HTPC Upgrade Part 2

I saw a 60" Samsung plasma in currys on oxford street. they stood it on the floor and it came to my neck.

£6000

Awesome picutre from the other side of the road :D


Apart from the purple snakes and all that.......

Being serious though I wonder what will happen to plasma, currently there are pros and cons between LCD vs Plasma, but with the market leaders (pioneer) looking into LCD technology you have got to wonder.....

Anyway back on topic I will post some piccys tomorrow for those interested...... (most likely no one ;))
 
wow.. thats a great display


bring on the pics indy! :]
 
Right firstly pictures of the main HTPC (living room) First image is before (with the original mATX board) the next are post upgrade (new board, ram, CPU and the ASUS soundcard :) Finally the last is the serious amount of connections now on the back of the computer :)
 

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Now for the bedroom 'extender' I did think about just getting another xbox360 for this, but having a full pc meant that is supported a lot more media file types plus it did just about work out the same price as an arcade xbox (due the parts I already had).

Luckily when I fitted the tv to the wall and ran the cables I had this project in mind, so to our built-in wardrobe (which has power sockets) I ran a HDMI cable plus a phone line extension (was the cheapest multistrand cable I could find).
Now I wanted to be able to control the media centre with an IR remote (so it could also control the tv), and I did not want to have to point the remote 90º to the tv, or cut a large hole in the cupboard door! This meant I had this extend the receiver. Now I have got an old hauppage tv card that I don’t use but what it does have is a nice tiny receiver which connected to the card by a stereo 2.5mm jack. So after taking apart my nice new Phillips vista IR receiver I connected up some wires to see if it worked with the hauppage receiver and luckily it did. So after getting some bits from maplin I connected a 3.5mm socket on the Phillips receiver (picture 1) and on the first end of the phone cable I connected a 3.5mm jack. Finally one the other end (which is the wall face plate) I connected the 2.5mm socket (picture 3). This means it’s all neat and tidy and works fine (sharing the recorded tv was a little bit of a pain). Now the computer can get a little warm but it’s not on for long periods (lives in s3 sleep mode).
 

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nice setup :)

Anyone want to see my cable spaghetti? :D

Go on go for it :)

Here is the full set up, with 7.1 speaks throughout the room


Picture 2 shows my hiding xbox!
 

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Okay here we go :)

Crappy iPhone camera FTW!

First - TV, xbox and amp

Second - closup front of amp

Third - the pc that does everything - media, music, game, etc

Fourth - the mass of wires at the back - every time I tidy these up they re-tangle themselves :( DVI to the monitor, hdmi to the TV, analogue audio to the amp

Fifth - Analogue input on the amp

The amp is powering 5.0 speakers at the moment :) 2 x Gale SAT-10s for front left/right and some cheapy daewoo for center and the 2 rears. Soon as I get a bunch of debt cleared I'll be upgrading the speakers to 4x floorstanders, a centre and a sub.

PC plays blu-ray, HD-DVD, CD, and any media I have codecs for at 1920x1080i on the TV :) AnyDVD lets me get non-downsampled audio from the xonar into the amp.
 

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forgot to mention - the xbox is giving optical audio to the amp dolby digital I think. and component 1080i to the TV. I can't get the TV to handle the xbox hdmi output. I get a green fuzzy mess :D
 
woah.. both are really great :)

makes me wanna build one of my own :)
 
Here's the TV playing Dark Knight Blu-ray version.
 

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Man you can really see the difference looks soo much better at 1080P ;P
 

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