HTPC Utopia???

BenEadir

Hi all,

I have a Panasonic HD Vierra plasma TV and would like to set up a HTPC so that I can watch downloaded movies, watch streamed content etc on my Panny in both SD and HD where available.

I read about the Acer Aspire Revo which looks very slick and I've come across threads talking about Sopcast, Myp2p, Tversity, XBMC, TVants and so on but as I'm a total newbie I really don't have an understanding of what all these things do. I'm happy to do the legwork and find out what I need but would apreciate a helping hand in the right direction in terms of what is the best HTPC to get to hook up to my Panny, what broadband do I need to effectively stream and download movies (I have 3mb from Ericom at the moment, do I need to upgrade to 7mb?) and what software do I need to get either streamed or downloaded content through the HTPC and onto the Panny screen in high quality without pixelation or staggering.

Am I looking for the holy grail???

I'd give myself a 6 out of 10 for being IT savvy. I can follow set up instructions and understand most user related stuff but partitioning hard drives and editing registry settings etc would be well outside my comfort zone and capability so whatever setup I go with needs to be relatively plug and play. Nothing too exotic.

Anyone here able to point me in the right direction?

Cheers.

Ben

meob

you can have a look here:

http://mediacenterhd.blogspot.com/

BenEadir

Hi Meob,

Thanks for the link. Having looked at it if that's what I need to do to get a decent HTPC setup then I'm afraid it's over my head and maybe I'm not a 6 out of 10 on the IT front after all!!!

Is there a "HTPC setup for Dummies" book out there yet???

Regards,

Ben

eddiem74

Ben,

Don't be afraid..........

Do you have any PC's at home already?

See if they have Windows Home Premium or higher as their Operating System. If they do they come with windows media center out of the box.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-media-center/what-is-it/default.aspx

For downloading, the faster the broadband, the faster the download.

viv.ie

Hi
I have a Acer Revo ,works pretty well into my Sony 40 TV,I posted a link on revouser.com about playing Hi Def content on the revo,the new revo looks pretty slick,anyway here is the link to my post
http://www.revouser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=132&sid=7e03619e6449c2efd77990794dcf35bc
Hope this helps.

BenEadir

Thanks Eddie and Viv. I'll have a good look at your suggestions at the weekend.