We've run out of space in the home office and I am moving a new computer to the tv room and using is for normal pc stuff. I am curious about using it as a Home Theater PC also. If anyone of you are familiar with HTPC could you direct to a site or information on the basics of this type of usage. My computer knowledge is not extensive so the simpler the better.

Thanks Brad

Brad maybe I can return the SPL meter favor by helping you in this department. Are you wanting to use it as just a DVD player/Media storage warehouse or are you planing on complete Media Center configuration? There's a pretty good section on the avsforums on HTPC's. Also TheaterTek has some forums with some good info.

I'm using mine as a DVD player (mainly due to it's excellent ability to change aspect ratios) and storage but also have Windows Media Center Edition on it so it's capable of much more.

Does the Video card have DVI out?

Hi Brad,

I may be able to help you with some of this stuff. I just went through setting up a HTPC myself. It was quite a task -- more than I had expected it to be...

I'm doing something like this:

A server in my basement holds everything that I may need to access from other points in the house (various movies, all my CDs, pictures, etc.). In addition to that server, two desktops and two laptops connect to the network by either Cat5 or wireless, depending on their needs.

The HTPC sits behind my TV and is connected to my TV using a VGA cable.

I use PowerDVD to playback whatever DVDs are sitting on my Server.

I use Winamp to play back all CDs, which are stored in FLAC format.

I can view pictures on the TV using whatever photo program I want.

I use a cheap digital audio card to hook from the PC to the 990. After a bit of trouble getting it to work, I have had no problems.

I think the biggest pain for me was getting my TV to handle a 1280x720 (720p) signal from my PC. I had to use a program called PowerStrip to get this close to working, and I'm still not 100% satisfied with it. I think I need a calibration on my TV to get all the way there.

So that's kind of how everything is hooked together. I'd be happy to discuss further what I'm doing, and how I might be able to contribute to your system. Post here, or PM me, and let's talk. We all put so much time, effort and money into this hobby and sometimes our wives and friends just don't appreciate it all!

Let me know, and best of luck either way.

-- Otto

I use a free front end software called Xlobby and have found that it works pretty well. Using the default skin in Xlobby and then importing your media will allow you to select your DVD's, Music, Pictures and check the weather. (Provided you have the computer connected to the internet.) I use Xant to catalog the DVD's and download the cover art and movie info. There's a plug-in that imports that into Xlobby so you can see a thumbnail of your DVD, select it and you see the larger coverart along with a descritpion of the movie. I think it's pretty cool.

I started with a P4, 1.8ghz, 512mb ram computer running Win2k Pro and have added an ATI 9600, 128mb ram w/ DVI video card (ebay $37), Turtle Beach Catalina sound card for digital audio out (buy.com $47 connected to my 1050 via digital optical cable), Cyberlink PowerDVD (upgrade from OEM software $20), Inmatrix Zoomplayer ($28), 300gb hard drive (to go along with the 250gb external drive I already had) (amazon.com $92). Outside of an occasional jitter, I can't complain about how it's worked at all. I do have the trial of Powerstrip installed, but I haven't dug into it much. Otto, I'd be interested in hearing what you've done so far.

I'm pretty sure there is support for TV in Xlobby as well, but all I've used it for so far is a DVD server (ripped my DVD's (movie only. no menus or extras) using DVD Shrink with no compression), music (playing mp3's you need to install Winamp, the free version works fine) and picture viewer. (My wife LOVES this as she doesn't see a lot of the photos we take except for the ones I print.)

If anyone here uses Xlobby, I'd be interested in hearing how you have yours set up.

Hey there kugumby,

As far as PowerStrip goes, I have used it mostly for alignment and overscan issues. I'm using a Radeon X600 video card to a Mitsubishi 52725 DLP via VGA cable. Overall, it looks pretty good, but without PowerStrip, I had a lot of overscan wherein things were lost over the edge of the screen. PowerStrip allows me to modify settings so that rather than sending a 1280x720 signal, it's at about 1200x666. This works pretty well, for the most part.

Now, inside of PowerStrip, if you haven't used it much yet, you will find a bunch of numbers, most of which I don't (at least fully) understand... I got most of my settings from browsing the AVSForum for anything to do with my TV and PowerStrip. It seems like the video card isn't as important to PowerStrip as the TV is.

So it's working OK, but I still have at least two issues, I think. First, I can never get the PC to sync all the way to the top of the TV. That is, there's always about one inch of black at the top of the TV, and it rolls off the bottom of the screen in about the same amount. The sides are pretty close. Also, there seems to be some issue with the TV where there's a bit of a dip in the picture -- it's not square across the TV, but this appears also when using Dish or DVD.

I also get some jitter on the picure, especially when panning or when the credits are rolling. I think this is resolvable with PowerStrip, or perhaps with a TV calibration (less likely, IMO). I thought maybe it was because of network latency, so I pulled a movie to my local machine before playing, and I get the same behavior. It's not too bad -- my wife doesn't really notice unless I point it out and replay it -- but it's annoying to me.

I'm going to call the TV calibration guys out one of these days, and see if I can get them to take care of the alignment issue and the pincushion thing.

Are you using a DVI cable to the TV? What kind of TV, signal type and how's it look?

-- Otto

I do use a DVI cable to the TV. I have a Philips 62" LCoS display. The only thing I've ever noticed regarding the image size is that occasionally (but not all of the time), there will be a hint of black bars on the left and right of the image and the picture, overall, is slightly darker than what it would be if I played the DVD from my DVD player. Other than that I don't have any issues with the picture quality.

My screen jitter is very noticable when it happens, but it doesn't happen often and when it does, it's random. I haven't found any particular type of scene that it shows up on. It's more like a buffer overflow type of problem.