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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC
 
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

 I picked up a HP DEC for really cheap. The only down side is that it uses a propritary power supply and if you want to upgrade the motherboard you'll have to cut out the back panel as the mother HP uses only has USB and Firewire connectors on it; otherwise I love it. It has a very nice design, Pentium D 945, 500 GB SATA drive, 2 GB DDR2 RAM, and a nVidia 7600 GS.

If you can find one of these cheap, they're very nice otherwise they're very expensive ($3000!!!!).

* # ¿ Mar 24, 2007 23:59
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 08:28
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

 Are there any guides on how to configure your media player and codecs? I read a lot about people enabling or disabling features and I really have no idea wha tthey're talking about. If I want to watch a video I've downloaded onto my desktop I just double click it and it plays. However, things don't seem to be as simple when you start involving HTPCs hooked up to home theatre systems and flatscrren TVs.

* # ¿ Aug 19, 2010 16:30
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

EC posted:

It depends on any number of things. What OS you're using, what video player you want to use, etc. VLC opens just about everything. Some people use ZoomPlayer for the various features it offers. If you're using a front-end, it might have it's own decoding engine (like XBMC) or it might rely on what codecs you have installed (like WMC).

I've never had a problem playing a file from XBMC.

Bonzo posted:

XBMC has its own codes so you don't need to install anything else. And yes, VLC is a good alternative if you just want to click on a file and play it.

I'd be using Window 7 and I'd prefer a front end as I'd like to use it with my Logitech Harmony One remote.

* # ¿ Aug 19, 2010 18:28
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

Bonzo posted:

You can do this with XBMC. You'll need to purchase a cheap MS media center remote with an IR reciever. You can then program your harmony with the other remote.
OK cool. My other question then would be if I'm just goign to be using this to play video files, will one of these prebuilt Atom/ION HTPCs be OK or should I be looking at building my own? They say they can handle up to 1080p content. I'm not going to be gaming on it, not going to be watching Flash videos on it, just watching stuff I've downloaded.

Mr. Apollo fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 20, 2010

* # ¿ Aug 20, 2010 01:11
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

Xythar posted:

I have an Aspire Revo R3610 and it works fine. I run XBMC on it, have uTorrent and a bunch of other things going in the background and do Internet browsing on it occasionally and it's pretty responsive overall for the specs.

If you're just using a HTPC for watching movies, is there any reason why you'd want a C2D/i3/i5 based system? I understand it would obviously be more powerful but it'll also be bigger, more expensive, and maybe louder.

I just want to make sure I'm not overlooking something obvious here before I go out an buy one of these systems.

* # ¿ Aug 20, 2010 01:31
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# ¿ May 2, 2024 08:28
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Mr. Apollo
Nov 8, 2000

Xythar posted:

Only if you want to do your decoding without hardware acceleration. The Atom can decode 1080p just fine as long as you use a player that supports GPU acceleration / offloading (recent versions of XBMC for either Linux or Windows do, as does the latest VLC).

Basically no, you don't need one of those processors and an Ion-based system will do you fine and will have a massive advantage in size, energy usage and noise. My Revo is a little smaller than the Wii, is barely audible over the sound of my fridge from all the way across the room and apparently uses something like 27W to run.
So it sounds like I could buy something like a Revo, install XBMC, get a cheap MS media center remote so I can have the IR receiver and I'm good to go. Is that right?

* # ¿ Aug 20, 2010 05:22
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC