Advice please lads ...

DubGF

Hi lads,

I know there are some HTPC experts here so I decided to ask for some advice.

I have a few bob to spend and want to get a htpc for the house.

What I want to do is have a nice quite desktop/laptop in the house for mp3's, movies (with remote control) and normal net stuff. I plan to buy a SONOS system as well so I want to integrate the HTPC stuff with that.

I bought a nice 32 inch Samsung tv last year, NOT a hd ready one I am afraid. I watch movies now through the s video port on the laptop.

I have Sky at home and would like to be able to record on to the PC/laptop.
What would you lads advise me to buy?

Preferably an out of the box solution, I have not got the patience to build one myself.

I have been looking at the Sony Vaio laptops, decent enough I think, do you have an experience with them?

Also, looking at XP media center, do you guys think I should wait for Vista Media center?

Thanks in advance lads,
Gary

subway

vista media centre is great,
not much extra features than xp but looks very nice - whcih is what the mce experiecne is all about imo
i have it running on a p4 2.4 with a radeon 6200 and 512mb ram

it does require about 50% more power than xp but the above should set you back very little in todays terms.

for cooling, relaibility and upgrade options id stick with a SFF pc rather than a laptop.

above spec should come to about 350 euro with a creative audigy, pvr-150 and big hdd included.
you can spec it up if you need to, but the above runs perfect for me.

i wouldnt recommend buying an out of the box solution, mainly as youll pay over the odds, but a second hand average spec dell with a few slot in extras wont take much time...

Tom Dunne

DubGF wrote:

I have been looking at the Sony Vaio laptops, decent enough I think, do you have an experience with them?

Sony laptops are top quality. But, as someone who has built a HTPC around a laptop, I would strongly discourage it. I have a vegtable rack with a multitude of cables and external devices in a terrible mess in "my" room (not the main sitting room, thankfully). It is very unsightly.

Re: Media Center, don't forget there are free alternatives, such as GB-PVR (which I use) and Media Portal.

SouperComputer

-1 For a laptop, too constrictive for a HTPC
-1 for a Sony laptop. Overpriced, overrated and in my experience unreliable.

Ive litterally repaired 1000's of laptops and let me tell you that Sony is a brand I would avoid.

I wouldnt rush out and get vista, personally id wait until Q2 next year. MCE is fine, but as Tom Dunne said, there are alternatives out there.

Theres not a lot of ready-built media centres that I can reccomend. If you are going for SONOS you must plan spending a good few bob, have a look at this: http://www.hushtechnologies.net/

The E1 is the model that you should be interested in.

RuggieBear

subway wrote:

vista media centre is great,
not much extra features than xp but looks very nice - whcih is what the mce experiecne is all about imo

what are the benifits of Vista MCE over XP MCE05?

I love my mce05 set up at the moment.

I presume MCE compatable hardware will be Vista MCE compatable?

DubGF

Thanks for the info guys.

That hush e1 looks sweet, and also gbpvr, I am interested in both. I have to do a bit of reading on both...

In relation to SONOS, has anyone used it at all? I see they are now selling them in the SONY shops, the guy had no idea about it though.

I have heard of using an xbox 360 in a setup like the one I want, can someone please explain what having an xbox360 can add?? Is it wireless transmission of media from a device throughout the house?

I want to eventually have 1 device (in an ideal world) that can handle all my AV requirements at home.

Thanks again lads,
Gary

subway

its all cross compatible.
the advantages are in terms of ease of use and presentation from what i can see.

not important to everyone,
but i like to have the best possible experience and the new layout offers that.
the recorded tv section is great looking and easier to find something that the 2005 layout.

i havent noticed much else, but its only a few days old...

8T8

DubGF wrote:

Thanks for the info guys.

That hush e1 looks sweet, and also gbpvr, I am interested in both. I have to do a bit of reading on both...

In relation to SONOS, has anyone used it at all? I see they are now selling them in the SONY shops, the guy had no idea about it though.

I have heard of using an xbox 360 in a setup like the one I want, can someone please explain what having an xbox360 can add?? Is it wireless transmission of media from a device throughout the house?

I want to eventually have 1 device (in an ideal world) that can handle all my AV requirements at home.

Thanks again lads,
Gary

With MCE XP or Vista the MCE UI can be streamed to an Xbox 360 console so in effect it acts as an extender. You can do almost everything you can with MCE from this so it makes a useful item if you make a PC act as a central server and have Xbox 360 as the front end.

It's easier to say what the Xbox 360 cant do (at the moment*)
Stream DVD's though MCE (you must use the built in DVD player in the console)
Video support is currently limited to MPEG1/2/WMV/DVR-MS {DVR-MS is the TV show format used by MCE}

There is a way to get around the video support issue through a program called Transcode360 will which turn everything into wmv on the fly for playback.

* This will be changing Microsoft have been soliciting feedback about audio/video codec support for the Xbox 360 but the update will be a ways off.

SouperComputer

An Xbox 360 can act as MCE extender. This means you can access all the content on your MCE computer. You can watch live TV, recorded TV, shedule recordings, play music and watch videos.

The 360 is fussy about what codec's it accepts so if you have anything in divx, xvid etc you will need to install software on the MCE to transcode the video into a format it likes. Forget about wireless if you plan using more than one device and even if you are only using one extender, I would highly reccomend that you wire it.

SONOS, IMO is another overpriced piece of hardware, its pretty ironic that you saw it in a Sony shop. If the controller is what makes the deal for you then fair enough, but otherwise theres Squeezebox and Soundbridge

Ive been using squeezebox and their open source server software for about three years and found it to be great.

RuggieBear

modded xbox?

but it's an ugly solution.

Villain

Well I have been looking at this topic myself for a while and I have tried a lot of different setups, so I'll give you a run down of what I have used and what I thought.

First of all I started off a few years ago by buying a Marantz amp and 5.1 Mission Speakers then I added a Panasonic Projector and a 27" JVC LCD TV Now I wired the entire house for sound and have all the rooms wired back to the marantz amp via a speaker switch box, I also got Sky+. This is all installed in one room, my sitting room, in a corner on shelves. Now being honest I don't use the speakers around the house that much, but I have a huge collection of music, TV series and DVD's so I have been looking at ways of playing all these through my system.

Firstly I built a PC in my room and ran a network cable to the sitting room. So I started off by looking at a Snazio SZ1350 (http://www.snazio.com/) which is a great product but has a lot of bugs which are being ironed out, this system is basically acting as a media center extender however you don't need media center as it uses snazio software and it will play almost every codec including divx and it can handle HD Video.

So having sent my faulty Snazio back I then bought an Xbox 360 and upgraded my pc to windows Media Center edition and I have to say this works well. I installed the transcode software on my PC and I managed to play most codecs and obviously it plays the music well, only one downside for me really and that is the XBOX 360 is damn noisy now when playing music you won't notice but when watching a movie with quite scenes you will. The XBOX 360 also comes with HD support and a HD dvd drive is coming out soon.

I also bought a SKY HD box when my SKY+ box died and the added space for recording is great. I then built another PC with Windows Vista and while I like the look of the new Media Center edition it doesn't seem to have many extra's.

So currently I have a PC in my room with XP Media edition connected to an XBOX 360 in the sitting room which is connected to the AMP and my TV and Projector. I then also have the SKY HD Box connected to my AMP, TV and Projector. So I can play any of my 30,000 songs, TV Series and Movies from my PC via the XBOX and any Live or recorded TV shows via my SKY HD box.

This setup is quite good but I do like the look of Hush E1, HTPC seem to very slow to come on the market, I was at show about a year ago where Intel was showing off hardware using their VIIV technology and they had a HTPC which wasn't much larger than a normal external DVD drive and had all the connections you needed and ran XP Media Center edtion, I can't find any such project on the market yet though.

Alienware in the US have released a HTPC called DHS2 which looks excellent but I can't find it here or in the uk?? http://www.alienware.com/product_detail_pages/DHS_2/dhs_2_features.aspx?SysCode=PC-DHS2&SubCode=SKU-DEFAULT