Kar Hoe's Blog - HTPC Project (UPDATE)

HTPC Project (UPDATE)

Tuesday, 29 July 2008

UPDATE

So I finally got the parts and everything working. On Friday, I waited for the casing to be delivered by Pos Malaysia, I checked Pos Malaysia website at 9am and it was stated "Out for delivery", I thought it would reach at around 11 but it didn't. Instead it reached at 6p.m.

The following day, my cousin and I went to Lowyat to buy all other parts and fix everything up. We also managed to get a Media Centre keyboard at a very attractive price.

It was my first time receiving such a big sized item via courier

It fits perfectly in the AV rack, with LED panel capable of showing CPU and casing temperature as well as fan speed.

Time to start surfing on the HTPC.

The keyboard is fantastic, it has a joystick on the right hand side which can be used to move the cursor on the mouse and all other hotkeys that can be used in Windows Media Centre.

The cost of this HTPC is RM1750, add another RM300 and you could throw in another TV Tuner and make it a full bloated HTPC

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My next PC build will be a HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer for my uncle. So what is a HTPC? The name speaks for itself, it is a computer which served as a multimedia centre in your house. Most of the time, you connect it to your TV and you get to watch downloaded movies, or even some light gaming on the PC. Apart from that, you can add in a TV-Tuner and configure it to record Astro programs are predefined times. In other words, it can also work as a Live TV, so you can instantly rewind the goal that Chelsea scored against Malaysia by a click on the keyboard.

So this time, I would be getting a HTPC, these are the specifications.

Athlon 64 X2 5200+

Team PC6400 1GB DDR2 800 x 2

WD3200KS 320GB SATA 3GB 16MB

Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H

Silverstone ST400

HDMI cable

Pioneer SATA DVDRW

Aztech WiFi USB

Genius wireless Keyboard with integrated mouse

XQBOX HTPC 200

I just ordered my casing from Kuching, and it should arrive by this week, I will post more pictures by then.

Meanwhile, this is how the HTPC looks like

In my opinion, HTPC is something cool to add into your existing AV system, with powerful DVD softwares from Cyberlink and InterVideo, watching any movies on the HTPC will be fantastic. Furthermore, by the time Bluray drives are sold cheaply, you can just pop it into your HTPC and let the powerful onboard GPU (AMD 780 or Geforce 8200) do the decoding.

Most of you might have gigantic LCD/Plasma TV in your living room, but most of the time you are just watching DVD's and Astro. Certainly you have not experienced the true capability of your TV, most of the HDTV are Full HD (High Definiation) capable or at least HD ready meaning they are able to play videos with 720 vertical lines or 1080 vertical lines. The current DVD format can only show about 480 vertical lines and you think it looked nice?

Well, download some HD clips and try watching it on the TV. HDTV was released to complement the next generation DVD format which is eventually won by Bluray. Bluray discs are capable of storing the entire movie in HD format. I downloaded some HD clips, watched them on the LCD TV, and it was fantastic, just like a showroom TV in the TV shop.

There is this quote "Without Bluray, your HDTV is just a normal TV" which is very true. Mun Yew told me "Without Bluray, your HTPC is just a normal PC" which I beg to differ