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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.
No mention of noise, or rather the lack of it, in the article? Pretty important IMHO, unless you're just gonna watch Top Gun over and over again. Those jet eng^D^D^D^D^D^D^D fans make me crazy!
You're not supposed to have a TV or a monitor. Just one of those projector thingies. You know, like at the cinema. They are able to accept an RGB input, so the quality is a lot better than S-video or even component video. Of course there's the price to consider, don't be surprised to pay $5000 or more for a quality part.
Also FYI, a quality 21" monitor will stomp all over a basic TV in terms of picture quality. It just depends on the size of your home theater. For my small room a 21" monitor or an Apple Cinema display would be perfect.
> IMHO, a Windows based PC is *not* a real HTPC
Uh, why not? Because of your OS dogmatism? Sorry, but not liking an OS for philosophical reasons is one thing, and perfectly understandable. But saying it can't be made into an HTPC when it clearly and demonstrably can is ludicrous.
I don't have a dedicated HTPC, but I use my PC for all purposes, including as an HTPC. It uses an All-in-Wonder series card under WindowsXP, and is rock-solid stable. I use it not just for playback of DVD, VCD, DivX, Quicktime, and older video files in a variety of codecs not even explicitly supported by Crossover on Linux, but also for TiVo-like MPEG and MPEG-2 video capture and Guide+ functionality. It flawlessly plays back all these formats on my TV. The fact that it does so using WindowsXP does not disqualify it from performing--well, from performing the dfunctions of a "real" HTPC and many more.
The fact that it runs under WindowsXP is something I consider to be an advantage because it handles old and obscure video formats and codecs which Linux is unlikely to, and new video formats which are likely to have Windows and Mac support long before they have Linux support. That is unfortunate, but it is just the way things are and likely will be for several years to come.
Another great advantage of using WinXP as the basis of a HTPC is that complete, functional, no-command-line-needed playback and recording software is available from a variety of vendors. This is important because, when I finally get around to building a second PC dedicated to HTPC/TiVo functionality, I won't have a keyboard connected to it like I do my present jack-of-all-trades box. A true HTPC should work seamlessly like any other multimedia component, and should therefore be fully controllable by remote. This precludes using many Linux packages, many of which are unusable without keyboard access. In contrast, many companies offer polished Windows software which is easily controlled by remote.
This is especially true of the software that comes with the ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500 series cards--which also come with the best PC remote control ever, which is integrated well with their software. Seriously, nothing exists for Linux which is in the same league as this software and hardware combo. That is unfortunate, but it is a fact. Indeed, nothing else in the Windows world comes close either. But don't take my word for it; see for yourself here:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1609 fine. But I'm a pragmatist who just wants to se his damn movies without any fuss, and I do.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
other than to completely piss off your significant other... a $250.00 DVD player with progressive scan will do more and better than any pc+DVD drive+soundcard. Come on people... it's pretty damned stupid to throw more than a thousand dollars and multiply the complexity by 10 to just play a movie.
Cripes... I was just at Best buy today... they have the top of the line sony DVD player with progresive scan, every possible video out you could want, every possible audio out you could want (INCLUDING DISCREET 5.1 analog audio) AND play SACD's for less than $300.00.
sorry... but anyone that would want to use a pc instead of a DVD player for their home theatre is either a complete moron or just likes to do things so his friends will make comments...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'd agree that the avsforum.com is a great site. One of the best for that type of thing. But it's got problems. First, it's a bad layout with bad colors. (which is important, like it or not, if a site ever want's to become "mainstream," which THIS type of thing SHOULD start to become). Second, for "AV" (which is AUDIO and VISUAL) the site is almost ALL TEXT. Not going to suck in a lot of AV freaks with a mostly text site. Third, it's lacking structure. It's a "forum" and that's about it. Something like cnet, slashdot, etc... will always get more traffic, becuase it's got news, and stories. Comments are without doubt needed. And there isn't a lack of content at all on the avsforum! Last, the only solution I see for the avsforum is to go over to something like the engine http://www.kuro5hin.org/ uses. Leave it forum based, and user run for content, but structure it so that it's much more fun and easy to use!
I picked up one of these http://www.mikeshardware.com/section_pcprojects/d
And there you go. Not exactly an audiophile's wet dream but perfectly adequate. Plays MP3's through my Technics receiver and Klipsch speakers and they sound great. While it doesn't have a DVD drive it plays DIVX rips flawlessly. Nobody can tell the difference. I can always add a DVD drive but I don't buy DVDs so why? It plays all my MAME games wonderfully. It even runs GTA3 but the on board video can't really handle 3d graphics that well (ATI Rage). Big deal I've got a real computer for that.
Opera running in full screen mode is perfectly readable. You can zoom in and out easily. As for recording video, TIVO is far superior to software PVRs so I'm not going there yet, but I suppose I could add a USB vid cap device.
All in all, most of the functionality for 1/4 the price. A great little MP3 jukebox, DIVX player, and Classic Video Game machine.
Anyone who drops $1900 for an all in one stereo component box at this stage will be disappointed simply because the software to integrate all that functionality doesn't exist yet. And if big media has their way, it never will legally exist.