Budget Home Theatre PC

[SanchoP]

How much does an 8400 cost? Maybe rather get a board with better onboard and just leave the graphics card out. What type of monitor will it be connected to?

 

[Beta]

CRT monitor

 

[The_Techie]

How much does an 8400 cost? Maybe rather get a board with better onboard and just leave the graphics card out. What type of monitor will it be connected to?

About R500. I'm open to suggestions about the board

Will be connected to my TV.

EDIT: Hence the need for TV-out.

 

[Glordit]

s-pose... the celery will do the job!
Could swop the 8400 for a 2400? I think the XT/Pro might have HDMI

256MB DDR2
Optimized for DirectX® 10 and Windows Vista®
ATI Avivo™ HD video & display technology
Hardware processed HD video acceleration (UVD)
HD video playback1
Built-in HDMI2 for one-cable audio and video connectivity
5.1 (AC3) surround sound
HDCP ready for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback3
ATI Catalyst™ software suite

Digital Displays (Connected by DVI)
All Resolutions up to 2560x1600
Analog Displays (Connected by VGA)
All resolutions up to 2048x1536
TV-out
SDTV (analog): 480i | 525i
HDTV (analog): 1080p | 1080i | 720p | 480p | Custom resolution3
HDTV (digital): 720p | 480p | Custom resolution3
Note: Resolutions are limited by the performance of the attached monitor.

 

[The_Techie]

s-pose... the celery will do the job!
Could swop the 8400 for a 2400? I think the XT/Pro might have HDMI

I don't really need HDMI, it's one of the old bulky CRT TVs

 

[TheRift]

The old celerons were crap because they had buggerall L1 and L2 cache. I noticed the new celerons have got 1MB, so performance should be on par with technology from 3 years ago.

W.R.T home theatre PC chassis, does anyone know if Axiz is currently stocking the Omaura range? I notice Omaura said they are the SA distributor. I'm loving their slim chassis and at some point I need to build a proper HTPC as I'm tired of cutting stuff to DVD only to have the old DVD panic on dodgey DVD media past 4.7GB.

In terms of motherboard, anything in the microATX form factor AM2 socket that has a decent onboard video and audio which can do the HD and 5.1/7.1 hardware decode? Played a Matroska file on my AthlonXP 3200+ and only after I installed CoreAVC x264 codec did I managed to bring CPU usage down from 95% to 80%.

Anyone have a wifi setup for playing video file from a share? Would 802.11g 54Mbit be good enough for doing this? I am waiting for the Chronos giga NAS 2000 to be available (budget permitting) to be a NAS with a couple of big drives on it, but need to know if I want to get decent playback over wifi do I need to also go and spend more dough on a 108Mbit wifi setup.

 

[The_Techie]

The old celerons were crap because they had buggerall L1 and L2 cache. I noticed the new celerons have got 1MB, so performance should be on par with technology from 3 years ago.

W.R.T home theatre PC chassis, does anyone know if Axiz is currently stocking the Omaura range? I notice Omaura said they are the SA distributor. I'm loving their slim chassis and at some point I need to build a proper HTPC as I'm tired of cutting stuff to DVD only to have the old DVD panic on dodgey DVD media past 4.7GB.

In terms of motherboard, anything in the microATX form factor AM2 socket that has a decent onboard video and audio which can do the HD and 5.1/7.1 hardware decode? Played a Matroska file on my AthlonXP 3200+ and only after I installed CoreAVC x264 codec did I managed to bring CPU usage down from 95% to 80%.

Anyone have a wifi setup for playing video file from a share? Would 802.11g 54Mbit be good enough for doing this? I am waiting for the Chronos giga NAS 2000 to be available (budget permitting) to be a NAS with a couple of big drives on it, but need to know if I want to get decent playback over wifi do I need to also go and spend more dough on a 108Mbit wifi setup.

Oi, make your own thread, don't hijack mine

But I can answer your question regarding 802.11g. 54Mbit/s is more than enough for simple video files.

 

[wizzard]

My thoughts exactly. Anyone have a reason why I need a dual core?

Dual cores can handle HD content much better than pre-2 core processors. Even codecs as low as h264 can give problems if your processor doesnt handle (I remember trying to watch the 300 trailer on my 2600+ and I only got a frame every 5-6 seconds while the audio played fine). So fairly essential imo for a media pc

 

[The_Techie]

Dual cores can handle HD content much better than pre-2 core processors. Even codecs as low as h264 can give problems if your processor doesnt handle (I remember trying to watch the 300 trailer on my 2600+ and I only got a frame every 5-6 seconds while the audio played fine). So fairly essential imo for a media pc

Thanks for the input. So you would recommend a dual-core 1.6GHz instead of the single-core 1.8GHz?

 

[SanchoP]

I would think so, if it's cheap enough. There's a guy at Prophecy selling an E2160 for R500 or so, which will be way better than any Celeron. New they're very cheap as well, at PCint.

 

[The_Techie]

Good timing, seeing as I've just replaced the Celeron with the E2160 before you posted

So, will this system do everything that I want it to do as a HTPC?

Intel D945GCPE Plum Creek
Intel Pentium E2160 1.8GHz Dual Core
Kingston ValueRAM 1GB DDR2-533
Seagate 80GB SATA
XFX-T86S-WAN GeForce 8400GS
Midi Tower Case + 300W PSU Black 2x Front USB

I'm not forgetting anything am I? Be kind, this is my first HTPC build

 

[QX6700RULZ]

soz to hijack a bit but what would be needed to convert this system to a pvr equivalent system ie satelite tv

/soz beanie but you just got me thinking with this thread (new house coming up)

 

[boramk]

My thoughts exactly. Anyone have a reason why I need a dual core?

Well the E1200 outperforms Pentium 4

EDIT: E2160 is better haha

 

[SanchoP]

I assume the 80GB harddrive is just for the OS? What OS will you be running?

You might want to get a TV tuner PCI card.

Also, if it's for an HTPC, are you getting a stylish chassis, or is it gonna sit hidden away. The Antec Minuet would be nice, if the graphics card is small enough. Also, I assume you'll want it to be very quiet?

 

[The_Techie]

Yes, it will probably only be remote media. I'll probably be running a bare-bones installation of Windows XP on it.

Any reason for the TV tuner card other than recording TV? I'm not going to use it as a PVR-style machine, so I don't think I'll need it.

It'll be a cheapie case because I'm planning to keep it somewhere out of sight. And I don't care too much about the noise, the TV has some pretty powerful speakers

 

[TheRift]

Oi, make your own thread, don't hijack mine

But I can answer your question regarding 802.11g. 54Mbit/s is more than enough for simple video files.

I can has HTPC?

 

[SanchoP]

Ok cool. The only reason I say you may want it quiet is if you leave it on for a lot of the time while not actually playing anything off it.

What I would also do is seriously minimize the installation, so that you can have really quick boot up.

Use nLite and remove pretty much everything, and disable lots of services. Also don't have antivirus on and make sure it only connects to protected computers.

Regarding the TV card, I may be wrong, but don't they sometimes offer dedicated streaming to a TV, to take the load off the CPU and then you wouldn't need a graphics card.

I could be completely wrong though...

 

[The_Techie]

I'll have a look at the TV tuners

And the installation of Windows XP will be tiny, I think I might go looking for that Tiny XP

 

[bdt]

Adding to the topic, read through Ars Technica's HTPC edition system guide which goes beyond this thread onto hi-def but provides a link to a simpler, all-in-one box. Yes, it strays from the original topic, but worth adding to the body of knowledge on the subject!

 

[Wynsam]

Other than playing dvds what else are you going to use it for?