Your HTPC...

[alexthecheese]

Must say I do love the look of these HTPC setups... very, very nice...

 

[Alistair]

Silverstone GD02B
Q9450 @ stock (retail cooler)
DFI Lan Party 9400 LPJRGF9400-T2RS
Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 X 2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel Kit
1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
Samsung S223F DVDR/RW
Kworld Dual DVB-T PCI Express
Thermaltake 700W SmartPower


Hooked up to a Sony Bravia KDL40D3500 & Onkyo HTX22HD.

Front Speakers are Mordaunt Short Aluminis rears are the ones bundled with the Onkyo

Pending Upgrades:

Asus HDMI Soundcard (xonar slim maybe?) & a Bluray Drive (LG?)

 

[BiGT-]

Alistair that looks brilliant but use some trunking for the wires, will make it look much better.

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Question for anyone who has streamed HD files to a PS3 or played it from PS3, and also from their HTPC, is there any difference in quality? for some reason when I test out my HD movies on my PC is doesnt look as good as PS3?

 

[Alistair]

Alistair that looks brilliant but use some trunking for the wires, will make it look much better.

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Question for anyone who has streamed HD files to a PS3 or played it from PS3, and also from their HTPC, is there any difference in quality? for some reason when I test out my HD movies on my PC is doesnt look as good as PS3?

Still a work in progress

 

[Matt]

Just noticed my AMD 5050e in my HTPC was running at 85c today. I might just install the CPU fan for a few days!

 

[steveo]

Antec fusion remote black
corsair hw650w
intel q6600
Gainward 4870 golden sample
Mini ninja
lg blu/hd-dvd
1tb+360gb
8gb corsair xms2

idle temps are 33c load about 45c

 

[jonneymendoza]

What setup do you have?

I have rebuilt my 4yr old MCE box to this:

- Gigabyte MA78GM
- AMD X2 5050e (energy efficient)
- Scythe Ninja
- 2gb RAM
- 160gb + 500gb Seagates
- DVB-T TV Card
- M-Audio Revolution 5.1 Soundcard
- Enermax Modu82+ 525w PSU

This system is running very quietly (only fans are 1x 120mm exhaust and the PSU fan). It is also very cool running (case cold to touch, exhaust pushing cold air). The energy consumption is down too, it now uses 75-90w.

Software wise i am running Media Portal + StreamedMP skin, which after using XP MCE i am very impressed with. The TV side isn't up to MCE standards really, but it's not at all bad.

I was running 2 TV cards but found the onboard sound of the Gigabyte to be appalling compared to the MAudio when outputting to my Cyrus amp.



Media Portal + Streamed MP Easy (very easy) install guide on AVS

TV
For logos in the guide:
- Download http://www.typetech.org/mediaportal/UKTVLogosFree.zip
- Move files to: C:\ProgramData\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\TV\Logos (Vista), C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\Thumbs\TV\Logos (XP)

is it possible to hook up a htpc with sky?

 

[SiD the Turtle]

I don't mean to be a pedant, but did you have to quote the whole OP with pictures?

 

[jonneymendoza]

I don't mean to be a pedant, but did you have to quote the whole OP with pictures?

Press the F5 key on your keyboard

 

[edgedemon]

- Gigabyte MA78GM
- AMD X2 5050e (energy efficient)
- Scythe Ninja
- 2gb value RAM
- 120gb deskstar
- Nova T & PVR-500 MCE TV cards
- On board soundcard
- Coolermaster 500w PSU
- Ageon 2.1 speakers

All my content is stored on my Windows home server and the HTPC has mapped drives via gig ethernet
Running Media portal and monochrome skin

Loving it

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Press the F5 key on your keyboard

 

[wolvers]

An update from my original post as the spec has changed somewhat since then.

Specs

Silverstone CW02
Q9550 @3.4ghz with Dtek Fuzion V2 block
2 x 2gb OCZ Platinum PC2-8500
Asus P5K-E
GTX-260 with EK VGA Acetal Supreme block (can't remember the clock speeds!)
Asus HDAV1.3
Hauppage HVR-4000
Enermax Liberty PSU
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD drive
2 x 640gb WD Caviar Black (RAID0)
1 x 1Tb Samsung F1
Laing DDC Ultra pump with XSPC res/top
TFC Xchanger 120mm rad
92mm rad (can't remember the name, came from Germany)
Vista MCE with Media Browser and MC Menu Mender mods

Build thread in sig.

 

[jonneymendoza]

One thing i hate about HTPC cases is that is cramped and very hard to work inside one reminds me of the bad old days of my experience in building stuff on a desktop pc

Its why im debating on wether i should just buy a midi or mini tower case instead

 

[Sankari]

Lian Li PC-36B
AMD 780G chipset (Gigabyte MA78GM-DS2H)
AMD 4850e
4Gb GeIL RAM
Windows XP x64

(Photos here).

 

[SiD the Turtle]

An update from my original post as the spec has changed somewhat since then.

Beautiful! I take it you play games on it as well then as that's a decent spec.

Media Browser has come a long way since I last used it, I ditched VMC in favour of Media Portal and XBMC, but I think it's time to give it another go.

 

[wolvers]

Beautiful! I take it you play games on it as well then as that's a decent spec.

Media Browser has come a long way since I last used it, I ditched VMC in favour of Media Portal and XBMC, but I think it's time to give it another go.

Thanks mate. Yeah I try to get a bit of gaming time in when I can on it.

Media Browser is a great app but I think the mods that you can do to VMC with MC Menu Mender, in addition to using Media Browser, makes VMC a much more usable interface, especially for SWMBO!!

 

[Demon]

Another one here who's gone back to Vista MCE from MP..

The two main things that made that possible (and mentioned above)
1. Media Browser (Beautiful interface in Cover Flow)
2. MCE Menu Mender to tidy up/customise MCE Menus

The HTPC Spec (just used for media playback) is

CASE: Antec Fusion V2 (Silver + VFD)
Mobo: Gigabyte E7AUM-DS2H
Graphics: Onboard Nvidia 9400 with HDMI (And supports CUDA)
CPU: C2D X6800
RAM: 4Gb DDR2 PC8500
OS:Vista 32
Audio: On-board (Decode to 6 analog channels then fed into old denon receiver)
Optical: BR/HD-DVD LG Combo
Codecs: Vista Codec Pack + CoreAVC (using CUDA Acceleration)
Media Players: PowerDVD9 for blu-ray, PowerDVD7 for HD-DVD
Keyboard/Mouse: Logitech DiNovo Mini

It comes in/out of S3 standy flawlessly (A first for me), so is pretty much instant on, and works with my Harmony remote as the Antec VFD has an IR receiver built in..

 

[edgedemon]

no sound for live tv in MP 1.0.2???

I remember this happening with the upgrade from1.0.0 to 1.0.1, and then seeing the news post about problems so I reverted back to 1.0.0
Anyway I decided to try and upgrade to 1.0.2 as I wanted to try the latest tv series and moving pictures plugins and fancied a different skin fter seeing the talk in this thread
I downloaded MP and chose the upgrade option, everything went through fine and started up MP - I have no sound when watching TV..
My Music and MY videos are all fine, I even get sound when moving through the menus - it is only when watching TV that I get no sound
closing MP and checking that no options are set to mute - all OK and I have sound from within windows so I know its not a hardware issue. I haven't changed settings, all I did was to upgrade
Please help - this is a showstopper at the moment - I have no TV
Anyone else had this problem, does the upgrade change a setting that Im not aware of???

 

[Dr Who]

Silverstone GD01B-MXR
Asus P5E-VM
BFG 8800GTX o/c
Crucial Ballistix 8500 DUal Channel Ram kit
OCZ Gamestream 600w PSU
E2180 2ghz CPU
Asus Lightscribe DVDRW
200mb/s Powerline Networked to Main PC

Gona slap in a spare Q6600 soon as have one laying about

 

[jonneymendoza]

I remember this happening with the upgrade from1.0.0 to 1.0.1, and then seeing the news post about problems so I reverted back to 1.0.0
Anyway I decided to try and upgrade to 1.0.2 as I wanted to try the latest tv series and moving pictures plugins and fancied a different skin fter seeing the talk in this thread
I downloaded MP and chose the upgrade option, everything went through fine and started up MP - I have no sound when watching TV..
My Music and MY videos are all fine, I even get sound when moving through the menus - it is only when watching TV that I get no sound
closing MP and checking that no options are set to mute - all OK and I have sound from within windows so I know its not a hardware issue. I haven't changed settings, all I did was to upgrade
Please help - this is a showstopper at the moment - I have no TV
Anyone else had this problem, does the upgrade change a setting that Im not aware of???

Check your settings again and make sure its set correctly