Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Receiver for HTPC?

You may have read in my other post that I'm trying to decide what to use to power my new HTPC. Due to space issues, I simply cannot keep the separates that I'm using now. (Rotel RMB-1075 and RSP-1066)

I really would like to hear as many opinions as possible on this, as I don't like changing gear all that often, so selling the Rotel and buying a receiver while at the same time dipping my toe (more like diving in!) into HTPC is a bit unnerving.

He's the skinny...

I'm building a HTPC and need a receiver to power it.

All video inputs will be run directly into my tv. I don't really need any sort of video switching/up rezing.

What will be running through the receiver is the following...

-6 channels analog out of sound card (using Power DVD Ultra for DVD/Blu-Ray playback - giving me access to lates Dolby and DTS codecs. Also using analog out give me EAX for gaming)

-Time Warner DVR box (HDMI video direct to tv, digital audio to receiver)

-PS2 - (via optical)

-Denon DVD-2900 (at this point pretty much only for SACD/DVD-A playback via analog outputs)

Unless I'm missing something, all I really need the reciever for is audio switching of the above mentioned items, FM/AM (though a minor point), and obviously power amplification. I don't even need a remote, as I'll be using the Harmony 880.

Soo...this is a long winded way of putting these two proposals up to you guys:

Used Denon AVR-5800
New Pioneer Elite VSX-84TXSi
New Denon AVR-3806

From what I've read the 5800 is supposed to be the one time be all end all of all-in-one receivers. It's obviously a bit dated now, and doesn't have all the latest bells and whistles, but as it's use will be limited, perhaps it's a good idea. ??? Also, if I'm not mistaken, it has not one, but two sets of 7 channel analog inputs, making hooking up the sound cards analog channels AND the DVD-2900's a breeze.

On the other hand, I've heard lots of great things about the new batch of receivers, including the Denon 3806 and Pioneer 84TXSi. And it'd be a new unit, not used.

Money-wise they're all reasonably in the same range.

What say you good people? I'll even add a poll to make it more fun, but please post a reply with your reasoning for your vote!

What should I do? single choice
	Get the Denon AVR-5800!
	Get the Pioneer Elite VSX-84TXSi!
	Get the Denon AVR-3806!
	Other!
Votes accepted starting: 02/20/07 05:06 AM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

Well, not that anyone responded, but I figured I'd give an update.

I just grabbed the Denon AVR-5800. It's the only receiver I could find that had (from all reports) a superb power supply, ample wattage, terrific sound in both 2 channel and 5.1 surround, and last but certainly not least, two sets of 5.1 analog inputs. Having never been looking for something like that before, I didn't realize how rare that feature is!

I'm going to be sad to see my silver Rotel beauties go. :~( But my saddness will be countered with the joy of playing with new toys. A kick-butt HTPC and huge honkin' AVR should wipe the tears away.

Well crap, now I feel bad for missing this. I would have at least checked "other" and made a smart-ss comment. My Adcom gtp-880 has 2 sets of mc inputs, but it's discontinued. Keep us posted on the htpc, thats something I've been kicking around.

Wow, Craig. Congrats. That thing looks like a monster.

The Adcom wouldn't help, as it's only a processor. The reason I'm going from separates to an all-in-one receiver is that with the addition of the htpc, I don't have the space for separates anymore.

I have an HTPC (Meedio as the frontend), I use the onboard SPDIFF going to my Yamaha Receiver. I also have an UnRaid Server with about a terabyte of drive space sitting in my bedroom that has approx 350 DVD's on the drives plus my music. It works great! I love the setup. Only one negative thing to say about it and that's the cables and wires. It's pretty insane with the number of cables I have. Not only for the HTPC, but the HD Cable Box, Router, Modem (Cable provider), speakers...I had them all hidden behind my rear projection tv but now that I bought an LCD it's a lot tougher to hide.

At some point I'll likely set up a RAID array with a bunch of external storage as well.

Is a wireless connection fast enough to read the data for movie playback? Or would I need a hardwire connection to the HTPC? It would be pretty cool to have my entire DVD collection online.

I suspect wireless would be too slow. Mine is wired gigabyte ethernet. You should look into Unraid, which is a little different than your typical Raid. YOu can mix and match different disk sizes and types unlike Raid 5.
Limetech

Any suggestions on how to put together an external RAID? I'm afraid it would be too noisy if I left it in the living room. There's a storage closet right behind the wall in back of my tv. I've already got some wiring going through there, so I could put the raid drives in the closet, and hard wire them through the wall.

Something like this

cool. That's exactly what I was thinking of. I just couldn't find it online.

I have friend that is running something a little bigger and has 1 terrabyte of disk space almost used up for his MP3 collection. I don't have that much patience to get that much music on a PC. I prefer to drop in the disc of choice.

Oh, God, they're geeking out again.

That USB box doesn't seem like that great of a deal; it's just a case and fans, right? You still need a mobo, memory, processor, controller, etc. I thought the limeware thing was pretty cool, though.

I know RAID is now "sexy computing power for the masses" but I'm just not sure it's necessary. I guess it depends on how much storage you REALLY need, and how fast you need it to be. Personally, I think maintaining another whole system can be kind of a pain. You really just need more storage, right? Drives are cheap.

It seems to me that NAS devices like this - or even external USB drives - are the future. Unless you REALLY need to be able to hot swap drives, why not just get a couple of these and automate the backups using Syncback or something?

I know. I'll be burned at the stake eventually. I just hope it's for something worthwhile.

RAID 1 would be nice. I don't need to hot swap, but on the other hand I would certainly like the data backed up. Ripping my entire DVD collection again if the drive(s) fail would SUCK.

Would something like this work?

Throw four 500gb drives into it, and I'd have a full 1TB of fully backed up storage, no?

Craig, you'll need a better geek than me. Fortunately, there are lots of them around.

I like the price of that unit, and the fact that it comes with a card and a cable. I DON'T like the fact that it is a software RAID solution. It just doesn't seem like there is any getting around the notion that - for true hardware RAID - you need to have the disks reside in the same box as a RAID-capable controller card. Which implies a separate system, rather than just a storage appliance.

How much storage do you need? It might be worth looking into something like the Western Digital MyBook II Pro XL Super Duper Whatever It's Called drives. Those have hardware mirroring of 2 drives--so there's a potential capacity of 750 GB mirrored.

That unit holds 4 drives. Couldn't you put four 500gb drives and get 1TB of backed up storage that way? (or even four 750gb drives and get 1.5TB)

OOPPSS You are correct.

Actually my Unraid is not very noisy at all. I put in a quiet Zalman CPU heatsink/fan. I also have a quiet PS. The Antec P180 case has 3 120mm fans that can be switched to low. The drives spin down when not in use. I have 6 drives in my system and it's sitting in my bedroom about 3 feet from the bed and I can barely hear it at all.

Thanks for the tip, Kevin.