Get your HTPC's out for the Lads

Here's mine - freshly delivered this morning and not even set up yet!

Asrock NetTop ION 330-BD with 320gb hard drive and multi-DVD/Blu Ray drive
4 GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 memory
Keysonic ACK-340 RF remote keyboard

Hooked up to Samsung LE40A656 telly and Sony HT-SF1300 surround sound sys.

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is this a ready set up solution... where did yo uget it from?
 
Am I the only strange one here that thinks the size and decor of the rooms has more of a "wow" factor than the media setup?
 
Good excuse to buy the new one then!!

I'm all for finding a reason to upgrade, but the R3700 is over twice the price and won't do anything that my current Revo cannot. Annoying, but money saved at the same time.

Am I the only strange one here that thinks the size and decor of the rooms has more of a "wow" factor than the media setup?

Our room is so large, that I could 100% justify a second set of floor standers, yet don't want to due to the cables trailing etc. Pah. Would need a new amp also .. !

I would love better/prettier equipment, but just don't have the time or urge to do so :)
 
My HTPC is visible in my gallery thread - see link in my sig. post 11

Specs are old !!

Silverstone LC17 case
Gigabyte mobo
Intel P4 2.8ghz (w/Zalman heatsink)
1 GB of RAM (have another 1GB not yet installed)
ATI HD2600 Pro AGP (with adjustable fan for silence)
Xonar D2 7.1 soundcard
Nebula DigiTV Freeview Card
Seagate 8oGB HDD
Belkin 54Mps wireless card
Technotrend external Satellite receiver (via USB)
Pioneer BD drive
Xbox HDDVD drive
Windows XP Sp3
MediaPortal
ATI Remote Wonder RF remote control (not really used anymore, useful for controlling mouse)
Harmony 785 remote control using Cyberlink's cheap IR adapter (used for media playback and mediaportal)

Not great specs but does the job 99% of the time ! Would love to upgrade but don't know where to start !
 
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Am I the only strange one here that thinks the size and decor of the rooms has more of a "wow" factor than the media setup?

definatley not, the size of the house/room and the styling plays a much bigger factor in the whole home cinema experience.

I have moved away from theself build area and currently have an Asrock 100HTBD (Intel i3 platform) and also an Asrock ION330

both can play HD content flawlessly but the 100HTBD also does bitstreaming which is a plus, and in terms of general usage the 100HTBD trounces the Ion series as there is just no lag in browsing my media collection.
 
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definatley not, the size of the house/room and the styling plays a much bigger factor in the whole home cinema experience.

I have moved away from theself build area and currently have an Asrock 100HTBD (Intel i3 platform) and also an Asrock ION330

both can play HD content flawlessly but the 100HTBD also does bitstreaming which is a plus, and in terms of general usage the 100HTBD trounces the Ion series as there is just no lag in browsing my media collection.

Yep - it is so INFURIATING that the HD bitstreaming, Full HD acceleration of the Intel i-series on-die integrated GPU is compromised by Intel still not getting 23.976 (and I believe 59.94) support working properly. It's potentially a brilliant solution for HTPCs IF they could sort that out.

I'd buy one in an instant to replace my Core2Duo E7400 nVidia 9400 IGP-based system (E7AUMDS2H motherboard that outputs 5.1/7.1 PCM but can't bitstream) - but I know that the repeated frames on "24p" content would be infuriating for me. (I can cope with downsampled decoded True HD and DTS HD audio - as it still sounds so much better than DD/DTS - but I can't cope with frame-repetition)
 
Heres my setup
Samsung 50" plasma tv
Samsung HW-C560S 5.1 AV receiver
Nox Live 2 case
Athlon 2 x4 3ghz processor
2 tb hard drive
ATI HD 5450 graphics card
TBS 6981 dual DVB-S2 TV card
Mediaportal frontend with the following plugins
streamed mp skin
moving pictures
tvseries
online videos
nevermiss.tv
and a overweight PS3 :p

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Am I the only strange one here that thinks the size and decor of the rooms has more of a "wow" factor than the media setup?
I completely agree, I think those posted within the M25 should say so, so we know who the money bags are! ;)

It is :censored: how big some places are and how much money is in those rooms, I am supposedly on above avg earnings and I find it :eek:
 
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I think we need a Get your Back of the Telly Wires Nightmare out for the lads thread starting :laugh:
 
Does anyone know if a Thermaltake Silver arrow will fit in a Lian Li pc33b? TT SA is 6.29 in height and the Lian Li Case pc33b is 6.61 inches in height.. I boutght the fan, but I have no case.. does anyone know before I purchase? :confused:
 
Here's mine!

Antec Fusion (with custom Hammerite display window!)
4.5 TB storage
60gb SSD
4gb RAM
Passive ATI 6570
AMD 4850e CPU
Fanless Mini Ninja Heatsink
Hauppauge DVB-T & DVB-S2 Tuners
Antec PSU
Win 7MC, TMT5, MediaBrowser

Yamaha RX-V667 Receiver
Harmony One Remote
 

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Did you rename the amp's input to HTPC? I did that with mine! :thumbsup:

Looks good, is it all improved with the new amp?
 
Cheers mate, yes I did but thats about so far in terms of tweaking! It didn't make a difference with the problems I had before but at least I can bitstream now although I didn't realise that means I can't control the volume from the PC when bitstreaming! Always something with these things....

The new Amp is also smaller than the old one so I can actually fit the glass shelf, before I had the PC on the amp.

The one thing I missed from the list was the case LCD being slightly customised with a coat of black hammerite!
 
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heres mine..... sub £500:smashin:
 

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Hi guys. A few pics of my mini HTPC. The idea behind this was to have all the polish and customisability of an HTPC but with the simplicity of a domestic media streamer. I have my gaming rig upstairs (Core i7, Radeon 6950) since I'm old school and prefer my FPSs with keyboard and mouse - that and I have a nice monitor that goes beyond 1080p! We also have a Toshiba laptop in the living room too so no requirement for web browsing either. I'm using InstantSheller to boot directly into XBMC so that the Windows 7 shell and associated resource hungry services aren't loaded up. I originally planned to just use Ubuntu or Linux Mint (as they're free and XBMC integrates particularly well) but there are issues with these OSes not being able to use the hardware acceleration of the components I'd chosen so unfortunately it was a case of old Gatesy boy getting more of my hard earned!

Setup
Samsung PS59D6900 59" 3D Plasma
Onkyo TX-SR608 AV Receiver
Monitor Audio Radius HD 5.1 Speakers
Sky+HD 1Tb Box
Sony BDP S580 3D Blu Ray Player
Xbox 360 250gb
HTPC with SpeedLink IR receiver
Harmony One to control it all

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Did you spot the PC?

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Here's an idea of the size
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Components Used
Lian Li PC-Q09FB Mini ITX Case with 150w flex PSU
MSI E350AI-E45 Mini ITX AMD Zacate motherboard/CPU/GPU solution
4Gb OCZ DDR3 RAM
2.5" Samsung Spinpoint 250Gb HDD
Sharkoon Silent Eagle 80mm Case Fan
Zalman variable speed fan controller

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The MSI board is a VERY capable piece of kit. Handles 1080p MKVs, 3D SBS movies and audio bitstreaming without batting an eyelid. I believe XBMC 11 is going to allow native bitstreaming of DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby True HD too. It also does a pretty nice job of upscaling SD material too. Quite necessary on a 59" screen!

The internal disk is for OS only. All media is streamed to the HTPC via a WDTV Live Hub which we use on the TV in the bedroom. Rather handily it can act as a NAS as well as a VERY capable media player. Even in it's switched off state it's internal 1Gb hard disk and any attached USB drives are accessible to anything on my network. I currently have my music and TV series on the internal drive and all my movies on an external Samsung 1.5Tb USB drive.

Rather handily the Speedlink IR receiver/remote was in the database for the Harmony One so after a wee bit of reprogramming all of XBMCs functions are available including "mouse" mode :)

Simon
 
As a Lian Li fan( I own 3) you just gotta love what they keep coming up with quality with style and simplicity, unlike some companys that just put a normal case on it side and call it a HTPC case! Nice one :smashin:
 
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Recently moved to my grans house and thought I'd post my HTPC setup, still have a few changes to make however. The images aren't the best due to just using my phone. :)

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Would love to do a lot more (channel wires, projector etc :D) but I am only staying here for less then a year so not allowed. :(

Hopefully soon I will be upgrading my HTPC at which point I will post more pictures focusing specifically on it. After doing that, I hope to save for an amp and 5.1 sound.

From memory the specs of the HTPC are:

Asus P5VD2-X Motherboard
Core 2 Duo E6600
XFX 512mb 5450
SH-B123L Blu Ray Drive
OCZ Vertex 2e 64gb SSD
Corsair HX650
Noctua U9B-SE2 HS/F
2 x 80mm Noctua Fans
92mm Noctua Fan
2GB 533MHz :)laugh:) memory
 
As a Lian Li fan( I own 3) you just gotta love what they keep coming up with quality with style and simplicity, unlike some companys that just put a normal case on it side and call it a HTPC case! Nice one :smashin:

Yeah it's an extremely well thought out case. The motherboard tray is in the centre creating a top and bottom compartment. The top compartment only has the motherboard in it and the exhaust fan. Directly above the CPU, the case top is all ventilation holes so airflow and cooling are good for such a small package. The lower compartment of the case houses the optical and disk drives. The only slight criticism is the fact that the 150w PSU isn't completely silent. They do a version with a laptop syle external PSU which is completely silent but I couldn;t find anywhere that had a black one in stock
 

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