Media PC to replace tuner, receiver, DVD

[Fike]

I am getting ready to drop my cable service and move to over the air HD reception. I don't watch much TV, but I like to watch football and DVDs.

It appears to me that for about $500 or $600 I can make an adequate Micro ATX pc with an HDTV tuner and DVD player. This seems to be a good way to futureproof against downloadable movies, Blueray and HD DVD etc.... because I can modify the media pc.

Will I be happy with a PC that handles sound and video for DVDs, Off Air TV reception(HD and std) and downloadable movies?

Will the sound quality be adequate.

Will the usability be good for my wife who hates multiple remotes--although she is pretty PC savvy.

 

[Chapbass]

honestly id say the short answer is yes. with a 10ft app like Media center, beyond Tv, Sage Tv, or any of the others, the interface is very clean looking and easy to navigate.

a PC with some upconverting software such as purevideo or FFDShow thats set up properly will be incredibly good for DVD watching. I'm not sure if this has changed, but a little while ago there was a review done of some upconverting DVD players compared to a setup like that, and the HTPC came out on top of virtually all the tests...might've even been anandtech that did it but its too early for me to go above and beyond the call of duty .


As far as sound quality, I would venture to say that the quality would be fine, but this is dependent on your setup. what do you have for a receiver and speakers and such at the moment?

One thing that i will say as far as HTPC's, try not to skimp too much on some of the "HT" costs. for example, an 8500gt that has HDCP would be a far better option than saving the 40 bucks for say a 6600gt IF you plan on doing HDDVD/blu-ray or any other h264 content in the future.


but once again, its all dependent on your situation. I'll tell you I love my HTPC, and i know theres quite a few like me. The one limitation to it is the fact that you cant do anything with CableCARD atm. Sure theres a FEW manufacturers that have just been approved for it, but the solution is flat out horrible at best.


hope that helps at least a little.

 

[venkman]

Sound is hard the gauge. Obviously you won't replace a good AVR powering some nice high end speaker sbut you can still get pretty decent sound out of a system. GO with Klipsch 5.1 Ultras and a good sound card to get the best sound you can get out of PC speakers. PCs make the best upconverting DVD players out there so you should be good on the video side of things. The only issues with HTPCs is that they have long boot times compared to conventional CE devices and they are more prone to crash or fail to boot at an inopportune time. If you are comfortable with Linux you can put together a pretty good MythTV box that should stay perfectly stable and have a better boot time than a XP or Vista based system. If you do go the windows route, I would highly recommend Vista over XP for a Media Center PC.

 

[Chapbass]

Originally posted by: venkman
Sound is hard the gauge. Obviously you won't replace a good AVR powering some nice high end speaker sbut you can still get pretty decent sound out of a system. GO with Klipsch 5.1 Ultras and a good sound card to get the best sound you can get out of PC speakers. PCs make the best upconverting DVD players out there so you should be good on the video side of things. The only issues with HTPCs is that they have long boot times compared to conventional CE devices and they are more prone to crash or fail to boot at an inopportune time. If you are comfortable with Linux you can put together a pretty good MythTV box that should stay perfectly stable and have a better boot time than a XP or Vista based system. If you do go the windows route, I would highly recommend Vista over XP for a Media Center PC.

why not go digital out of a sound card to a receiver and use HT speakers? i'm pretty sure thats what the majority of the HTPC crowd uses. thats why the Chaintech AV-710 is so popular, because of the quality of the digital outs.

 

[venkman]

Originally posted by: Chapbass

Originally posted by: venkman
Sound is hard the gauge. Obviously you won't replace a good AVR powering some nice high end speaker sbut you can still get pretty decent sound out of a system. GO with Klipsch 5.1 Ultras and a good sound card to get the best sound you can get out of PC speakers. PCs make the best upconverting DVD players out there so you should be good on the video side of things. The only issues with HTPCs is that they have long boot times compared to conventional CE devices and they are more prone to crash or fail to boot at an inopportune time. If you are comfortable with Linux you can put together a pretty good MythTV box that should stay perfectly stable and have a better boot time than a XP or Vista based system. If you do go the windows route, I would highly recommend Vista over XP for a Media Center PC.

why not go digital out of a sound card to a receiver and use HT speakers? i'm pretty sure thats what the majority of the HTPC crowd uses. thats why the Chaintech AV-710 is so popular, because of the quality of the digital outs.

From the OP i gathered he doesn't want to use a conventional AVR.

 

[Chapbass]

Originally posted by: venkman

Originally posted by: Chapbass

Originally posted by: venkman
Sound is hard the gauge. Obviously you won't replace a good AVR powering some nice high end speaker sbut you can still get pretty decent sound out of a system. GO with Klipsch 5.1 Ultras and a good sound card to get the best sound you can get out of PC speakers. PCs make the best upconverting DVD players out there so you should be good on the video side of things. The only issues with HTPCs is that they have long boot times compared to conventional CE devices and they are more prone to crash or fail to boot at an inopportune time. If you are comfortable with Linux you can put together a pretty good MythTV box that should stay perfectly stable and have a better boot time than a XP or Vista based system. If you do go the windows route, I would highly recommend Vista over XP for a Media Center PC.

why not go digital out of a sound card to a receiver and use HT speakers? i'm pretty sure thats what the majority of the HTPC crowd uses. thats why the Chaintech AV-710 is so popular, because of the quality of the digital outs.

From the OP i gathered he doesn't want to use a conventional AVR.

ah, alright. Definitely too early for me to look that deep into anything . Either way, im using the Promedia 5.1 ultras in my apt right now, and the sound quality isnt half bad.

 

[Fike]

I am planning to use my 27" CRT 1080i HDTV. so, I need to have component inputs. I think that there are DIV to component converters. My old Stereo (2 channel) is in my living room for music and ipod stuff. It will stay there since it does poorly with video due to it's inability to handle center channel stuff...the voice track is muddy. So, I don't really have a receiver or speakers to deal with. I do have a very good samsung HD Tuner that handles upconvert for my Yamaha DVD player. I guess I am prepared to get rid of both of those units since the integration of the two was a nightmare with all the menus one had to go through to switch from watching DVDs to watching television. My wife was ready to kill me. It all had to do with the aspect ratio auto sensing that was going on by the TV and the tuner....really annoying. Also, I never successfully got the television to play the audio track at the same time as the reciever. I know that a theater receiver would solve that, but that sends me at least $300 down a path towards planned obsolesence.

My room is not a theater. I have a nice TV that I use to watch movies and broadcast sports, so amazing audio and video fidelity aren't essential. I am definitely going for the 80% /20% type of solution. I want GOOD, not GREAT!. I am even unlikely to setup rear channel speakers. Really what I want is dolby 3.1 instead of 5.1 or 7.1. I will use a center channel and a left and right speaker.

I have some hard drives laying around and an Athlon San Diego 2700 that runs really cool. I figure I can underclock the Athlon and put a very slow, quiet CPU fan in, resulting in a fairly silent pc.

 

[Fraggable]

Having used XP media center and Vista Home Premium extensively, I highly recommend Vista over XP. It may be younger but there are so many more features and nifty things in it that it is very worth it. Drivers for TV tuners, etc. has been a non-issue. I use a ATI Theater 650 to tune to my satellite box over S-video, it's kind of a waste to not be using the OTA HD tuner but someday I'll figure out how to use both.

I'm no audio enthusiast, but when I compare my uncle's $500 surround system + receiver with my Creative X-fi XtremeMusic + Logitech X530's ($150 solution), there is barely a difference. And I can do all kinds of things with EAX effects (Theater, Ampitheater, etc) that he'll never be able to do.

As far as video quality a computer will always be able to equal a set-top box, and at similar cost, and with the flexibility you get it's totally worth it. Just make sure you get a HDCP capable video card, they're getting cheaper these days.

You will want a couple of hard drives. Don't plan to use the same drive for OS and recorded TV, you'll be disappointed with the performance. Vista is slow enough on a single 7200RPM drive, plan to use separate ones for OS and TV. I use a 160GB RAID 0 OS array and a 400GB SATA2 TV drive.

 

[Fike]

I was watching a downloadable movie yesterday evening on my PC. that is another advantage of this approach. I have priced out at least $600 to get a cheap switching receiver and speakers to go with my HD TV. With the PC, I can get all that and more.

 

[Onita]

If someone thinks I should start a new thread for this, please let me know, but it kinda fit in.

I'm replacing my old PC with a C2D. Would it be possible to build myself a decent HTPC out of the scraps? I have a A643000+ with a shuttle AN50R mobo, 9700 pro, and 1.5 gigs of ram.

Thanks,
rpkelly

 

[jkresh]

rpkelly, it should probably be in a new thread but the simple answer is maybe. That setup would be fine for analog tv, it wont cut it for hd unless you get a card that can do decoding (ie 2600xt, 8600gts,8500...)

 

[venkman]

Originally posted by: rpkelly
If someone thinks I should start a new thread for this, please let me know, but it kinda fit in.

I'm replacing my old PC with a C2D. Would it be possible to build myself a decent HTPC out of the scraps? I have a A643000+ with a shuttle AN50R mobo, 9700 pro, and 1.5 gigs of ram.

Thanks,
rpkelly

That would make a decent SD, Xvid/Divx, or up to 720p h264 box but just don't expect to do 1080p, HD DVD, or Blu Ray level media playback with that box. I had a A643500+/1 GB/7600 GS and it couldn't handle High Definition DVR-MS recorded from Vista Media Center with an OTA antenna. The video lagged the audio on that system. When I moved the file over to my C2D system it worked fine. 720p quicktime trailers (h264) worked fine on my A64 box.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

OP. have you checked if OTHD even offers football and other sports. i don't have cable and watch broadcast tv and i don't get any of the sports channels. it comes up in the news but thats it. but...maybe that just where i live.

 

[sdifox]

never mind. replied to the wrong thread...