My First Home Theater PC

[Kamshaft-XBA]

Here are the specs on my first HTPC…

• Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H motherboard (more on that later)
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Dual Core Processor LGA775 2.53GHZ 1066FSB 3MB
• 2 Gigabytes of Ram - OCZ Gold XTC PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-15 240PIN DIMM
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 3.5IN 500GB SATA2 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Cache
• THERMALTAKE BLACK BACH HTPC CASE

Total Cost ~$600

At the same time I replaced my 10+ year old Sony Amp with an Onkyo TX-SR606 amplifier.
On my set up I didn’t add a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD combo drive yet, because I was pretty high on the wife agro already.

Right off the bat, I really love the amp! Hell, even the wife likes it, and the price was right at $620 canadian. Plus, I was trying to keep the overall budget really low.

After everything was setup with the 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium (64-bit there were too many codec incompatibilities), I found a small hardware limitation…the motherboard I purchased can’t output TrueHD or the DTS Master Audio through the HDMI port, it’s just not able to, only AC3 and plain DTS. But, for now it’s fine, my old amp never cranked out DTS anyways, Hehe.

I found this board online a few days later that seems it will TrueHD audio and some video enhancements through HDMI. It’s called the ASUS HDAV 1.3, check it out…. I’m definitely picking this one up.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...55&modelmenu=1

If you guys have other suggestions on other cards that will do the same thing.



Any comments will be appreciated.
Kam

[Symmetric-XBA]

not too bad man, I'd personally would upgrade the hdd to a terabyte simply b/c HD material will take up MASSIVE space lol. I can suggest other cards, but if you want to keep your budget low then some corners will have to be cut.

[Kamshaft-XBA]

not too bad man, I'd personally would upgrade the hdd to a terabyte simply b/c HD material will take up MASSIVE space lol. I can suggest other cards, but if you want to keep your budget low then some corners will have to be cut.

At first I wanted to keep things low. So I could buy the Amp. Besides, HD space gets cheaper and cheaper....I'll wait until this one fills to buy another.

Video playback is actually quite good, it's plays 1080p files at full speed.

Do you have one?

[Enamelized420-XBA]

Very cool setup Kam, very clean and sleek looking.... Also let us know how it does once you get the other Asus Card.

[Variation-XBA]

Not bad dude. Is that what you are getting me for xmas too?

[Symmetric-XBA]

At first I wanted to keep things low. So I could buy the Amp. Besides, HD space gets cheaper and cheaper....I'll wait until this one fills to buy another.

Video playback is actually quite good, it's plays 1080p files at full speed.

Do you have one?

A home theater pc? not anymore. I sold it to help me fund my audio studio. True hdd space seems to be getting cheaper by the day. Nice goin w/ the 1080p. I still have all the specs I used when I created it a few months ago if you would like. I was thinking of building another one just to network the directv hd service and a modd.... wait, can't say that here lol. I do miss though the feature to send HD data to the hdd and then burned to blue-ray and then I wouldn't have to spend money on buying seasons of shows on dvd/blue-ray, but w/ work and all I dont have much time for tv.