- December 11, 2009
- 142
- 46
- Home Country
-
Netherlands
As of august 2013 we've moved into our new home. And of course, the mediacenter moved with us. Lately I've been installing it. The idea is to have as much functionality with as less cable clutter in sight. To achieve said goals this is where it has been going:
Front view
I´m kind of done with the centerspeaker. My two floorstanding JM Labs Chorus speakers do place voices so beautiful that I´ve never missed the accompanying center speaker. To be honest, I think the soundstage is better now, without the centerspeaker. I use a logitech Harmony 300 remote and a Microsoft Mediacenter IR keyboard. The keyboard works pretty okay, but the pointing device (a little 'joystick' on the top right) IMHO should've been a trackball. The TV is a Sony Bravia 40" LCD. The WAF is excellent!
Side view
In the left corner you can see the Rel Quake II subwoofer. Nice little piece of equipment, which I only use for the extra 'rumble' in movies. If you think of buying one, also consider buying a 5 kg (or more) weightlifting plate. The enclosure of the sub is way to light. I've made a simple construction to tackle this issue. Costs about nothing, improvement in sound is great!
Behind the wall
In case you might have been wondering where the HTPC itself was hiding, here it is! All the noisy equipment is placed behind the wall the TV is hanging from. The receiver is a Onkyo, and is a beast! I've placed everything on wheels, to be able to service it without doing a fullbody workout everytime; the receiver weighs about 25 kg (55lbs) The HTPC itself is quite simple; Core2Duo 2,4GHz with 2 GB RAM and a NVidia 630 graphics card. TV comes via IPTV (with a little bit of tweaking) All the cable are fed through a 25 mm hole I drilled through the wall, and are nicely tucked away out of sight.
All the mediafiles are stored in the (hot swap) server case on the right (which I found in a thrift store) It contains several drives at the moment, for a total of some 10 TB. The motherboard is an Asrock C2550D4I with a an onboard quad core Athlon and 12 SATA ports and IPMI support The mobo only consumes 20 watts and is powerfull enough to encode alle the videofiles I've thrown at it. It runs Ubuntu Server 14, a usenetclient, Plex mediaserver and sickbeard.
To be done:
Install rear speakers
Install turntable
get a more powerful htpc, to be able to run webmediaportal for streaming TV over the interwebz.
Previous threads of my HTPC
(There have been quite some versions between these two and the current setup)
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/almost-completed-but-never-finished-my-mediacenter.80423/
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/getting-there-my-htpc-setup.99342/
Front view
I´m kind of done with the centerspeaker. My two floorstanding JM Labs Chorus speakers do place voices so beautiful that I´ve never missed the accompanying center speaker. To be honest, I think the soundstage is better now, without the centerspeaker. I use a logitech Harmony 300 remote and a Microsoft Mediacenter IR keyboard. The keyboard works pretty okay, but the pointing device (a little 'joystick' on the top right) IMHO should've been a trackball. The TV is a Sony Bravia 40" LCD. The WAF is excellent!
Side view
In the left corner you can see the Rel Quake II subwoofer. Nice little piece of equipment, which I only use for the extra 'rumble' in movies. If you think of buying one, also consider buying a 5 kg (or more) weightlifting plate. The enclosure of the sub is way to light. I've made a simple construction to tackle this issue. Costs about nothing, improvement in sound is great!
Behind the wall
In case you might have been wondering where the HTPC itself was hiding, here it is! All the noisy equipment is placed behind the wall the TV is hanging from. The receiver is a Onkyo, and is a beast! I've placed everything on wheels, to be able to service it without doing a fullbody workout everytime; the receiver weighs about 25 kg (55lbs) The HTPC itself is quite simple; Core2Duo 2,4GHz with 2 GB RAM and a NVidia 630 graphics card. TV comes via IPTV (with a little bit of tweaking) All the cable are fed through a 25 mm hole I drilled through the wall, and are nicely tucked away out of sight.
All the mediafiles are stored in the (hot swap) server case on the right (which I found in a thrift store) It contains several drives at the moment, for a total of some 10 TB. The motherboard is an Asrock C2550D4I with a an onboard quad core Athlon and 12 SATA ports and IPMI support The mobo only consumes 20 watts and is powerfull enough to encode alle the videofiles I've thrown at it. It runs Ubuntu Server 14, a usenetclient, Plex mediaserver and sickbeard.
To be done:
Install rear speakers
Install turntable
get a more powerful htpc, to be able to run webmediaportal for streaming TV over the interwebz.
Previous threads of my HTPC
(There have been quite some versions between these two and the current setup)
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/almost-completed-but-never-finished-my-mediacenter.80423/
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/getting-there-my-htpc-setup.99342/