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How do home theater PC? (bonus astrology shareware Q)
PirateJon
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have given up on PC gaming. So I'd like to convert my badass rig (circa 2003) into a home theater PC. I'd like to used my PC a DVR, run the TV/360/wii audio out through the PC 5.1 speakers, all that fun stuff.
Where do I start? Links to the basics appreciated.
bonus question: I used to have a very detailed horoscope/numerology shareware program back in the day. You input your b-day, time, and lat/lon of where you were born. What you got out was a 30~ page report about your life and compatibility and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty neat at parties but searching for it now leads mostly to spam crap. One section about how you functioned in a group used analogies about airplane parts (you're the engine, you keep the group moving forward, etc). Ring any bells?
Where do I start? Links to the basics appreciated.
bonus question: I used to have a very detailed horoscope/numerology shareware program back in the day. You input your b-day, time, and lat/lon of where you were born. What you got out was a 30~ page report about your life and compatibility and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty neat at parties but searching for it now leads mostly to spam crap. One section about how you functioned in a group used analogies about airplane parts (you're the engine, you keep the group moving forward, etc). Ring any bells?
all perfectionists are mediocre in their own eyes
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To start with you'll want a TV tuner card, digital presumably. You're going to want a fair amount of hard drive space depending on how much you wish to capture and in what format. MythTV I believe is a pretty popular software bundle and I'm sure they'll have associated guides with how to setup a PC to best run with its feature set.
What he said. Get a hauppage card, a 150 series will suffice unless you want HD. If you've got the power, then get two tuners, so you can record and watch at the same time. Myth TV is the way to go.
Also, as far as the video games go, just get some adapter cables to run your games into the speakers, they should have come with the speakers, but if not, they're like seven bucks at radio shack. Honestly though, unless you've got some killer $200 stereo speakers, I'd invest in a new system. You can get a decent (for a small room) system, with 5.1, and a receiver with multiple inputs, for around $120 if you shop. It might only be like 300 or 400 watts, but it will do the job better than the computer speakers, and you won't have to constantly switch cables.
VERILY! For sooth, i sure do want HD yo. The TV is a 42" 1080p westinghouse. It has free DVI/VGA inputs (hdmi is for the 360).
The PC has the klipsch promedia ultra setup - so I'd like to use them. I've looked into putting them in the living room already, but they don't have the same inputs and stuff as normal speakers and they don't make the gizmo that can convert them anymore. http://www.klipsch.com/products/discontinued/details/promedia-dd-5-1.aspx
if there's another way to do I'd love to hear about it.
I hadn't thought about the noise at all. That bastard is loud too. Hmm..
- A fanless Geforce 6200 with a DVI output. These can be found in both AGP and PCI-E flavors for $50 or less. Some have fans, make sure you get one without, for less noise. All the 6000-series cards have native HDTV support, making it easy to send DVI signals your TV can support. If you already have a 6000-series or newer Nvidia card, then you don't necessarily need a new card, but the no-fan 6200s are ideal for HTPCs. I'm not sure how ATI is outfitted for HDTV support, but I imagine all their newer cards support HDTV resolutions as well. Set the DVI output for an HDTV resolution, then run DVI to your TV.
- Speaking of cables, Monoprice.com is a good place to get cheap DVI cables in whatever length you need. You do not need to pay more than $12 for a DVI cable, unless you need an insanely long one (i.e. 25'+). It's digital, so either it works or it doesn't, gold contacts and fancy shielding are entirely superfluous.
- If you don't already have one, consider replacing your CPU HSF with something from Zalman. The CNPS7000's are nice, and they come with an adjustable fan throttle that you can put in-line with the HSF power cable. I'm able to run my HSF fan at silent speeds for HTPC applications, but YMMV depending on what sort of CPU you have and how much heat it generates.
- I opted to get an Ahanix HTPC case, which has a very quiet PSU as well as some fairly quiet case fans. Those are pretty pricey though, so you may be better served just replacing your existing PSU with one that generates less noise. I can tell you from experience that your PSU is likely to be one of the noisiest parts in the system. Silentpcreview.com has a good recommendations page for choosing a power supply.
- You probably won't want to do this, but for my rig I bought some Seagate Barracudas, which are pretty quiet. Silentpceview.com has a hard drive recommendation page as well. If you're planning to record or stream HDTV, you will likely need to prioritize performance over noise, however. Meaning no laptop hard drives, no 5400RPM hard drives. Streaming HDTV is pretty data-intensive, and if you're drive I/O can't keep up you'll drop frames, which is never fun. If you've got a matched pair of hard drives, running RAID can be a good idea. RAID-1 mirroring provides nearly double the read I/O of a single drive (since the controller can read the same data from either disk). RAID-0 is even better for performance, since it provides the doubling bonus for both reads and writes, but you also double your chances of catastrophic data loss, so be forewarned.
I'm really happy with how my HTPC turned out. The only time I can hear it is when everything in the living room is turned off, and even then it's just low-pitched white noise from airflow, there's nothing in that system that hums or whines. You may be somewhat limited in how noiseless you can make yours, depending on how willing you are to replace existing components. It's not until you try to build a noiseless rig that you realize just how terrible a lot of parts are for noise these days.
Well, HDTV output is easy. HDTV recording, on the other hand, can be an absolute nightmare. Here's the problem... A lot of HDTV content is only available from encrypted sources. As of right now, I'm not aware of any legal, widely available product that will allow you to decrypt encrypted HDTV content and write it to a hard drive you control. There are lots of set-top PVRs that various cable and satellite providers will sell you, and those can write encrypted HDTV content to a hard drive and play it back unencrypted, but only the hard drive that those providers sell you. Hauppage does have an HDTV-capable tuner, and there's also the (Linux-only) HD-3000, but they only support unecrypted channels. Some cable and satellite providers encrypt some of their channels, some haven't bothered to implement encryption yet, some started out with no encryption but are now encrypting... Basically, it's a crapshoot as to what your provider allows, and you're entirely at their mercy in terms of whether or not the encrypt channels now or will in the future. According to the HD-3000's FAQ, 70% of cable is unencrypted, so hopefully you can record the majority of the HD content you have access to, but it's by no means certain.