For a while I've been planning to build a home theater driven via a PC.

I plan to use this system primarily to play DVDs/Blu-rays, play downloaded video, stream Netflix video, and maybe do some gaming (mostly console emulation). The display is a 1080p plasma (click). I do not have surround sound.

At the moment, my "theater PC" is in pieces. I am still working out exactly what I need to put it together, and therein lie my questions. To pipe video, I am using my DVI video card and a hardware DVI-to-HDMI converter (my TV does not support DVI input). This doesn't seem like the best approach with a home theater because (1) presumably lossy conversion between the DVI and HDMI (just guessing here) and (2) since the DVI signal piping from my video card obviously does not carry audio, I need to take care of it by some other means, and I do not have surround sound to pipe it to, so I'd have to leverage my television's speakers.

Questions:

• Is it worth it to get an HDMI capable video card, or should I stick with DVI and a converter? If I should, any suggestions for how to approach audio?
• Are [any] HDMI compatible video cards capable of merging audio with video? Recommendations?
• What's a good Blu-ray drive? This?
• OS? Current plans are something Vista-flavored.

Any other advice is greatly appreciated. I've not built a home theater PC before, so any and all advice (even if it seems obvious) is appreciated.

Thanks. You guys are awesome.

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Display you linked is only 1080i, and god damn that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player is cheap!

thats the same BD player i have its good.

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If you're going to use Vista, then get either Home Premium or, preferably, Ultimate.

Get a fast as fuck hard drive and a boatload of memory. Make sure you get the 64 bit version to support more than 3gb of ram.

Also, get an HDMI video card. Make sure the card has a line in connector for audio and can output audio over the HDMI port. ATI should make something to this effect, though I have not looked.

My suggestion is a hardware RAID for the data drive and said fast as fuck hard drive for the OS. Please don't skimp on the RAID and use onboard. This should do nicely : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6816116030. Get big hard drives and do RAID 1.

Like skycrasher said, the display you linked is only 1080i (though native 1080i and not a 720p monitor masking as 1080i. You can probably get away with this : http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 1306784758

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

(I will list my machine specs at the end of this...)

Well, I have had a HTPC built and running for quite a while and through my experience, Van is incorrect about several things.

First of all, you do not need a high end video card with HDMI out to do 1080p and audio from your video card. I have a $69 ATI 2600 XT 512mb card and it plays 1080p and puts audio to the TV perfectly (although I do use a receiver for sound). No need to pay for a HDMI output card. ATI includes an adapter to go from DVI to HDMI and it works flawlessly. http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=179&grp=3

Secondly, you do not need a Fast as fuck raid or hard drive set up at all for an HTPC to work perfectly. In fact, most are pieced together from parts lying around and most HTPC sites out there agree; amount of storage > speed of drives. As a matter of fact, when I first built my HTPC, I used an Seagate Freeagent Pro eSATA external drive for movie storage and it worked flawlessly.

Thirdly, there are serveral 'Must Haves' for your Vista 64 Ult HTPC. My Movies, Cyberlink's software suite that came with your BD Drive, Any-DVD, Deamon Tools Lite and DVD Shrink. Let me explain why you need these.

My movies http://www.mymovies.dk/ is an advanced plugin for Windows Media Center and keeps a running .db of your movie collection, downloadable DVD box covers and lets you choose your movies via the box picture, name, category and several other ways. It pulls down actor, director and movie info and keeps it there for review. It IS a must have for your HTPC.

Any-DVD http://www.slysoft.com/en/ Any-DVD removes the protection from your DVD's that you are going to copy to your HDD for "Backup". It IS a "Must Have".

DVD-Shrink http://www.dvdshrink.org/ Allows you to remove the FBI warnings, previews, multi-language sound and commentaries from your DVD movies that you are "Backing up" on your HTPC. It also has it's own unique compression engine that will reduce down the size of the output if you want to keep your movies small. It is free, do not fall for the adds for DVD-Shrink 08 that cost money.

Daemon Tools lite http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/download.php is a drive emulator allowing you to mount your HD-DVD movies and Blu-Ray moveis that you have "Backed Up" as .iso files on your HTPC as a drive. It is Free and also a must have.

I have to recommend a visit to the My Movies Forum http://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx and reading through there for other tips and tricks for your HTPC. Any-DVDs forums are also very helpful.

My current HTPC specs are:

Intel DX975XB Mobo
Intel C2D E6400
4gb DDR2 6400
Sapphire HD2600 XT 512mb VC
LG 16x BD-RW/HD-DVD-R drive
On Board sound
C: 500gb Seagate SATA-II O/S and program files
D: 500gb Seagate SATA-II Media drive for Pictures, Music, HD Camcorder Videos etc.
For Movie storage I have an AMS DS-2340SES eSATA VENUS T4S External Enclosure
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817332013 populated with
2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives
The AMS enclosure comes with it's own PCIe eSATA controler in case your machine doesn't have eSATA capabilities.
Samsung HL-T5687 LED DLP
Crappy old Surround sound tuner and Klipsch speakers.
Gyration Media Center Remote http://www.gyration.com/p-68-media-center-universal-remote-control-windows-media-center-compatible.aspx
Gyration GYAM1100CKUS Keyboard http://www.gyration.com/c-5-accessories.aspx
200+ SD, HD and BD movies, 2500+ songs, 4000+ pictures and probably 25-30hrs home movies.
My system backs up to an 1tb Seagate Free Agent Pro External HDD

This setup allows me to watch movies, listen to music, play games and surf teenage asian bukaki sites without a single problem, all from the comfort of my recliner.

Hope this helps!

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

HDMI and DVI both use similar digital signals that produce equal quality video.

The only reason to use HDMI over DVI is if you want digital audio transferred over the same line. You can accomplish equal quality results using a digital or optical audio signal.

My personal thought: if you're not going for surround sound, that level of audio quality probably won't make much of a difference anyway.

I never said anything about a "high end" video card -- just one that could do HDMI out and audio over the HDMI, khan

Also, my HTPC is recording and transcoding video, thus my suggestion for raid/fast hard drives.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

My mistake van.

Myrtle, here is a solid deal for your HTPC for a video card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121259 it even has an native HDMI port so no need for an adapter. Plus it is heat sinked with no noisy fan.

I'm not sure you even need fast drives for transcoding video Van. I do Video (AVCHD and HDV to SD, BD, HD) all the time on my HTPC and more than drive speed, processor speed is more important. For instance I can do 2 30min AVCHD videos and render them to SD on my HTPC and on my AV box. One, the HTPC is a straight E6400 and my AV box a QX9650 O/C'd to 3.75. and it is more than 3x as fast due to the O/Cing and 4 cores. Also, last year I had 2 Raptor X 150s in Raid 0 for the program drive, this year I split them up and there is zero difference in render times.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Well, not only am I recording/transcoding live tv, I'm using it as a time shifting box (ala tivo, fast forwarding through commercials/etc), so fast drives are a necessity as seeking through a file that's both playing and being recorded at the same time can kill a slow drive.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Heh, I need to link my setup. I've got a VERY similar setup to Khan's, but I'm actually streaming data across from my Home Server.

If you do not yet have a Home Server, GET ONE. Quite possibly one of the best products MS has put out on the consumer market in a long time. I personally like the HP Media Smart, and once you perform the RAM upgrade, it smokes.

Awesome. Thank you for all of the suggestions.

I want to clarify that while a yacht (like Kahn's! wow) would be nice, I would prefer a tugboat if that will do the job. I don't plan to stress or multi-task much on this system. I don't think I'll be doing any recording on it at all (unless I get a TV card, which is plausible).

Van, I think I will be running Vista Ultimate - 32- or 64-bit I'm not certain. In the past I've stuck with 32-bit just to avoid driver and software issues. Do you think the performance gain, especially in the scenario of a HTPC, outweighs the potential pitfalls introduced by a 64-bit OS?

I would also like to purchase the card you linked to, Kahn - but I didn't see any mention of audio. Would I be able to pipe audio via HDMI with that card? Also, thank you for all of those software recommendations - they look excellent. I will take a look at My Movies forums as well.

As far as hard drives go, I wasn't going to purchase anything spectacular because I didn't plan to play any video off of the drive itself. My intent was to stream everything; stuff I'm not streaming from the web or from a disc I would be playing over my network (from my "data drive" on my primary PC). I've done this in the past with other systems without too much problem - and though Home Server does sound like an slick (and effective) way to organize my media, Ele, it sounds like it might be a little overboard for my purposes. Do you agree? Or do you think my approach sounds impractical? My home network is a simple one.

Again, really appreciate the advice. I rue the day I figure something out myself.

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There are no more pitfalls to a 64 bit OS, unless said OS is XP64, at which point you just make me sad.

That being said, you still want a boatload of RAM, so you can avoid hitting the disk. I'd suggest at least making use of Vista's "ReadyBoost" solution, preferably with a relatively large (1-2gb) SD card in a cheap media reader.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

64 bit is a bit of a hassle atm, I found myself having issues running certain programs. I'm back to XP32 now. I miss some Vista features, but not the hassle. I am a fan of Vista, but I am less enthusiastic about it now. Part of the reason I went back to XP was because no Disk Partitioning software worked, not even the built in stuff. I wanted to dual boot Linux but wasn't in a position to format an entire disk. So when I reinstalled XP, I just deleted the entire system drive (60g) and split it into 1 30g partition, and let Ubuntu take care of the rest. This is neither here nor there, just an anecdote about experiences w/ 64.

First line in the ASUS Features

"Native HDMI Connector:
Build in Multi-channel 5.1 surround audio"

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=2&l2=8&l3=634&l4=0&model=2253&modelmenu=1

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

For a simple and cheap setup, subscribe to both Tiger Direct's and Neweggs newsletter. Each week they have a barebones systems and complete kits for about $199, add in a video card and HDD upgrade and you are set for less than $400.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
_____
VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Really nice dell for 500 bucks, slap a video card in here and you're good to go. Get an external SATA enclosure and you have your home entertainment system plus a rather powerful computer.

Inspiron 530 Core 2 Quad / 3GB / 500GB desktop

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This thread brought to you by a tremendous dickhead!

Elle, you got me wondering about the Windows Home Server so I ordered 3 free 120 day trials to see how it works.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
_____
VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Make sure you update it to Power Pack 1. Also hit up We Got Served (google for the link) and mswhs.com for some kick ass add-ins. I've got it managing shared media, central antivirus, defrag, and utorrent for keeping my tvtorrents credits up.

As an aside, if you decide to go for it, make sure to check out keepvault. It's an online backup that integrates with the console and uses the archive bit for backups. Very slick.

If you do buy, be sure to check out the Media Center. Building your own is always an option, but I like the small form factor and integration. You can even use an eSata enclosure to expand from the 4 drive bays. And you can go with any size drive, as it doesn't use raid for tolerance. In some ways, I'm glad they didn't. You'll see what I mean when you build it.

Thanks again for all the advice. Just ordered the assorted parts necessary to piece together what remains of my old system(s) into a HTPC.

Only took me 8 months!

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