Home Theatre PC

[LindZ]

I'm interested in building a home theatre pc and was wondering if anyone else here has done such a project. I like to use it to play mp3's, dvd's and movies through my tv/stereo system as well as record tv shows. Can anyone suggest what sort of components I might use to go about this?

[pam123]

I admit to eyeing HTPCs with considerable longing.
Start with this article, it's in 2 parts, from Extreme Tech : http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,10314,00.asp
Don't let the date (2002) fool you, the article is still excellent guidance.

[LindZ]

Thanks for the reply pam, the article gave me a good starting ground.

[Xayd]

http://www.avsforum.com has a very good set of forums for this.

IMO-

1) Hauppauge PVR cards are tough to beat for a dedicated capture machine, hardware encoding is a big plus (assuming you don't have HD channels to record).

2) You don't need the best of best components, video playback is fairly straightforward. Celeron/Duron machine would do nicely.

3) Software is the tricky part. Finding software that does everything you want it to do is the catch. There's lots of PVR/Video player setups for both Windows and Linux, you gotta find one that does everything you want it to do.

[Strider]

This site (http://www.snapstream.com/) has PVR Software and I have used it in the Past with great results. Something to check into.