Topic: HTPCs Anyone have experience or own one?

[m666]

Thanks for all the advice

I'll be sure to post my idea over there

[Touti]

Let me know how it goes, if you do well maybe I'll just blindly copy your setup 

[m666]

haha i wouldn't care at all
i've always wanted to put one together, just had a lot of questions.

[Touti]

Which one of the to HTPC 100 cases did you choose, the BA or the SA ?


Edit: Nevermind, juste realized the only difference is the color 

[Tracer]

Which one of the to HTPC 100 cases did you choose, the BA or the SA ?

I have the black one since that matches my reciever.

[m666]

Alright, I've been waiting for 3 days now for htpcforums.com to approve my registration...
this blows...

Actually I've definately decided to buy a new tv that is 1080p and can accept hdmi
So that will alleviate some decisions on video cards.

I want to post my setup idea on that forum, and get some feedback, but no luck since I can't even fully register.

[Touti]

I'm surprise,htpcforums was quick for me last year.  Did you check your spambox ?

[m666]

I finally got added, and I've made some modifications to my build, slight but I posted it with the hopes that they will help out
I kept the hauppage 500, just to see if they suggest anything else, in its place

here is what I posted:

Case: SilverStone Grandia SST-GD01MX
Motherboard:
Asus P5B Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard and an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz   
CPU Fan: Thermaltake / Ruby Orb
Sound Card: Auzentech HDA Digital X-Plosion 7.1 DTS Connect, BGI-HDAXP-D
Video Card: XFX GeForce 7600 GS / 512MB GDDR2
Tuner Card: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE-Kit
Hard Drive: ATA-3002x Seagate / Barracuda 7200.10 / 750GB / 7200 / 16MB / Serial
To start out, eventually move to more drives, probably NAS Storage.
RAM: 4 gigs, becuase its cheap.
My TV is probably going to be
either
61" Akai DLP Rear Projection HDTV
or
60" Philips DLP TV w/Stand

Please if you have better suggestions for anything here, or see something I missed or would need to consider, please speak up.
I'm new to this, and not sure what it is that I need.

[Touti]

I love the Silverstone casings, I rushed into buying my Antec Fusion because I was afraid I couldn't resist getting the Silverstone with the 6" Color LCD

Edit: When you're ready for NAS storage, you might want to look at this.  I can't wait for this baby to become available in Canada.

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=279

[m666]

Yeah, I saw those at best buy, I was thinking that would be a really cheap way of putting storage to my system.
They are only 349 at my local store, 499 on their website.
either way they are a steal, since most NAS systems are 600 bucks for this kind of storage

[Touti]

The only thing that bothers me with them is that you have no choice of size in the one with 2 discs.  I would very much like to have RAID but I don't need 500gigs, 250 would be more than enough for me.

[m666]

yeah, that's true, but you know the reason...
its the trend, they make them bigger for cheaper, and they have no need for smaller drives anymore.
Which makes sense.  Why pay money for materials for a small drive, when those same materials can be put towards larger drives.
That's why finding anything smaller than 80gigs is next to impossible.  Hell even 80 gigs is getting hard to get a hold of now.
1TB for me is nice, I have over 500 gigs of just music alone...  I'm going to need a couple of these world books if that's the route I choose.
I wouldn't mind having one of those 4 bay NAS servers though, a quad set of 750gig drives, 1.5 TB raid, would be perfect for me.  Just costly.  Would have to be one of those buy 1 now... 1 later, etc.

By the way guys I have yet to get any feedback from htpcforums.com
seriously I never see new posts.

[Touti]

I agree with you about the disc drives but there is still a big difference in prices between a 250 and a 500.  Offering the dual disc version with a total of 500GB instead of 1TB would probably make the unit at least a 100$ cheaper if not 150$.

As for HTPCForums I guess it's not a very popular site anymore if nobody's posting, sorry my suggestion wasn't that good in the end, it used to be a very good site.

[m666]

yeah you're right a couple hundred is a big deal.

It seems like there is tons of info on htpcforums, its just not up to date anymore...
i just wish I was getting some response... I guess I can search for other htpc forums, and repost.
There has to be an active one.

[m666]

I'm trying to post at
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/
they seem pretty active, if I get any good response, I'll let you guys know.