Let's say you had an infinite amount of money to spend on a home theatre arrangement that had to have the following features:

- Large LCD/Plasma/Projector.
- Minimal physical media -- we've got about 200 DVDs, and they're taking up a lot of physical space.
- At least 5.1 audio.
- Recording and playback of DVB/DVT.
- BlueRay support.
- Easy to use: wife-compatible and toddler-safe.

...what would you buy? Now you've decided that, what would you buy if your budget was more modest, say £2K?

This year, my resolution is to get a bigger TV, and to get rid of the physical CDs and DVDs, as far as possible. I'll probably want to throw an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 into the mix as well. I'm leaning towards MythTV, but it was a PITA to set up the last time I tried, and Windows Media Center was much nicer to look at and use, but requires that the PVR cards be in the same PC.

We already have a Samsung 32" LCD TV, which will suffice for now -- although I'd like to upgrade to 37" or 40" later in the year. We have a crappy Sony compact Hifi. We have a Humax PVR and a Toshiba DVD player.

I'd also like to cut down on the number of cables emanating from the back of the TV, because they're ugly, and it's much easier to chase a smaller number of cables into the wall (plaster on solid brick, by the way).

Build a HTPC running Media Portal software. I love it, and it'll do all you want it to and more. It takes what you love about Media Centre and fixes the bits that MS broke (native BR playback and PVR stuff).

Its free and is constantly being improved thanks to a large team of volunteers. Its also got a very active online community with busy forums. Think of it as the empeg of the HTPC world. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Thanks, Phil. That's a good place to start.

Does it support separated front/back-end? Internet-accessible scheduling?

I'm also looking for hardware recommendations. And I'm not just interested in the HTPC component; I also want recommendations for the sound system, etc.

I'm fairly certain, but not 100% on this. There is server software for locating things in other rooms if thats any help but I've never investigated it in any detail.



This I really don't know. But there's so many plug-ins and add-ons that its hard to keep up with all the features. It really does get added to daily, and being open-source, you can fix things yourself if you have the skills (I don't).



I can only help with the PC components here. I specced my PC to run quiet and cool but still being able to handle HD and multiple recordings etc. I'd imagine you know what your doing in that area though?

Graphics wise I just put an Nvidia 8600GTS in there with a quiet Zalman cooler on it. A quiet Corsair PSU and a quiet Scythe CPU cooler. All in all its just a quiet hum if that.

Auzentech have a new sound card coming out that supports uncompressed HD audio from BR discs. Looks interesting but probably only for real audiophiles. It takes the HDMI from a video card, adds the audio and outputs as one HDMI. A very neat solution. It also allows one audio and one video HDMI to go to a receiver if need be.

Asus also have a number of graphics cards with integrated 5.1 audio (compressed) that output as a single HDMI.

Not really. Every small PC I've tried to make has either broken due to overheating, or sounds like a hovercraft trying to get up a cliff.

That's why I'm thinking separate front-/back-end -- I can keep the front-end nice and quiet: just for viewing content from the backend, or for occasionally viewing/playing DVD/CD media. All the noisy/hot stuff goes in the server which can be put in the spare room or something.

I can spec out the back-end: quad core Core2, plenty of disk space, couple of DVB/T cards. Where I'm struggling is the front-end. It's got to be beefy enough to do the video decoding, but would ideally be fanless. This implies video-accelerated decoding. What's MythTV support for that like right now?

My server's nice and quiet, but it's way too big for the living room -- it won't fit on any shelf, which means it's on the floor. And Charlie's just started crawling

My current setup is a mish-mash. I've got a TiVo Series 3 for DVR functionality, but I guess that's not an option for you. I've got an AppleTV, hacked with Boxee (a derivative of XBMC) for everything else.

A stock AppleTV is really good at streaming audio. It plays nicely with an iPhone running Apple's free "Remote" app, which lets you remote control iTunes on your server machine, which then sends the audio and metadata (including album covers) to your AppleTV.

A stock AppleTV is damn near useless for video, unless you've got it encoded in precisely the limited H.264 format that Apple supports. When you hack it with XBMC/Boxee, that all changes. Boxee uses the main CPU to play video. There's almost-but-not-quite-enough horsepower to play DVD images and most any standard-def video you download from the Internet. Officially, they'll say they can handle anything under 3.5Mb/s. What they won't say is that they have occasionally unacceptable judder and poorly implemented deinterlacing with, so far as I can tell, no way to just output 480i and let your TV set deal with the scaling. Boxee completely fails if you give it an HD stream and ask it to play it. It will keep the audio going, but you'll get two frames per second, but this would presumably not be an issue if you were running Boxee on a machine with more horsepower. (Boxee/XMBC also runs on Linux, among other options.)

My thinking is, when Apple releases whatever update to the Mac Mini at MacWorld, I might repurpose my old Mac Mini as a home theater PC, letting me use Apple's own DVD player, which can handle a directory of VIDEO_TS files just fine and without any of the issues of Boxee.

For the audio bits, you clearly want a receiver that can switch HDMI. That will allow you to have only a single HDMI cable going to your TV. Exactly which receiver, I'm not sure. That probably depends on your speakers. Also worth noting, some receivers are now built using "class-D" amplifiers (i.e., they use efficient switching power supplies), which mostly means much smaller packaging and much less heat output. See, for example, the Pioneer Elite "SC" models. Depending on your situation, that could be a feature worth looking for.

Many receivers now have Ethernet jacks, USB ports, and other attempts to converse with the digital side of your life. So far as I can tell, none of this is going to work as beautifully as an AppleTV. The feature I'd like to see more is USB sound card support, allowing your HTPC to speak to your amp digitally in a clean and simple way. The aforementioned Pioneers seem to support USB for talking to iPods and for accessing music on memory cards, but otherwise nothing mentioned on the web page.

BluRay, of course, will require a dedicated BluRay player, and there's no easy way to rip and stream BluRay media (yet... the hacker types are certainly working on it). Some BluRay players are growing Ethernet jacks and also trying to compete with the AppleTV and whatnot.

For a small and quiet front end with complete control over the DVR aspects of the server, I think you're back to looking at Myth if you want to roll your own all the way, or SageTV if you want most or all of it already done for you.

You might want to look specifically at SageMC add-on for SageTV which will change up the UI, especially making the movie library feature much more pleasant. I haven't installed this yet myself. Their new HD Theater extender box works very well, including its ability to scale your content to your display's native resolution.

If you're on a budget do look at receivers. If you can afford it, go separates because whatever power amplifier(s) you get along with speakers, can last years longer than the ever-changing requirements of an audio processor. It'll cost more but you might be able to fit it with your stated budget.

With regards to "unlimited budget" it's not even worth discussing except for "fun" because the prices can easily surpass a million dollars without trying very hard.

Right now I'm leaning toward getting an ATI power amplifier (not related to the ATI graphics company) with an as-yet undetermined preamp-processor (trying to keep that to about $1000). I'd like to get a DVDO Edge video processor (which will handle any/all video switching) and connect that up to a 52" Sharp Aquos (hopefully something new they release after CES).

For speakers, I'd personally like to keep it Canadian with PSB, but you might look for something locally in the UK, especially with such great products produced there. I don't know how much you'll save shopping a national brand, if anything at all however.

With a greater budget, but not going into the absolutely insane, I'd probably also keep the amplification Canadian and go with multiple Bryston amplifiers. Either a 4BSST for the front left and right (and music) along with one of their multi-channels for everything else. Or at some additional cash, a pair of 7BSST monoblocks for the front left and right. At that point I'd still be undecided on the pre-pro, though Bryston also make one of those. I'd still stick with PSB speakers but move on up their model line.

Onkyo "receivers" are getting quite popular here (Italy) because of the excellent price/quality ratio. As a metter of fact, on some pretty good magazines they often compare with much more expensive devices. I am looking to buy one of these, depending on what budget I'll end up with in the next future:

Onkyo PR-SC886
Onkyo TX-NR906
Onkyo TX-NR876

The big advantage of these ones is that they have two HDMI outputs, which offers space for a flat screen TV AND a projector, which I'd love to do in the long run.

In fact, as to video, I just gor a 46" Samsung which I love, so far (LE46A956 - LED becklighting). My idea was simply to get the larges I could fit, and with the best size/performances price ratio. Today that size seems to be in the 40-46 range. I am planning to add a projector + scree to the overall home theatre project, as I saw some full HD movies on a projector and I turned from scheptical to a fan of fullHD: the change in video quality was, to me, absolutely impressive.
The problem with a projector is that, of course, screen takes a LOT of space, and I could not keep it down all time and give up an entire wall for that. Also, no matter how good a projector is in these days, if your living room is not dark-ish, you are going to miss on contrast and brightness. So, TV+Projector seemed to be the best way to go.

As to media center, for now I just got a 200 Euro DB player together with my TV, and I am still considering either the Dell Studio Hybrid (see other thread) or to assemble one, completely fanless. The point is that this ig going to turn into a quite expensive system - 700 Euros or more - and so I am taking a bit more before I proceed with this.

And, I am only now trying to get some knowledge about speakers. They can be, of course, incredibly expensive, and, often, for no reason.

The backend PC doesn't need to be that strong of a system. I'm using an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ (2.1GHz 65W) cpu in a linux box running software raid 5 (5 320GB drives) shared via Samba. The video playback machine is an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2.6GHz) using a Zalman CPU cooler and a GeForce 7950GT fanless video card. This PC was build around Nov 06'. The CPU isn't up to playing downloaded HD content when I'm running at 1080i but it works great at 720p. If I was building today I would get a 3GHz socket 775 Core2 Duo and for the video I would get something from this selection. I'm running Windows XP on this PC and Zoomplayer to play DVD's using the Nvidia PureVideo codec. I also run AnyDVD to skip directly to the DVD menu when inserting a DVD. I have read that PowerDVD is the best option for PC BlueRay playback but I don't have a BlueRay drive in the PC.

Indeed. If you're getting "exotic" speakers (let's define that as speakers costing as much as a decent car), then you're going to want more exotic gear. If you're getting "reasonable" speakers (two-way bookshelfs, maybe a sub in the corner), then standard receivers are the way to go.

I have one particular friend who's Piega speakers cost a good deal more than a car. It seems every few months he's trying out some new audio component, some new DAC processor, and on it goes. He even got one of those crazy turntables where the platter is six inches thick and weighs a ton. At that point, you're not buying a home theater. You're adding a new hobby to your life. My friend justifies this by getting nearly everything at some incredible half-off sale price. He imported one high-end two-channel stereo pre-amp from Japan by purchasing it while he was there on business (for maybe half what it would have cost had he bought it here).

If he has everything set up for two-channel audio and wants to flip it over for watching a DVD, much fussing about ensues, since that means switching from the crazy Japanese pre-amp to the shiny Bryston pre-amp with the appropriate DVD decoders, and inevitably something isn't quite working right.

So, yeah, be careful what you ask for when you ask for an "unlimited" budget. (Maybe I should mention that said friend is also single. A kid crawling around the floor near his speakers could easily get electrocuted on the power outputs of the monoblock amps...)

I don't think Myth/Linux supports blueray easily. 'They' are fighting hard to make you use windows. You certainly won't be ripping them on a kosher DRM enabled system though so if that is an aim then linux may be a better bet.

The rest is a doddle.



Now you are talking about economic choices

Frankly at £2k you aren't pushing the boat out - spend wisely. (You're in the same ballpark as me).

Eg: I bought a 2nd hand £2500 Denon amp from eBay for £400 when my old amp died. OTOH we still use the B&W 110i speakers we bought as students (another wise choice). I don't think many people would complain at the sound we get from it. (OK, the £400 Rel Stratus II sub doesn't hurt).

I also bought a £99 Dell server P4 something to act as my backend. It records sky and DVB-S (so I get BBC HD). You don't need a quad-core yadda yadda
You do need lots of disk - I run 5x1Tb in RAID5 but that's OTT.

Right now (Jan '09) the frontends currently need more power than the BE if you do HD. But moves are afoot (eg Jun '09) to use the new nVidia HD capabilities - in fact our very own Mr Lord is doing stuff in that area (sorry Mark - I've been ill and not replied!).

If that pans out (and it will!) then a HD 5.1 Myth FE will run on something dirt cheap the size of a hardback with no fans and no hard disks.

At that point you end up with front-ends in the kids rooms, the kitchen etc etc.



As for wires: I have a cat5 going into the lounge.
Then I have 1 phono (5.1) to the amp. 1 HDMI to the projector.
The amp has speaker wire to the speakers. 3 mains cables.
You really don't get much less wiring than that

It's more of a mess now 'cos we bought a Wii to make up for being ill over xmas

And I've offered to show my Myth setup to people before so I have no problem extending you that offer to you too
(It wasn't you last time was it?)

I think the real decision is "do you want to be able to play with it?".
Yes : MythTV
No : MediaPC

Do you have any links to this platform? There are already single-chip solutions out there to be had, but of course they all need at least some form of production-assembly to make boards. Sigmatel chips are used in products from popcorn Hour and SageTV among others for example. If you're going to roll your own software or install Myth's FE software, it's obviously a hinderance to rely on a single hardware vendor.

Will the solution you mention be close to the generic nature of current PC-building?

I can honestly say that I would not go back to a workstation-only solution. Client-Server is the most robust (and versatile) way to do the DVR/Media system as far as I'm concerned.

A fanless Nvidia 8400GS card with 512MB onboard (ASUS) is the minimum needed for full hardware playback of anything/everything at full HDTV resolutions. A fanless 8500GT would provide lots of extra horsepower, but those apparently suffer more from heat/cooling issues.


Not there yet. The development stream has it working -- I actually tried it out here yesterday, and it does work -- but that development stream is NRFPT right now. Within a year or so it will be there.

I'm considering doing a backport of the h/w playback stuff to the current stable stream. None of the Mythtv devs are interested in doing it, but really.. it doesn't look that hard to do, and tons of people would love to have it. Me included.

Cheers

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/VDPAU
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf


Cheers

To go back to the components side a bit, you might want to look at unifying what company you buy everything from. Many are offering nice links between their equipment over HDMI to make things easier to control. Sony for example has a feature in most of their products now called "Bravia Link". This allows all the devices to seamlessly integrate into the interface on the TV. You can then just use one remote to control most of the functions you would need. It looks like Samsung calls theirs "Anynet".

On the media/PC side, you may be able to skip the box under the TV completely, as some offer DLNA compatible network streaming either built in, or via a box that attaches to the back of the TV.

Features like this are why I will probably look at replacing my system at some point in the future all in one go.

It's more that I don't want to have to play with it.

Are there some links to a hardware reference platform where one can see an example of a complete hardware setup using one of the mentioned cards? Such a setup should have HDMI output with audio and video, additional video outputs and additional audio outputs (analog and digital). It should also have some type of IR receiver and of course at minimum 100mbit LAN.

The NVIDIA links provided just seem to be about published APIs to their video cards. Stuck in the lurch is still the building and configuration of a stealth/small/silent box to run the front end software and connect to your AV rack.


EDIT: This is the cheapest complete mini system I've found, which still excludes the NVIDIA video card:

http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M300

You'll also need memory and storage of course. Plus an IR receiver - which you'll have to connect externally (not necessarily a bad thing). There's no optical (toslink) or other (COAX) digital audio output.

So far my calculations on a mini system are about $300-500 and they're still coming up short compared to what's currently available with the Sigmatel SoC platform solutions.

Then I can only suggest SageTV with an Extender. It's the only thing that you won't have to play with, apart from some initial setup that's common to anything AV related and some basic software installation on your server PC. The software install is dead simple because the system won't be used for display or decoding. It doesn't need any fancy hardware at all.

Specifically, there are PCI cards available (yes, PCI, not just PCIe) with GeForce-8 GPUs on them that can do full hardware HD playback.

Couple one of those with a mini-ITX or nano-ITX mobo with a fanless CPU in a small case, and there's a diskless front-end client for about $200. A single MythTV backend server can support a multitude of those, limited only by network speeds. Notebooks also make good front-end clients where a huge screen is not required.

EDIT: within the next 12 months, we'll also be seeing support for Intel and AMD/ATI GPUs doing (mostly) h/w playback of HD in Myth.. spurred on by the competition (NVidia).

Myth of course also has a full web interface, with remote streaming/download capabilities which will work anywhere, provided one has sufficiently quick internet connections.

We just need to get the hardware HD playback out of the development stream and into the the main stream.

Cheers

In theory this is a great idea - it would ideally work with components from any brand. In practice it's not that great because you'll have to stick with a single brand. No single brand offers high quality gear in every product segment.



A decent universal remote such as one from Universal Remotes or a Harmony will be able to deal with the multiple devices. It may be easier than using the included remote from any one of the devices, even if they interlink.

I don't think there's huge value in pairing audio processing gear with the same brand video display gear. The video display for the most part can be treated as a dumb display device that needs not much more than an ON and OFF control. This is especially true is using an external video processor. Many receivers today have video processing in addition to audio so you only need a single device to control switching and all processing, plus of course amplification.

As Taym suggested, the Onkyo stuff is pretty good and gets decent reviews. Likewise so too is their Integra brand (including the DHC-9.9 AV Pre-Pro I'm looking at right now). They have Receiver (with power amplification) and Pre-Amp (without power amplification) versions of their components.



The issue here is going to be format support and updates. There's a lot to do here, from container formats to audio and video codecs. You'll find most products in all classes are fairly short in this area. It's a rare component that caters to all formats. Support in a TV is likely to be on the very short side when compared to something like an Extender or Media PC which can see quicker updates duue to its position in the ecosystem and lower install base (much more risky rolling out updates to 1 million grandmas' Sony TVs than a few thousand enthusiasts).

Hmm, thinking about it I 'play' with our system once every 18 months or so. Maybe I want a new diskless FE or to include a DVB-S tuner or install it in the bathroom.

The rest of the time it 'just works'; day-in, day-out. It wakes up a few times a day, records stuff, goes to sleep, pulls in schedules, heck, it acts as our alarm clock in the morning...


What I can't live with is the "Yes it's technically simple but the license agreement says you can't..."

If I want a diskless install then it may take me a while but I'll damn well have one

Oh, also worth pointing out that a fair few Myth people have kids and at one point I was forever skipping threads on how to play entire series of "Postman Pat" or whatever back to back....
IIRC there are quite a few kid-friendly features in myth.

I also get the feeling that you don't specially want the minimalist 'designer look' solution? All Bose, no balls

Hmmmm I think the reason that I'm pushing the Myth side is that your first post started:


That suggests you are actually interested, you want the good stuff and you'll put some effort in (if not tons of cash!)

Rather than:

There are better solutions available. Intel makes/sells Atom based Mini-ITX boards for under CDN$100.

A suitable NVidia card should cost no more than $50 or so, though my search-fu fails me at the moment on finding the PCI versions that are out there.

RAM is about $12, and storage (flash card + usb dongle) is about $20 for a diskless client.

Then just find a case+psu to your liking .. lots of those out there, cheap and expensive alike.

Cheers

Yeah, like I said, $300-500 total for the mini system.

I think once the Myth group get this type of solution working full-time perhaps someone will step up and come out with a more integrated mobo offering all the pieces required along with suitable little cases. Or maybe they/you might be interested in looking into a SoC platform and then write for that instead. The hardware is much cheaper and much smaller. Not as fast, but generally it doesn't need to be.

You can see the internals of two devices from SageTV that run on Sigmatel SoC in this "unboxing" of sorts.

There isn't much stopping any enterprising individual from getting similar devices produced en-masse via an ODM/OEM if MythTV could be made to support them. The Sage guys did not design the hardware for their products.

I wanted to put my vote in for Media Portal as well. It can run in a client/server config which is basically what I do (No TV tuners, but all my media is on my file server).

My front end is also my only Blu-ray player. For Blu-ray playback remember, there are still many bugs to work out for the same features as a standalone player. For instance the only way to bitstream HD audio currently is with Asus' Xonar HDAV 1.3. (Since the Auzentech card isn't out yet.) Unfortunately last I saw this was coming at the price of reduced picture quality. So I'm currently just adding standard 5.1 S/PDIF audio to my HDMI connection providing me with standard Dolby Digital and DTS, none of the uncompressed HD audio. There are plugins for Media Portal to seamlessly launch PowerDVD or ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre, so it can all be done from the one interface. I do use AnyDVD HD as well as it eliminated all non-playing discs.

My front end is:
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 (2.2 Ghz) (Zalman CPU fan)
2 GB Ram (Not enough for both Media Portal and PowerDVD to run at the same time on Vista, but it's my current mobo's max.)
LG Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive - Which included PowerDVD 7 Ultra
Fanless MSI GeForce 8500 GT
100 Mb LAN ->Plenty to stream HD video from my file server
80GB IDE hard drive I had lying around.
nMedia PC case that included an IR port and remote.

I can only hear it when everything is off. I've definitely spent quite a bit on it, but I'd estimate I'm still under $1k.

Mmm.. must be that new math they talked about back in the '70s or something.

But even if it were $300, then that's still $200-$300 cheaper than the existing commerical solution being touted.

EDIT: mind you, I still suggest SageTV as an alternative to people who are pretty clueless overall about this technology.. mostly because it means they wouldn't end up coming to me for support afterwards!

Cheers

I'll step up for this one.

You want a Panasonic Veria Plasma, these babies have what Panny calls TUF displays. (Tough Under Force) There is an extra piece of glass in front of the panel, making it more resistant to breakage. Available in 720p, 1080i and various sizes.

AFAIK Panasonic is the only flat panel maker that incorporates additional protection against breakage. Curiously neither they nor anyone else seems to be playing this up as major benefit.

from amazon.co.uk

* Super Contrast--native contrast ratios on the PZ85, PZ800 series are 30,000:1, double last year's 15,000:1. Dynamic contrast ratios are up to 1,000,000:1.
* new anti-reflective filter; lead-free "Tough Under Force" panel is resistant to impacts and scratches
* Built-in SD card slot with Photo Viewer/Gallery Player software
* x.v. colour and Deep colour (HDMI 1.3 features)
* 24p native reproduction
* Game Mode auto-adjusts image quality suitable to games and includes anti-image retention
* Viera Link is now compatible with Onkyo and Yamaha home theater systems
* At least 2 HDMI inputs on all models (4 on PZ800 series)
* THX Certification on PZ800 and PZ850 series


EDIT: A video of a panny demo of TUF.

Must be. You're skipping over the "unpriced" items though... Every little thing adds up.

The prices quoted add up to nearly $200 on their own. But then there are the prices for the rest of the kit. Figure another $90+ for a case, IR receiver and PSU. Plus there's still the question of audio - do the $100 mini-ITX boards have spdif?



The Sigmatel boxes only cost between $150 and $230 complete. The server costs are exactly the same for SageTV as they are for Myth and both are highly configurable. About the only thing you can't do with SageTV is compile it yourself. It's also available for Linux with likely the exact same hardware support as Myth.

The primary reason I suggest it "right now" is because of the Extenders and low total cost of setup/ownership. There's just simply no way you can build a mini system of any kind that will offer the capabilities of the Sigmatel SoC using off-the-shelf components for a price anywhere near what's out there right now from Sage and others. Maybe in a year's time, but not right now.



I generally just tell those people to lust after my modest setup and forget about a PVR of their own. Or get a TiVo.

Anyway, considering SageTV is the only solution out there today offering the same wide range of capture device support as Myth and with the added capability for a small, low-priced, silent and feature-rich extender, the Myth comparison for this type of complete client-server setup is moot.

It's quite easy to put together a complete HT setup including one extender for under $1000. Apart from some basic requirements, that cost will grow primarily with the choice of how much disk space to include/add.

Not sure if anyone's addressed the TV options yet, but just in case it hasn't been mentioned:

No light control in your room: LCD

A very good amount of light control: Pioneer Kuro (no, not just plasma, get a Kuro)

Complete light control: front projection (though obviously this requires a lot more than just controlling the light to set up)

That's how I'm treating my future TV purchases. At the moment I can't really get my TV room dark at all during the day, so I have LCD. If I ever had a basement with no windows, I'd be awfully tempted to put a front projection system in there.

Ah.. but we're forgetting about the $300 of software required to make it become anything other than a paperweight. Details, details..

Cheers