Here is my journey to the HomeTheater PC world.
Specs for HTPC:
| Enclosure | Silverstone LaScala series LC17, black |
| Power | Nexus 4000 |
| Motherboard | Abit NF7-S v2 |
| Processor | AMD Athlon 2500+ |
| Memory | 512 Kingston |
| DVD | Generic DVD-rom |
| HDD | 120GB Samsung sata |
| Graphics | Club3d Radeon 9200 |
| Tuner card | TechniSat AirStar 2 |
| Tuner card | TechniSat Skystar 2 |
| Mouse | M$ bluetooth |
| Keyboard | M$ bluetooth |
Few pics:
PC is running (beside OS);
XLobby, as a front end
TheaterTek, for DVD / movies
FFDShow, for fun
DVB Viewer, for TV stuff
Daemon-Tools, for mounting CD/DVD images
iTunes, for music (I just need some time to change it to Foobar)
I have changed Silverstone 80mm fans to Nexus, as they are more quiet. I have replaced the motherboard NB fan with a zalman heatsink. Processor heatsink has also nexus 80mm fan attached to it. When purchasing graphics card, one of the criterias what needed to be met was a noise, so it has just a passive heatsink on it. At the moment my HTPC is the most silent of my computers, if you don't count my laptop. It will need few more tweaks to be better. But as it is silent enough for movies already, it is not the most important thing at the moment.
I keep some of my movies, some of my TV recordings and all of my music in my server. This is a convinient way of distributing music/movies/other data to a diffenent locations inside the house. At the moment network in our home is 1000/100/10 LAN + 802.11 B/G WLAN, so I can easily listen music with any of my computers.
HTPC is connected via optical S/PDIF (sound) to my AVR, Harman/Kardon 3550. Video is connected via VGA straight to my projector, Panasonic PT-AE900. At the moment screen size is about 90", and it seems just right for the room where it is. This might be called a hometheater by some, but I prefer calling it livingroom. But that is only because a few of my friends are having rooms dedicated just for the HT, and ours is just a living room with surround sound and large screen... Well, you can judge by yourself if you prefer to call it a HT or a living room.
All you need to know about HTPC:
http://www.dvdplaza.fi/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26