cygnusx1 Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Well I just finished building a Media Center PC using the left over parts from my old dead PC and a few new parts. I am using Win MCE 2005 as the operating system. The PC looks like a piece of stereo equipment under my TV set. Here are the specs. AMD 64 3500+ 2gigs DDR Cas2 2-5-2-2 RAM Two 120Gig Drives in RAID-0 Config A8N-SLI Motherboard A single 7800GT Video Card. nVidia Dual TV Tuners Two digital cable boxes controlled by the PC. 1 MCE Remote Control TV is a 50" Samsung DLP and the sound system uses Axiom M60 Theater Speaker system with an Onkyo Amp/Receiver. If you are looking for "budget" speakers with a $10,000 sound I highly recommend the Axioms. Made in Canada and only available online. This is a photo of the old setup which was not a media center PC. I absolutely love the functionality of this thing. All my MP3's, Photos, Videos, Weather, Live TV, Timeshifted TV, recorded TV (two channels at the same time if needed!), XM Radio, FM Radio, DVD Cataloging, WMHD Videos....I could go on and on. There are also tons of other features I still need to explore like TV-Tonic which is about 250 free, independant, online video channels including a bunch of car based shows. The keyboard and mouse go away and the entire thing works with a remote control from the couch. It's connected to the dual cable boxes via s-video and the sound goes out of the PC to the THX Receiver via TOSLINK (fiber optic) for Dolby 5.1+ support. Oh and the two doorways on the back wall lead to the babyroom. He is due via c-section on January 15th!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Some-Guy Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Awesome!! A-1 Man! My Daughters 2 Now, ohh and thats a great setup!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BayAreaZT Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Nice setup. I've been looking at building a HTPC soon. I've heard good things about the Axioms. I'm using Paradigms. edit: Why are you still using S-video? You're not running HDTV? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flames_187 Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Nice setup. I've been looking at building a HTPC soon. I've heard good things about the Axioms. I'm using Paradigms. edit: Why are you still using S-video? You're not running HDTV? he put the HD in the babyroom cuz he knew he was gonna be spendin all his time in there...lol (jk) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillZ260 Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Very nice set up, when I first looked at your pic, i though those dorways were your speakers!!!! I was like..Whoah! I have a very similar set up i've been playing w/ for about a month now. Still working on some things here and there but all in all it is an awesome system to have in the living room. I have the AMD Dual Core 4200 w/ 1 300gig HD (They fill up frightenlingly quickly when you record HD ), one gig 800 Mhz ram, MyHD-130 Tuner card (only one channel but the OTA HD is superb and has two inputs so i can go from OTA to Cable w/ Chanell up or down, I like it but am thinking of getting the tuner you have for a 2nd), Same Samsung tv via VGA and a Pioneer 1014 tuner pushing Wharfedale bookshelfs and home made 12" Adire Shiva Sub. You should invest in the Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse, well worth the 70 bucks to sit on the couch when your surfing and no cords. Software MCE My Movies Theatertek AnyDVD DVD-Shrink What remote are you using? That's about the only part I haven't played w/. The MyHD came w/ a remote but it only controls the TV functions and I'd like to control MCE and all that stuff via remote too, wondering how many IR recievers I'll need an all that? Also, are you living w/ the 1" black boarder around your screen due to underscan? I've played w/ "Powerstrip" but I don't thing my onboard videocard (nVidia 6200) supports the resolution i need which i think is 768 x whatever to get the full widescreen going. Anything that comes from the TV card is full screen but anything from the video card currently has about a 1" or so boarder all the way around. Nice to see another HTPC guy on here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillZ260 Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Duplicate Post... Sorry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Aguyandaredhead Posted December 26, 2006 Share Posted December 26, 2006 Bill set your resolution to 1280x720 hdtv in powerstrip. Your Black Border will go away. I had the same problem when I set mine up initially. I now run my HTPC at 1920x1080 and it is incredible. How did you get involved with a HTPC? Did I mention it? Just curious as most people are not in tune with that yet. I have been running one for about 3-4 years as of now and I love it. I sold me very expensive DVD player after going to the HTPC. When you are ready to upgrade to a 1080p unit let me know.. I am going to be upgrading again soon and mine will be available at my cost. Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted December 26, 2006 Author Share Posted December 26, 2006 My TV cards are only analog so they dont record HD That's why I use the S-Video. I do have component connection directly to the DLP TV from one of the cable boxes so I can watch HD directly on the TV. If I record HD on the PC, it is in standard definition widescreen. Yes, I do have the darned 1" underscan issue too with everything that comes out of the PC. I have my video card drivers set to 1280x720 32bit but I still get the underscan. It doesn't bother me too much. My only wish was that someone would make a PCI card that accepted CableCard technology so that I could record fully digital and HD onto my PC. I beleive there is one manufacturer working on this already. When it comes out, I will send my set-top-boxes back to the cable company and order two CableCards from them instead. My cable company currently offers CableCards for $1.50/month! If you are an HTPC guy...this should get you excited. http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2662&p=2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillZ260 Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 Jeff, the reason I got into HTPC's was due to a buddy getting DigiCable w/ a DVR. I wanted to be able to do that w/ out paying for cable and since the HD TIVO box was like 900 by itself i decided to build one. I also like that I can rip my fav movies to the hard drive, and the pic quality is way better than my old cheap Prog Scan DVD player. So far, even w/ software, i am under the $1K mark and am able to do everything I want. I still have alot to learn and set up but it's cool. You can check out my set up Saturday. We're still on right? cygnusx1- you might look at the MyHD 130, it's able to decode QAM, that's the encoding for digital cable right? It has two coax inputs, right now i have one to antenna in the attic for my OTA channels and we do have basic cable hooked to the other. I like the card alot, but it does not work w/ MCE (Yet) but it's stand alone software is pretty decent. My wife is wanting to get cable soon since I'll be traveling so we'll see how that goes, if we get it, i'll want digital and I'll let you all know how my tuner card works w/ it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Aguyandaredhead Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 Yep we are still on, just let me know what time. Jeff I assume you are using something other than TheaterTek to play from the Hard Drive. As I do not think it will play stored files. Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillZ260 Posted December 28, 2006 Share Posted December 28, 2006 Say 9AM Sat morning? Is that too early? Let me know if it is and we can work it out. Not sure how long it will all take, most is ready to go, but I did find something I need to fix before we turn her over, I'm starting a new thread for that. I thought of something I needed you to bring but can't thing of it right now... Theater Tek in fact does play .vob files from your hard drive as well as the .TS (HD transport streams) which is why i like it. The version I have is 2.4 so maybe the older versions didn't play from your HD. My Movies 2.0 also has a setting that uses Theater Tek as its default player, it's been working very well so far. I'd like to play w/ FFDshow some but havn't had the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillZ260 Posted December 28, 2006 Share Posted December 28, 2006 Say 9AM Sat morning? Is that too early? Let me know if it is and we can work it out. Not sure how long it will all take, most is ready to go, but I did find something I need to fix before we turn her over, I'm starting a new thread for that. I thought of something I needed you to bring but can't thing of it right now... Theater Tek in fact does play .vob files from your hard drive as well as the .TS (HD transport streams) which is why i like it. The version I have is 2.4 so maybe the older versions didn't play from your HD. My Movies 2.0 also has a setting that uses Theater Tek as its default player, it's been working very well so far. I'd like to play w/ FFDshow some but havn't had the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cygnusx1 Posted December 28, 2006 Author Share Posted December 28, 2006 Jeff, the reason I got into HTPC's was due to a buddy getting DigiCable w/ a DVR. I wanted to be able to do that w/ out paying for cable and since the HD TIVO box was like 900 by itself i decided to build one. I also like that I can rip my fav movies to the hard drive, and the pic quality is way better than my old cheap Prog Scan DVD player. So far, even w/ software, i am under the $1K mark and am able to do everything I want. I still have alot to learn and set up but it's cool. You can check out my set up Saturday. We're still on right? cygnusx1- you might look at the MyHD 130, it's able to decode QAM, that's the encoding for digital cable right? It has two coax inputs, right now i have one to antenna in the attic for my OTA channels and we do have basic cable hooked to the other. I like the card alot, but it does not work w/ MCE (Yet) but it's stand alone software is pretty decent. My wife is wanting to get cable soon since I'll be traveling so we'll see how that goes, if we get it, i'll want digital and I'll let you all know how my tuner card works w/ it. I noticed a few QAM tuner cards HD capable but I wanted compatibility with MCE2005 and I don't get OTA HD so I figured the cool HD channels are encoded anyhow. They wouldn't be able to record to the hard drive even with QAM decoding, so I wait patiently for technology to catch up to us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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