Hi everyone,
I've currently got a Sony BDP-S350 Bluray player and Foxsat HDR Freesat HD PVR connected to my TV. I control them with a Logitech Harmony remote. There are a couple of things I don't like about this:
1) From inserting a BD to playing the film, it's at least 2 minutes. Why do I have to watch the anti-piracy stuff when I've paid for it?
2) The EPG on the Foxsat is very clunky, and the box in general is slow.
So I'm pretty much decided I'd like to replace both boxes with a HTPC set up. I think my requirements are:
* Very quiet and lower power - it will be left on the whole time.
* Record TV from Freesat HD and Freeview HD
* Pause/rewind/fast forward live TV
* Watch DVDs/BDs
* Rip DVDs/BDs to Synology NAS, and play back from there (not bothered about transcoding them, I just hate all the 'forced' trailers on BDs)
* Play other media like MP4, MKV, M2TS from cameras etc.
* Play back in 1080p24, 1080p50i etc, to suit media
* Output sound over HDMI to Onkyo amp
The bits I'm looking at to achieve this are:
Gigabyte GA-H67M-UD2H-B3
Intel Core i3-2100T 2.5GHz (35 watts)
4GB DDR3 RAM
OCZ Technology 60GB Vertex 2 SSD
Samsung 12x BD-ROM/DVDRW Lightscribe SATA
Windows 7 Home Premium OEM 64-bit
AnyDVD HD
Then these bits that I've not decided on yet:
- Case/PSU
- Remote
- Keyboard/mouse
- DVB-T2 tuner
- Dual DVB-S tuner
Just wanted to get some initial feedback from the community on here to see if I'm going along the right lines?
One other thing I was wondering about was output - the HTPC will output 1080p over HDMI the whole time I assume, so I will be relying on it to deinterlace and upscale content. Is this going to be good? I'm planning to put it into a pretty decent surround sound system and TV.
I've currently got a Sony BDP-S350 Bluray player and Foxsat HDR Freesat HD PVR connected to my TV. I control them with a Logitech Harmony remote. There are a couple of things I don't like about this:
1) From inserting a BD to playing the film, it's at least 2 minutes. Why do I have to watch the anti-piracy stuff when I've paid for it?
2) The EPG on the Foxsat is very clunky, and the box in general is slow.
So I'm pretty much decided I'd like to replace both boxes with a HTPC set up. I think my requirements are:
* Very quiet and lower power - it will be left on the whole time.
* Record TV from Freesat HD and Freeview HD
* Pause/rewind/fast forward live TV
* Watch DVDs/BDs
* Rip DVDs/BDs to Synology NAS, and play back from there (not bothered about transcoding them, I just hate all the 'forced' trailers on BDs)
* Play other media like MP4, MKV, M2TS from cameras etc.
* Play back in 1080p24, 1080p50i etc, to suit media
* Output sound over HDMI to Onkyo amp
The bits I'm looking at to achieve this are:
Gigabyte GA-H67M-UD2H-B3
Intel Core i3-2100T 2.5GHz (35 watts)
4GB DDR3 RAM
OCZ Technology 60GB Vertex 2 SSD
Samsung 12x BD-ROM/DVDRW Lightscribe SATA
Windows 7 Home Premium OEM 64-bit
AnyDVD HD
Then these bits that I've not decided on yet:
- Case/PSU
- Remote
- Keyboard/mouse
- DVB-T2 tuner
- Dual DVB-S tuner
Just wanted to get some initial feedback from the community on here to see if I'm going along the right lines?
One other thing I was wondering about was output - the HTPC will output 1080p over HDMI the whole time I assume, so I will be relying on it to deinterlace and upscale content. Is this going to be good? I'm planning to put it into a pretty decent surround sound system and TV.