Livingroom-Home Theater PC

[bolker]

I want to build a living room PC that I can hook to my television to play audio, video, and the internet. I might like to play some 3D games as well, but I doubt it would look very good on a TV, would it? Essentially I want to use my HD TV as a monitor for my PC. I have a 60" Pioneer HD-TV which doesn't have HDMI or DVI, and I would need composite to attach to it. I have a home theater and would want to connect the PC to my receiver as another source. I also have a good progressive scan DVD player so I doubt I'd play DVDs on the PC. I won't want to use the PC as a TV tuner and I don't want to use the PC as a DVR. I have a HD DirecTv TiVo that I use for that.

I would assume the best OS for this PC would be Windows Media Edition.

Here is the list of parts that I've been looking at to this point. Please comment on them:

- ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2000MHz HT Socket AM2 Dual Core Processor
- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 800 (PC2 6400)
- ATI 100-714800 All-In-Wonder Radeon X1900 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16
- Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels
- NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A
- Western Digital Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

The thing I'm least sure of are the Video card and the Audio card. I've heard that All-In-Wonder cards are great for this purpose. but they run hot and aren't as fast as their regular counterparts. Is there a better card for this purpose? Essentially I need something that can provide HD and DVD playback

I'm worried that so many have problems integrating the Audigy sound card with their systems. I'm hoping it's just that you have to turn off the on-board audio in the BIOS but I don't know if that's the only issue. But help here would be appreciated. I need a sound card that will provide digital out as I would assume that's best for Dolby and EAX, etc. But recomendations would be appreciated.

[786ARS]

well, looks gd but a couple of issues, the first being if you are not plannin on overclocking then go for value select ram. secondly are you really going to need 500 GB, because for $70 less, you can get a western digital 400GB here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144423
sorry, but cant help ypu on the all in wonder or the audigy.

[Staren]

Something else you might want to consider, you are going to go nuts if you build a full out gaming power house for the living room. The sound when watching TV would be a big distraction unless you are someone that can game next to a computer under full load without the sound bothering them. You might want to think about this for a little bit before buying. When I built my HTPC, I went with a venice core CPU, heatsink cooled northbridge motherboard, heatsink video card, and a single 120mm fan PSU. It cut the noise down a lot conpared to normal systems, and the venice core helped keep the heat more under control. Your motherboard cooling is a heat-pipe design so that will help, but you might want to consider other video card options, or an after market cooling set-up.

[bolker]

Those are great comments, thanks. I'm not going to overclock, but I'm always afraid the motherboard will be picky about memory and the XMS has never let me down. But it's likely not needed.

I'm especially concerned about the All-In-Wonder which I've heard gets really hot and can get noisy. Maybe the best bet there is to go with an aftermarket quiet fan out of the box. But for the CPU I think you're right if I went for the Venice it wouldn't get as hot and wouldn't need as much cooling.

I'm still stumped if I really need an All-In-Wonder card if I'm going to have Windows Media Edition. I will need a remote I suppose, however a good wireless keyboard and mouse should work. I'm also worried about how far a wireless keyboard and mouse can be from the receiver. It could be 10-15 feet in my living room and I doubt it will work very well at that distance.

Thanks again for the comments!

[Staren]

I'm not a big fan of the All-In-Wonders. Personally, I would go for a good tuner/capture card and a stand alone video card. Something like the Hauppauge PVR-250 or Powercolor Theater 550 Pro.

As far as software goes, you might want to look at going with a standard copy of XP Home, and HTPC / PVR software such as GB-PVR (freeware), or SageTV. Rather then trying to mach hardware to play nice with MCE. I'm a pretty big fan of GBPVR myself. It takes a little fiddling and futzing when you first install it because there isn't a set-up wizard, but works great from then on.

[jimmyrules712]

I must be missing something. If your not going to use the PC to record tv...then why are you building a media center? your TIVO box has a tv tuner, I don't see the point in having a media center PC if your going to use tivo, they serve the same purpose.

If your just wanting to be able to browse the itnernet and play music in your living room, you don't need a media center PC for that. And you certainly don't need media center edition. The only difference between media center edition and standard windows XP is media center is excellent for watching and recording tv on...but if your're going to continue using tivo then the PC is pointless. It would be like buying a living room soundsystem, hooking it up to your tv, but not using it and using the TV speakers instead (if you're going to do that, why buy the speakers?)

If you just want to play audio, vidia, and internet, you don't need a tv tuner at all. Just put a standard PC out there, with windows xp home, with a video out (from a regular video card) going to the TV. You don't need the ati-all in wonder or a hauppauge, those are for tv recording.

and if you're not recording tv you don't need a big hard drive. get a seagate 7200.10 320 GB with 16mb cache HD for $100 at newegg. That will hold more audio then you'll ever have.

Remember, the main purpose of a media center PC is to watch and record live tv on it. If you're not going to do that then all you want is a regular PC that uses your tv as a monitor.

[bolker]

I am sure glad I came here.

jimmyrules712 I didn't realize that was the main purpose of Windows Media Center. I really just want to be able to display whatever the computer would normally display and play the sounds the computer would normally play, over my home theater. So the real issues for me are that I get the best card to reproduce a computer image on a TV, and a sound card that can produce quality sound.

I might also want to play DIV-X movies on the PC, but the only issue there would be that I would need dolby or EAX sound from the computer to the HT receiver. But I think the sound card I picked would handle that and I'd use the digital out of the card to the digital in of my receiver. It would be nice to support HD-DVDs but I don't know if there's much hardware out today for it, it's better to wait I think.

Are all recent vid cards good at producing video on a TV or is there a clear choice for this?

BTW, I actually have a Hauppage MVP which just doesn't work well with my large list of media. It crashes fairly often. I also use GBPVR which helped and let me add plug-ins, but for whatever reason it doesn't handle streaming well. It's connected via wire to my PC today. Anyhow, I want to be able to display Internet content which the Media MVP can't do, so I do like the living room PC best.

Thanks again guys

[Staren]

Ok that actually makes things a bit easier. If your already familar with GBPVR, just drop MCE. As for video cards, that depends on what kind of TV you have. If you have a newer LCD or Plasma with DVI, you just run DVI to DVI, and done. No problem. It just gets tricky if you have an older SD TV with the most advanced connector being S-Video. Any video card will handle the signal, but the TV itself isn't designed for that kind of input and you have to tweak settings. (The only thing that makes me consider spending the money needed to replace my 37" Sony Trinitron that was a hand-me-down)

As far as brands go ATI cards display video a bit better then nVidia. Something as low as an X1300 would do your video playback just fine. The only reason you would need something more powerful is if you want to game. You can go as powerful as you want, just remember that the fan on a X1900XTX or 7900GTX could easily fill the room if your trying to watch a quiet scene.

[bolker]

My TV supports 480p, 480i, and 1080i, but it requires component input for HD digital signals. DVI and HDMI weren't out when I bought it. But it does 1080i very well from component, my progressive scan DVD player and my HD-TiVo both display perfectly on the TV.

At first I misread that video cards supported component out, then I realized it was composite out which is essentially S-Video. So I either need some sort of converter from DVI to component, or I need a card that supports component. I haven't seen one yet.

EDIT: I just found this. I just bought one because I do have a Radeon 9800 Pro I can use it with if worst case this is the only way to get HD video to the component TV.