Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Looking into HTPC...general question.

To bad about the DVR stuff...I hate that the PPV is gone in 24 hrs!

I will have to take a look at that thread about RAID....I dont know too much about it. We use it on our work server....

A much easier - if a little pricey - solution rather than RAID is Drobo Have not ponied up the money (yet) myself, but I hear good things. Version one was a tad noisy, but the new version is apparently much improved.

What I like about it is the ease of increasing the disk available for storage: simply - while the unit is being used! - take out the smallest disk in the array and replace it with a larger one, and it automagically brings everything up to date, using its RAID-like redundancy features. You can apparently use any 3.5" SATA I or SATA II hard drives in the enclosure.

I can highly recommend the slysoft software mentioned earlier: I run CloneDVD and AnyDVD on a WinXP vmware virtual machine on my Mac Pro, and it works beautifully. Again, perhaps a bit pricey, but they often have 20%-off sales, and you get a "lifetime" of updates once you purchase. Interesting that they manage to stave of the evil of the RIIA and the like. Perhaps being an Irish company helps: I notice too that their postal address is in Antigua

Regards,
David

I've been looking pretty hard at the sagetv +hd extender combo. It's not cheap by any means but by most accounts it delivers on it's promises. They even have an Axiom-like forum, but you guys are cooler.

Fixed link here.

Not trying to be a "Debbie Downer" but I built a HTPC and never got it working properly. I ended up getting a PS3 which does nearly everything I wanted my HTPC to do, does it better, and cost a quarter as much. Now I use the PS3 for Blu-Ray, DVD, CD, SACD, and MP3 playback. I can even browse my digital photos on it. I just use my cable company DVR. Couldn't be happier. (Well we all know that's a lie, but that's the illness that is hometheateritis.)

Good to know. I was sort of researching to build a HTPC (HD) and just couldn't justify the price.
Definitely going to buy an PS3 soon.

Building a HTPC can take some good PC knowhow but it can payoff majorly in the end. I run SageTV with a PC client in my bedroom and a HD100 extender in my theater and it works very well. I am able to record any HD channel from my cable provider and watch it anywhere in the house, even pausing one room and continuing in another. I can also placeshift my entire DVD, music, and TV collection and watch it on the road. SageTV is hugely capable and infinitely customizable which can make it a bit complicated at times, but if you are technically inclined and don't mind another hobby I really enjoy my setup. I would suggest you start your search on a system agnostic (unlike the sageTV forums which will push you towards SageTV) website like MissingRemote.com and they can help you set up any system you like.

I think it depends on your situation. I need a pc anyway and I have no multi room, multi system issues so why not use what I have to do double duty.

I have no use for another gaming system as I don't play much.

The only items that make this any different from a normal PC are some quiet components like the power supply and the addition of a video card to handle HD out when they get around to making that work. If you want to put all your music and movies online, you need to add external storage to the PS3 anyway.

I thought I'd resurrect this thread instead of start a new one.

Question for the Nerd Herd - how do you feel about the power and value proposition of AMD processors nowadays? I am thinking of my next build (primarily for the wife, but I like to future-proof things for maximum flexibility). It seems like I can save some money by going with a quad-core phenom instead of a Core 2 Duo.

On a related topic, how does one best balance the number of cores v. clock speed?

Thanks for your always clever guidance.

I'm reading an article on the newest Phenom II right now.

I'm pondering buying within the next few months, and I've decided I want a quad, even if all I do is play games on that machine. If you get a high clock quad, you're set, as far as I can tell. The duals just seem like a bit of a dead end to me.

I'm looking a lot more at the Core i7/920 than a Phenom, but I also don't have to replace the case or various other bits, so I can pig out on the parts I'm buying a bit.