Home Theater PC's (laptop, RAM, hd, games)

[TnHilltopper]

After updating my old SOHO server tower, which weighs a ton and has more metal in it than a Yugo, I was pretty amazed by the small foot print of the Micro ATX motherboard and the capabilities of such a small board. This got me thinking about my next project which I plan to do in the next year.

I wish to build a home theater PC which would obviously have DVR capabilities as well as full surround, interface with my home network, both wired and wireless so that if a guest wished to watch a movie on their laptop, or a different SAT station, streaming net radio, whatever, they could do so.

After rifling through the growing selection of parts for such an endeavor, it dawned on me the vast amount of various gizmonics for a home theater PC has left me somewhat overwhelmed.

Things like the case, the motherboard-Micro ATX with PCIE slots, power supply, ram requirements (2-4 gig being plenty) any base dual core processor, and a video card that has HDMI output on the card... that's the easy part.

Now the hard part, the TV tuner card with FM, the equipment to interface between this HTPC and the other computers on the network (wired only or wired and wireless) a need for an amp after the HTPC but before the speakers? Sound card or other device that allows additional remote speakers (outside for instance) Etc...

So, for those folks who have ever built one or use their own PC to accomplish some of the things I wish to, please by all means chime in, because I haven't done a system like this, so I'm a bit out in the weeds on a finer points.

Thanks.

[NHDave]

First question, What OS will you be using?

[f_m]

You should consider a motherboard with an integrated chipset that supports 1080p video and HDMI audio. The nvidia 9000 series chipsets are pretty popular since nvidia pushes being able to do 1080p well. Intel has a chipset that does it, but the general performance of the graphics isn't as good for general purpose/games. See the link below and read the various user comments on these boards. You can always upgrade these if you need games, but if you don't need games, then integrated will work and save slots.

Newegg.com - Motherboards,Intel Motherboards,NVIDIA GeForce 9000,

I use Windows Media Center, which comes with Vista Home Premium. You just need to get a remote and you can access media and the TV, etc.. The biggest issue is if you want to have TV from cable or satellite. I only want OTA so I use a HDHomerun LAN based dual HDTV tuner (supports two shows at once), so any device on the LAN shows and records HDTV (even wireless devices, although it depends on the speed of your wireless, since HD will eat the bandwidth). You should probably use a Gigabit LAN for this, but it works fine on 100kpbs LAN.

Also, if you use HDMI out with audio on the motherboard, then you only need a HDMI compatible receiver and TV. The receiver will pull the audio signal and play it out the speakers.

[Wayneb]

I stopped using a traditional HTPC over a year ago, I now use SageTV on a central server and use Sage HD200 hardware media extenders for every TV in the house. The SageTV server has a bunch of tuner cards in it and the media extenders are on a wired network. I also have a seperate media server that works with SageTV that has about 8TB of drives in it for extra storage beyond the 1TB I have in the SageTV server. I only run the Media server when needed but the SageTV server runs 24/7. These are the extenders I use. SageTV® HD Theater - Enjoy your home media and online video on your HDTVs and you can download a trial of the software there also. They have a very active forum here. SageTV Community - Powered by vBulletin SageTV can be used like a regular HTPC also if you don't want to use extenders.

[Wayneb]

Here is a some other components that seem to be popular with SageTV users.
Dual ATSC tuner card. WinTV-HVR-2250 Product overview

And for recording HD content from Satellite or Cable. HD PVR Product overview