Hello Guys and Gals,

My personal computer at home is nearing death and combined with the nervousness of losing my data and being plain fed up with it taking 30 minutes to boot and being unable to browse the internet; I’m looking into other options.

This thought times well with another idea/thought/plan of mine. My family and I have amassed a rather large DVD collection over the past few years. I don’t want to have to take away the ones that are mine and I would like access to some of the ones that are theirs. However, making DVD copies of everything would be extremely unrealistic.

I was giving consideration to the idea of having a computer that I can burn all of the DVDs to and then play the DVDs off the computer and through the TV and surround sound system. (IE. Have the computer be a media center for DVDs). I thought some of you have already done something like this and wanted to reach out to you for any ideas or thoughts on this project.

My chief concerns would be:
1. Cost of the entire project
2. Would true surround sound playing off the computer be possible
3. Quality of the movies once burned to the hard drive and playing from the computer to the TV

Thanks again for your time and ideas,

Duke

 

Absolutely!

Here's a good starting point for ideas.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26

I've looked into it and a reasonable Theater PC can be built at a price comparable to any other high end PC. Just throw some extra equipment in like ATSC tuner cards for HD signal, digital audio out for your receiver, video capture and software and the like. There are Blu-Ray and HDDVD disk drives on the market as well. It's usually recommended that your data (movies, music, etc) be stored on a separate hard drive or server. Than the operating system.

Best part about it is as technology develops, you can upgrade your HTPC without breaking the bank on new equipment.
Bonus: Some TV tuner cards come with DVR software, so you get a "free" DVR out of the deal.

 

I've had nothing but Media Centers since they came out. While I don't try to load them to the internal memory, they play better on the Media Center than on my high dollar entertainment center. It will depend on the sound card and the speaker system but I watch movies on the computer, not in the living room. I don't think loading the movies to the computer will work very well. Most movies are about 8 meg and it won't take many to fill a drive. There may be technology out there to compress these files but the quality would be suspect. If you haven't heard a Klipsch surround sound system, it's awesome and will rearrange the furniture at volume.
My .02

 

Thanks for the guidance fellas!

My girlfriend and I just got engaged so this project will be used as my personal computer for now and then be put in the upstairs family room of our house once we buy a home.

The eventual plan is to move it downstairs for the movie room once we finish the basement but that would be a longer time frame and we'd be using the upstairs family room for a movie room in the mean time. Thus the tower would be my computer in the family room and the TV would be the monitor.

That is a good point on movie storage that I didn't think of and that's to put it on a separate drive. I'm not too worried about each movie being 8 meg as I'd put 2 hard drives in the tower. 1 500 GB drive for movie storage and then a small 125 GB drive for the OS.

 

For a entertianment system like you are looking for would be this:

Several hundred GIGs of HDD space. AT LEAST 200GBs IMHO
High end tv tuner card with HD to support quality graphics to the TV.
I would use a seperate card for the monitor, even a cheap on just for display.
High quality sound card supporting several inputs/outputs and respectively the type of surround sound you want to use. ie. dolby, etc.

For rendering video without it being choppy, a high amount of ram something at least 2 gig.

Of course a decent processor. Intel pentium xxxxx

Pretty much a high end system.

Of course drivers and software are also suspect in something like this.

You can also use a system like this to be a TIVO type of equipment with the right software.

I am building one for my truck with windows CE.

 

Well I'm reading the following thread and I'm quickly realizing that:

A) This is going to be a lot more money then I was anitcipating (hoping to keep it under $800)

and

B) This is going to take a lot more time then I was hoping to take.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...t=940972#Intro

 

Eh, just start with the less expensive stuff and get your feet wet. Build up over time as you grow accustomed to using it and figure out exactly what more you need to do with it.

That way, one day you can work up to this:

 

8 meg's per movie? Seems a tad off there. You could easily store LOTS of 8 meg videos on a modern inexpensive hard drive.

Also check out www.mythtv.com I've been wanting to build one of these for a long time. If I hadn't modded my ReplayTV to be a 250hour one, I'd have gone that route by now.

 

FWIW, you don't have to get a media center PC case. I just built a new PC right before Christmas:

Abit IP35 Pro ATX MoBo
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz @ 1333 FSB
Powercolor licensed - ATI Radeon 2600HD XT (with the DVI to HDMI adapter)
2 GB Ram - Corsair
Seagate 250 GB HDD
Plextor PX-800A DVD/CD burner (multi-format)

All total: 771.42 w/ shipping, BEFORE rebates

Then I bought a new case for it:

Antec TX1050B w/ power supply. This is a great case, I have two of them and the wife has one. It appears to have been discontinued in favor of a new line. I think the case took me up to 940.

Anyway, I think you can build a decent machine for your budget, but you may have to do some shopping around and may need to reuse a case you already have or something.

Once you have the base machine, then you can add HDD space by adding them as you need to. Unless you want to spend half your budget on a single Terabyte Drive.

 

My brother does just that. He has ripped all his DVD's and stores them on hard drives on one computer that mutiple computers and TV's can access. A true dedicated HTPC doesn't need the latest hardware specs. I mean a 5 year old Celeron with 512MB RAM and built can play a DVD without skipping a beat. If you want video editing, you need power. DVD playback is fine on any 5 year old laptop, even with 5.1 channel audio.

BTW, 8GB per movie is probably what Labnerd meant. You can often get that down to 4GB if you only rip the movie, not the whole disc with extras/menus/multiple audio tracks, etc. you can also convert the Vobs to .avi with better compression, about 1.5GB for a 2hr movie.

 

The more HDD you have, the better off you are going to be. If you start doing HD movies, M2TS files will be 10GB per HOUR. I currently have 2 250GB HDD internal for everything but movies and a external E-SATA box holding 4HDDs totaling 1.9TB for movies and backups. I am soon going to have to beef that up.

 

So I read that thread and it really looks like you can go nuts with this and do gaming and everything else imagineable but that is all way out of my budget. Besides if I'm gaming it's few and far inbetween and is done on the 360 or Wii.

So any tips on hardware if I'm just looking to burn my original DVDs to a hard drive and play them back with excellent clarity and sound? It'd be nice to be able to copy/play HDDVD and play Blue Ray disks too.

Thanks,

Duke

 

My wife just sent this to me:

http://www.3rsys.com/english/product...ase&idx_num=88

talk about blowing the budget.

As for playing HD DVD and/or Blu-Ray: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...3&Tpk=hd%2bdvd

I've only seen one HD DVD burner, it's a Toshiba, and last I saw, it was only available w/ a new system. Blu-Ray burners are available from several manufacturers: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2f+DVD+Burners

 

APT, that's what I figured. I was trying to remember how big the files were that I ripped from DVD to ipod format that were still in a resolution that could be played on TV from the ipod and it seems like they were at about 850MB. So I was thinking 8MB was really off the mark. Didn't want the guy planning to buy hardware based on that quote.

I'm guessing Kingfish51 is also meaning 10GB instead of 10MB per hour.

Also, if your only ripping, you don't need a burner, just a reader.

 

So a runnig list of what I need:

1. A tower
2. CPU
3. Heat sink
4. Hard drive for OS
5. Hard drive for storage
6. Memory
7. Very nice graphics card
8. Very nice sound card
9. Player for HD-DVD and Blue Ray - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...3&Tpk=hd%2bdvd
10. Faster DVD/CD burner
11. OS for computer (probably just XP)
12. Software for DVD, HD-DVD, and Blue Ray ripping