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How to Build The Perfect Home Theater PC
Ian Bell writes: "We have just updated our HTPC guide to include some new parts for building the perfect home theater PC. We scoured the net and talked with various manufacturers to find these hard to find parts and components. This includes a new component width black anodized aluminum case complete with reciever sytle legs, a fold down front door and front USB/FireWire ports. Add to this an ATi AIW Radeon 8500 DV, DVD-RW/CDR-RW drive and Dolby Digital sound and you have the perfect HTPC. Check out our guide for complete system specs pictures and links to where you can find these hard to find parts. This system replaces your DVD player complete with HDTV and progressive scan support, Tivo or Replay TV and TV guide." Update: 05/26 23:44 GMT by T : Helstein writes with another All-In-Wonder based approach, his 1U Multimedia Station.
I know ATI has the most comprehensive video-handling VGA cards, but I'd strongly recommend you dump it in favor of a GeForce-based card with video in/out. ATI's drivers have always been funky and I've never been satisfied with them.
This advice is for a Windows-based system; I don't have any experience with *nix drivers for the ATI cards.
The Radeon 8500 is seriously broken for playing DVDs on a very high quality display. The gamma correction is screwed up, preventing proper display of many scenes. Furthermore, the AIW is a somewhat inferior capture card.
If you really want to know what cooks, check out the Granddaddy of A/V Forums and look in their Home Theater Computers Forum. There are two threads in particular of interest:
HTPC FAQ
Best in Class HTPC Component Listing
FWIW, ATI has given a prerelease driver to one of the AVS Forum's most prominent members for testing and he claims the gamma correction problem is fixed in that driver. Who knows when the drivier will be released and if it will be even remotely stable...many of their most recent drivers are pure, unadulterated fecal matter.
They mention HDTV in the article, but only in the context of HDTV output of a lo-res source. The DVD's are 480p at best. So, you can scale them up to 720p or 1080i, but it's not full HD.
Slap an HDTV PCI card in there, and get true 1080i (1920x1080) HDTV. They also HD PVR functions, and some even do DVD decoding & scaling in hardware.
Check out the MyHD Card, the HiPix, or the AccessDTV cards for options.
Unfortunately, none of these (that I know of) support Linux. The MyHD is the newest, and the HiPix has an open source effort to enhance their Windows software.
If you live in an area that has digital TV broadcasts (most major cities do), HDTV is the way to go.. there is a LOT of HD Programming available.
I've been wondering this myself.
The problem is, with digital projectors, they are noisy (big fan to cool the lightbulbs in em) and the bulbs tend to be expensive when they burn out.
Of course, you would also need a big flat, matte white painted wall to project onto, etc.
There are major Home theatre heads who do have such setups, but usually the project is in a projection room, with a double layer of optical class to project through.
Also, don't forget, that with a projector behind you, you would have to change your entire cabling setup (because everything was in front, plugged into your TV, remember?) so everything is behind you. After someone has dropped a few hundred (thousand at times) on cables, getting the speakers setup JUST right, its a pain to move everything around. A Plasma TV is something you can put in place of your TV, get an image just like from your projector, but without the hassle of having to setup a projector.
(and then there is an entire other issue of which tvs can provide true "blacks" etc.)