HTPC Help

Aruffell

Aruffell

Aruffell

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2004
Posts
5,653
Location
Chatham, Kent
Looking at putting a HTPC in the bedroom.

So far i've got a 250gb SATA hard drive, AMD Athlon Xp1800, Windows XP with SP3 and a Nebula Digi-TV card.

Just wondering how much RAM i would need and what kind of motherboard and graphics card you would recommend.

We will be hooking it upto an Optoma HD65 DLP Projector (hopefully via HDMI) and will be buying a set of Logitech Z5500 speakers.

Ideally want to buy things second hand and spend little to nothing so please help and what case?

Thanks,

Andy
 
Mainly DVD, Divx, TV through tuner and maybe some high definition files and mkv.

Highest resolution that the Optoma HD65 does.

Andy
 
What would i need then?

Cheapest graphics card for starters?

What would be the cheapest (with connection to logitech z5500) sound card (brand new or second hand) audigy2?

What CPU power would i need?

480watt psu be ok?

Opteron 146 @ 2.8/3ghz be ok?
2Gb G.Skill ZX DDR3200 ok?
DFI LANParty SLI-DR board ok?

Andy
 
I would get an e5200 with a micro-atx 9400 Nvidia based board, theres also an amd triple core and 780G board to think about.

You gotta ask yourself, are you really gonna be watching that much HD to warrant a new PC?

You could test the water and use the parts you already have.
 
You could always get something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-269-WD. I got one after realising that there was nothing this couldn't do that an expensive HTPC couldn't (for my needs). Plays pretty much any music/video file without a fuss, has optical out for surround sound and full 720p/1080p HDMI output.

It may not be ideal for everyone as it can't play optical media and you'd have to look at something different for TV, but I'm getting on fine with an HDMI Freeview box and this, already got a standalone DVD player and BluRays get ripped to MKV on PC.
 
Wharfdale LPDV832HDMI. Got it for about £30 from a highstreet catalogue store. Haven't had a problem with it and looks fine on my 24" monitor via HDMI, does 720p or 1080i out. Only thing about it is that you obviously can't record on it but that's not such a big deal for me.
 
There's plenty of freeview recorders out there, I'd be surprised if none of the decent ones had HDMI. Obviously the HTPC route is best for a lot of people but to get just a decent case it seems you have to spend as much as a stand alone media player, let alone a system good enough for HD and finding 100% reliable software, then there's the costs of cooling to keep the system as quiet as possible.
 
Phil99 said:
There's plenty of freeview recorders out there, I'd be surprised if none of the decent ones had HDMI. Obviously the HTPC route is best for a lot of people but to get just a decent case it seems you have to spend as much as a stand alone media player, let alone a system good enough for HD and finding 100% reliable software, then there's the costs of cooling to keep the system as quiet as possible.
Click to expand...

But i would need to find a USB enclosure to put the hard drive in wouldn't i?

Andy
 
Aruffell said:
But i would need to find a USB enclosure to put the hard drive in wouldn't i?

Andy
Click to expand...

Yeah, dirt cheap enclosures available 2nd hand/auction though.

My setup cost <£210 for TV/Media/1TB, all totally silent (well, maybe not quite silent if you put your ear right next to the harddisk :p). My Media PC cost more, is about twice the size, is now too old to play 1080p (~2yrs) without going in to overdrive and isn't half as easy to get working. Of course that's only one option, after going the HTPC route I decided to ditch it and go for stuff that works out of the box with no worries.

If you do go the media pc route I'd recommend a decent spec PC with something like a C2D, 2GB RAM, reasonably new graphics card (with a nice quiet cooler) and the rest of the hardware as preference. Hardware acceleration works nicely in Media Player Classic but I have no idea if it does in Windows Media Centre/Media Portal.

Software is a bit of a difficult choice. Windows XP MCE is a bit dated, Vista Home Premium is pretty good but obviously going to add £70 or so to the build cost. I liked MythTV but I couldn't get TV working on it easily.

edit:

Maybe based on something like http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-098-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=326 as it has onboard video that appears to have Purevideo (video acceleration), HDMI and HDCP. Couple that with 2GB of cheap DDR2 and a second hand C2D and you'd have the core parts of a PC that should play anything you throw at it. I wouldn't bother going with the XP1800 as it'd stand very little chance of running with any HD content.
 
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Saying that i think i have a USB enclosure somewhere and a spare 250gb Sata drive.

How many HDMI ports has it got?

The projector (Optoma HD65 has got 1 HDMI so i want to run that media player into it and a HDMI Freeview PVR as well.

Also, Logitech Z5500's would run straight off of the box?

Andy
 
Aruffell said:
Saying that i think i have a USB enclosure somewhere and a spare 250gb Sata drive.

How many HDMI ports has it got?

The projector (Optoma HD65 has got 1 HDMI so i want to run that media player into it and a HDMI Freeview PVR as well.

Also, Logitech Z5500's would run straight off of the box?

Andy
Click to expand...

The Western Digital TV has 1xHDMI and 1xOptical out. Any freeview box will have phono (red/white) audio out and as there's no multi channel audio on freeview there'd be no problems using optical for dolby/dts from the WDTV and using line-in for stereo from freeview.

As for HDMI, I don't think you'd be able to pass through from one device to another like you can with SCART on most things, no idea how much switch boxes would cost. You could maybe even use S-video or RGB scart if the projector has either with a standard freeview box as the PJ should have decent upscaling or might even run at the native SD resolution, no idea how they work.

Aruffell said:
Phil could you add me to msn please - aruffell [at] gmail.com

Thanks,

Andy
Click to expand...

I'll add you tomorrow, had a fair bit of time off uni so am having to catch up with a lot of coursework so am a bit limited for time. Probably shouldn't be browsing the forums in that case, but anyway... :D
 
Phil99 said:
You could always get something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-269-WD. I got one after realising that there was nothing this couldn't do that an expensive HTPC couldn't (for my needs). Plays pretty much any music/video file without a fuss, has optical out for surround sound and full 720p/1080p HDMI output.

It may not be ideal for everyone as it can't play optical media and you'd have to look at something different for TV, but I'm getting on fine with an HDMI Freeview box and this, already got a standalone DVD player and BluRays get ripped to MKV on PC.
Click to expand...

I've done the same as Phil99. Fiddled around with an old PC (P4 2.6) and got as far as changing the graphics card but it ended up as a whole lot of hurt. Gave the PC away, put one of the HDDs in a caddy and bought the WD instead.

I figure the WD will pay for itself in energy savings - 200W vs 20W for the WD and HDD.
 
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