home theatre

[RickP]

anybody care to share their home theatre set ups? im looking for ideas on mine.

 

[alicarve]

i have the samsung ht-bd1255 which is really good

 

[INMATE183]

Your planning on building a HTPC?

 

[Stryker64]

HTPCs in my opinion HAVE to have a bluray drive, also gotta have some high quality fans to avoid any sort of unnecessary noise. As far as OS goes, Windows 7 or Linux is fine.

 

[timby]

Rick

I too wish to see some good ideas for an HTPC. I wonder if the new Sandy Bridge would allow one to build a decent mid range HTPC without the cost of an expensive GPU? I can't see expending $1000 for a HTPC. It would be nice to see one in the $500 to $700 range. Just a thought .....

 

[INMATE183]

A HTPC needs to play blu rays... im sure you can get one built in that sort of price range easily, silence is the key maybe even (heaven forbid) an underclock? a passive cooled card? (silent)dont need to go all out on one...gigabyte have just released a passive 5770? that should do and it is cheap. silent 5770

 

[Stryker64]

AMD Fusion is one way you can go, small, quiet, cooler simple. But the other path is to get a bit more horsepower, preferably an nVidia card for 3D.

7.1 surround soundcard is also something. ASUS Xonar is probably the best option.

 

[cbiltsouris]

noctua fans? there good as dead silent

 

[RickP]

yeah guys im thinking of building a HTPC.

I know it has to be quiet and it really needs to play in 1080p resolution, and have 5.1 surround.

I would also want it to connect to my 50inch plasma via HDMI

i was thinking of a mini-itx board but i dont know much about these.

i would also like to be able to connect it to a projector down the line

 

[Stryker64]

@Rick Is the case your using compatible with mATX?

 

[INMATE183]

Quiet pc htpc cases

 

[madshots]

I use a mac mini 2010 model with nas drives and plex and ps3 media server.. with denon avr 1920 receaver and onkyo 5.1 speakers.... seems to work well and the bills are still low with it on all the time.. I'm going to post it all up etc in a few months when I should be sorting my bedroom out and making everything look good lol... But i am thinking about building a i3 rig with raid and use a bluray player or r/w but what worrys me is the electric with a server / media centre build.