Hometheater PCs

tman24

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Feb 6, 2008
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Hey I was just wanting to ask what people have for their htpc. I have been using my modded xbox with xbmc for the last few years but isn't powerful enough for hd video. so yesterday i purchased parts for a htpc. I am thinking of trying xbmc for windows. What does everyone else use?
 

dmclone

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Oct 20, 2006
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I haven't felt a real need for an HTPC since I have a PS3 but I like to put PC's together. What type of hardware you going with?
 

cytech

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Apr 10, 2006
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I put linux on mine to start with but ended up putting xp on it after while.

and as dmclone said what kind of parts did you purchase?
 

tman24

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Feb 6, 2008
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I went a little overboard but I got a amd 2.5 ghz quad core, 4 gig of ram and 3 1T hard drives to make a raid 5. I am extremely excited hopefully its all here soon as possible
 

dmclone

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I went a little overboard but I got a amd 2.5 ghz quad core, 4 gig of ram and 3 1T hard drives to make a raid 5. I am extremely excited hopefully its all here soon as possible

Sounds like a great set-up

What video card? Does it have HDMI?
 

dmclone

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I don't know where you're placing this PC but if noise is a factor you'll also want to get some big slow spinning fans. I combined those with a fanless video card and my PC is pretty quiet. I also have my hard drives suspended on a rubber band type thing.
 

tman24

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Feb 6, 2008
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Sounds like a great set-up

What video card? Does it have HDMI?

I am going with the HDMI on my motherboard. Ill give it a try for awhile. I read a review on the motherboard and it said it can handle htpc level of graphics. So i will give it a try if it doesnt work I will go shopping for a video card.
 

tman24

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Feb 6, 2008
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Dump Windows. MythTV on Linux rocks.

I have given MythTV a chance a couple of years ago. I dont need the recording tv function as I already have a DVR for now. Also I am terrible at Linux. so if something goes wrong i wouldnt know how to fix it.

When I used MythTV it was great for a couple of months.
 

dundermifflin

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Nov 14, 2007
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i run windows vista with a couple of over the air HD cards from Hauppauge. I connect my xbox360 to the vista media center and it works great for over the air hd and my hd home videos as well as hd wmv files that I download from prettyboo.com

The xbox 360 will not stream mkv files which I think is what most blu-ray and hddvds are converted to, so I have to find hdwmv files.

I can't as far as I know find a card that will allow me to record and stream DirectTV-HD. Does anyone know if you can do that?

I don't know the exact motherboard that I use, but it is at least 3 years old and I have 3 gig of ram. I have an older video card that has a hard time playing my hd content, but it streams it to my xbox360 just fine.

Not sure if any of this helps but I am curious if others have any luck connecting their DirectTV-HD to their HTPC.
 

cytech

Well-Known Member
Apr 10, 2006
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You should really get a video card to help out some. You don't need anything to fancy something under $100 will do just fine. Also Blue ray drives for PC's have really dropped in price lately. You can get the drives for around $80 now or a burner for about $175.
 

ISUKyro

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Oct 28, 2006
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Houston, TX
Kinda on topic without starting a new thread: anyone know how big of a DVI run you can make before quality drops/ or signal gets weak? (I've heard 100 feet, but not from anyone I trust lol)
 

jbhtexas

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Oct 20, 2006
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Arlington, TX
i run windows vista with a couple of over the air HD cards from Hauppauge.

Do the Hauppauge cards have onboard MPEG processing, or do they dump all processing over to the PC's CPU?

I have an old Dell GX260 with XP, 1 GB RAM , nVidia GeForce AGP graphics card, and a MyHD MDP-130 OTA tuner card. The MyHD card has an on-board MPEG processor, so the PC does not get bogged down when watching/recording HD content. Unfortunately, this card doesn't have active software support anymore. With the nVidia PureVideo driver, this old thing can play 1080i transport streams quite well with Windows Media player. I can also play back using the MyHD card, which has a wonderful on-board MPEG II decoder, but the MyHD software is cumbersome.

Unfortunately, my old baby doesn't have a prayer for BlueRay content, so I suppose an upgrade is coming somewhere down the line...
 
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tman24

Well-Known Member
Feb 6, 2008
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i run windows vista with a couple of over the air HD cards from Hauppauge. I connect my xbox360 to the vista media center and it works great for over the air hd and my hd home videos as well as hd wmv files that I download from prettyboo.com

The xbox 360 will not stream mkv files which I think is what most blu-ray and hddvds are converted to, so I have to find hdwmv files.

I can't as far as I know find a card that will allow me to record and stream DirectTV-HD. Does anyone know if you can do that?

I don't know the exact motherboard that I use, but it is at least 3 years old and I have 3 gig of ram. I have an older video card that has a hard time playing my hd content, but it streams it to my xbox360 just fine.

Not sure if any of this helps but I am curious if others have any luck connecting their DirectTV-HD to their HTPC.

The last I heard people were having trouble doing that because they encrypt or whatever their feed. So until someone figures out how to get around that you wont be able to record directv.