HomeTheater recommendation

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spike99

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 29, 2007
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112
Hi,

I'm looking for recommendation for a hometheater PC.

Basically, I would like to stream Spotify & movies (for example HBO GO) and I would like the best audio/picture quality. Right now I'm not downloading movies/music but It's possible in the future.

Initially I was thinking of buying a laptop and possibly buying a long HDMI cable or I could go with a HTPC.

I currently have a pretty good 5.2 speaker system with pre-pro (Integra 80.3) and a separate AMP (Emotiva XPA-5).

I find that its more intuitive to use a PC vs using Roku, audio quality is horrible when I use my IPad with Airplay via Apple TV... and using spotify directly from my pre-pro... audio quality is really good but not as intuitive and does not contain the features that a PC would have...

Thanks in advance.
 
What's your price range and size constraints? You can probably get away with an all in one mini-itx board like an Atom/Ion or a Zacate. Otherwise, the i3-2105 or something similar is a pretty solid choice. There's not much reason to go any above that. The onboard GPU is enough for 1080p playback, and you can use audio over HDMI for your Integra. Actually, come to think of it, that Integra is total overkill for a HTPC. I'll trade you my Denon AVR-591 for it. You pay shipping and it's a deal. :D
 
if your going to be using streaming services, theres not alot you can do for picture quality except for calibrating your display. id use kylo browser.
 
nalc said:
What's your price range and size constraints? You can probably get away with an all in one mini-itx board like an Atom/Ion or a Zacate. Otherwise, the i3-2105 or something similar is a pretty solid choice. There's not much reason to go any above that. The onboard GPU is enough for 1080p playback, and you can use audio over HDMI for your Integra. Actually, come to think of it, that Integra is total overkill for a HTPC. I'll trade you my Denon AVR-591 for it. You pay shipping and it's a deal. :D
Click to expand...

I really don't have a price range... But probably will top 1,500.

I did not get my pre-pro Integra for a HTPC... This is what I have in my current Home Theater living room mainly to watch Blu Ray movies. I would like to add a HTPC and connect it to my AVR

Ideally, as mentioned before... I would like to stream music and movies from PC to my home theater. Also, would like possibly a Bluetooth Keyboard to surf the internet...
 
spike99 said:
I really don't have a price range... But probably will top 1,500.

I did not get my pre-pro Integra for a HTPC... This is what I have in my current Home Theater living room mainly to watch Blu Ray movies. I would like to add a HTPC and connect it to my AVR

Ideally, as mentioned before... I would like to stream music and movies from PC to my home theater. Also, would like possibly a Bluetooth Keyboard to surf the internet...
Click to expand...

i would look into totally silent itx HTPC builds based around an i3. if you dont want to build yourself they have some places that have good models but you can save alot doing yourself.
 
Procyon12 said:
if your going to be using streaming services, theres not alot you can do for picture quality except for calibrating your display. id use kylo browser.
Click to expand...

Calibrating my display ? Actually I do have my plasma TV calibrated... not sure if that's what u mean...

When you say not being able to do much for picture quality... what does that mean ? I won't get a good pic quality ? If I plan to stream movies... for example HBO GO via eg Internet Explorer/Chrome... I won't get a good pic quality ?
 
spike99 said:
Calibrating my display ? Actually I do have my plasma TV calibrated... not sure if that's what u mean...

When you say not being able to do much for picture quality... what does that mean ? I won't get a good pic quality ? If I plan to stream movies... for example HBO GO via eg Internet Explorer/Chrome... I won't get a good pic quality ?
Click to expand...

youll have to calibrate each input.

and im saying that the quality wont vary. theres not alot you can do to change the picture quality because hbo go is all flash video.

it is what it is. i dont know the quality of HBO GO, but it should be as good as it comes on anything else.
 
Couple more questions...

1. Do I need to buy a sound card ? Obviously, I want the best audio quality possible... In my main gear I have a HT | OMEGA Claro Halo XT sound card... which sound really good. I will be plugging to my AVR
2. What is the best video card for HTPC ? Should I be plugging video card directly to TV or AV receiver ? I would probably prefer connecting to AV receiver... (No need to change TV input)
3. What case is recommend... obviously the small the better... to be place in living room. I checked AsRock Mini PC Series... case size is obviously ideal... but don't know how if sound/video it outputs is the best ...
4. Wireless keyboard... Any recommendations for Logitech diNovo Mini ?

Thanks in advance.
 
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I've done a bit more research...

1. Considering GT640 (HQV 2.0 result = 178) vs Radeon HD 7750 (HQV 2.0 result = 193). The 7750 looks better than NVIDIA ?
2. Doesn't appear that I need a separate sound card ?
3. For case.. Currently looking at Antec NSK 2480
 
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in all honesty, none of those are going to matter for flash video playback (HBO Go)

if your going that high end on an HTPC, consider dumping your BD player and using the HTPC.
 
Procyon12 said:
in all honesty, none of those are going to matter for flash video playback (HBO Go)

if your going that high end on an HTPC, consider dumping your BD player and using the HTPC.
Click to expand...

Are you suggesting that I can match or surpass my Blu Ray Player OPPO BDP-93 with a HTPC ? Will I be able to get DTS TRUE HD from a HTPC ?

Also, once in a while I do watch Netflix... Will Netflix be better thru HTPC or OPPO ?
 
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spike99 said:
Calibrating my display ? Actually I do have my plasma TV calibrated... not sure if that's what u mean...
Click to expand...

With a HTPC, you can do color management. If you've got a colorimeter (or better yet, a spectrophotometer), you can create a profile for your display, and then set your playback software to do color management. If your TV has been professionally calibrated already, I wouldn't bother.


spike99 said:
1. Do I need to buy a sound card ? Obviously, I want the best audio quality possible... In my main gear I have a HT | OMEGA Claro Halo XT sound card... which sound really good. I will be plugging to my AVR
Click to expand...

No. Just use audio over HDMI. Your Integra can handle the digital to analog conversion just fine. HDMI can support more audio standards than optical or coaxial SPDIF anyway.

spike99 said:
2. What is the best video card for HTPC ? Should I be plugging video card directly to TV or AV receiver ? I would probably prefer connecting to AV receiver... (No need to change TV input)
Click to expand...

Yeah, run it to the AVR, that way you get the audio.

spike99 said:
3. What case is recommend... obviously the small the better... to be place in living room. I checked AsRock Mini PC Series... case size is obviously ideal... but don't know how if sound/video it outputs is the best ...
Click to expand...

Depends. Do you want to have local storage? Do you want to have a Blu-Ray drive? That will determine how many drive bays you need. You can find a pretty small mini-ITX enclosure.

spike99 said:
4. Wireless keyboard... Any recommendations for Logitech diNovo Mini ?
Click to expand...

That's probably the best one, but it's somewhat pricey. I'd also probably grab a Windows Media Center compatible remote for the simple stupid stuff that you don't want to bust out the keyboard for.
 
BTW, Messing around with Windows Media Center... checking different shows... picture quality is not very good... seems like standard definition. I currently don't have a tuner but is this normal ?

When watching netflix/HBO GO on my PC monitor... it looks very good.

How do you tell if shows are in high definition ?
 
How are you watching shows with no tuner installed? If you have an HD tuner, you simply tune to the HD channels. You can tell when it is in HD.
 
JohnDC said:
How are you watching shows with no tuner installed? If you have an HD tuner, you simply tune to the HD channels. You can tell when it is in HD.
Click to expand...

I suppose there are free shows that are available in Media Center... I'll assume these are in STD definition.
 
OK... So I need more help...

Initially, I wanted to get a HTPC to do music, movies & TV shows....

In reality, I wanted HTPC to play high res music and all the rest were nice to haves...

I didn't find a nice IPad app to control HTPC so I gave up... and started looking at music servers and SONOS.

I do like SONOS (IPad's integration) but didn't like that it is limited to 16bit...

I find myself going back to a HTPC....

So my question is, what is the best media center software for music ? and if it has Spotify integration even better !!!

For high res music files... Is it better to get sound card or external DAC ? Any recommedations ?

Thanks..
 
Your HTPC should be connected to your receiver via HDMI. Therefore it uses the DAC in the receiver.

There's no reason for a sound card in a HTPC.

I would also like to know the best software for music. I've read Foobar2000 is recommended a lot.
 
J Macker said:
Your HTPC should be connected to your receiver via HDMI. Therefore it uses the DAC in the receiver.

There's no reason for a sound card in a HTPC.

I would also like to know the best software for music. I've read Foobar2000 is recommended a lot.
Click to expand...

Yes, I want to connect my pre/pro using HDMI... So, if I'm using a receiver no need for sound card or DAC to get best audio quality ?

Yes, I have tried Foobar2000, very good in playing music.. but I'm looking for a music software that can display album art on my TV... so I suppose a media software would be best for this ?
 
spike99 said:
Yes, I want to connect my pre/pro using HDMI... So, if I'm using a receiver no need for sound card or DAC to get best audio quality ?

Yes, I have tried Foobar2000, very good in playing music.. but I'm looking for a music software that can display album art on my TV... so I suppose a media software would be best for this ?
Click to expand...

j.river media center, media portal, xbmc
 
I use an HTPC as my primary source for all my music, movies and TV. I'm using this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GGUAUE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER case with two HDDs installed internally with a 4x2tb external USB 3.0 bay. I just use the HDMI out on my video card for DTS-MA and DDHD. I find that storing all my media digitally is far, far easier and gives me significantly higher quality compared to any streaming source or using other Tivo type devices.

My two primary players are Foobar 2000 for music and Media Player Classic for movies. I know Foobar has an App+Plugin to allow you to control it from an Apple or Android device and my receiver has an App for external control as well so I can pretty much control everything music wise from my phone or tablet if I want.
 
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grifter_66 said:
I use an HTPC as my primary source for all my music, movies and TV. I'm using this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GGUAUE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER case with two HDDs installed internally with a 4x2tb external USB 3.0 bay. I just use the HDMI out on my video card for DTS-MA and DDHD. I find that storing all my media digitally is far, far easier and gives me significantly higher quality compared to any streaming source or using other Tivo type devices.

My two primary players are Foobar 2000 for music and Media Player Classic for movies. I know Foobar has an App+Plugin to allow you to control it from an Apple or Android device and my receiver has an App for external control as well so I can pretty much control everything music wise from my phone or tablet if I want.
Click to expand...

So, I am back with plans on building a HTPC... (Looks like I gave up searching by the time the above comment was posted.)

My main reason for giving up on HTPC is because I did not find a suitable way to control my PC with my IPad. For music, I did buy a Logitech Squeeze Box and use IPad app "SqueezePad" for control.

Pretty happy with playing music... But now, I am now building a blu ray movie library all in mkv format and I would like to play these movies on my HT...

I've been starting to check how to play movies... and found JRiver has an App that can control your PC (JRemote) and play music/movies. (I'm told that I can control my PC too... but don't know if this is the case yet).

Does anyone have any experience with JRemote ? Or any other suggestion ?
Note: I suppose I can get a Bluetooth keyboard as an alternative

My other question... is that since I'm building a blu-ray mkv library... This will occupy a lot of space... For space what is the recommended suggestion for a HTPC ?
1. I have a desktop... Do I add storage to my main desktop and have HTPC access my main rig?
2. Buy a NAS Server ?
3. Build HTPC and buy a case big enough to add storage as needed ?

Note: I do have an OPPO Player and I can buy external storage and play mkv files... Would my OPPO player have a better video quality than a HTPC ? I prefer not to use OPPO due to navigation is not very good...

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
 
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Check out Ceton Companion - works with WMC and can be controlled via iPad/iPhone/WP7/Android/etc. If you use WMC for TV, you can control all of that along with you movie library. If you use MyMovies, they also have an app, but I'd recommend the Companion. You can't play music (yet) but it's in the works.

For storage, I first went with a 2TB drive in my HTPC and quickly filled it up. I then jumped to a NAS (Synology DS2413+) and love, love it!
 
Ceton Companion... looks very interesting... I will continue investigating this app...

Yes, I figured a NAS server would be the ideal solution.

Thanks for the heads up.

Note: I was also looking at Collectorz.com (these seems an extensive software to catalog your movie collection) but, I don't know if I can use their mobile apps to actually launch movies on a HTPC.
 
Many media center apps [Plex, XBMC, etc] have remote control apps for android/iOS...as for actually launching it remotely, that might require something more...I got lazy and just usesplashtop to remote into my machine from my droid and launch what I need, then use PlexRemote to run plex from there.

Another alternative is to run a media server app that has a corresponding channel/plugin on a smart TV or one of the many "hockeypuck" boxes [Roku, WD TV, Boxee, etc], and then you have a full fledged interface with a remote control...and just leave the heavy lifting to something fast & ugly in the closet
 
I use xbmc for my blu ray mkv's play back and the xbmc remote works great on my android phone or my wife's iPhone.
 
Hello,

XBMC and XBMC Commander on your iPad is what I use and all you need. For the skin, I use AEON Nox.

LJ
 
Yes, XBMC plays fine mkv files...

Some of my movies... meta data is not there... I do have enabled "The MovieDB"

Any way of doing this manually ?
 
FYI,

Figured it out... I had proxy server on... after disabling... I started getting all updates... Album art work fine now... well expect for a TV Show (Games of Thrones).

I did have some issues with some movies but after renaming them... I get all album work.

I really do like XBMC :)

When ripping movies.. I am ripping complete blu-ray movies (iso) and then I would rip to MKV. Since I did not know what format I would end up staying with... I did both...

Now the question, which should I stay with... I really don't to spend the time to do both...

Also, I would like to get a video card suggestion... Previously I was looking at GT 640, but I really don't want to make any compromises for video quality... any other recommendations ? Maybe GTX 650 TI ?
 
for watching blu-ray, anything recent that isn't an IGP would likely suffice, unless you need 3D. 650/60....560/70.


As for what format to keep, I do MP4 simply because I'm lazy and can load them up on my mobile devices, too...but I'm not sure it much matters so long as it works for you. I would think ISO would have less software that supports it, but be easier to re-convert without IQ loss later as needed.
 
Darq said:
for watching blu-ray, anything recent that isn't an IGP would likely suffice, unless you need 3D. 650/60....560/70.
Click to expand...

A modern integrated will work great for Blu-Ray, anything like a Sandy Bridge, or Ivy Bridge, and most will do 3D just fine. The AMD Trinity's are even better for on-board graphics, and 3D, and even capable of medium gaming.
 
I use the amd apu with a 6670 and handles all the movies i throw at it =p Plays some games and XBMC works great on it haha
 
give Clementine a try for your music program, it's awesome :) the only thing I miss about foobar is the global hotkeys
 
JohnDC said:
A modern integrated will work great for Blu-Ray, anything like a Sandy Bridge, or Ivy Bridge, and most will do 3D just fine. The AMD Trinity's are even better for on-board graphics, and 3D, and even capable of medium gaming.
Click to expand...

Anand states the following:
Llano, while being pretty decent for HTPC use, didn't excite us enough to recommend it wholeheartedly. Intel's Ivy Bridge, on the other hand, surprised us with its HTPC capabilities.

Discrete HTPC GPUs are necessary only if one has plans to upgrade to 4K in the near term. Otherwise, the Ivy Bridge platform has everything that a HTPC user would ever need.

I don't see my self converting to 4K any time soon... but would be nice to future proof.
 
thegrinch said:
For storage, I first went with a 2TB drive in my HTPC and quickly filled it up. I then jumped to a NAS (Synology DS2413+) and love, love it!
Click to expand...

I've been thinking about this... I understand that a NAS is always on... but question is... does it make sense to have a NAS ? Why not integrate it with HTPC ?
 
spike99 said:
I've been thinking about this... I understand that a NAS is always on... but question is... does it make sense to have a NAS ? Why not integrate it with HTPC ?
Click to expand...

I've asked myself this many times and the only answer I've been able to come up with is no.
 
Spades45 said:
I've asked myself this many times and the only answer I've been able to come up with is no.
Click to expand...

The only thing I can think of... is not including a NAS you can have a smaller case.

I do have a desktop and I can possibly add storage there...

Also, I do have Logitech Squeeze box... but it needs to access my PC so I need to turn it on.... Having a NAS, you don't need to worry about having PC on. At the same time... I was thinking about replacing my Squeeze box with XBMC... But I doubt I will replace my SB... I can do much more with SB vs XBMC.

I suppose it makes sense to have a separate storage...
 
I like having my storage some where other then in the HTPC. That way the hard drives arn't being cut on and off all the time and there in somthing being kept nice and cool. I also I have 4 HTPC's that access data in the home at difrent times so I need a cetral point for my data.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
I like having my storage some where other then in the HTPC. That way the hard drives arn't being cut on and off all the time and there in somthing being kept nice and cool. I also I have 4 HTPC's that access data in the home at difrent times so I need a cetral point for my data.
Click to expand...

Yes, makes sense to have a NAS in this scenario.

Doing a bit more research... Looks like Intel may be coming out with Haswell that includes HD 4600 (or 5000) Which should be better than HD4000.

Release date is possibly June. I'm in no rush to get HTPC... But, I probably won't see a need to get a separate GPU with this new release. Heck I don't think I need a separate GPU with Ivy Bridge...

I don't think HD4000 does 4K, and I don't see myself going 4K anytime soon... but usually good to future proof.

BTW, I'm loving XBMC... Really nice... Just what I was looking for. Can't wait to get my HTPC to put it in my HT :)
 
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