autoboy

[autoboy]

All PCIe 2.0 cards are compatible with PCIe 1.0 slots on motherboards.  The graphics card will simply default back to PCIe 1.0 mode and it will have no affect on anything since 16x PCIe-1.0 is plenty fast for today’s graphics cards. 

I recommend the AMD 5570 as the best video card option, but even a 5450 or 4350 would work fine if your aren’t concerned about the best image quality possible.

You might even get by with an upgrade to the Ram and the video card only since the video cards now accelerate most video, unless you’ve got a large library of improperly coded content.  The single core Athlon is still faster than an Atom, and a lot of people use an Atom with ION graphics for a HTPC.

My HTPC is a AMD 2.4ghz S754 chip with a 4350 graphics card and it works fine when I use it.  Which is like once a year mostly for testing purposes.  I switched to using extenders everywhere.

[autoboy]

[quote=”robinhoody”]
I was a little surprised how many people dont have blue ray yet (me being one of those votes.)  Only reason I havent switched yet is because I only have a tv that plays at 720p.    When I upgrade my TV i’ll def add a blue ray player to the HTPC.
[/quote]

Do you notice the difference between DVDs and HDTV?  If  you do, then you will see a benefit from BD on your 720p TV.

[autoboy]

[quote=”Meester.Rip”]
I would think you could buy a AM2+ board, proc and DDR2 pretty cheap whether it be used, refurbished or a cheap combo deal. 1080P isn’t going change like video games as far as graphics hardware goes. If it runs today then it should run several years from now. Unless the pockets are deep.

The only thing I would definitely change on my future main HTPC builds would be to use an ATX board. More options, e.g. more tuners, a 3d capable video card (if there needs to be such a thing), more sata ports (should it get moved to a server).
[/quote]

I think MATX is perfectly suitable.  Just make sure you have things like firewire onboard if you think you will need it.  I use it to change channels on my cable box.

I would go with AM3 since DDR2 will only get more expensive.  AM3 will be more upgradable.  But, you are are wanting to upgrade a board, and Athlon X2 will fit in a AM2+ board.  From what I’ve heard though, it hurts the onboard graphics/video performance because you step back to HT2.0 instead of HT3.0 on the new chips.

[autoboy]

He’s already using his HP WHS.  He’s keeping his Dish DVRs in parallel for now until he gets comfortable and stable.  SageTV can be very stable if you can just quit fiddling with it.

[autoboy]

I used to have the same problems.  Constant issues with SageTV and constant issues with my PC clients.  I switched to WMC and it was even worse and I couldn’t do half the stuff SageTV could do.  I switched back and got it working ok, but no matter what I did there was always something that I couldn’t get to work.  DTS, or smooth playback, or MKVs.  It was a mess.  That all went away when I switched from PC clients to the HD100 and HD200 extenders.  Since then, 95% of my problems are the bad HD-PVR I have.  It fails every 2 weeks or so, but I’m too cheap to replace it and I have my hopes up for CableCard on SageTV. 

Now I’m building a system for my brother in Sacramento.  125 miles away.  I hope I’m not getting myself into a support nightmare…

[autoboy]

You really don’t need too much CPU power these days in a HTPC.  A basic system can be built with an AMD 785G motherboard and a dual core 45W CPU.  I’d probably go with the dual core to keep the power and heat down, but a tri or quad are fine choices as well.  Remember, you can always upgrade later if you decide you really need the extra CPU power.

I like the Antec NSK 2480 case since it comes with a nice power supply. 

2GB of ram is enough, but I don’t build without 4GB anymore.  Especially since the really cheap motherboards I like to build with sometimes only support 2 slots for RAM.

A SSD is overkill, and 2TB drives are $100 now.

I don’t expect you really need to spend much more than $400 right now on a HTPC and other than a better video card, I don’t see much reason to spend more than that.  But, with the AMD 6XXX series coming soon, I’m hoping that AMD’s lowest end and lowest power card will finally be a good HTPC performer.  The 5450 isn’t much of an upgrade over the 785G.  The AMD 5570 is the go to card right now if you want more than the 785G.

[autoboy]

Good to know that the black levels are still good on the Panny.  But, I’m really not happy with knowing that my 2009 model will continue to get worse.  Still, I don’t expect it to get much worse than Samsung’s 0.017

[autoboy]

I read the front page AND the forums, but I don’t look in the sidebar of most websites because I filter it out, expecting to see ads. 

Ok, so I’ve done a bit of research on the sidebar and realized why I don’t notice it at all.  It is the width of a standard banner advertisement, so my eye filters it out.  If you look at Anandtech’s site, their sidebar is much larger and the title text is the same size and format as on the main section of the webpage.  I use Anandtech’s sidebar all the time to look at dailytech content.

If you look at Gizmodo, their side bar (opposite side) actually features banner ads, which is why I’ve never actually clicked on any of the content in that sidebar.

Engadget is in between Anandtech and Gizmodo.  While Engadget features ads in their sidebar, they are not the long banner type, and there is enough space to make the text for the title large enough to draw the eye. 

On missingremote, I never see any of the content in the right sidebar and I’ve been here for awhile.  I knew it was there because you guys have pointed it out before, I just never looked at it unless I had to.

[autoboy]

[quote=”shadymg”]
blame Mikinho for it only running 1 week, he couldn’t wait to get the Blu-ray survey out there!!! 😀
[/quote]

Actually, I now realize that I’ve never seen any polls because they aren’t featured front and center.

[autoboy]

I started to watch the fringe but didn’t get into it.  It just seemed kinda strange and far fetched.  Maybe I’ll start it up again though if you guys like it.

[autoboy]

I missed the poll too!  Not sure how I did that, but I haven’t been that active on here lately.  1 more vote for SageTV to offset Jennyfur.

I’ve used MC but just for windows XP and it had way too many limitations.  I’ve been with SageTV ever since.  I tried boxee and found it didn’t add anything over SageTV and didn’t support recording.  XBMC I use on my laptop but just for the occasional movie when traveling. 

“Other” may be CE devices like the popcorn hour and other media streamers

On a side note, I think entirely too much attention is paid to the UI of these solutions.  I can learn the UI in a day of using the product and after a week I don’t even pay any attention to the UI.  MUCH more important is the functionality of the software / hardware.  Boxee and XBMC are just media player UIs and offer me nothing more than a pretty face.  They have great UIs and are nice to use, but I need more out of my HTPC.

[autoboy]

I don’t think the AppleTV classic tried to appeal to all users at all.  It’s pretty much the same as the current one except it lacks Netflix and the new UI.  I consider the new AppleTV a little more than a simple hardware refresh that allows the price to drop and the video capability to improve slightly.  I’m not sure the old one could handle HD Netflix.  The graphics card in the old AppleTV was only an underclocked 7300 and it lacked full h.264 decoding while the CPU only ran at 1ghz.

[autoboy]

[quote=”babgvant”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
God I hate HD bitstreaming.  I wish it would just go away.
[/quote]

There are a lot of reasons why HD bit streaming is a very nice feature (bypassing the OS’s mixer to name a big one).  Why do you want it to go away?

[/quote]

because it is confusing for users and completely unnecessary for 99.99% of of the population.  It is thought by many people as the only way to get HD audio to your speakers but that is not true at all.

[autoboy]

[quote=”Mikinho”]
[quote=”autoboy”]
Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card[/quote]

One one of the pre-reqs was 3D HDTV and HD Audio bitstreaming so a discrete sound card was needed since the NVIDIA 4xx series weren’t available at the time of the article.

[quote=”autoboy”]
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds.  At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu.  Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
[/quote]

We’ll have a review next month that will disagree on that.  The AtomION builds can be a great HTPC if done right assuming you aren’t a big add-inextra software user.  For a long time Flash was worthless with Ion builds but since their introduced hardware acceleration it works quite nicely.
[/quote]

God I hate HD bitstreaming.  I wish it would just go away.

Why anyone would spend an extra $250 plus all the setup headaches to get bitstreaming is beyond me.  That same person would probably pair that bitstreaming setup with a small $1000 satellite speaker system thinking they got great sound out of it.  LPCM is right there absolutely free.   ::)  If you want bitstreaming over LPCM because you must have completely untouched audio then you had better have $3000 worth of speaker and $800 worth of amp or more with perfectly placed speakers and exact calibration.

Is your Atom dual core?  That makes it better.  But does it work with Hulu?  What about with Silverlight?

[autoboy]

I don’t think it is THAT bad.  At least they used a fanless graphics card and a 45W CPU.  Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card, could have spent half what they spent on the motherboard, and probably don’t need a fanless PSU, but the overall build could be much worse.  I’ve seen much worse HTPC builds.

The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds.  At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu.  Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.

[Author]

Posts