[koolfilter]

Hi all,
My intention is to build a home theater pc.
Mostly I’m just tired of changing out disks all the time. So it would be nice to put everything on the pc.
Also this would allow me to run all the different THX trailers I want before viewing the movie.

It is important that the audio signal pass through (untouched) so the Rotel processor / Paradigm speakers can do what they do.

Optical output would be ok, although I currently run (and prefer the sound of) some high quality digital coax that I put together myself.

The video must pass through also.

This system only ever sees ‘store bought’ media. No mp-this or wmv-that…

It would be nice to be able to control the pc with my Pronto remote that currently handles all the audio/video equipment, lighting, and air conditioning in this particular room, along with the audio/video in another room.

The web surfing will be minimal, but necessary.

Been snooping around and im liking ubuntu/elisa. (good price on them too)

Like to use 4 big hdd’s 500g or maybe 1t each. Probably will start with one or two in the initial build, to spread the cost out a little. IDE would be fine as they don’t have to be fast to play movies (right?).

Tentatively have them picked out, along with a case and optical drive.

By now you can probably tell im no computer guy. I could build one no problem though, looks like stacking lego’s to me.

The problem is making it all work together, so any suggestions on mother board, processor, memory…etc would be greatly appreciated.

If you recognized any of the manufactures names I used in this post then you know I am serious about sound, it is by far the most important consideration here.
My current system (its awesome) was built over time, pretty much a piece at a time.
Im going to build this thing myself, so user friendly is important, also it would be nice to keep the costs down.

So I guess what im looking for here is a parts list of components that will work together easy.

Priorities:
-pass through audio and video
-Lots of room.
-Remote control capability.

I don’t need the latest and greatest, in fact I'm more interested in ‘tried and true’, and Linux compatibility.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long post.

Kool

[Razer]

I'm no expert on sound but I know onboard audio wouldn't do your speakers any justice so you're going to need some sort of sound card. I can't recommend any since I've never used a dedicated sound card.

You're looking at 2Gb of RAM, Dual core processor (For HD films) and the hard drives will be sata 2 more than likely, IDE 1Tb drives are more expensive than their sata counterparts. As for motherboard, I'm unsure. I doubt it would make any huge difference but ask Carbon via PM, he'll point you in the direction of something good value.

When you say there is a good price on Ubuntu/Elisa, you do realise that they're free? you just need to download them. Personally I would use Windows for the fact that everything just works (Usually). As far as the remote control goes, I'm unsure. I'm sure you can find some adapter to make an IR connection available.

[philthomas]

I'm no expert in HDTVs, but a friend of mine recently built one and had problems with audio, using optical output.

He had an old Receiver, which didn't accept HDMI inputs and never managed to get it working.

In the end he went for a new Onkyo Receiver with 3 HDMI inputs and one HDMI output to the TV and this worked flawlessly, hooked up to the PC, Blu-Ray Player and PS3.
So ... if your Rotel has HDMI, this might be an easier route. Also makes for a much neater wiring setup.

[Carbon]

From the research I've done there's no way to get a HD bitstream from the player to the receiver through the PC without decoding it, there's just not enough bandwidth available. Regular DVDs? SPDIF works great, but with HD you're pretty much out of luck.

Your best bet is to invest in a good quality sound card then hook it up through there via traditional analog. It isn't untouched but it's the closest you'll get.

The rest of the build won't matter as much - a good dual or quad will do you fine. Since you're doing audio separately, you can pull that back into HDMI later, so just grab something like a G45 motherboard with integrated video. Coming soon will be dual platter 1TB Seagate drives..I'd wait for those to get high sustained read/write.

e: been reading up a bit and there are some video cards that can do this but they will probably req. a sound card. I don't know enough about this to offer an opinion one way or the other about how this should be done.

[koolfilter]

Hey guys,

Thanks for taking the time.

Ok, I understand from what you have said here, the support just isn’t really out there for this.

No problem.

Thinking in a different direction now after reading your posts and google research.

I should just go ahead and get high quality video and audio cards and let them do what they do.

From what I have learned they should only compliment the components I already have. Right?

Would love to hear your suggestions on this.


How do these cards look to you?

This will give me digital audio out through coax, THX cert I think:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...693&CatId=2771 The cables just look really weak...

This will give me DVI out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730

Separated like this I can send the signals right where they need to go, ie no video to the SS processor, and no audio to the TV. A big reason I don’t like HDMI.

What kind of components would I need to support these cards? Board, CPU, RAM?

How much juice do I need ( PSU )?

Any chance of running ubuntu now? ( I no its free, I have it and XP on my machine )

Like this case a lot for the money ( straight out of the sticky )

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129042

[Carbon]

That makes it a lot easier. I wouldn't suggest that graphics card though, it's a bit overkill for what you need.

I'd pop in something like this - you can shove it in pretty much whatever case you want, it's completely passive as far as cooling, and it's about perfect for this need. You can then just pull the DVI (actually thinking about it, you might want to do HDMI instead w/o the audio) out of that, do the audio over that sound card (which is fine, you may want to look at HT Claro cards as well though) like you mentioned. You shouldn't have to worry about HDCP because this will be off the hard drive - just be aware that only a few programs can rip HD content to the hard drive (I think Nero is one of the only ones at the moment).

For other parts:

- I'd buy this set of RAM. You won't need that much, but it's a steal.

- Remember, for the case you can get away with a microATX case like this, which will be substantially quieter and smaller. Even though you said "lots of room" I'd highly suggest looking into mATX cases, even if the P180 isn't your thing. You don't get much of a reduction in space inside necessarily, but the thing ends up a lot lighter and looks a lot smaller.

- Seagate has come out with nice new HDDs that use two platters instead of three - i.e. each platter can carry 500GB of data, and they can be stacked by Seagate into 500/750/1TB configurations. Right now there's only this one out, but we should be seeing the 750GB and 1TB variants shortly. If you have to buy now, pick up four (or five!) of those. If not, pick up one or two of the larger versions.

- Motherboard..eh, it's really your call.

If you grab a ATX case like you were planning, the best deal right now is the UD3R, though if you don't plan to add more than 6 drives in the future, the DS3L will be fine as well.

If you go micro, this is probably your best bet. Note that that onboard video _will_ do 1080p, I'd just trust an expansion card to do it better. It's also got 6 SATA ports.

- PSU: I love this PSU. It's extremely quiet and is more than enough for this build so you save on electricity costs (since it's not running at full load). If you want the thing to look a lot nicer inside and be easier to build/work on, the 520HX is modular, but obviously quite a bit more. Both of these will work in whatever case you buy.

- CPU: Since you're not going to actually be decoding anything on the CPU, the E5200 should be a fine choice. It's jumped in price, and now the AMD 7750 is technically a better deal, but I'd be too afraid of sticking you with a crappy motherboard and it would be wasted anyway.

I think that's it? Let me know if you want me to knock up a public list on NewEgg, this post was really longwinded.