Htpc

L

Loshee

New Member
Hi everyone, I've recently moved into a new house.

I currently have a 40 inch Sharp AQUOS LCD, and we are looking into buying a bigger LED or DLP television.

I've seen some varying definitions from what people look for in an HTPC, so I'd just like to clarify mine first.

Ideally, every TV will be able to connect to the HTPC and stream content from it. This is probably not all that easy to implement though right off the bat, so in the beginning, I'll just have whatever is the nicest TV in my house connected to it (through HDMI I think, more on that later).

Now for the HTPC itself, I'd like it to be able to play blu-rays, movies and music that are all locally stored on it. I'd like to be able to connect to the HTPC from my desktop and transfer music and movies from my current desktop to the HTPC. I'm sure this could accomplished by just setting up a shared folder.

I have a basic build down. I'd like you guys to offer suggestions on improvements, or comments about things you think might be cool to add.

I just want to stress, that since this a full HD TV, I want to make sure the HTPC will let it use all of its HD capabilities. I currently have my desktop hooked up to the TV over VGA and the quality is not all that great.

Build so far:

Western Digital AV-GP WD5000AVVS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

500 GB is a little light, but I have 2 TB on my home desktop, so I can store things on that and transfer back and forth.

GIGABYTE GA-MA785GMT-UD2H AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

IOGEAR GKM561R Black 2.4GHz Wireless Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel

Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3N9K2/2G

AMD Athlon II X2 255 Regor 3.1GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Model ADX255OCGQBOX

LG Black Blu-ray Disc Combo SATA Model UH10LS20 LightScribe Support - OEM

Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case


For my questions:

1. Is my processor fast enough>
2. Is there is enough RAM for my purposes/is that brand fine?
3. This motherboard has HDMI built in; will that also bring in sound to the TV?
4. If I decide to add some sort of sound system in the future, will anything need to be added to this system?
5. People have mentioned using a TV Tuner card to record TV like a DVR, how is this accomplished?
6. I was planning on putting Windows 7 Ultimate on it...would this fine?

I'd prefer to stick around this price range, but I can go up a little bit.

Any input would be great!

Thanks.
 
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You don't need a lot of power to run media play back on a HTPC. I run Linux on mine though, you plan on running Windows? Also, I went completely HDMI with my set up, and I think it is the way to go. It will allow you (receiver depending) to listen to audio uncompressed, which means it will sound exactly how they intended it to.
 
Elimin8or said:
I would also recommend getting 4GB of RAM. And what are you using as a video card?
Click to expand...

Why? 2gig of RAM is way more than enough to play movies and music. I have 2gig in my system and I maybe peak at using around 700 megs of memory total, that is booted into the OS running several apps and playing a movie. I guess RAM is so cheap right now, it couldn't hurt. So yeah I guess getting 4gig would be fine, but I think it may not really be needed.
 
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For graphics card, I was using the motherboards on board gfx. Is this not advisable? It has HDMI built in.

I was just going to windows 7 because I have it laying around, I havent really thought to hard on that one.

Thanks for the help tlarkin, any other suggestions?
 
I bought a $45 dollar ATI Radeon card with HDMI out, it works great on my HTPC. It also has no fans and makes no noise and consumes very little power. It is made for HTPCs actually, not for gaming or anything like that.
 
I just bought that ATI AIW card for Microcenter just because it was $49.99. It seems to play HD movies as well as my 5870 and it has a TV tuner built in. I can't immagine how anyone can go wrong for that price. It has HDMI and DVI.

2 Gigs of RAM should be fine.

If you have a Frys near you they have several CPU/ MBO combos that should work

http://www.frys.com/product/6207370

http://www.frys.com/product/6220700

You dont need much for HTPC. I would wait though, last week they had a killer i3-540 GB MOBO for $100 that would have been perfect for you and fast for other apps.
 
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For my questions:

1. Is my processor fast enough>
2. Is there is enough RAM for my purposes/is that brand fine?
3. This motherboard has HDMI built in; will that also bring in sound to the TV?
4. If I decide to add some sort of sound system in the future, will anything need to be added to this system?
5. People have mentioned using a TV Tuner card to record TV like a DVR, how is this accomplished?
6. I was planning on putting Windows 7 Ultimate on it...would this fine?

I'd prefer to stick around this price range, but I can go up a little bit.

Any input would be great!

Thanks.
Click to expand...

1) Yes the processor is plenty fast. You can even find a slower processor (some 45watt one so that it'll generate less heat)
2) Yes enough ram
3) Not quite sure, I know if you use a dedicated video card you'll need a soundcard that supports it and connect them internally.
4) A sound card, it doesn't seem like that motherboard supports optical or digital out
5) You connect your cable/satellite box to the TV tuner and record using programs like windows media center.
6) Yeah it'll work, that's what I'm running.
 
Sounds good, thanks for the help guys. I'm probably going to wait around and see if any good deals come up.

If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free.
 
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