ditching cable once and for all....building a media center pc

[hulkster]

after careful consideration, im decided to cancel my comcast stuff all together other than my internet, and save myself $100 a month in comcast bills.  ive using substitutes to allow me to keep most of the functionality and channels/movies i want....

instead of paying comcast for hbo and movie channels, im just getting Netflix.  its awesome, and im using the instant streaming now on my xbox 360.

im going to get an antenna in order to get over the air HD channels and SD channels.  i mainly watch Lost, Supernatural, and Heroes along with occasional sports on the local channels like CBS and stuff, but thats taken care of with the antenna.

finally, im putting together specs for a htpc that will allow me to use vista media center and record hd.  here is what i have so far for my pc:

AVergMedia AVertTV Combo PCIe tuner card with remote
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815100014

antec htpc microatx case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129034

gigabyte mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128360

amd athlon 64 X2 5050e 2.6ghz cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103298

640gb SATA hard drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

2gb ddr2-800 ram (i have this already)

DVD-RW drive (have this already)

PSU (included in case)

OS - vista ultimate (won a copy at work)

what do you guys think?  suggestions?  do you think this is a good build?  i dont plan on doing any gaming on it other than mame for console emu's so it doesnt need anything more than the onboard video. 

[Paul Olson]

Buy a 360. Stream media from your PC, and download netflix from xbox live.

[Malenko]

dont go over your 250GB/month limit

call comcast and ---smurfette--- about your bill being too high, odds are it wont be that high much longer.

[hulkster]

Buy a 360. Stream media from your PC, and download netflix from xbox live.

i have a 360....but i dont want to have my 360 on every time i turn my tv on. 

i did complain to comcast and they offered to lower my bill from $150 total to $99 total for 12 months.  thats a good deal, but the whole point of doing this is to get rid of comcast completely for my tv viewing.  for some dumb reason, they knocked my internet down to $33 a month for 12 months just as a "courtesy".  whatever.  but after i get the htpc built, ill be saving $100 a month by not using comcast. 

[J_K_M_A_N]

That is funny. I just did the same thing. We canceled cable and phone last Tuesday. I did keep the basic channels because internet is $45 with cable and $55 without and the basic is $10 so...I did also buy a Tivo because I can't live without pause and rewind live TV. Even if it is just basic channels. I just use the xbox and Usenet to get all my TV shows. I would like to get an HD tuner since my TV didn't come with one but...oh well. I like saving $104.30 a month. I also have blockbuster but I may get rid of that also. They are pretty slow sometimes. Maybe I will try netflix but I am not sure.

As far as the HTPC, I would get a 1 TB drive right off the bat. If you are going to record HD you will need it. And they aren't THAT much more. I have a 1TB and a 500 GB in my PC for storing shows and movies and I could easily use more. I guess if you aren't going to keep any of the shows, 640 would work.

J_K_M_A_N

[BORIStheBLADE]

If I were you would keep your cable until you get the HTPC setup. You might have some issues that could take time to resolve. Or everything might go smooth as silk.

I'm not going to tell you not to go this route, but I will tell you my experience.
About 4 years ago I ventured into this HTPC idea. I know it was 4 years ago and alot might have changed, but It might give you something to think about.

I built a HTPC to archive my DVD's and DVR my direct tv box. There was an endless amount of tweaking trying to get the the resolution to look right on my screen. I could never get the overscan to be as minimal as possible.
I would have endless amounts of microstutters. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. It had something to do with the audio not sincing with video and the computer would try to compensate and I would end up with this microstutter that pissed me off.

To top it off, being just a computer was another thing. Computer always have some sort of issue. They could freeze up or just not cooperate.

Another thing I was thinking about is will you have any issues with the digital change over with that antenna and capture card? I couldn't find any info about them being digital.



In the end, four years after I built that HTPC I took it out of the garage and dusted it off to use as a server. I bought a video streamer so I can watch my movies and tv shows I torrent off the internet. Very happy with this and it was cheaper.

[patrickl]

Why not get a popcorn hour and have the whole thing done in a simple box?

Did you pay $104 for extra TV channels and phone? 

[BORIStheBLADE]

Why not get a popcorn hour and have the whole thing done in a simple box?

Did you pay $104 for extra TV channels and phone? 

Thats what I got and love it. It plays almost everything I throw at it. I think you can even watch live tv with the plugins.

Heres the forum

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/index.php

[Blanka]

LOL, I just read an article about a big dutch network CEO wining that he cannot ask the same for cable+internet as the americans pay. Here 40 euro's for TV, unlimited bandwith internet and unlimited landline calls is quite normal. We just go dutch on this

[patrickl]

LOL, I just read an article about a big dutch network CEO wining that he cannot ask the same for cable+internet as the americans pay. Here 40 euro's for TV, unlimited bandwith internet and unlimited landline calls is quite normal. We just go dutch on this

Yes indeed. If they pay around $150 a month for that in the US, then wow, just WOW

[BORIStheBLADE]

Isn't it legal to steal cable from the airwaves in Europe if you have the means too?

[patrickl]

Isn't it legal to steal cable from the airwaves in Europe if you have the means too?

It's not really cable if you us an antenna ... But yeah some channels are free when received on an antenna or satellite dish. Or you need to pay a modest fee for a decoder.

[Ummon]

On Netflix: I think they're way better than BB. Their turnaround time is faster, they don't wait for a damaged or malfunctioning DVD to return before they send another one, and they stream a fair amount of stuff. Customer service is 24/7 and has always been helpful and polite.

[orion]

I have been into the HTPC's since 2001. My first one I used a first generation ATI All in Wonder card hooked into a Sony Vega though the S vid input.... I guess I am somewhat of a pioneer on the subject. My two cents... these things can be a royal PITA! Seems like no matter what I have tried I could never find a reliable video recorder solution. IMO they are not a good replacement for your DVR. That being said, they are great for playing back MP3's,  DVD ISO's and internet radio ect, which is all I use mine for these days. I also use it to watch shows off of Hulu.com ect.... I won't go into detail into everything I have tried, but I would recommend Coolermaster HTPC cases. I have used this one http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=104 since 2004 and I still love it.

[orion]

Also I just wanted to say, that I don't have any experience with the AVertTV Combo PCIe but I have tried this before and it works well. http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/PCTV+Tuners/PCTV+Analog_Digital+PVR/PCTV+HD+Pro+Stick.htm

Mame is also really cool on a HTPC!

[J_K_M_A_N]

When I canceled my cable and phone I bought a Tivo. It was good but I missed HD. So this weekend I traded the regular Tivo in for a HD Tivo. I did that because I found out it has a tuner for over the air HD. I have to say, I am now a big fan of Tivo. The HD is perfect. I was able to tune ALL of the HD channels for my area. The other box I had using the same antenna would only get about half of them. It has two inputs. One for cable and one for over the air.

I would highly recommend one. I am saving $104 a month from cable and phone being dropped so the Tivo and a 1 year subscription will be paid for in about 4 months.

The other cool thing is you can stream movies from netflix. I may switch from Blockbuster to Netflix just to check that out.

Just wanted to mention that in case anyone was looking into getting one.

J_K_M_A_N

[richms]

Overscan is a problem with displays, not the computers driving them.

Newer LCDs seem sweet as to give a perfect 1:1 mapping in their native resolution, older ones were hell with it going thru stretching/scaling etc making it blury crap before hitting the panel.

Graphics cards dont seem to want to do 24fps output when I have tried it, 1080p50 and 1080p60 work fine, but I am yet to find a  player that will change the rate according to the FPS of what is being played - not an issue for you in the states where tv is all 60 field/frame anyway, but hell over here with 50/25 for tv and most other stuff being 60 or 24, neither of which play well when the output is set to 60.

H.264 accerleation on most graphics cards now makes stutter a thing of the past, but there are some "aquired" files that dont actually meet the profiles as defined in the standards that will not play properly on a hardware accelerated system like a graphics card or popcorn hour, but it seems the "scene" has got their crap together with making complient files now.

windows 7 is excelent for its support for tuners and stuff now. With a cheap nvidia 8600 doing acceleration and windows 7 being free to try at the moment its well worth a shot doing a htpc IMO.

[DrumAnBass]

Be sure to check out Boxee - getting a lot of buzz for being a killer HTPC app; http://www.boxee.tv/

Personally, I am loving my modded original Xbox's running XBMC. I have a full on HTPC but find the XBOX's can't be beat for playing content. All the HTPC front ends I have tried blow compared to XBMC - which has been ported to windows but still isn't as clean and simple as XBMC. http://xbmc.org/

Haven't tried using my HTPC as a DVR however; still using a HD DVR from the cable company for that. It is rock solid, no fuss no hassle... Except for that nasty cable bill every month ;-)

[stace]

I use XBMC on a few xbox's around the house and I don't think anything can touch it, in terms of useability.  I will say though, that the hardware is getting old and isn't really supported (certainly not after it's modded).

I'm getting on the 'popcorn hour' wagon until something better comes along   

I have tried the htpc route; Windows, in whatever capacity (inc 7 although better than it was), doesn't have WAF.  Don't blow a fortune until you've tested the software in situ, its not a simple solution.  Its full of tweaks (even if you use good software like theatretek, etc).......You may be very dissapointed, irrelevant of how much you are saving a month.

Its amazing that no-one has offered an 'out of the box' solution that provides something similar to an xbmc frontend with dvr, etc built in!?

Good luck with your choice

[J_K_M_A_N]

I can turn mine on with a remote.

J_K_M_A_N

[pinballwizard79]

I was paying $55 for my cable based internet & $125.00 for satellite.

The bummer was I hardly watched it because usually I game online or watch blu-rays (and of course play with the game room toys).

So now I call my internet provider every 6 months to get it for $29 & fired the satellite.

Streaming Netflix via my xbox360 is pretty sweet considering I already receive 2 blu rays from them each week. Then add in the over the air HD channels & the fact I can hit up Redbox with $1.00 to rent standard DVD's & that means Satellite = peace out.

Of course pic quality comes into play

1. Blu Ray = 1080p
2. Over the air HD = 720p/1080i
3. Redbox = 480p
4. Netflix stream = 480i/p depending on the time/connection/movie.....some are unwatchable & others are damn good, I mean really good yet some are really really bad with frame rate issues & etc....very unpredictable outcome every time

As it was mentioned before the 360 doubles as an extension to your media center PC.

So "backing" up your DVD's & buying a 1.5TB HD may have a pretty solid ROI actually if you think about it......& it has a remote