Anyone have a "Home Theater PC?"
 

I have a computer that I was thinking of turning into a home theater PC. a while back I took a bunch of DVD movies I had an burned them to DiVx files on my computer so I could play them throughout the house with this network media player i bought from Frys.

Although I really don't understand the concept that much unless your using it to browse through 1000's of photos or home videos, what else could you possibly do with it?

Id really love a way to figure out how to use my TV monitor as a PC monitor to browse the web through a wireless keyboard/mouse without having to use the shitty PS3/Xbox/Wii browser

I do.

I got a nice little Dell Zino HD for Christmas.

You want to get the HornetTek Phantom MP-2020 media player. I have one and it plays my divx files on my HD TV. It is really a great device to have.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...ist=ce lebros

I have a HTPC running win 7, using windows media center with media browser plugin.

I ripped my blu ray/dvd collection (also re-encoded them all to x264 to save about 50% of the disk space with no noticable quality loss) and now i can just go thru my movie database on the computer without having to mess with disks when i want to watch something. Everything is organized with media browser,cover art,info about the movie etc is automatically downloaded for me.

I just have it in my living room hooked up to my big screen,but im in the process of converting my bonus room into a home theatre room and will either move it there or build another.

Can also use it to to record/pause TV, i have a dual digital/analog tuner but dont use it much.

Can also surf the web on your tv play pc games etc.

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/


http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g1.jpg

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g2.jpg

http://www.mediabrowser.tv/images/gallery/g3.jpg

I just bought the LG BD-390, amazing device and streams just about everything and includes Vudu software

Where did you get a bluray dvd software from? I bought a bluray DVDR and tried a few apps and nothing worked that well and most couldn't rip newer movies.

Id love to have my collection on some harddrives in my house. its a pain to go out to the living room, grab a movie, head back to the bedroom then gf decides she wants something else, blah blah blah. then i leave them there, fall behind the night stand, go to bestbuy and buy it again :1orglaugh

I run a Windows 7 system on a dualcore rig with 2 gigs of ram, an nVidia Xfinity for video, 1 TB internal sata, and I have a hotswap dock for data storage. All of it is piled in to an Antec case which runs whisper quiet. They have rubber gromits and bushings so there isn't any metal on metal contact to cause vibrations. I jump between mediaportal and VLC for watching stuff. Usually in Media Portal though.

To rip/decrypt them you can use
http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html

http://www.smlabs.net/tsmuxer_en.html
to re-mux them(remove audio/video/subtitles you dont want) no quality loss (it can also down convert HD audio to regular ac3 or dts but that is lossy if your tv/reciever cant play the HD codec)

http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/
to convert the m2ts/ts file to MKV (no quality loss,but saves a little space about .5-1 gig for a bluray)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127611
Ripbot264 to re-encode to x264 i use CQ18 for video and leave the audio untouched and it usually cuts the blu ray file size in half but takes about 12-18 hours to convert on dual core intel chip

After they are re-encoded my average blu ray is about 10-12gigs each and i can see no quality difference playing the original and re-encoded one side by side

HTPC = money pit haha. I run the following setup.

I have a Windows Home Server (WHS) running mymoives.dk You just put in your dvd/bluray and it rips them to the hard drive. The WHS has 6TB of harddrive in it and ablut 70% full, need to add a few more :)

Then I have another pc that is acutally the HTPC. It runs Vista Premium and media center. With the media center I can hook into the WHS and stream movies threw my xbox 360. The I use media center extenders on the other tvs in the house so basically any tv in the house (even bathroom) can stream from the WHS.

With Media Center you can record tv play music basically its a pc so you get the idea :) They are very easy to manage now adays with the current software. Well worth it if you watch a lot of tv or movies. But like i said its a money pit. If you get into bluray you need higer end pcs becuase you need to transcode the blurays on the fly to play on most tvs.

oh software list:
powerdvd9 Ultra
Slysoft anydvd hd (rip isos from dvd/bluray)
slysoft virtual clonedrive (mount bluray/dvd)
mymovies for WHS
mymovies clients for any pc i want to manage from

I was using a sff PC for a media PC for awhile but I find my PS3 can handle most of my needs, networked to my main PC running tversity.

Using a mac mini, I have a wall mount for it that looks great. It's networked to multi terabytes of NAS drives and the machine itself runs PLEX. http://www.plexapp.com/

I use a PS3 bluetooth keyboard with build in trackpad to control it all, I can also control it from my iphone.

Works like a charm. I call this setup wife tested, as she can even use it as easy as changing the channel.Best part is it ties netflix hulu, itunes, cnn, nbc ,miro, etc etc all into one simple to use interface.

Seriously, who needs cable with this?


Oh... I do have a ps3 also, and use it for any blueray needs....

I looked into it once. After reading all of this, now I remember why I didnt want to mess with it :)

Why bother? Get Apple TV instead. It does everything you wan to do and costs less than $300 bucks.

I have 2 apple TV's and I'm about to wipe the drives and stick plesk or something else on em, cause having to run all movies through Itunes sucks donkey dick, having to convert everything to mp4 and shit is getting rediculous.

You just need a video card with svideo out, run it your tv. Then setup your video card to have duel display. Some cards require a plugin to do it, others don't.

Our Cable box has been a PC for years now.. Nothing fancy, win2k on some old box we had with svideo out and a kick ass sound card.

Netflix if you want movies, hulu and several other places legally offer everything shown on tv for free... and you can buy ppv to most anything else.

We have a DVD burner/player in it, and a normal player hooked up too.. and a Onkyo receiver that we can patch the sound through if we want, but we don't..

You can also get applications to run your iphone/touch as a remote control for various boxes.

So much you can do really.. it's seems endless.

Thanks for the info fellas, great advice :thumbsup

Im going to look into storing blurays, but my biggest fear is loosing video and audio quality. I just bought a new receiver and running an 11.2 system (2 front, 4 rear, 2 front wide, 2 front wide, 1 center, 1 sub front and 1 sub rear) and everything I checked out down grades 7.1 to 5.1, while my receiver takes 7.1 to 9.2 with "3D sound" out of the top front highs (I had a yamaha that did the same, called presence from THX).

receiver also up converts all video coming in to 1080p, which I am anxious to test with some cable movies and DiVx formats compared to the Bluray player.

IMO, its not worth it. there is no true 1080p like the Vudu box does which offers "super-hd" at 1080p 24fps. The bluray player I bought (LG BD 390) has a built in Vudu software which made it worth every penny, as well the ability to stream any content from a home theater PC, and so does my receiver.

I can pull pod casts from my computer and even through TiVo. I don't see any advantage that Apple TV has over the LG BD-390 besides in an Apple product and you can stream content from iTunes

we are almost done with our new house and i had a dedicated media room. I got all good equipemnt and amps / 7.1 surround will let you know how the ripped blurays do as far as quality. Watching them on my tv now they look the same but the truth will be in the sound. Should be all hooked up mid next week ;)

i watch all my television through my xbox, as an extender to windows media center. I have a pc in the basement with an antenna hooked to tv tuner card, watch and record over the air hd channels. Also watch hulu through PlayOn app.

nice. hit me up for sure. if you dont mind me asking, how did you setup the bluray storage? Ive looked around and found a few options, one is to store on a NAS drive and others are on HTPC, but before I go out and spend the money, I wanted to make sure it was worth it.

From what I read on a home theater forum, it looks like you have to downgrade the audio from 7.1/5.1 true hd to 5.1 DTS, which would blow. the video quality seems to be decent from what people say, but id like to keep the bitrate and fps as original as possible.

i play blu rays with my laptop onto the tv with hdmi out, works great.

I have the mymovies for windows home server. it is 100% intergrated. I have 3 drives in the machine and simply pop the dvds in the drives and it rips them. no other actions required on my end. It has a vast database and will display movie boxes/info for most tiles and if the automaited info is not thier you can hand key it. Its a awesom setup.

Are you using an off the shelf home server like one of those HP mediasmarts? Or did you just build a PC and put WHS on it?

I'm using a macbook pro DVI-HDMI and optical out to get 5.1 running plex and boxee. Can't decide which one is better yet.

I download Bluray (1080p HD) movies from torrents and watch them through WD TV media player on my Panasonic 65" plasma with home theater system.

:thumbsup

built my own :) The off the shelf ones have no real expansion capabilities and the boxes are small so only hold a few harddrives. I got 7TB now in mine and using over 50% of it so you cant have too many bays for expansion. I use a Cooler Master Centrion has 9 5 1/2 bays. I use hotswap bay converters that turn 3 5 1/2 bays into 4 3 1/2 hd bays. Works out great :)

Win7 64 HTPC here
Thru HDMI 1080p Blueray/mkvs/x264/720p All i have in my library

Running http://xbmc.org/download/
Skin: http://www.teamrazorfish.co.uk/mediastream.html

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/...e1c449e05a.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3293/...c3dd62d563.jpg

Install XBMC on it

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=XBMC_for_Mac_on_Apple_TV

& if your really into 1080p format add this

http://rufn.it/aTV/

http://i463.photobucket.com/albums/q...w-Backdrop.jpg

XBMC as well running AEON skin ;)

Apple TV will not do 1080p, frankly it can hardly do 720p.

Have you seen the Drobo famous?

http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php

You should read the quote of mine that you replied to.

basically, this card will allow xbmc to play 1080p content (and all below it) on the AppleTV!

enough of the jibber jabber, here's how to install the card into an AppleTV

will give it a look thanks man!

As far as playback of blurays thats are ripped....i cannot tell the difference between picture quality/sound from a rip vs the actual bluray in the player :) sweet lol

Some really nice graphic designs here.

download Bluray (1080p HD) movies from torrents and watch them through WD TV media player on my Panasonic 65" plasma with home theater system.
cleaver

MythTv is the way to go

I built my own HTPC back in 2007. Rebuilt it last year.

Works great and I love surfing on the 52" screen.