Newbie looking for lots of info, in english!!

prospect

Hi guys,

looking for some help here, I am considering building a HTPC.

This is my first venture into this area of PC building and to be honest all this HDMI / DVI / VGA blah is confusing me no end.

Anyway,

Rather than post a heap of questions that have already been answered (in a manner that is too technical for me to understand) would anyone be willing to volunteer to let me PM them for the info?

Cheers,
P.

BTW, here is my current set-up:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055025882

SouperComputer

Id rather it wasnt thru PM. Im sure lots of people are in the same situation as you so this thread could be really useful to them. Please keep all your thoughts on thread, im sure we would all like to help.

My first question is.....What do you want you PC to do? What features appeal to you? Do you plan watching HD (High Definition) movies in the near future?

Ask away, we dont bite

prospect

Oki Doki,

I didn't mean to be 'covert', I just didn't want to pee-off any regulars with repeat questions.

However, I'll gather my thoughts, and check the thread a bit more for obvious answers and post later on this evening.

P

prospect

Okay,

so that was a lot of time gathering thoughts.

Lets start with the biggest hurdle, if it cannot be overcome, then I am wasting everyones time.

My Setup has a 42" Plasma. However, it is wall mounted and the only cable going to it is a HDMI.

Is there a PC card available that can send Video and Audio to the TV?

BK

leahcim

You can get a cable that converts from DVI to HDMI with no loss of quality (they are both digital).

HDMI carries video and audio, DVI only carries video.

Dont worry about not sending sound to your tv as the sound from your HTPC would more than likely be better send to a surround sound system. If you really wanted to have the sound from your tv's speakers you could always connect your soundcard to the audio-in on your tv.

Many graphics cards support DVI.

Here is an example on komplette.ie. This one has a heatsink to keep the noise down which is always important when building a HTPC.
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=337821&view=detailed#ProductTabs

There are a couple of graphics cards that do support HDMI output but for a HTPC I dont see the point. Spend your money in a quiet card that has DVI out and can handle 1080P (1920×1080) resolution.

adrian.s

prospect wrote: »

Okay,

so that was a lot of time gathering thoughts.

Lets start with the biggest hurdle, if it cannot be overcome, then I am wasting everyones time.

My Setup has a 42" Plasma. However, it is wall mounted and the only cable going to it is a HDMI.

Is there a PC card available that can send Video and Audio to the TV?

BK

You could of course buy a motherboard that has hdmi built into it, make sure it can go up the resolution of your tv, and you should be fine. The mb's only cost around 70 -100 euro on komplett so worth investigating.

Adrian.

SouperComputer

if you have a look over onthe graphics forum, IIRC theres a couple of threads on cards that have hdmi and are hdcp compliant

adrian.s

SouperComputer wrote: »

if you have a look over onthe graphics forum, IIRC theres a couple of threads on cards that have hdmi and are hdcp compliant

One of these days I should take the time to have a more proper look at boards and all the different forums! I thought I was mad on spending on techie stuff, but I really can't grasp why people are spending over €400 on a graphics cards I'm sure if you're a gamer they're well worth the money, but for just doing media center even up to 1080p resolution I'm not sure you need to spend the money on that component.

Any basic card will more than suffice, if you do have a budget, spend it on large amounts of diskspace.

So I've been looking around to build me a new frontend for my myth tv system and if this is any help to you, here's what I'm looking at buying (from komplett):

New Frontend Stuff

with the following case:

Silverstone ML02

Not 100% sure that all these will fully work together (I will be using Linux, and heat is a consideration as well), still doing my homework before spending. Maybe though it would give you some ideas around what to put into the box and at a reasonable cost.

Adrian.

SouperComputer

Cant understand the idea of paying 400 for a graphics card myself, there are ones with HDMI for MUCH less than that. 120 is the most ive ponied up for a graphics card personally.


Do you plan on having the frontend doing some transcoding? Otherwise, id go with an old S478 board and stick a DOM on there.

The main potiential issue I see is that the board you picked has ATI graphics on board, which is not always fun with linux.

Talisman

Prospect: What do you want from the system?

That is the most important question to answer. Apart from saying you want to connect it to a 42" plasma screen with a HDMI connection there is no information to go on.

Further questions:

Do you already have a pc/laptop in your home?
Do you want to use the system to record tv programs?
Do you only want the system to stream video content (DVD/DivX/Xvid etc) to the tv?

You don't necessarily have to build a HTPC system yourself. Depending on your needs you will have a number of options.

prospect

Thanks for the info guys,

I'll check out the graphics forum also.

Talisman wrote: »

Prospect: What do you want from the system?

That is the most important question to answer. Apart from saying you want to connect it to a 42" plasma screen with a HDMI connection there is no information to go on.

Further questions:

Do you already have a pc/laptop in your home?
Do you want to use the system to record tv programs?
Do you only want the system to stream video content (DVD/DivX/Xvid etc) to the tv?

You don't necessarily have to build a HTPC system yourself. Depending on your needs you will have a number of options.

Talisman,

I have a samsung HDD recorder, and SKY, so I have the ability to record to a HDD and EPG.

What I am looking for is a project! I have a few old PC's knocking around and I was going to build something with them. But, as things go, I decided if I was going to do this, I may try and do it right.

Thing is, if I am going to use this on the main TV, I have to make it useable for the wife as well, so here is my wish list:

I would like it to send both video and sound to the TV via the HDMI.
I would like the option to send sound to my AMP.
I have a Logitech programmable remote, I would like to be able to continue using it.
Aswell as watching TV & DVD, I would like to use it with the TV for viewing photos.
I would like to use it to play music to my AMP via I-tunes (or similar).
Also, I would probably use it to play games.
Finally, would I be pushing it if I wanted to use it as a web browser?

I'm not needy.

Cheers,
P.

SouperComputer

prospect wrote: »

I have a samsung HDD recorder, and SKY, so I have the ability to record to a HDD and EPG.

What I am looking for is a project! I have a few old PC's knocking around and I was going to build something with them. But, as things go, I decided if I was going to do this, I may try and do it right.

Thing is, if I am going to use this on the main TV, I have to make it useable for the wife as well, so here is my wish list:

I would like it to send both video and sound to the TV via the HDMI.
I would like the option to send sound to my AMP.
I have a Logitech programmable remote, I would like to be able to continue using it.
Aswell as watching TV & DVD, I would like to use it with the TV for viewing photos.
I would like to use it to play music to my AMP via I-tunes (or similar).
Also, I would probably use it to play games.
Finally, would I be pushing it if I wanted to use it as a web browser?

I'm not needy.

Cheers,
P.

Nah, thats pretty standard stuff.

Spec wise a P4 1.7 with 512MB RAM will suffice. The more HD space you have the better.

HDMI, you can spend more on a card with HDMI to get an older one with DVI and use and adaptor.

A photo viewer is included in all major Media-Center type apps such as mediaportal, windows MCE and MythTV.

Logitech remote should not be a problem, you may need the MCE remote & receiver for this however. Also you will need this if your HTPC is going to be controlling you sky box. It has little beads that go on the device to change the channel for the computer, just like a remote.

Audio thru your amp, not a problem in either analog or digital format. Switching between your TV and the amp might be a bit more involved.

Games, all depends on the spec of your machine and what games you wan to play, so its no different from other PC's in that regard. Checkout this thread for suggestions on games that go well with a HTPC.

On the music front, again mediaportal and Windows MCE have built-in music players which work through the remote controlled interface. You can of course pickup a mouse and open iTunes if you want, but really the more you can integrate to the remote the better.

Internet again, no problem. You just need to pickup your keyboard as usual.


My best advise right now, is to download mediaportal and play with it. This will give you a good idea of what its all about and its FREE!

prospect

SouperComputer wrote: »

Nah, thats pretty standard stuff.

Spec wise a P4 1.7 with 512MB RAM will suffice. The more HD space you have the better.

HDMI, you can spend more on a card with HDMI to get an older one with DVI and use and adaptor.

A photo viewer is included in all major Media-Center type apps such as mediaportal, windows MCE and MythTV.

Logitech remote should not be a problem, you may need the MCE remote & receiver for this however. Also you will need this if your HTPC is going to be controlling you sky box. It has little beads that go on the device to change the channel for the computer, just like a remote.

Audio thru your amp, not a problem in either analog or digital format. Switching between your TV and the amp might be a bit more involved.

Games, all depends on the spec of your machine and what games you wan to play, so its no different from other PC's in that regard. Checkout this thread for suggestions on games that go well with a HTPC.

On the music front, again mediaportal and Windows MCE have built-in music players which work through the remote controlled interface. You can of course pickup a mouse and open iTunes if you want, but really the more you can integrate to the remote the better.

Internet again, no problem. You just need to pickup your keyboard as usual.


My best advise right now, is to download mediaportal and play with it. This will give you a good idea of what its all about and its FREE!

Lovely stuff,

Thanks for your time.


Another one or two questions.

Can I connect my SKY Box to the HTPC via scart and then send it through to the TV via the HDMI.

Is there and Open Source OS that suits this type of work. I assume media portal is an application that runs on windows.

I'll check it out anyway.

Much Appreciated.

SouperComputer

Basically you need these to get your Sky box hooked up:

TV Card (Hauppage PVR150 is a good one to start with)
SCART to Svideo & Audio cable
IR Blaster (this emits remote controller signals to the box on the computer's behalf so that it can change the channel.

Im not 100% sure on what the SVideo status is for Sky boxes. If your box supports RGB, then you will get the best quality by getting an RGB to Svideo converter.

Open source OS wise, you can run MythTV or Freevo on linux. But to be honest, for your first build, if reccomend you run MediaPortal or Windows MCE. Mediaportal itself is open source.

prospect

Lovely.

Food for thought, thanks so much.

Talisman

If you want to go the open source route then there's more work involved.

Check out these links:
Freevo
GeeXboX

Linux distributions with the MythTV system integrated:
KnoppMyth
Mythbuntu
Mythdora