HTPC - Home Theater on a PC

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Cris

Cris

In search of Immortality
Valued Senior Member
Has anyone built their own HTPC?

I built one earlier this year. It is a dedicated 3GHz P4 with 1.3TB of disk storage. The monitor is a 50inch widescreen DLP connected to a high end graphics card using a DVI cable. I use Haupauge PVR 250 tuner cards and have BeyondTV from Snapstream as the main software. Audio output is through a digital connection to an ONKYO 6.1 surround sound system. Remote control is via an RF remote from Snapstream called Firefly. Features, and program schedules look and feel a lot like TIVO, except that the program guide is free and provdied by Snapstream.

I record all shows at the best DVD quality which is about 3.3GB per hour. And I can store around 350 hours of DVD quality TV.

The system has been operating 24x7 for the past 3 months without any serious problems.
 
Wow, that's sweet! And you have 3 times as much storage as I do. :( :p
My PC is also a 3Ghz P4. Only a 19" monitor though.
Do you share the shows?

*Is jealous*
 
If you feel like tweaking what you can do with your remote (in case the built-in features are somewhat limited) check out www.girder.nl. This is an excellent piece of software. It's a bit tricky to figure out and is trialware. But, I love it.

On topic, I got a All in Wonder but I wouldn't call it a Home theatre or anything. It suits my purposes though. I would like to work out a better OSD. The ATI interface is somewhat limited. There is a girder plugin that I think might work but I haven't delved into it yet.
 
Muchos dollars, no?

I always thought that a pc should be the center of a living room multimedia set.

Do you have your music collection blasting through the 6.1 speakers as well?

How much RAM do you have/is needed to record and watch shows in that quality?
 
I play DVDs on my computer and I have a TV tuner. I also have a nice sound system but it isn't quite a theatre.

When I get a better job, I hope to buy a projector for my computer.

Here is the ultimate theatre screen: 30 inch apple Hd screen
 
While not a dedicated system, I do all of my music listening, and DVD viewing with my computer. A 19" monitor isn't bad when you are sitting close. I've a Yamaha TSS-1 5.1 speaker system with 12" Cerwin Vega subwoofer spliced in. It is connected to a Philips Accoustic Edge soundcard via the SPDIF port.

My Nvidia Ti4200 has a tv out, but I don't have the cash to buy a good television to connect it to.

I rip all DVDs I rent to my computers harddrive using DVD Decrypter ( http://www.dvddecrypter.com/ ) a freeware application that saves the DVD to your drive.

I still need to sort out how to convert a DVD to Divx. I've a link that walks you through it, but I've been too impatient to sit and go through all of the steps.
 
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Gordian Knot has it all.
Click to expand...
Including adware if you install the DivX player as well. I'd suggest K-Lite Mega codec pack over Gordian Knot. It also has everything, without the spyware.
Or you can install each codec yourself.
 
You can do it a lot cheaper with linux. One day(when I have an HDTV, time and sufficient cash), I plan on using this type of software to build a killer 'nix entertainment system:

http://www.mythtv.org/

Fast, stable, and sexy...
 
I didn't install the divx player. Lots of those. BSPlayer I like. Smooth subtitle handling. It reached version 1.0 recently.
 
Including adware if you install the DivX player as well.
Click to expand...

There is of course the free version.

Hmm. Crap. I was going to post a link directly to the free codec that doesn't contain ad-ware. But, they've changed their site and I'm not sure which it is, necessarily. There is Divx and Divx Pro. Common sense would say Divx would be the free version, but I don't think so. They used to have all the downloads on one page and then way down in the corner was this tiny little link to the good codec.
 
Or you can get either one, and simply not install the player, and use MPC.
 
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