HTPC ponderings.

[AZAZEL]

Hey there.

 

I'm looking to build myself a proper Home Theater PC for use with my 32" LCD TV. I reckon I'll be running Windows Vista, and using the built-in Media Center function, along with a compatible remote. I'll want to be playing DVD movies, watching TV through a TV-tuner card, listening to music and so on.

 

What I'm not really sure about, is how powerful it needs to be. Will a low-range graphics card be able to pull this off without any loss in quality compared to a more powerfull one? I'd also like some suggestions for sound cards.

 

I'm new to this sort of build, so any advice will do, really.

[Wolf68k]

Does your TV support DLNA? If it does then you can use any TV that you want to use and opens you up to a few more choices

DLNA is a way to connect your TV to your home network and stream video, audio and pictures to the TV from a PC.

One of the best choices I've seen for this is PlayOn although it's not free you can watch Netflix, Hulu, CBS and a bunch more.

To watch your own movies/files, things you download from where ever would be best handled through whatever DLNA software that comes with the TV

 

Another solution might be Roku which you can buy and connect to your TV and watch Netflix and whatever else they have to offer. The HD-XR has a USB port can from what little I bothered to look at you can get it to play your own files but they have to be H.264 and I'm not sure about audio or video, like I said I didn't look into it that deeply.

 

Short of DLNA or you just want to connect the HTPC to it directly anyway then Boxee has free software that can do a lot of what PlayOn can do plus your own files. Yes Boxee is come out with a stand-alone box sometime soon but it'll cost you money.

Boxee's system requirements are: 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, a video card that supports OpenGL 1.4 (so just about any video card made in the last 5 years would work).

I would think you could apply the same to what you're doing. However if you plan to put a blu-ray optical drive in there or play 1080p WMVHD movies then you'll want to something more powerful

I would say think of building a mid-range gaming PC and you should be good.