First Antec HTPC build

[ShoopNL]

Yes the speakers are not good :-)
That's because I am currently not living in NL ;-)
My stereo is at home ;-)
I wil move back to NL in August 08 then I can connect it to my stereo.
The speakers I have now are better then the ones in the TV ;-)

When I bought the screen it was about 1500,- euro, but that was 1.5 years ago.
Prices have dropped and techniques are improved in that time.
You will be able to find a better screen then I have for less then 1000,- euro
So with the screen (and keyboard) the set costed me about 2100,- Euro
But now it must be able to do it for less then 1500,- including screen and maybe a cheaper keyboard.

I do not have Blue ray, to expensive.
I normally download HD material from Internet, this works as good.

SwingSultan,

Thanx.

The htpc runs 1080p but as I have written, if it is full screen (no black bars) it shows some interlacing when there is lots of movement on the screen. So then the quality is not as would wish for.

I do not have blue Ray because it is to expensive for now.

[jerbob92]

Woww lot of money!
Look at this(i order it on the internet) and it has a floppyDTV...
The system:

Antec Fusion 2 Black € 154,95
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express OEM € 34,95
Samsung SpinPoint T166 500 GB € 89,95
Asus M2A-VM € 50,96
AMD CPU Athlon 64 X2 BE-2350 € 71,95
GigaByte GeForce 8500 GT 256 MB, PCI-e 16x € 58,95
Digital Everywhere DVB-T FloppyDTV Light € 129,00
Digital Everywhere CAM Conax DVB-T € 58,00
Scythe Processorcooler Ninja Mini € 34,95
Lite-On DVD-RW LH-20A1S € 25,95
Microsoft Keyboard Remote Windows XP MCE Wireless € 30,95

Will be 750,05 euro with sendcosts(630,29 without BTW)


Don't know the screen yet!

[ShoopNL]

Nice configuration.

If you only use the system for watching media, you can save a lot of money by not buying a Video and audio card, but use the one's that are intgrated on the Motherboard. My mother board has 7.1 audio output.
This way you can save a lot of money, and it will perform good.
This geforce card will also need some additional cooling, so if you are going to do that, remeber that it can generate extra nois.

Your system is missing a wirreless keyboard, the IR one from microsoft you can buy for about 35,-euro's

I am cuorious about your screen

[jerbob92]

True but for HD movies a external graphics card is needed and this one is cheap, onboard audio is good but this one is better and only 30 euro... The Graphics card is cooled passive.
I don't think i need an keyboard... will look for that one, already have an MCE remote!

EDIT: I see the remote keyboard is around 30 euro, i think i take the MCE remote keyboard.
I will put the prices on the list!

BTW, i'm thinking of Samsung LCD TV LE32S81B 32 Inch, 8 Ms, HD Ready

If you look good you see Floppydtv is second most expensive only the case is more expensive, with the CAM module it is even more expensive!

[kszabo]

Originally Posted by SwingSultan

but im very suprised that the amd 690g handles 1080p at all. afaik it only accelerates 720p. have you tried blue ray discs? i have heared that some copy protections require an extra gpu with your cpu.

The x1250 (GPU of the 690G chipset) can handle 1080p or 1080i, if you have a very fast CPU along with it. The x1250/690G cannot accelerate h.264 at all (only mpg2), not even 720p.

My x1250 with AMD X2 BE-2400 has no problems at all with 1080p (24 or 25 fps). More difficult is the 1080i 50 Hz HDTV! Same pixel count/sec (25 full frames per sec) BUT you still have to deinterlace it somehow... Try to watch 1080i 50 Hz true interlaced football... It works with CoreAVC codec but quick movements are not quite fluid. I did not try bluray yet, but I can imagine that the extra CPU power for HDCP will be crucial for my setup.

[ThaClown]

Missing Remote
This is some good info...

I have a Samsung LE40 I love it!

[mamakawama]

I just built an Antec Fusion black today as well. I went with a 31w Celeron Conroe-L and only a small system drive but with a WD green 1TB drive for videos/music, which is backed up on my network, and an MS MCE remote. I had everything shipped to me from the States in a big brown box (except the case) so it was very cheap.

I also used to use XBMC on a chipped xbox. I wish the search/scan on MP was as good as on XBMC.

[ShoopNL]

Hi mamakawama,

I have to agree with you on the search possibilities of XBMC, it works great.
It also makes no problem of the extention (ISO, ts, avi...) it starts playing, If you want you can even play strait from a .rar file, without extracting it first.

The nicest thing for me on HTPC is that it plays this HD quality.

[mamakawama]

I'm enjoying my new HTPC, but I've certainly not gotten it all dialed in yet.

For example, I'm listening to a playlist right now, and I was fighting with the remote to figure out how to get out of the playlist view, so I could browse my music share again. I could only do it by navigating to the top bar and 'ok-ing' the back arrow. Not so convenient, so I'm assuming I'm missing something.

I've also found some odd control responses with divx avi files... I remember reading somewhere about how something needed patching with divx but I've not figured out what yet.

Anyone throw me a bone... or should I post this in the support section. I'm sure I'm just missing some basics.

My specs are listed.

[kszabo]

ShoopNL:

did you try the Scythe Ninja Mini without fan? with 2 12 cm case fans and your 45W CPU it could go without I guess. I am planing to buy the Antec Fusion case with same cooling but passive (with X2 BE-2400). With Speedfan you can monitor your CPU-Temp.