Hi all,
Am new here, and in the next month or so will be buying some gear to set things up for a HTPC. Currently doing a fair amount of research and some advice would be great.
Current gear I have lying around:
Gigabyte DXR+ Motherboard,
Athlon 2.4Ghz Thunderbird CPU,
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro,
SB Live 5.1 Card
1GB of RAM,
and an 80GB harddrive
I figured that this gear should provide me with a fairly solid starting point for a HTPC. I will be purchasing the following and am still working out brands
- Dual Tuners (Setup will be hooked onto a Grundig Widescreen CRT, so only focused on SD reception)
- Another Disk (Will get Seagate 300Bg disk (Fluid Spindle))
- Case
- A Universal Remote (replace my old Harmon Kardon Take Control unit)
The issues I am still unclear about are as follows:
- I will be getting an Xbox 360 along with the rest of the purchases. This being the case should I get a HTPC case and use that to run through to the TV from my Hifi rack? or should I use the extender functionality that the 360 possesses and get a less "attractive" case and put the HTPC outta the way. Bearing in mind that I will be displaying things through S-Video to a SD Widescreen CRT.
- I will be running a wireless connection from between my main PC (where my DSL connection sits) and the living room where the hifi gear is. My thoughts here are to get a wireless bridge to put in the Living room, and use a 10/1000 switch that I have spare to plug in both the Xbox 360 and the HTPC. This will give a 100Mbit link between both of these units, and sharing a 54Mbit? link back to the Main PC and to the Internet. Am open to suggestions here if anyone can think of other options.
- Any suggestions on a remote? I was thinking of either a Logitech Xbox 360 remote or a Harmony 880 unit. I will really only be running my HTPC, Xbox360, a H/K Receiver and the TV off it, so there isn't a lot of complexity there I don't think. I just want something that is simple to use for the wife and kids, but also is flexible in terms of what it can do.
Look forward to any comments or suggestions you guys might be able to provide.
