Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater HTPC

I built up my first HTPC. Any you guys have the same experience? I am getting better video than my older Toshiba 3750 Progressive scan.
Sound is I think the same since I use the reciever to process the signal via Coaxial Digital. Layer change is definitely quicker. Normal players have a layer change in .8 - 1.5 secs. I don't even see a layer change at all.

Sound I stay with this rather than upgrade to a newer model progressive scan DVD?

EPIA Mini-ITX M series with C3 933 Mhz
(M series has built in DVD compensation, VGA 3D/2D, Lan, S/PDIF)
512 megs DDR PC266
LG DVD 16X
20 gig laptop 2.5 inch drive
6 in 1 media reader
Win XP PRo
WinDVD

Had to jimmy rig a silent Inwin 200w Mini ATX power supply externally. The one built into the Cube was too noisy. Waiting couple of months to see if a new small silent one shows up.
all for under $530 CDN taxes-in

One nice thing is that I can insert a DVD or CD or compact flash and it all automatically is loaded on the screen. No mouse or keyboard needed. Power on and Power off starts and shutdowns the OS. Good ole XP.

http://www.spacelofts.com/HTPC/

That's a neat little setup Saturn.
I was thinking about buying my father one of those cube Shuttle computers since he seems to move around so much. Beyond a laptop, they would suit his needs well.
However they are also certainly a great idea for a home theatre PC.

I haven't done it yet, as I've had other expenses get in the way, but my rig at the moment will consist of the following:

Athlon XP 2400+
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo
2x 256MB PC2700
Antec True350 PSU
DIGN HTPC case
ATi Radeon 9500
Hauppauge PVR-250 cap card (Win XP MCE compatible)
Western Digital 2000JB HDD (will probably require a second one shortly)
Logitech wireless duo keyboard and mouse

I'll be using an external VGA to Component converter as ATi was kind enough to handicap their component video adapter.

Umm... I think that's it.

Thankfully, I have sources that can help me procure Windows XP Media Center Edition without buying someone else's over priced hardware.

Thats a sweet setup. I had some issues with noise. Thats what I got the first time around. I had to find power supplies (quiet power supplies) that are quiet and hard drive (Seagate drive fluid bearings) that spins quietly. The fans on the AMD is also loud (special heat sink). The fans is loud too on video card (special heat sink) . I ended up with the above setup. Hardly any fans. A little underpowered but everything works up to par and it is DEAD silent now. There also this nice Keyboard/mouse on keyboard combo wireless. All in black looks sweet with handles on side of keyboard to carry about. I picked it up for a mere $32 CDN on sale. I'll send you info on it if your interested.

Quit PC info:

http://www.quietpc.ca/psu.html
http://www.mini-itx.com/
http://home.swipnet.se/tr/web.html

A really really really nice case to match my Rotel. Soon to be shipped. DROOOOOLLLLLLL factor!!!!!!!!!

http://www.hushtechnologies.net/

Saturn

ps: BTW you got any leads to procure Windows XP media Center Edition. wink wink

Sound is a definite issue. I'll be sporting an Alpha heatsink and an L1A Panaflo fan on the CPU along with a Zalman passive heat pump on the radeon. The Antec PSU's are very quiet so that will work. The only source of major noise will be the HDD, but I simply can't make do with the size of the Baracuda IV's and V's. 200GB will be pushing it as is and I'll likely have to add a second for 400MB.

I've seen those Hush cases before and they are indeed very sweet. The only problem is that they're mini-ITX and I need something that can hold a full ATX board. I want the nForce2 + MCP-T's ability to encode positional game sound into Dolby Digital and there still aren't any micro-ATX cases with that chipset combination let alone mini-ITX.

Your current rig won't run Win XP MCE though. You have to have a video capture card with on-board MPEG 2 encoding (like the Hauppauge PVR-250 I mentioned or the 350). That brings up another question I had. What are you using to input television signals? Are you planning on using this for PVR activities?

I didn't know you were going to do PVR activities. Thats why you need that horsepower. I tried capture via firewire on MiniDv and even with my main system it was barely chugging along. Video capture and process is a hog in CPU and hard disk. No PVR activities for me. But if I did PVR activities could I just add external case firewire drives since I got 4 firewire inputs? As with capture I do have 1 PCI slot at back and put in a Sigma Design XCard which is hardware MPEG2.

As with the TV tuner with inputs check this out. I have been using these for 2 years with much success.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/video_box_nextvisionn6.htm

I personally use the entry level VB50HRTV for $150 CDN
The N5 is $220 CDN and the N6 is like $600+

Saturn, i realize that this component will increase the resolution of the signal to a higher level but can you describe the quality of the signal afterwards?
i.e. at the present time my cable signal is really quite crap for some channels, green edging shows on some channels, not others, sound varies from stereo to mono, a certain 'fuzzyness' is apparent on some stations while others look like near digital quality, etc.

This gadget will upsample the resolution of the cable signal but again, how is the actual quality of the picture in other regards after the upsampling?

Since our cable is generally quite terrible all around (and i have tried cable boosters which helps a bit), i would consider such a device if it at least makes any improvement to a standard cable viewing experience.

Hey chess;

I'll try it out tonight. Maybe get some some pictures through my digital camera (If the pictures comes out). Based on the quality of picture I would say is as good/bad as the ATI All in Wonder setup. The picture is definitely upscaled and the Viewsonic processor upscales up to 1024x768. I have the processor plugged into a Sony CPG400 19" monitor and it looks pretty good. I would say just a tad less quality than DVD quality played on a PC using the PC DVD reader. The picture is very slightly soft. Not like the hard details you see on real HTDV. If you compare my older 36" Toshiba tube TV vs the Viewsonic processor I would say the Viewsonic processer would definitely have an edge. Hue tends to be in the green and yellow side but there are adjustments in color, hue, brightness and contrast that you can switch to get the right color you want. The adjustments are not that fine tuned so moving the adjustment 1 to 2 clicks above or below makes a dramatic change. This is the lower model VB50HRTV so maybe the newer models have changed there menu options. I also have cable booster thing (I'll tell you what it is tonight) and this really helped a lot. Its not the standard booster from Radioshack. It was supplied by Bell to me because where I used to live I had really bad reception. After they plugged in this baby the signal is crytal clear. It even has a coaxial cable that is run out from the cable inputs/outputs and has power run (or thats what it looks like) rather than the standard power cord run. <-- don't knock me on this language. I'm no engineer

Saturn,
I"m curious to hear more about your cable booster now as well. I had a Radio Shack model from my parents old house that i'm using but i've never been thoroughly convinced it does much of anything (my father used to run a Radio Shack in the early 80s). Channels in the basement are relatively clear while upstairs they get a bit distorted and sometimes grainy. Using the booster tends to 'help' a bit but certainly does not boost the cable signal nearly as much as i think it should. I also have a cable problem that connects to my ATI AIW and i'm not 100% sure that it isn't the fault of the card having a loose coaxial plug. The bedroom tv still confirms my doubts. I've wondered whether there are some better, even if more expensive, solutions out there for cable boosting, perhaps this Bell item as you say.
Calling the cable company of course gets you absolutely no where. Unless the cable signal is not working at all or looks like some form of satellite jamming, they won't bother coming out to check it. I live right within the city so distance from the source should not be a problem.
Virtually every cable company i've dealt with has different ranges in quality. It is reallly quite annoying.

You may find this thread on HTPC's interesting. The latter part is discussing the UI currently which is the most forgotten (and as yet least optimized) portion:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=67909965&m=3480961855

Semi:

Really interesting thread. Would you explain to me why you need P4 2.8 for capture of 1080i? One thing to note that I think in Canada we don't have 1920 x 1080i HDTV. I might be wrong. And you are talking about capturing via firewire (like MiniDV on Camcorders) not capture through a capture card like AIW?. The highest capture I would need is for SDTV which is Rogers Digital. I forget what the resolution is for Satellite transmission. If I wanted DVD movies I grab ISOs on Newgroups or to my buddy that does that stuff 24/7 (You didnt hear me say that). I am new to PVR and have not touched into that technology since about 3 years ago when I was playing around with it (ASUS capture/AIW capture).

Currently for software today I use WinDVD.. it drives my DVD and CDs. Windows slideshow automatically load when I pop in a compact flash card. I'll look into that MCE when I get all my facts straight about that software.

Also with MPEG decoding on the card does that mean that the CPU is not as important. So in my case my C3 processor with a Sigma Design XCARD I can do the same job as a P4 with a AIW with software mpeg. And you know how good ATI is with building drivers and software. I don't know where they hire those programmers up at Thornhill, Ontario. But I'm led to believe they have come out of a programming course in George Brown College. <--thats not a good thing


Here is an interesting review. The Xcard supposedly outclasses most video cards out there for DVD playback.
http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/sigma_xcard/
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/products/story/0,24330,3351029,00.html
http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/xcard/
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard.htm

chess;

Okey here are the pictures of the Booster. If I don't have this plugged in I get noise in the picture. With it turned on I get a nice picture. As good as cable can get. Unfortunately the camera shot of the TV did not do much justice. Theres one CNN take that turned out pretty good. But as you know using a camera to take TV pictures is not a good rendition of what it actually looks like. I actually reset all my settings of the Tv tuner to default to give you an idea of pictures right out of the box. You can adjust hue, color, brightness and contrast to better the picture.

http://www.spacelofts.com/Tv_tuner/

http://www.electrolinequip.com/en/products/drop_amplifiers/index.html

One thing to note is that the tuner has resolutions from 640x480 to 1024x768. You get the best picture matching your end projecting device. If is tuner is different than your imaging source then the picture would not be optimized for that source. Sunch as with this tuner it would look best with a 1024x768 projector. If you have a 1080i HDTV set then the signal coming in would only still be 1024x768 and then the set would probably rescale it as best as possible or not to its native 1920x1080 resolution.

I would only recommend this to projectors, plasmas, LCDs up to 1024.
I actually compared signals of the TV tuner with the Sony CPG400 vs a Viewsonic VX900 (which has only an optimal resolution at 1280x1024) The signal looked better on the Sony than on the Viewsonic LCD since the TV tuner had a max res of 1024x768.

The pictures are great Saturn.
Do you know where they sell those Electrolines? I would be interested in trying one.

Here is the distributors list. Send an email to find out where the closest retailers are to your place.
http://www.electrolinequip.com/en/contact_us/offices/rep_distr.html#canada

Hey Semi;

I was looking into getting a TV Tuner card/HD for the HTPC and looked into the Hauppauge WinTv-HD and just found really bad reviews on the thing. Have you looked into the Hauppauge product? Should I just go for the ATI product?

Thanks for any info
Saturn

Saturn,

If possible stay away from the WinTV line of tuners. Not very good quality, and even better - stay away from any kind of internal tuning solution as it picks up quite a bit of noise from the PCI bus and other components inside the machine (PSU etc).

However, if your looking at one of those cards for the bundled PVR solutions then you dont have much of a choice.

I went down virtually the same route as you. I picked up a VB50HRTV like you, and the deinterlacing was horrible not to mention the auto-brightness issue (not macrovision as it was doing it on a coax cable source as well). From there I tried virtually every capture card out there, from the WinTV's to Pinnacle's to a Zoltrix card modified by Ken Hotte (cleans up the picture quite a bit actually). I was never satisified with any of them. The ATI's worked, quality was eh, ok but I could not use Dscaler with them at the time (advanced software deinterlacing routines and misc noise filters).

Currently I have a Holo3DGraph (Immersive Inc.) input board (no tuner, input only) which has SDI, component, svideo, and composite inputs, AND does DCDi (Faroudja) deinterlacing. The quality of this board is amazing in terms of input boards for the PC, however it has a price to match and requires external tuning/sources (my case, satellite and dvd player for video sources as software dvd is horrible at video sources).

However, if your on a budget I recommend taking a look at the Xcapture board from Prolink, and or the newer Asus TV card as both are based on the newer Conexant chip CX23* which the H3D uses. Supposedly both are supported by the alpha version of DScaler as well, and some even say that some of the new deinterlacing routines rival that of DCDi, but I can not personally vouch for either of those cards or the new deinterlacing routines as the purpose of purchasing the H3D card was to put an end to all the upgrades and tweaking/frustration etc.

Side note on the H3D board, its a 480i input board only, 480p may be supported in the future, so even though it has component in you shouldnt get your hopes up on the idea of trying to pipe in a 1080i source and deinterlacing and scaling to 1080p or something (PCI bus cant handle it anyhow). But bringing in 480i with DCDi magic and say a Radeon to 720p looks beautiful (I dont like 1080i personally, and there are issues with the overlay and interlaced resolutions with the Catalyst drivers right now)

-pd

pdermody:

Thanks for the reply. I had to send my VB50HRTV for warrantee repairs. I think it dropped one to many times and something went wrong with the volume bar and/or sound circuitry. It was good that it did that now since the warrantee expires in 2 weeks.
I agree with you in that all the internal TV tuner cards have been a pain in the butt. I tried the ATI and there are issues with the software. I did pick up a MSI TV@nywhere with the new Conexant chip and it works pretty good. Color saturation and detail is definitely better than the VB50HRTV. The VB50HRTV picture was a little soft like the older ATI All in Wonder I have. But the nice feature is that it uses the same software that is for use on DVD playback on the HTPC. Same company that makes the WinDVD player Intervideo. And all for the cost of $100 CDN taxes in. All fit into the small package of my HTPC. It definitely was a pain to get it in that small case. It took a while.
Well the bad. The Remote still doesnt work. The person that sold me the item did mention it might not work. So I just have to come into the store and swap it till I find one working. Once I get the remote working I can use my learning remote from my Rotel and mimic all the commands so I again will use one remote. The TV software crashed once on XP today. Hopefully that was a one of thing. I'm not even going to try to do any PVR activities. I'm scared to even try it. Since all this is running on this HTPC it might be underpowered. VIA C3-933 cpu 512 DDR megs ram with a 20 gig notebook hard drive .. a slow 4200 rpm. There is a slight fuzz I guess coming from other components on the HTPC. But you will notice a nice picture with detail.
I might look into installing DScaler since it can be downloaded. But I am happy with the picture so far. So I might not even try tweaking and losing many hours which could be better used elsewhere.
ATI has alway have great hardware. I don't even know how they can employ or where they get those programmers at ATI here in Thornhill. I think they are hiring college graduates and pay them crappy money, promising crappy returns on stock options. There drivers and applications barely works. Your even better off using the drivers supplied drivers offered by the OS. At least those have gone through betas and updates.
I personally recommend any TV Tuner card using the Conexant chip. The video/audio decoder is excellent. To note it is a 10 bit video AD converter. The chip is a Silicon tuner & Conexant CX881 video/audio decoder.

Saturn,

Yeah I lost one VB50HRTV after a cable outage (took out whole neighborhood, and a few cable boxes, including my box). They seem to be kinda delicate as it did not affect another scaler I have. I forgot about the MSI card, that is another one that a lot of ppl are talking about as it has all the same chips as the others I mentioned. The only difference I have read in the cards are the various grounding paths on the board and how much noise they pick up.

As for the remote situation, take a look at Girder and Girder supported IR receivers/transmitters. I am currently using a USB-UIRT which as the name states a USB device, that is both a receiver and transmitter with a jack for external emitters (such as Xantech). It works great, Girder is *very* powerful, but has a learning curve. With this you could say use a universal remote or pronto if you have one to talk to the computer and control various aspects (especially with the pronto as the interface is as you design it)

If you are not going to bother with PVR activities I highly recommend taking a look at DScaler, specifically 4.1.5 and greater as it supports the newer conexant chips, its free all you have to lose is a little time. The various deinterlacing routines are pretty nice, specifically the Tomsmocomp series. When I was using it I was using greedy high motion which was pretty nice most of the time. That and the various sharpening and noise reduction filters are nice, and perhaps the second most important one after deinterlacing method is the Judder terminator which is a life saver if you dont have a device that can handle a refresh that is a multiple of the source framerate.

As for your recommendation on the newer CX chips, yeah that is the opinion of many right now, the Bt8x8 chips just couldnt make me happy (majority of previous generation cards are based on this chip). The H3D I use now has that chip as well as the Faroudja chip for deinterlacing.

If you are not familar with AVS forums, take a look. They have a whole section dedication to HTPC's. Traffic is quite high and lots of knowledge in there. That is where I first heard about Axiom speakers, in the Speakers forum.

-pd

Another thing to note on the MSI TV @nywhere. The stereo or SAP option does not seem to work. Mono can only be selected in cable mode.
As with the remote I just chucked it. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse. I just used my Rotel remote and used its self learning mode and copied all the keyboard keystrokes for each function. Now no more keyboard and mouse and just one Rotel learning remote. I will check out the forum in AVSFORUM. I've been there before but sometimes there is too much fuzz and stuff.

hey PD;

I went to the AVS Forum and I can't seem to find much newer information. Much of the info is based on hardware that is 2-4 months old. And you know with computers thats old. I noticed a lot of people using full blown systems with horsepower (needing lots of noisy fans or specialty heat sinks) and hardlyr saw anyone using the new stuff out right now. ie VIA C3 processor boards with built in 2D/3D video, hardware DVD compensation, SDIF for Dolby Digital EX processing, Firewire and USB 2.0, LAN, surround analog. Get a cordless mouse & keyboard and a programable remote and your all set. This setup is very quiet since big fans and big power supplies are not needed. All in a Mini-ITX format. And too boot it will cost you under $600 Canadian to build such a rig. If I was going to do PVR duties I would just get another PCI card that has hardware MPEG encoding. What gives with all those people spending in the upwards of $1000+ $1500+ on HTPC system. I don't know if I got this wrong but this small HTPC I built up can push excellent DVD at high resolutions and TV broadcasts equally as well. Hey Semi_on do you have any input in this since you yourself has been researching this stuff. I looked around and PVR activities are fine if you use a card that has onboard MPEG encoding and having a CPU faster than like a P3-600. Do I actually need horsepower for these activities?

Heh, unfortunately I am one of those guys with a faster machine - with specialty heatsinks and fans and PSU's to eliminate noise. The reason I need the speed is for various filters provided by FFDShow which can be CPU intensive (resize, denoise, asharp, etc).

The problem that a lot of those guys have with the all-in-one solutions is the quality of such components, ie onboard video vs Radeon R300 core for a 10bit DAC. Onboard sound which resamples everything to 48khz vs say an M-Audio board which outputs at native sample rate, stability of misc drivers and apps on some of the misc chipsets (specifically the Via chipsets seem to give ppl hell, lot of initial problems with Via chipsets and the H3D)

Eh, I say if it works and your happy stick with what you have. I tried onboard video for a bit (Intel 845g chipset) and I didnt like it compared to the Radeon cores. Sound, I am still personally on the fence, currently I just use SPDIF out for DVD's out of the computer as my Audigy resamples anything else. I may look at the M-Audio Revolution later once the drivers mature a bit to see how the DACs compare.

Sidenote, I will probably build another HTPC from one of those shuttles boxes for my father, he is currently using an old machine that used a older Dxr2 for quite a while, it has a Xcard in it now (component out of the card vs jacking with transcoders on vga) but he wants to play some of the newer games so needs a little more speed.

-pd

Hey pd;

Don't get me wrong. I would spend the money if I needed too if there is definitely a quality of video and sound. Excuse me for being naive on certain things. Can you explain to me that since my mini ITX mobo is outputting my windows sounds and DVD and CD sound through the SPDIF that there is some processing involved on my mobo. I thought SPDIF is purely digital and the digital signal is sent to my Rotel receiver which then processes the sound. So when it comes to digital output the sound is only as good as the outside processor or the receiver. All my windows sounds, CD and DVD sounds play on my receiver and the HTPC is only connector to my receiver via SPDIF connection. So the built in sound chips on the ITX mobo resamples all the sounds from the CD, DVD and computer sounds if outputted to speaker out. But I thought with the SPDIF connector there is no resampling just the pure digital information. That is why I was not afraid to connect my Rotel receiver to that HTPC. Five years ago I would call a guy nuts to connect any computer equipment to thousand or tens of thousand dollar Surround systems.

I would definitely agree with you on the video aspect. The better the video card the better the output. Higher GForce card handle shadding, smoke and other terms like G buffer etc etc... But I was thoroughly supprised with the built in via of these new VIA board. Its tried a lot of built in ones and this is by far a clearest cleanest I've seen. It won't do double duty for 3D games thats for sure since I tried benching it using 3DMark. But for TV and DVD I don't know if you need all those. I'm still waiting for those ITX boards to come out with a 8x AGP slot. One nice thing the new versions have is a onboard connector to boot from compact flash. This even makes the format even smaller. Running an OS on a compact flash would definitely be very very fast but also kinda expensive. Even the new motherboards from AOPEN have tube sound tehcnology for processing sounds. Now thats nuts.

http://english.aopen.com.tw/tech/techinside/Tube.htm

Anyone wanna connect your power amps connected to M80s to the sound output of that motherboard.

Saturn

Saturn,

You may very well have a board that does not resample, they are far and few between from my understanding. A quick test would be the following, pop in a CD hit play and see what the receiver reports. In my case and many others it seems, it will more than likely report 48khz via SPDIF. I have an SB Audigy1, and while it does allow me to set 44.1/48/96 for SPDIF, it has been explained to me that there are a couple layers of resampling and its always best to set the card to 48khz and pass it a 48khz stream so it does not molest it on its way out (DVD's output 16/48khz and all the cards *should* output a bit perfect stream, but others report not always). As for system sounds, just for an example the XP startup wav file is 16/22 so in my case for my Audigy and my onboard sound it is output as 48khz instead of 22khz based on my receivers display.

Now does it really make it difference? Well if the card is passing resampling 16/44.1 to 16/48 PCM stream via SPDIF then the die hard guys will argue that it has been molested and is less than ideal.

I sat down with my box last nite for a good 2 hours or so with a set of Seinheisser headphones and listened to a couple CD's via my Technic's CD player, as well as the HTPC (ripped the CD to wav files). First I listened to PC via its native resampling, and compared it to the Technic's output (both going through the Denon, only difference is the Technic's output is analog compared to the PC's SPDIF interface). I was hard pressed to find any audible differences with my ear's once I brought the output levels, and tone on the PC to virtually the same as the Technics. I listened and listened and when I thought I heard a difference and replayed specific parts I could not really tell the difference. Next I decided to take the advice of some of the AVS forum members by using 'better' software resampling plugin's for winamp (SSRC directsound output plugin) and had it resample to 16/48 in software which should have not been touch/resampled again via hardware and thus should have been 'better'. As I could not tell the difference the first time, I dont know why I bothered as I could not tell the difference the second time. So either the Audigy's resampling is better than they (AVS forum members) want to believe or it simply doesnt matter as I do not have the 'golden ear'. Maybe next I will pick up the Revo board from M-Audio and see what a a native 16/44.1 PCM via SPDIF sounds like compared to the analog output of Technics player, maybe my Technics CD player is crap and I am just hearing crap all around (albeit I always thought it sounded pretty good, and had read long ago that it actually wasnt too bad for the money, its an older SL-PG300 4dac 1bit mash unit)

So I guess in the end it's really up to you and your ears. My biggest problem right now is that with the new Axiom speakers and headphones (picked up headphones this past weekened to trouble shoot some stuff I heard via the speakers) is that I am discovering that a lot of what I listen to (classic rock) are poorly mastered and I can hear bits of distortion. I need to pull out the turntable and see if the distortion is present in the vinyl press, if not I may pick up the Revo card sooner than later and record the vinyls as 24/96 wav files and dump them to DVDR. Or maybe look into some of the universal SACD/DVDA and see how they compare (problem with this is that I don't think a lot of what I listen to is available yet)

Yeah video stuff seems to be changing, with DirectX9 and VMR9 things are going to get really interesting (no more overlay battles). I will have to look into the chipset on your VIA board, I know there are a few guys using the NForce based boards which are NVidia based and seem to have decent outputs for built in video.

Do any of those ITX boards have an AGP slot at all? I know one of the shuttles do, but I dont think that is ITX. If so that would kick ass due to the sheer size and video quality you could get out of such a small box (audio aside as I wouldnt care so long as it output bit perfect DVD SPDIF streams). I could even build a game 'console' out of one for my setup.

That AOpen board looks interesting, would love to hear it for myself just to see if the tubes make any difference

-pd

The AOpen board is a gimmick and nothing else.

Tubes are very sensitive to EMI and there aren't many places in your home with more EMI than inside of a computer. Putting a tube based amp right next to a massive switch-mode power supply is not exactly an ideal situation...

What's more, tubes run hot. That's how they work. The added heat from that device will make quiet cooling significantly more difficult with no real pay back due to all the EMI.

The best option, in my mind, is to offload all your audio digitally to external equipment and deal with it there, be that from an expensive DAC and amp or simply a good receiver.

What pd says regarding the capture cards is largely true. Pretty much all of them suck and can be a pain in the ass. Personally, I'll be using the Hauppauge PVR-250 because it's one of the few cards that's compatible with Win XP MCE and I want the interface to prevent me from having to explain the HTPC to my roommates every day.

If you're married, you'll likely find that interface helpful in dealing with the wife as well...

Semi:

I was going to take the PVR-250 myself but I do not think there is a hardware decoder onboard. There is a hardware encoder for PVR activities. In your case since you will be using the GForce or ATI I believe they have onboard DVD compensation which I am not sure is hardware or just sofware. The PVR-350 is the only one with both hardware encoder and decoder.

pd:

I do not believe any ITX boards have AGP slot. THe board I have has a built in AGP 2d/3d card. I know its not as good as the GForce or the ATI since I benched it on 3DMark. But it does a good enough job on DVD since it has DVD hardware chips on board for motion compensation. and the CPU isnt chugging along during DVD playback.
If you want and ATX slot then for small form factor the Micro-ATX board do have the AGP slot. Its a little bigger than the ITX. But I believe some of those Shuttle box do have proprietary boards built by MSI motherboards and they have AGP slots but in a weird form factor around the size of ITX.

Saturn,

A 933MHz C3 should have absolutely no problem doing the decoding in software. Whatever program you use for watching DVD's (I like Ravisent's product, personally) will rely on your CPU to do the decoding.

Semi:

So if I get any DVD software none of those hardware MPEG decoder doesn't help with the prcessing? I will try out the Ravisent's product. I am still finding a program that will do all medias DVD, VCD, TV, CD. With the Intervideo prduct I have to switch between PVR and WinDVD. It doesnt run within one app like ATI does. Have you tried out that DScaler program?

Saturn
Saturn

Hardware MPEG decoders were necessary when processors were barely breaking the 400MHz mark. Now, they're largely unnecessary. Unless you plan on doing a lot in the background while watching movies, I wouldn't waste the money.

A lot of the functions you want are pretty well served in ShowShifter and its interface is perfect for televisions. I recommend checking that out.

Dscaler is actually what I use to watch TV in my room on my PC as I didn't like having a TV in here any more taking up yet more space. It's picture quality is unparalleled but it's not exactly TV friendly as far as the interface.