Building a PC into a home entertainment system.

seamus

Probably better in the tweaking/modding forum, but anyhow.

I have a barebones machine sitting at home that we want to build into a fileserver/home entertainment system.

So we're looking for surround sound stereo system to play all the mp3's on the machine, TV in/out for recording TV and playing DVDs, and of course, a remote control to allow us to control it all without getting off our asses.

So what do I need? Relatively beefy CPU notwithstanding, what cards and software do I need to get this off the ground?

Pure n00b in this area, so links wouldn't be looked down upon.

Phibsboro

Hi,

Have a look at www.mythtv.org - exactly what you are after, tho not really for the faint hearted.

Cheers,
C

seamus

Yeah, I got that from another thread too.

Looks pretty insane. Something I'd love to sink my teeth into.

Cheers

soiaf

Lots of useful information/discussion here

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=26

Its an interesting area - though it can be very expensive. For example, its easy enough to set up a PC with a TV out and use the PC to play DVDs.
But then you might start thinking "wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to find the DVD, put it in the machine etc." - so you start thinking of ripping (your own) DVDs and storing the ISO image on your PC - dead handy, but you needs tons of hard drive space.
If you start thinking of some of the fancier newer stuff (like playing high-definition video for example, the CPU you use has to be fairly beefy - at least (in pentium 4 terms) a 2.4, but 3 (or faster) much better.
I personally think the ATI Radeon graphic cards have a nicer TV out.
Soundcard - if you really are only using MP3 - then pretty much anything. If you start thinking of hifi sound, or thinking of feeding a multi-channel sound to a hifi amp, then a soundcard with a digital output (say an SPDIF connection) would be nice.
But its (potentially) a huge area with lots of choice.

Graham

There's so much you can add it's difficult to know where to start. Take it from someone who went out last Friday to buy a TV card and ended up coming home with new PC, fast hard disks, TV card, etc etc.

I can reccommend the Haupage WinTV PVR 350 (around €200) good quality, hardware based mpeg decoding so doesnt put much of a strain on your processor. The timeshifting for tv is great.

If you're using windows take a look at showshifter, works very nicely just a shame the electronic program guide that covers Ireland (digiguide) doesn't integrate fully with it

For a really whizzy option, take a look at Windows media centre edition 2005 (and remote control), it looks the business. I only ordered mine yesterday but if you're interested I'll let you know how I get on with it.

IrishMike

OK but there is a much MUCH cheap and better alternative to this.
You could buy an xbox mod it throw in a hd and you have the best home cinema system
there is at the moment for the price.
xbox media player is free and plays every movie file codec in existance it seems.
Region free dvd, mp3,ogg,wav etc music playback, picture viewer and of course games.
It also doesnt look out of place beside your tv and there is a swanky

remote that comes with it
I personally have one and will be getting a 300 gig hd for it in the next few days.
Will have every ep of every single tv show i watch on it (futurama southpark the office
etc) along with about 200 films and a few gigs of mp3s. Looks ok beside the tv and if
all comes to all you can stream files of any type from your pc straight to the xbox to
the tv.
Only downside is that you cant record tv onto it YET (give it time its a certainty to happen though)
Anyway may not be exactly what you want but i said i would just mention it.

daveJAM

IrishMike wrote:

I personally have one and will be getting a 300 gig hd for it in the next few days.

Before you do that you might want to do some research. I'm almost certain the xbox is subject to the 137 gig limit. Course you could always just throw it in a server. I'm getting an xbox for christmas and it'll be setup with an always on myth server. I'll use the myth script for xbmc to watch any shows i've recorded.

Graham

After a week of using Windows Media Centre 2005 I can definately reccommend it. Excellent user interface and a superb remote control.

Only downside is you can't get the full electronic program guide for Ireland yet, at the moment I can only get it to show BBC1, BBC2, UTV and Channel 4.

You do get:
Live TV (watching)
Timeshifting - pause, record, rewing live tv
Recording
Music from your mp3 library
Internet Radio
Photo Library
Video Library
DVD Playback
DVD/CD Recording

I gotta say it's the best microsoft product I've used.