Help with htpc v blu-ray v roku

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bpimmerman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 5, 2001
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I'd love some help, I've read a lot of the posts, but I'm still on the fence. I must say that budget is a big issue, as the TV was a huge purchase, but I'm willing to spend a little extra for something i'll be happy with for 2-3 years (unrealistic, i know).

I just got a samsung 40" lcd - i love it. I hooked up some passive antennas and get great free HD. I do a lot of computer watching, and want to push that to the TV. I hooked up my 3 y/o macbook to the tv, using a dvi->hdmi cable, and it struggles, but looks great with netflix, hulu, etc.

So I can purchase a blu-ray for under $130 with streaming that will allow me to do most of what I want, or I can ditch the disks for $80 for the new roku XD

But what I really want is a HTPC, primarily because then I can get DVR without a monthly fee, and It can become a media server as well.

Any suggestions on which direction to go? Can I do a decent HTPC for under $400?
I could do w/o the tuner for now and upgrade in the future (so i need upgradeable). Noise is also a concern if I go this route.

This will do audio to my stereo

I'm thinking:

i3 530
micro atx with built-in video
2 gig ram
HDD
dual HD digital tuner
case w/power supply
blu-ray drive
remote

anyone have any thoughts - thanks for the help
 
bpimmerman said:
I'd love some help, I've read a lot of the posts, but I'm still on the fence. I must say that budget is a big issue, as the TV was a huge purchase, but I'm willing to spend a little extra for something i'll be happy with for 2-3 years (unrealistic, i know).

I just got a samsung 40" lcd - i love it. I hooked up some passive antennas and get great free HD. I do a lot of computer watching, and want to push that to the TV. I hooked up my 3 y/o macbook to the tv, using a dvi->hdmi cable, and it struggles, but looks great with netflix, hulu, etc.

So I can purchase a blu-ray for under $130 with streaming that will allow me to do most of what I want, or I can ditch the disks for $80 for the new roku XD

But what I really want is a HTPC, primarily because then I can get DVR without a monthly fee, and It can become a media server as well.

Any suggestions on which direction to go? Can I do a decent HTPC for under $400?
I could do w/o the tuner for now and upgrade in the future (so i need upgradeable). Noise is also a concern if I go this route.

This will do audio to my stereo

I'm thinking:

i3 530
micro atx with built-in video
2 gig ram
HDD
dual HD digital tuner
case w/power supply
blu-ray drive
remote

anyone have any thoughts - thanks for the help
Click to expand...

well HTPC is of course the most flexable. For what your looking for though I would go with an AMD setup & get the Athlon II x2 240e for it (its only 45w compared to the i3's 80 something) to help keep things cool & still have enough power. & Grab an 880g board so it has the onboard 4250 igp & hdmi out. Hell for the cost of the i3 you can just about get a Athlon II x4 600e (also 45w) that would give you a couple more cores of processing power. For a tTuner the Happague 2250 seems to be the go to card for internal or an hdhomerun for external
 
Will that onboard video be good for full 1080p? Is there a specific mb that people recommend?
 
bpimmerman said:
Will that onboard video be good for full 1080p? Is there a specific mb that people recommend?
Click to expand...

I have seen it recomended before more then once. As far as a specific mainboard I dont think it matters very much as long as its got the chipset & hdmi. Though I could be wrong (I am still using a nforce chipset in my HTPC)
 
I'm looking at this:

ASUS M4A785-M

Seems powerful enough tied with the cpu recommended above (athalon II X2 240e). And I can throw in the Happague 2250 in the pci express slot in the future.

It's got an ati 4200 which should run blu-ray, 1080p (I could upgrade to a mobo with a 4250, but I don't think it's worth the $30)
 
bpimmerman said:
I'm looking at this:

ASUS M4A785-M

Seems powerful enough tied with the cpu recommended above (athalon II X2 240e). And I can throw in the Happague 2250 in the pci express slot in the future.

It's got an ati 4200 which should run blu-ray, 1080p (I could upgrade to a mobo with a 4250, but I don't think it's worth the $30)
Click to expand...

I was actually looking at the same board. However if you dont already have some DDR2 memory to put into it then i would pay the extra for the board & get a DDR3 board. If you do have ddr2 sitting around that you could use then thats what I would do for sure.
 
bastage said:
well HTPC is of course the most flexable. For what your looking for though I would go with an AMD setup & get the Athlon II x2 240e for it (its only 45w compared to the i3's 80 something) to help keep things cool & still have enough power.
Click to expand...

The i3 also has a GPU with the processor cores, so that is another reason why the TDP is higher (73w).

I use the i3-530 in my HTPC and it has worked really well for me. I have found the all-in-one nature of the processor to be quite helpful in my cramped HTPC case. I can also play Blu-Rays on my HTPC without a hitch (well, except for my rattling optical drive but that is another issue :p).
 
visionviper said:
The i3 also has a GPU with the processor cores
Click to expand...

That was my original reason for going the i3 route, but the amd boards, like the one i linked to above, has a built in radeon 4200, which i think should be powerful enough for 1080p video. I'm not doing any gaming, just looking to build a media center/dvr.
 
bpimmerman said:
That was my original reason for going the i3 route, but the amd boards, like the one i linked to above, has a built in radeon 4200, which i think should be powerful enough for 1080p video. I'm not doing any gaming, just looking to build a media center/dvr.
Click to expand...

Well like I said I have no issue with 1080p playback with my i3.
 
I'd go with a dedicated GPU if you're going to watch Blu-ray. Nothing fancy, just an HD5450 to make sure playback is smooth.
 
i3/i5's IGP on a H55 motherboard does bitstreaming and will decode 1080p w/o issue for blu-rays. I have seen some people post difficulty with other codecs, but that is most likely a codec or driver issue
 
Redmist said:
I'd go with a dedicated GPU if you're going to watch Blu-ray. Nothing fancy, just an HD5450 to make sure playback is smooth.
Click to expand...

well of course that's the issue, because if i go with the setup i posted, it's micro atx and only one pci-express. which i want to reserve for a tv tuner card later on (when the money allows). Therefore I really need a setup that has built in video enough for blu-ray.

anyone using the AMD setup w/o video card that watches blu-ray?
 
The AMD setup will work but the 785g and 880g chipset doesn't stream 7.1 or 5.1 trueHD or bitstream hd audio

It will do 1080p without issue, with an X2 CPU.

You can do $400 for a HTPC but not with a blu-ray drive, OS and all.

The i3 and i5 will do 1080p with Hd audio
 
Optical only has enough bandwidth for 2 HD channels

Most tuner cards are pcie 1x anyways.


The only amd solution that will work for hd audio is a 5x00 series gpu

Higher priced nvidia cards and the i3/i5 w/ h55 Motherboard.


This has been the case the entire time for the 780-880g chipset.

If you read any reviews fo a motherboard with the chipset they all say the samething
 
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