Building a ?300 HTPC

[elrasho]

Hi,

Some of you might have seen my posts in the Toshiba Z series about connecting my Acer Aspire 5920G to my Toshiba 42Z2020D HDTV using HDMI. Now that I have got that working, I've decided to build a HTPC as I would prefer to leave the HTPC in the cabinet rather than moving the current Laptop around.

So is it possible to build an HTCP for ?300 that will do the following:

1. Connect to my HDTV using HDMI
2. Audio comes from a dedicated sound card (can be onboard) that uses Optical to connect to my reciever
3. I would really prefer the case to be shaped as a convential DVD player so it fits snugly in my cabinet
4. Can play .MKV files as my HD movies are in this format
5. Preferably have USB ports on the front as I will be transfering the .MKV files to the internal Hard Drive using an external USB Hard Drive
6. Can play 1080P .MKV files

Heres the list of hardware Im getting so far:

Antec NSK1380 Micro Cube 350W Silver/Black ? 64.95
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz (Retail 775) ? 74.95
500GB Samsung Spinpoint 501LJ SATA2 16MB ? 34.95
OCZ 2GB PC2-6400 Value Series ? 19.95
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H, GeForce 7100, Socket 775, MCP-630i ? 38.37
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S Plus - PCI Digital Satellite TV and Radio Tuner Card ? 38.67


Total ?319.41

What do you guys think? Will this setup allow me to play .MKV files at 1080P?

What about the software? Ive got Vista Ultimate and really wanna use a remote rather than a Keybaord and Mouse to move through my movies and music

 

[DEATHMASTER]

what is ? currency

 

[elrasho]

Its meant to be British Pound for some reason comes up as a ?

 

[Asus]

There are cases meant for HTPCs which sorta look like receivers. (Antec Fusion or Antec NSK2480).
There are other brands as well but they use just small 60mm fans (loud when spinning fast or prone to whine).

Those two give you good flexibility with the components you can put inside plus 2 large 120mm fans out the side so it can be very quite with low power components or turn the fans up for excellent cooling for a hotter running game machine.

If you want to play HD video then get a better graphics card. Some newer onboard can, especially from AMD. That's the one area (HTPC) people are actually buying AMD CPUs/Boards enthusiastically. The 7100 GPU on that motherboard won't help ya with HD video and the CPU will be swamped trying to process it.
This shows CPU usage % being high with fast CPU and a high end GPU w/out HD video processing ability while the lower end GPUs that can help w/ the HD video get low CPU usage.

This one shows different onboard GPUs and a lower power CPU. The AMD 780G chipset/video (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) has very low CPU usage % while the others are much higher (including the 7100 GPU on the other Gigabyte board GA-73PVM-S2H).

The video on Blu-ray and HD DVD is either MPEG-2 or VC-1 (aka WMV).


I use Beyond TV software for recording/watching TV shows on my PC. And there is a Firefly remote that works very well from the same company. Good layout etc and works with all popular software (Power DVD) plus it has it's own Media hub software (video,dvd,music, TV from tuner, FM/AM radio from tuner).
Or if you don't mind using a keyboard then check out something like this.
Trackball top right corner. Mouse buttons on the top left, all right were you would put your hands if you were holding the keyboard on the sides. Plus it has 'trigger' buttons on the front again by where your index fingers would go.

 

[elrasho]

Was about to place my order for the componants and saw this:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/multi...Introduces-Ultra-Versatile-HD-Media-Player/p1

All for ?80

Only worry is if the .mkv format becomes obsolete then this thing will we as useful as an HD-DRIVE

 

[elrasho]

Got this today and hooked it up to a 500GB USB hard drive. Plays 1080P easily with full 5.1 sound from Optical. Its tiny and feels kinda cheap. The connections click nicely though so doesnt feel too tacky.

But after an hour it stopped sending audio for Optical. My reciever doesnt get a signal anymore. Tried factory reseting it but still no audio over Optical, it works over stereo which comes out of my Tosh Z series 42" TV.

It was skipping audio through Digital (which is Optical out) and then just stopped all together. Its not the cable as it works fine on my 360.

Also anyone here using a USB drive thats powered by USB and streaming 1080P from it? Im currently using a caddie with a 500GB SATA hard drive in it and its too noisy. Was thinking of getting the WD Passprt hence the question