Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater ANyone here with a HTPC?

So, how much did you guys spend on your HTPC?

I was thinking about getting the Panasonic S97S which has a Faroudja DCDi processor, and can output 1080i and like you said, the Z3 can go to 1920 x 1080i with HDMI.

I am not sur eof the processor in the Z3, but it is supposed to be excellent. So good, that many people are skipping the upconverting DVD player, and letting the projector do it.

With that said, I want a great picture, but after spending about 6 hours tonight trying to fix the crashed hard drive on my PC (remember the great one I mentioned before? Looks like an unrecoverable error. Oh, and it went out of warranty 45 days ago. Western Digital only has 1 year warranties I guess.) I am thinking that I don't want to tinker and tweak a HTPC if I do go that route.

What about the Microsoft Media Center route? I have heard of people building their own system and getting Media Center installed on it.

I don't want to rule out the HTPC, and I GREATLY appreciate the easy to follow information you folks posted, but I want to make sure that if I go that route, it will be worth the trouble compared to the DVD player I mentioned above.

Thanks yet again for your help. This is a really interesting topic.

I like the looks of the Ahanix D5 case or the Silver Stone (black)...

Very nice....

Great information Saturn, sounds like your the HTPC guru

Since Nick is looking at the Z3, as am I to replace my awesome Z2, I thought I would add some additional information. I'm not sure what video scaler Sanyo uses for the Z3, it might be Faroudja based, not sure, but many of the threads I've read on AVS from current owners speak very highly of its ability. Most of them set their DVD players to interlaced mode and let the Z3 take over.

Here is a portion of Projector Central's review on the Z3, sounds pretty impressive..

"Owners of the Z3 will never want to bother with an external video processor like the DVDO iScan HD since the onboard electronics are already fully adequate to the task. DVDs are scaled as cleanly as we've ever seen on any product in this class, and those with particularly good transfers look almost high def."

So it sounds like I will forget the idea of getting an upconverting DVD player.

The S97S has great reviews. But the Faroudja processor is supposedly not the helralded Faroudja on the the legendary Panasonic RP82. Based on some reviews they said to use 720p with HDMI. It came out withthe best DVd picture which is actually the same native rez as the Z3. You can't go wrong with that combo.

If Media Center is still using WM10 I would still go with NVDVD. Last time I played with WM10 or was it WM9 it does not use hardware acceleration in the DVD player. It only had options to use software acceleration. Since the ATI or GForce card have hardware video acceleration why not use it.

I'm getting a Silverstone tower case for my new gaming rig (hopefully) tomorrow. I'll let y'all know about the fit and finish. (TJ05)

Saturn - Where did you get NVDVD? I looked at their website and they say that it's not sold or distributed outside of the bundling w/ specific manufacturers cards (PNY and evga.com).

FWIW- Popular science just had an overview of HTPCs with some reviews. Nothing really in depth, but a nice multipage overview of them just the same.

I just did a quick search of their website:
Build your own HTPC overview
and more detail

Finally, the article I was talking about above: The PopSci Buyer's Guide: Media Center PCs. On that page, make sure you follow the links on the left side to "related articles"....that's where they review specific desktops, laptops and "living room friendly" PCs...

My 2 cents

HTPC is a very broad term these days. Basically because you impliment a system to output whatever it is you want, to your TV in so many different ways.

I learned so much in trial and error over the past ~10 years outputing things from my PC to my TV and I still feel there is a lot more to learn.

I think one thing to consider is if you want to tweak or if you just want a box that works. Right now I've settled on MCE 2005 (self built box) because I mainly wanted tivo like features. I picked MCE over MythTV mainly because I liked the added bonus of a Windows (XP) desktop in my HT for other things, and general ease of configuring (MythTV is easy but Linux+Hardware is not always).

Now I'm doing all this with standard tv. I don't have a HDTV yet (although I cry myself to sleep at nite wishing I did ). I think picture quality is fair but I still use a regular DVD player for DVD movies. Of course I can play other media thru MCE like DivX (mpeg4 and such) which is VERY nice when I need to get my hands on a tv show I missed or didn't know about or comes from a friend, etc. Plus of course archiving tv and other things now is extremely nice ability to have (althought time consuming).

And then there is the music. I am a big mp3 nut, having all my music at my fingertips is extremely nice. And with multichannel mp3 on the way, as well as all the other music file formats out there today, I'm pretty excited. It's almost relaxing to have all this ability sitting in one box in your HT, at least to me it is.

I'm picking up the Silverstone HTPC when I got spare change.

Well, the TJ05 is a really nice case, quite well built. Also enormous... I'll let y'all know how their customer service is... they forgot to include the case key! I had to partially disassemble the thing to put in the DVD drive... we'll see how quickly/well they deal with that. The istructions they send with the case are somewhat lacking, however.