A forum that discusses building your own Home Theater PC?

[Rally1]

let me know of a good one, or a section of another site that talks about it.

thanks!

 

[DaveJ]

AVSForum

Dave

 

[Ornery]

Home Theater PC

Seems like a waste of time and money. Why not build a real home theater, even a budget one, and leave the PC for surfing and word processing? Hope you haven't already invested a small fortune in your PC! :Q

 

[Rally1]

pretty sure i can make a home theater PC system alot cheaper than you think, and a hell of alot cheaper than buying components


why on earth would you just use a PC for surfing and typing, it can do alot more than that?!

 

[Tripleshot]

A p4 or XP with DDR, a vid card (ATI Radeon works well) with TV in/out and an Audigy sound card hooked to some good 5.1 speakers, and my friend,you will have a pc home theater setup on the cheap that looks and sounds good.

 

[DaveSimmons]

AT's video forum is a good place to ask questions about TV-out, Tivo-like recording, DVD playback, etc. though the consensus is pretty much to go with ATI for the best TV-out quality.



<< Seems like a waste of time and money. Why not build a real home theater, even a budget one, and leave the PC for surfing and word processing? >>



- Playback of own slides and home movies (DVD players can be finicky about encoding and disc mastering, e.g. many support VCD but not SVCD, and almost none support "mini-DVD")
- VCR replacement
- MP3 jukebox (I'm thinking of this, so I can box up my 1,200 CDs)
- big-screen gaming
- (some people, I use Netflix myself): playback of pirate divx movies

and there's always:
- just for fun. Makes as much sense as modding a case, or overclocking from 133 to 150 to get 12% more speed.

 

[Ornery]

You have to own a TV and Stereo system anyway, so you're already 80% there for at least a decent sized picture and better sound than almost any PC speaker kit. Substituting a PC home theater for even a modest 'real' home theater is worse than using you PC to listen to music instead of your stereo system. To have to cough up hundreds of dollars for that huge compromise is just adding insult to injury.

Edit: At this point, I'd like to know what you're using for the monitor of this "Home Theater"?

 

[joohang]

With an expensive home theatre setup, it doesn't hurt much to add a ~$500 nForce PC.

It could even have a 1 GB HD that connects to the network.

I personally want to setup one up with AIW Radeon to use it as some sort of a personal video recorder, if the quality is good enough.

And with a nice TV and large enough font, it's not too bad to use a computer with it, especially with the ATi remote, if I could map keys to certain apps or something like that.

 

[Rally1]

you must not know what a home theater pc is?

you have a TV
you have a 5.1 or better stereo

you have a PC with DVD, HD full of your movies, MP3s and TV shows. Connected to the web for GuidePlus and streaming content. One remote that does it all ($20), etc etc.

I already have all the components for a working system, i just want to see what else I may need. Oh and it is fun!

Duron 900
80GB HB
RAdeon AIW
Logitech Remote
Pioneer 16x DVD
Audigy
etc

 

[Ornery]

"you must not know what a home theater pc is?"

You got that right! I thought you were going to watch DVDs on your 19" PC monitor and listen to it over your Logitech 560s, or whatever. That's not much of a "Home Theater" in my book!

So, basically your PC replaces a $150.00 DVD player, $75.00 portable MP3 player and $75.00 VCR? I know what you mean about "big-screen gaming". Personally, I got off the PC upgrade merry-go-round by relegating games to consoles. Hell, the consoles are less than a single video card and don't crash!

Guess it's too late for you, but I think the money would go farther invested in the main Home Theater.

 

[AaronP]

ornery, the nicest thing about a HTPC is that, with powerstrip, it can do better scaling than a 10,000 dollar Farjouda scaler.

 

[spidey07]

Onery,

A HTPC can do so much more than you describe.

digtially upscale everything to HD
DVD player that rivals the best in the business
superb video processing similar to 10K processors
digitally record HD and SD sources
Just about anything else you want.

So a HTPC can actually save money, and in the scheme of things 1500 dollars for one sure beats 15 thousand for the gear it accomplishes.

I too was skeptical, but now am seriously looking into building one for the scaler alone. This would blend quite nicely into my HT as I'm dieing to see 65 inches of HD goodness.

<edit> aaron beat me too it. I was getting ready to drop some money on a scaler...HTPC offers so much flexibility.

 

[AaronP]

I'm soon going to buy a Panasonic AE-1300 lcd projector. THe projector's panels are 848X480. There aren't any dvd players that scale to that, and cheap line doublers like the Iscan can do a good job, but not perfect. WIth a HTPC, I can set my resolution to exactly 848X480 and get perfect 1:1 pixel mapping, this creating an AWESOME picture.

This is just one example of what a HTPC can do.

Another cool thing with HTPC's is that you can do really cool stuff with your home theater like play mp3's before the movie starts, have custom graphics playing like the (no smoking/buy food) animation that always plays before movies at the real theater, you can play DTS demo avi files and stuff like that.

It doesn't have the pure ease of use that a pop the disc in and play dvd player has, but it has much more power.

 

[Ornery]

"Just about anything else you want."

That must be my problem. I don't "want" much. Slap in a rented DVD on Saturday night and watch it with no graininess and listen with no static, hiss or distortion. That's about it. Once in a while I transfer videos to VHS for family. My entire Home Theater cost about the same as all three PCs combined. The consoles just a few hundred. Together, they do "everything I want" for not much money and I want to keep it that way. I gave up connecting my TV to the PC back in the Amiga days and that decision has saved me a bundle!

 

[AaronP]

that's not really a problem. to each his own. you should feel good, you can spend a lot less money and be happy. Some of us HT addicts really drop a lot of dough on equipment.

 

[Mucman]

Ornery - I understand what you are saying, but I have a totaly different viewpoint . I love the fact that I can replace everything in our house with a computer .

Things that I am using a computer for, or plan on using a computer for :

TV - P150 with Hauppage tv tuner attached to a 14" monitor. Can your TV crunch SETI workunits? This is also on my desk so 14" is plenty.
Router/Firewall - 486/66 running Freesco
Recording studio - BeOS machine replaces thousands of dollars worth of multi-track recorders and mixers. As well as effects units.
car stereo - My next project is to put a PC in my truck
Console - jNES,MAME, ZSNES is loaded on a machine and when my brother has guests over with kids, this computer is a hit!
Jukebox - My brother is a DJ at a local pub and uses a PC to play music
VCR - dedicate a file server for TV show recording

Stop thinking how pathetic my life is

 

[RGN]

<< Home Theater PC

Seems like a waste of time and money. Why not build a real home theater, even a budget one, and leave the PC for surfing and word processing? Hope you haven't already invested a small fortune in your PC! :Q >>



good god, all you do is bitch.

 

[Ornery]

Some day, some day...

The main reason I got into computers was because of my video hobby. I spliced tape via analog sources. A friend suggested Amiga and the "Video Toaster" to do the same thing digitally. By the time I priced out all the equipment, I dropped the whole PC video editing idea. I did however buy my first 486-33 and have been plenty happy with all my PCs ever since.

Haven't done much in the way of editing since then either. All my VCRs, including my 1986 vintage Sony SL-HF900 SuperBeta HiFi are geared toward editing, but I rarely go there. I just transfer the raw tape to VHS and everybody can take it or leave it as is. That's all I have time for, or care to do anyway!


"good god, all you do is bitch."

F*ck off asswipe or I'll really give you an ear full! :frown:

 

[Desturel]

<< car stereo - My next project is to put a PC in my truck >>

Hopefully with an super cooling system. Trucks in the summer time can easily kill a computer. I don't even leave my laptop in the car unless it's only going to be for a few minutes

 

[Rally1]

Ornery i've never read your posts before but sure sounds like you bitch in this one.

 

[Mucman]

Desturel - I will definitely have proper cooling ... I need to get those YSTech 120mm out of my machine! I will probably under clock as well.

It doesn't sound like Ornery is b!tching to me... it sounds like he is asking a reasonable question...

 

[Ornery]

I only come here to bitch, but I don't want to hear about it!

 

[Mucman]

Also, your handle is Ornery! What would you expect

 

[Ornery]

Hey, I bitch too much, and whine... and holler... and rant... I ADMIT IT! But sometimes I help out... sometimes...

 

[AAjax]

<< Hey, I bitch too much, and whine... and holler... and rant... I ADMIT IT! But sometimes I help out... sometimes... >>



There there big guy, all is well