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I was over at my grandparents today, and out of dumb luck, I stumbled upon my old college 5.1 surround sound system. I worked at Radio Shack while in high school around 2000-2002, and during that time I had the opportunity to grab a few items at ridiculously low prices when they were...

Long story short, I've recently moved and have decided to centralize the A/V equipment for my place into one room (The computer room). I own the place, the cable runs are fairly short (Longest run is a 40 ft. HDMI cable) and I have easy access to run them all under the floors through the...

I'm loosely using the word "upgrade" here. They system has actually been up and running for a while now as a "proof-of-concept" phase, using parts borrowed from my other machines. I want to move these parts back to their original setups and purchase new parts that are better geared towards the...

I could use some help fine tuning a couple of overclocks. While I'm not a complete noob, it's been several years since I have done any serious overclocking and my game is obviously rusty. This all started a couple weeks ago when the mobo for my media fileserver died, so I went to Microcenter...

I've been tinkering around with my first WHS setup for about a week or so now and I'm starting to get a grasp of it. The FAQ here has been really useful, but I still have a few questions about the main reasons for me wanting to setup a WHS in the first place. The 2 main reasons I'm thinking...

Basically, I need a PSU for a new fileserver I'm putting together out of some old parts that will be storing the media for my HTPC's. I'm not a complete PSU bonehead, so normally I wouldn't be this indecisive about buying a PSU for a new build, but I'm doing this in a couple stages as I get...

I know people have been getting pretty creative with alternative uses for the Kinect, but I just saw a new Microsoft commercial that made my jaw drop. Basically, the commercial shows a couple sitting on the couch using voice commands to the Kinect to control media center on the Xbox. I...

I have been using Ripbot264 for over a year now to convert to MKV. Overall, I am quite happy with the program so I'm not really interested in switching to anything else. Despite this, I have had a nagging issue with it ever since I first started using the program. The issue is that at the very...

This is kind of a general hardware question, but I wanted to ask it here due to the situation. Basically, I'm curious of how much of a performance loss you get by having a hard drive "full". Over the years, I've always heard things like, "If your hard drive is more than X % full, you will...

I have an interesting issue that has troubled me for a couple weeks now. I'm not sure when it started exactly, but I have narrowed it down pretty specifically at least. If the display (50" Samsung plasma 1080P connected via HDMI) for my main HTPC is off and I go upstairs and watch live TV...

Basically, I'm getting annoyed with my xbox 360 extenders. It's not that they are all that bad, it's just that after 2 years of using them, my original problems with transcoding are still present. They work great with everything else, but 1080p MKV files get choppy and look like crap in general...

A couple of months ago I was given a (supposedly legit) windows 7 professional upgrade key. A co-worker was given them by his school at the time as part of their "Technology package" or whatever and gave me one. The problem is that it is just the cd key, there was no install package or physical...

Alright, I think it's time I upgrade from onboard video in my HTPC. When I built the system about 1 year ago, the onboard graphics was more than adequate. Since then, I have added 3 xbox 360's as extenders, upgraded to a 50' plasma and started going BR over DVD. This is a TV server that also...

I know this has been covered before and I apologize. I've done some research, but I feel like I'm searching for a needle in a haystack here. I think my demands might be a little steep, so I'm hoping some experts here can guide me in the right direction on what to sacrifice and what no to...

I must be missing something here, so any advice on setting up an Asus HD5670 in my HTPC is much appreciated. I have been using the onboard HD3300 very happily for almost a year now. Recently, I decided I would like to try to setup bitstreaming. I first tried it out on my HD3300 and I got 5.1...

While it is off... It first happened a month or so ago. Came back home after being gone all weekend, and I noticed there was a faint image burned in the top left corner from the recorded TV page that it was left on before we left. I chalked it up to my girlfriend doing it one evening and...

Curious question here. I am considering re-doing some movies on my HTPC, switching them from DVD to Blu-Ray copies. The more I started looking into this, the more I realized I don't know how to tell if it would be even worth it. I understand that re-doing The Godfather in blu-ray, isn't really...

I've decided that I've had enough of PowerDVD and Blu-Ray. Currently, I am using Windows 7 MCE with Media Browser for movies and MyTV for my TV series. As some of you might remember from previous threads of mine, I have recently converted all of my DVD's and media files to dvr-ms for...

I've never really given this much thought until recently, so I'm curious what others have to say. Ever since I started tinkering with HTPC's almost 5 years ago, I have always encoded my TV shows I want to save into divx. 300 megs for a 30 min show and 600 for 1 hour. Since I was pretty much only...

I've been traveling a bit more recently and this has caused me to realize I really need to figure out how to remote desktop into my HTPC to adjust recording schedules and be able to download a file if needed. I've used remote desktop software before (We use Dameware at work) so I understand the...

I am thinking of buying a 5.1 home theater system for my HTPC. For all the years I have had my HTPC, I have always just used the TV speakers (Which were fine before in a tiny apartment). Before I go and buy anything, I was wondering if I will even get true 5.1 sound with the setup I have. I am...

For those of you that haven't read my other thread (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1469604), it appears my motherboard has bit the dust and I need to replace it. I haven't been in the HTPC hardware loop for almost a year now so I definitely could use some advice on this one...

Alright, I am in desperate need of some advice here since I have been playing with this for 3 weeks now with no luck. In October I upgraded my existing HTPC with some SSD's in RAID 0, 2 HVR-2250's and a Vantec SATA PCI card as a treat to myself before I moved to Denver. I put it all together...

I'll try to make this short and sweet. Basically, I need some "nanny" software for my mother's computer. She has used a computer for over 10 years now (Mostly work purposes), but has never really used the internet in any large capacity. She has been dropping hints to me for some time now to...

I am looking to setup some backup drives for my 2 drives that store all of my music, movies and recorded tv. My original plan was to buy 2 external enclosures and keep them unplugged except for the once a week backup. Data isn't changed that frequently on the drives so a weekly backup is just...

Alright, I'll make this short and sweet. I want to free one of my SATA ports up so I can install another hard drive. My motherboard has a built in eSATA port on the back. Is it as simple as moving my Blu Ray SATA cable to the eSATA jack on the back? Aesthetics mean nothing, this computer is hidden.

I work in the IT department for my company doing IT support. Recently we have hired a number of new people and it has come to my attention that we would greatly benefit from having a knowledge base where we could store the common fixes and solutions we come across. I have web development...

Alright, I just got a new iPhone 3G which means I now need to switch my music over to itunes. I have been using winamp since 2000 for my mp3's and 99% of my 2500 songs do not have ID3 tags or anything. Winamp never had a problem just reading my file name (artist - title) so I never bothered...

Quick question about wiring... I am wall-mounting my 42 inch LCD at my new place. In an effort to hide my wiring, I am curious if I can run my TV power cable along with my video cables. I want to run my TV power cable, HDMI cable for the PC, HDMI cable for the xbox, A/V cable for the Wii and...

Alright, I have spent the past 2 months setting up, configuring and uploading my media to my new media server. Now that I have it all setup and running smoothly, I want to backup it all up so I don't have to redo all the work I have done. First, I would like to ghost my c: drive so I can re...

Weird problem here. My Vista media server will no longer boot without a vista install cd in the cd-rom and boot from cd enabled. I am not actually booting from the cd, I just have to have it in there. If I don't, startup hangs after verifing DMI Pool data. If I put the cd in the the drive, let...

The title says it all. For some reason my PVR-150 looks terrible in VMC, when it used to work just fine in Beyond TV. I have tried using vista's built in drivers, the drivers from Hauppauge's website, as well as the ones off of the install cd. All of them result in a fuzzy picture with light...

Alright, I am looking to get the best quality out of my cable connection as possible, but I am just a little confused with my cable TV situation. I currently have basic cable, which includes clear QAM HD local channels, with Time Warner in my apartment. I run VMC on my media server pc with 2...

Alright, my trusty HTPC has seem to bite the dust (Biostar T-force 7050, AMD 4000+, 2 gigs of ram, 2TB across several hard drives, Happagauge(sp?) HVR1600 and 250). For the past couple of days it has been hardlocking on me, and today it really loves to hang at the post screen. Since I am already...

This might be kind of a weird question, but an answer would save me some time. I am currently with AT&T and have been eying an iphone for a little while to use as my work phone on my company plan. I know that my company is alright with use using an iphone because several other people do. They...

Long story short, I have dead hard drive that I must recover the data from. This is for my company, and the files contain needed sales data. I don't think the drive is completely dead because I can plug it into my laptop via an external adapter and both partitions on the drive are detected. The...

I guess this is kinda of an easy question so I will get straight to the point. If I buy a video card with 2 vga outputs, can I display the same image on 2 different monitors but at different resolutions? I currently have my htpc hooked up to my 42 inch westinghouse 1080p which is perfect. The...

OK, I have had my current setup for about a year and a half now and it has served me well. While it isn't quite top of the line, I has done pretty much everything I want well. Despite this, there are a few things that I have put off and now that I have purchased a 42 inch Westinghouse LCD, well...

Alright, I just reformatted a computer and after installing service pack 3, I can now no longer install any other windows or office updates. I am pretty sure that a particular piece of software I installed did not do this because I had the same problem a couple weeks ago on a friends computer I...

I need a new wireless router quickly. I have not bought one in years so I am a little out of the loop on what are the good brands nowadays. Basically, I need something inexpensive and reliable, with a gigabit switch and wireless G. I work from home so something that needs to be restarted every...