Exactly what the title says

"Im Curious, how many of you use a Rack and/or HTPC"

When I mention having a AV rack or that I'm using an HTPC, most folks just try to muster a smile and tilt their head a little like I was on America's most wanted the night before.

Is it still that much of niche hobby?

Being an Audio/Speaker forum, thought u'all would be a nice mix to take a tempature on, and get a take on this.

The other forums I visit: AVS, MyMovies, theGreenbutton, etc. are already "in the game", so hard to tell.

Thanks

Jeff

I don't have a rack or an HTPC.

I do, however, have a rack with 2 ESX hosts and a vCenter server at work, along with a 2 tray iSCSI SAN, a couple of Cisco gigabit switches and various other equipment. Does that count?

So I guess my 24 port netgear gigabit rack mounted switch ain't going to float your boat! Or my 20 hot swap bay server? Okay we are finished here! I am amazed at how many ports I use on that switch for one tiny house!

Hell, I don't have that stuff at my house!

But no, I'm not fond of the Netgear gig-E switches. I've got one sitting on my desk at work on the off chance I get invited to a lan party at some point, but the thing is a pain to administer, and virtually impossible to integrate into a Cisco network.

Well I do have an ulterior motive asking this question.

huh huh huh. He said "rack". Huh huh huh.

No rack. I have a PC attached to the main A/V system, but don't use it for PVR purposes. I DO use it as a streaming and music source.

I love my Squeezebox duet, streaming from a computer!

Hey Jeff, what Netgear do you have?

I'm looking for a 24 port GBE unmanaged switch for my house, I was looking at a few Cisco ones around $300, give or take $50.

I went with the most logical (for a house setup and non critical) one off of newegg for 169 dollars! It's a .... running to the rack to check! Hell I don;t recall! Sorry it's a D-Link and was the cheapest 24 port on newegg with a good rating. Aint nothing in this house it wont do. 24 port gigabit, no POE. MAnaged I dont think so but not sure, Id have to read the manual,aint going to happen

I have an ultra low tech rack. It’s an adjustable metal storage rack form Lowe’s sitting in the office next to my living room, Great ventilation for the equipment and keeps the heat out of the rest of the house.

Right now it’s holding 3 PCs (General, Gaming and HTPC), Onkyo, Xbox 360, Buttkicker amp, Oppo BDP83, Oppo HD981, Direct TV DVR (x2), NAS, Router, Switch, HDMI Switch, Modem, External hard drives (x2), w/ plenty of room to spare for holding blank media & cases for burning.

I saw a woman today with a nice rack. I used to have my pc hooked up to my tv via svid, but I dont bother anymore. I just use a flash drive for movies now with my PS3 or my Eureka. I also have another Eureka that I can stream to but never tried.

My momma's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest.

Yeah, it is. I ran an htp using a Gigabit mobo with HDMI out for a while and it worked OK. I kept waiting for a reasonable bluray solution, but, after two years, gave up.

When my son started getting into some ps2/3 games I picked up a used ps3. Works fine for me since I have no need to store movies on disc (I'm a rent & watch once kinda guy).

Have Nvidea or ATI even released a reasonable cost card that will do bluray that includes a working player?

I think most of the current crop of ATI cards (5x00 series) will do blu-ray without an issue. I think Anandtech recommended a 5570 or something like.

And when daddy gets home he never gets no rest.

<banjo solo>

The new shampoo is an intel iCore3/5 chip and board. Build in HDMI HD Graphics, bitstreams HD audio from the chip (on chip sound) and TMT3 for a blue ray player. Plenty of HP for BR and HDTV, and the rest. You can now forget the Xonar card for bitstreaming and any video card, just need the processor and the mb. (not great for gaming, without add-on video card)

OK, it looks like reasonable cost cards are finally available, but there are still issues that need to be geeked around. Too bad the 5450 doesn't quite cut it.

Do these cards ship with a working HD player?

I've been using a HTPC for a number of years now. I like the fact that I've ripped all the kids movies to the hard drive so they don't need to touch anything. They just press Movies on the Harmony and it all fires up to the TV. I'm using MediaPortal on XP instead of WMC for now and the kids can just scan through the cover art and pick the movie they want.

I also had the luxury of cabling my house when we built it, so all the equipment can connect to any of the TV's in the house through a component matrix switch. Once I move to HDMI, however, I'll need to find a streaming solution. Luckily I have 2 Cat6 runs to every room in the house right next to the component runs.