Post Your Home Cine & HiFi Kit...

howardcanning, how do you find the BK Monolith? I've been after an XLS200 for years but I don't think my neighbours below would appreciate it :D

I noticed BK have made some recent additions to the range so I might be tempted by one of the lesser powered models. The prices are certainly tempting anyway!

While I'm in here, I might as well post a recent picture of our setup.

From my previous post in the thread

To this...

frontroomsmall.jpg


New additions are a 47" Philips 47PFL5522D TV and some fancy lighting. My flatmate bought the TV after selling his old 32" Hyundai to his parents. My Yamaha DSP AX620 is still trundling along nicely although the rear channel drops at low volumes occasionally :(

It is getting on a tad now though.

When I get my own place probably late next year, I might splash out on nice new equipment... it's been a while.
 
PESolution said:
Hey bud, i have the 37" version of the Toshiba Regza and love it, how are you finding the 42?
Click to expand...

Very good :) Better than the reviews of the smaller screens suggest!


agw_01 said:
howardcanning, how do you find the BK Monolith? I've been after an XLS200 for years but I don't think my neighbours below would appreciate it :D

I noticed BK have made some recent additions to the range so I might be tempted by one of the lesser powered models. The prices are certainly tempting anyway!

While I'm in here, I might as well post a recent picture of our setup.

From my previous post in the thread

To this...

[ig]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u45/agw_01/frontroomsmall.jpg[/img]

New additions are a 47" Philips 47PFL5522D TV and some fancy lighting. My flatmate bought the TV after selling his old 32" Hyundai to his parents. My Yamaha DSP AX620 is still trundling along nicely although the rear channel drops at low volumes occasionally :(

It is getting on a tad now though.

When I get my own place probably late next year, I might splash out on nice new equipment... it's been a while.
Click to expand...

Nice setup :) The Monolith is truly bonkers. It's probably a bit excessive if you want to watch at reasonable levels with neighbours below! The XLS200 is very good, but might struggle in a bigger room. I know the XLS300 is meant to be somewhere in between the two, I guess it depends what your needs are!
 
howardcanning said:
Nice setup :) The Monolith is truly bonkers. It's probably a bit excessive if you want to watch at reasonable levels with neighbours below! The XLS200 is very good, but might struggle in a bigger room. I know the XLS300 is meant to be somewhere in between the two, I guess it depends what your needs are!
Click to expand...

Thanks :) It's not bad. I'd really like some more speakers and a better quality amp.. but I'll make do with what I have at the moment.

I'm not sure what to replace the B&W's with as I want to keep them as rears. I therefore want to get something with a similar sound for the fronts. I might get a new amp before new speakers though, as I'm not getting the best out of the speakers until I do.

That's interesting about the XLS200, how big a room are we talking? The sub will probably be the last thing I buy, probably be well into having my own place by then so will have room dimensions to work with.

The Minotaur does look like a beast. I bet you've rattled a few shelves with it!

Oxlde said:
may I ask what sofas those are and where you got them? they look soo comfortable :)
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We inherited them :D 'My' sofa on the left was from my Mum's house when she got a new suite, and my flatmate was given his sofa by his Mum's friend. We originally started out with just the one on the right, but the second sofa is a nice addition.

It means ample seating if we have people over and quite a comfy seating position (albeit slight off center to the TV) when watching a film.
 
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Mansize_tissue said:
How are you finding this setup? I'm thinking of investing in something very similar but I'm unsure whether to get a NAD or CA amplifier (with either the DACMagic or Beresford DAC). Also, are they the Q1s or Q3s?
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Sorry, they're Q1's! Not sure how i managed to type Q3 in the 2nd part. But yeah, the setup was a bargain, the 540a and the Q1's came to £200 all in :D To my ears it all sounds amazing, although i desperately need to get some feet of some sort for the Kefs, my desk reverberates too easily!
 
A random name said:
Sorry, they're Q1's! Not sure how i managed to type Q3 in the 2nd part. But yeah, the setup was a bargain, the 540a and the Q1's came to £200 all in :D To my ears it all sounds amazing, although i desperately need to get some feet of some sort for the Kefs, my desk reverberates too easily!
Click to expand...

Ah, cheers dude! I assume you picked them both up second hand then, right? I really need to make my first foray into hi-fi, but I don't like the idea of dropping hundreds of pounds on kit which I have little experience with, and with no warranty or anything. Thing is, I'm looking at getting a pair of B&W 685s, CA DACMagic and a NAD C355BEE which, with interconnects and cables, will be nigh on £1000 new!
 
Could anyone tell me whats the advantage of a media center? I don't really get it, I mean I have my computer plugged to my TV thru a SVGA cable and I can play movies just as well, so I don't really understand why people wanna buy a second PC just to do that?
 
Leodido said:
Could anyone tell me whats the advantage of a media center? I don't really get it, I mean I have my computer plugged to my TV thru a SVGA cable and I can play movies just as well, so I don't really understand why people wanna buy a second PC just to do that?
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- To Play H.264 files at 720p/1080p with HD sound via a dedicated HDMI connection.
- To catalogue all the movies in a convienant way (DVD/DivX/BluRay/HD)
- To catalogue all the Music in a convienant way
- To have a nice look to it (MediaPortal)
- To Control it via Remote Control
- To bring all media togther in 1 place which can be accessed easily
- Simplfies things
- Looks cool under a TV
- Can be made to run very cool
- Can be made to run very quiet
- High Storage Capacity

- Quality - HTPCs can rival high end dedicated devices.
- Features - such as pause live tv, usually a feature of high end dedicated devices.
- Digital media recorder
- Media server - The HTPC can serve media files to other computers / devices on a network.
- Gaming - Plays any PC game and application within the game or application's system requirements.
- Other media - HTPCs can store photo albums and play other media files.
- Other functions - other functions may include weather forecast, online radio streams, TV schedule, etc.
- Other software - other software, such as downloading or file serving, can be run, perhaps in the background.
- All-In-One - The features found in a HTPC would usually require more than one dedicated component.

The general goal in a HTPC is usually to combine many or all components of a home theater setup into one box. They can be purchased pre-configured with the required hardware and software needed to add television programming to the PC, or can be cobbled together out of discrete components as is commonly done with Windows Media Center, MythTV, GB-PVR, SageTV, Famulent, or LinuxMCE.

Think of it like a PS3 but a hell of a lot more!
 
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Thanks a lot, that cleared a few things up for me :)

So basically you need :

  • an HD TV
  • a Media PC(Does it have to be powerful, ie: Gaming rig?)
  • A Card in your computer to hook up the TV network?
  • Sound Surround System
  • A remote to control all that
  • Media Portal
 
Leodido said:
Thanks a lot, that cleared a few things up for me :)

So basically you need :

  • an HD TV
  • a Media PC(Does it have to be powerful, ie: Gaming rig?)
  • A Card in your computer to hook up the TV network?
  • Sound Surround System
  • A remote to control all that
  • Media Portal
Click to expand...

Yes HDTV (To watch HD content)

Does not have to be powerful at all (unless you intend to use it for gaming)! A basic system will do for watching movies. My HTPC cost £400 to build using 2nd hand parts and it plays full 1080p files at 24Hz perfectly!
Im using onboard X1250 graphics (which is an old chip now) and a Core2Duo E2140. I dont think you can get any more basic than that! My Abit mobo (discontinued now) has onboard HDMI so it carries both the audio and the picture.

You dont need a surround sound system. I have just 2 speakers. If you wanted a surround sound system you would just need to hook the HTPC into your amp and off you go (thats if the mobo or soundcard can output 5.1/7.1). If the mobo has an onboard HDMI connection, or if the GPU has one then its surround sound ready. You can also use an SPDIF connection (most new mobos have this) to output the sound. If your watching something that is 5.1/7.1 then it will output that and you just need an amp to process the signal.

You can control it via remote yes. I use Windows Media Center Remote.

MediaPortal is the front end. Its the software that pieces everything together and provides a nice interface. It itself doesn't really do anything as in the background there are codecs and players which are doing the work.
There are alternatives to MediaPortal as well.

My HTPC is just a shell really. It does not have any data on it (other than software, codecs, media players, and MediaPortal). Everything is stored on my Main PC and the drives shared. I Fire up MediaPortal on the HTPC, browse to a movie i want to watch and hit play and it is streamed across from the main PC to the HTPC.

One thing to note is that if you intend to stream .MKV files across a wireless network then you will suffer. My 108Mbps wireless network was not up to the job and i got really bad stuttering. I resolved this by hardwiring the HTCP into the router.
 
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Im asuming that a big portion of you have your movies stored on your setups (NAS or locally), what software are you using to display them all 'neatly' in whatever media center app your using?
And are they literally just rips or mkv/avi/mpg files?

If this is against the rules mods, please remove the post. :).
 
agw_01 said:
howardcanning, how do you find the BK Monolith? I've been after an XLS200 for years but I don't think my neighbours below would appreciate it :D

I noticed BK have made some recent additions to the range so I might be tempted by one of the lesser powered models. The prices are certainly tempting anyway!

While I'm in here, I might as well post a recent picture of our setup.

From my previous post in the thread

To this...

frontroomsmall.jpg


New additions are a 47" Philips 47PFL5522D TV and some fancy lighting. My flatmate bought the TV after selling his old 32" Hyundai to his parents. My Yamaha DSP AX620 is still trundling along nicely although the rear channel drops at low volumes occasionally :(

It is getting on a tad now though.

When I get my own place probably late next year, I might splash out on nice new equipment... it's been a while.
Click to expand...



Hey look its my tv :D its famous!!!!!

woo....looks good Andy you should get yourself a nice DSLR :p
 
BoomAM said:
Im asuming that a big portion of you have your movies stored on your setups (NAS or locally), what software are you using to display them all 'neatly' in whatever media center app your using?
And are they literally just rips or mkv/avi/mpg files?

If this is against the rules mods, please remove the post. :).
Click to expand...

ALL my movies are stored on HDD's which are shared across my network. Those HDD's are in my main PC and on the HTPC. Both my 2 PS3's, my HTPC and my main PC have access to them.

For the PS3's i use a software called TVersity to act as my media server which is run on my main PC. The PS3's then can see that TVersity media server and can access all the files from it via wireless.

MY HTPC is hardwired into the router and that streams the files across the network. I hardwired it as wireless cant cope with 720p/1080p files being streamed. Now they play flawlessly!

Im using a software called MediaPortal on the HTPC. This is a very sexy looking front-end which shows posters, imdb info, storyline, actors etc. It downloads the information automatically as well. Its very customizable and there are a lot of plugins for it.
All my movies are file-based. Either DivX, Xvid, Avi, ISO, IMG or MKV. Why you ask? Because its quicker than going through my DVD collection and looking for a film. Now all my movies are already there and i just select which one i want to watch. It certainly speeds things up and i can watch a film in my main living room and someone else can watch the same film in my other living room :) . The only boring bit is ripping the movies from the original DVD's/Bluray's that i own and converting them but i stay on top of it so its not that time consuming. Now i just rip blurays as i buy them and stick them on my home network and put the original disk away.
 
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