Ongoing Low Cost HTPC (1080P) (1 Viewer)

[kszabo]

maybe you are not interested in alternatives but this looks also very good:
http://www.antec.com/pdf/flyers/MicroFusion350_flyer.pdf

only 12 cm high case with dual air chamber design, 2 8 cm fans. Only140 € with psu included.

 

[outlive]

yeah it looks pretty good!
i'm not fond of the silver faceplate tho and it lacks a build in card reader, but that's personal preference

 

[foxx]

Any news on this? Is the given hardware able to play HD content flawlessly?

 

[kszabo]

Any news on this? Is the given hardware able to play HD content flawlessly?

I´ve built a HTPC for a friend: X2-BE2400 CPU, this Gigabyte board, latest Bios (with the new VGA-Bios), latest PowerDVD 7, with an LG BluRay drive. It plays BlueRay back flawlessly (through HDMI with HDCP). It gives surround sound through HDMI, through a Denon AV-Receiver. Real surround. Films tested: Password swordfish, Vertical Limit. I guess both h264 coded

I will still try HDTV from satellite (1080i) and report

 

[Shurik]

Hrmm.. 1080p is a pretty heavy thing for a rig of this configuration, I think.. Plus, what are you going to do with that tiny 500Gb drive if you want to playback 1080p? Any movie at that resolution will run at least 10-12Gb, so I wonder what kind of collection you can have there..

And yeah, I've got 4x1Tb WD GreenPower drives. Pretty quiet and, most importantly, much cooler that other drives I have...

Good luck IMHO, HTPC cannot be cheap, unless you want something that doesn't do much..

 

[kszabo]

what are you going to do with that tiny 500Gb drive if you want to playback 1080p? Any movie at that resolution will run at least 10-12Gb, so I wonder what kind of collection you can have there..

Maybe to watch HDTV from satellite or cable? Maybe to watch BluRay? AFAIK there are HD satellite tuner and Bluray player even without harddrive (there are only such). Is the industry insane?

Not everybody is a collector, just to archive movies never watched for the 2nd time. Congratulations to your 4x1TB storage capacity.

 

[outlive]

case needed quite a long time time arrive here - built the htpc and i'm in the final tweaking stages

i bought the harddrive for my current collection - which consists mostly of DVD quality xvid's/divx's in 480p/720p

 

[Shurik]

Maybe to watch HDTV from satellite or cable? Maybe to watch BluRay? AFAIK there are HD satellite tuner and Bluray player even without harddrive (there are only such). Is the industry insane?

Not everybody is a collector, just to archive movies never watched for the 2nd time. Congratulations to your 4x1TB storage capacity.

Fair enough.. I guess I was speaking from my prospective - I don't know about any way to watch and record HD from my cable company - there is no way to do that except through theirs STB (I wasn't looking into that all that much though) and we don't have HD over air here unlike Europe..

As for my RAID - there are other uses than just to store movies and such.

 

[42yen]

Looks like an awesome system so far. What type of monitor will you hook up to it and will you be using a wireless keyboard/mouse system or controlling it remotely from, say, a laptop?

 

[outlive]

all the tests where positive - system runs 1080p/i fine with and without coreavc

i have a 32" Samsung LCD TV (LE32S81B) hooked up via VGA - it's surprising how good the signal is from the onbard Ati Xpress 3200
i use wireless keyboard/trackball combi: Perixx Periboard 703