NOOO!!!! PCAlchemy has closed its doors...

Damn, I just got an RMA from them two days ago. I hope they still refund the money. :-(
 
They've been trying to sell off as much product as possible (hence the deals they've had recently) too make as much of what they've spent back. The HTPC market isn't as lucrative anymore.

Good luck to them all! I loved PCA!
 
CrimandEvil said:
They've been trying to sell off as much product as possible (hence the deals they've had recently) too make as much of what they've spent back. The HTPC market isn't as lucrative anymore. . . .
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That's because Blu-R is such a pain to work with, the casual users stay away. Thanks Sony.
 
twil said:
That's because Blu-R is such a pain to work with, the casual users stay away. Thanks Sony.
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Wait. You have to be fucking kidding me. You think Sony is to blame for near shittastic Blu Ray support? It's Sony's fault that MS doesn't want to intergrate Blu Ray playback into VMC because then they'd be supporting a version of Java that isn't their own? It's Sony's fault that few people see the point in having a PC connected to their TV and instead want some sort of craptastic extender device? It's Sony's fault that Intel, NV, AMD, PowerDVD, etc can't get TrueHD/DTS-MA output working right?

Yeah, shut the fuck up please. You have no point.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Wait. You have to be fucking kidding me. You think Sony is to blame for near shittastic Blu Ray support? It's Sony's fault that MS doesn't want to intergrate Blu Ray playback into VMC because then they'd be supporting a version of Java that isn't their own? It's Sony's fault that few people see the point in having a PC connected to their TV and instead want some sort of craptastic extender device? It's Sony's fault that Intel, NV, AMD, PowerDVD, etc can't get TrueHD/DTS-MA output working right?

Yeah, shut the fuck up please. You have no point.
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I didn't know SONY's Head of NA Operations was a member of this board. I guess your position is so weak that it won't withstand any opposing commentary. Sorry your Sony stock options are in the toilet.
 
Sorry, gonna have to side with Crim on this one ;)

Honestly, the HTPC market has been taking a hard hit long before BlueRay. What with the completely incompetent support for CableCard, what appears to now just have been a "pipe dream" for a DirectTV based tuner, the completely lackluster market penetration of Windows Media Center.....

The difficulties with Blue-Ray may have contributed to the current state of HTPCs, but it was in no way the primary factor...
 
CrimandEvil said:
Wait. You have to be fucking kidding me. You think Sony is to blame for near shittastic Blu Ray support? It's Sony's fault that MS doesn't want to intergrate Blu Ray playback into VMC because then they'd be supporting a version of Java that isn't their own? It's Sony's fault that few people see the point in having a PC connected to their TV and instead want some sort of craptastic extender device? It's Sony's fault that Intel, NV, AMD, PowerDVD, etc can't get TrueHD/DTS-MA output working right?

Yeah, shut the fuck up please. You have no point.
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QFT

Sorry twil but the guy is right, Sony has almost nothing to do with the shitty support.
No blu-ray integration for Windows operating systems is a pain in the ass but using Powerdvd has been seamless, even BD-Live titles have worked excellent.
 
Rip PCA
You'll be missed.
Wish I would've bought an antenna from them before they closed.
 
I bought a few parts from them here or there, but I'd disagree with it being BR's or even the state of the HTPC industry to blame for their demise - As a former worker-bee of a computer shop, all I can say is that it sucks to be a little guy in the PC components business. PCA typically had 'higher than Newegg' prices, however, had a higher level of service and better variety for HTPCs. Unfortunatly, because of their size, they were likely paying their distributors about what NewEgg was selling the same parts for, which makes it very difficult to compete. The margins suck in this business - the one thing that I learned from my years in the business that there's not enough money in it for a sustainable enterprise (speaking specifically towards computer parts/systems sales - repair can be viable if you do it right).

Anyhow, not to derail, RIP PCA.
 
I'm not getting in an argument over something so stupid. Not worth it.


Schro said:
The margins suck in this business - the one thing that I learned from my years in the business that there's not enough money in it for a sustainable enterprise (speaking specifically towards computer parts/systems sales - repair can be viable if you do it right).
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Back when I used to do computer support, I'd never sell my own components. Id either have the business buy them directly, or purchase them myself and just invoice the customer with the exact price I paid. Trying to fight customers over the markup necessary to make it worthwhile, when "I can get it from Best Buy for cheaper" wasn't worth it. I'd just have them buy it, and charge them labor for installing/working with it.
 
What the hell are you talking about and what the hell is the point? Blu Ray isn't what killed PC Alchemy nor is it whats slowly killing the HTPC market. If you want to lay blame then it's squarely on MS for not knowing their own market and segmenting it with shit like "TV Pack" and either dropping or not implementing features that the community wants/needs.

Either way, you're trolling a thread just like the other guy. Drop your crap.
undyingshadow said:
Like Hell, Sony has always been proprietary to the extreme, and hate everything they can't control. You gave them their way when blu-ray won, and they're going to try their damnedest to control the format. And you're insane if you think Sony doesn't have their fingers in everything Blu-ray regardless of what the Blu-Ray board claims. The idiotic insistence on having everything HDCP screwed everything up. (Can't blame Sony exclusively for this one, because all the studios wanted it, and HD-DVD had it too)
The fact remains, no one putting out movies wants their shit anywhere NEAR PC's, and they'd love nothing more than if PC's didn't even exist, so we all had to use their shitty components for everything entertainment related.

That said, the fact that its such a PITA to work with Blu-Ray ensures that vendors and manufactures give it terrible support, and we're forced to use absolutely HORRIBLE software (I'm looking at you, PowerDVD) that infuriate the most patient among us.
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They are usually my first stop for anything HTPC related. Their prices are usually pretty fair so I usually give them the nod. Quite sad...
 
Trepidati0n said:
They are usually my first stop for anything HTPC related. Their prices are usually pretty fair so I usually give them the nod. Quite sad...
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The worst of it is, that always carried the weird tuners/heat syncs and other misc that I needed for my products, that places like Newegg do not care about....
 
It seems that even the few people who are into the HTPC-thing wants to get out and go the extender route. I hang out on missingremote.com most of the time and have seen several once-firm supporters and users of an actual HTPC in the living room talking about changing to an extender. True that they're generally smaller, quieter, and cheaper, but they just don't have the flexibility you get with having a true PC in the room. You don't have to worry about the device not supporting a particular format. With a PC, you can get anything you want to play. I like having everything integrated into one thing. I can watch DVD, DivX, Bluray, and Digital TV right from one source. You go with an extender and you're still going to have to get a bluray player, assuming you want it.

And I agree with the others...when I saw the comment about BR having anything to do with PCA closing I had a very confused look. I guess bluray's to blame for what's going on in Gaza, too.
 
OT....

Well, I'm one of those people moving to extenders, but SageTV has a really nice extender IMO. I always thought I would keep a PC client, but after two years and never once playing a video game or surfing the web on them, I decided to take a harder look at what I wanted. My game room had some emulators installed, but I never played them because when we are up there we are usually trying to get my daughter ready for naptime/bedtime so she is watching Dora or some other kid's show.

As for Blu-ray, we get to watch maybe 1 movie a month and DVD is still fine for us.

So really we just don't use any of the extra capabilities of a PC. The only things I haven't been able to play with my SageTV HD200 extender are some .MKV trailers, which play fine on a Dell 745 with integrated graphics :rolleyes: Hopefully SageTV will get the MKV support fixed soon.
 
But if it kills the HTPC it's going to kill extenders too. Unless you're talking about the DRM crap that you buy on the 360 or PS3. I have Sage Client on my main PC so I can watch something from the HTPC. I just feel like with extenders there's always going to be something that it can't play. There's going to be new formats for the PC that an extender can't play until either the next generation of extenders or some type of firmware upgrade.
 
Well, mostly it's people moving from VMC to SageTV and then deciding to add some SageTV Extenders into the mix. Moving to SageTV because it offers so much more then what MS is which, frankly, is sad because a company like MS could really pull some awesome features out but instead they're willing to hang with a feature set that is three to four years too old (TV Pack finally caught VMC up to where other PVR apps where over a year ago by adding in QAM support),

Other then MS's own interests theres nothing else stopping them from releasing some sort of VMC lite client that can connect and extend the VMC experience on the PC to another PC. Resource sharing or Softsled, either way they really need it.
htpc_user said:
It seems that even the few people who are into the HTPC-thing wants to get out and go the extender route. I hang out on missingremote.com most of the time and have seen several once-firm supporters and users of an actual HTPC in the living room talking about changing to an extender. True that they're generally smaller, quieter, and cheaper, but they just don't have the flexibility you get with having a true PC in the room. You don't have to worry about the device not supporting a particular format. With a PC, you can get anything you want to play. I like having everything integrated into one thing. I can watch DVD, DivX, Bluray, and Digital TV right from one source. You go with an extender and you're still going to have to get a bluray player, assuming you want it.
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And I agree with the others...when I saw the comment about BR having anything to do with PCA closing I had a very confused look. I guess bluray's to blame for what's going on in Gaza, too.
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Blu Ray killed Kennedy!
 
spacetrader said:
DRM is KILLING HTPC projects worldwide. its fuckin digusting.
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Please :rolleyes: So far DRM hasn't impacted my SageTV setup one single time. Maybe I'm just not using it for the right things....

Music - no problems
TV - no problems
DVDs - no problems


As for the extenders, the major benefit for me was the reduction in "tinkering" time spent on the client boxes. Every time SageTV came out with a new version I had to update the server and each client. I usually tried to keep up to date with drivers for all the hardware or I was testing out little "tweaks" to try to either improve performance or speed things up. I finally got s3 suspend mode working on 2 of the 3, but the one I have left still has issues and for no reason whatsoever will just wake up in the middle of the night. Still haven't tracked that down and it is pretty annoying since it is in the bedroom.

With the extenders I just plug it in, configure it and don't worry about it anymore. My HD100 has been running for 2 months without a single reset (something I couldn't reliably do with my client boxes) and my HD200 is going on 3 weeks straight out of the box.

The Microsoft thing is definately part of the problem, IMO, for the HTPC-oriented businesses. Many of them started up right around the time that MCE2005 was released. I'm sure they were betting on the idea that the leader in OS sales was finally going to push the media center into the living room. Unfortunately, Microsoft has treated MCE just a step above it's Windows Mobile OS, which is to say they tossed it the left over scraps and are just waiting for it to starve. They've had so many opportunities to make Media Center a really great application but they keep sticking their heads up their own tails. WHS and MCE, for example, should have been designed to integrate seamlessly for a server/client setup. The lack of QAM support was rediculous. The fact you had to "hack" MCE just to get more than 2 tuners :rolleyes: The list just keeps going....

I'm really glad I made the choice to go with SageTV in the first place. And every license I bought was from PCAlchemy. Heck the only piece of HTPC equipment/software I didn't buy from them was my HDHomeRun, until SageTV came out with their HD extenders. They were the only ones I could get SageTV licenses from besides directly from SageTV, Newegg never carried them :p
 
CrimandEvil said:
Well, mostly it's people moving from VMC to SageTV and then deciding to add some SageTV Extenders into the mix. Moving to SageTV because it offers so much more then what MS is which, frankly, is sad because a company like MS could really pull some awesome features out but instead they're willing to hang with a feature set that is three to four years too old (TV Pack finally caught VMC up to where other PVR apps where over a year ago by adding in QAM support),

Other then MS's own interests theres nothing else stopping them from releasing some sort of VMC lite client that can connect and extend the VMC experience on the PC to another PC. Resource sharing or Softsled, either way they really need it.



Blu Ray killed Kennedy!
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Yes, I agree, I used to run 2 HTPCs and with Sage, I just run a server with Sage on it, and HD100 Extenders at the tvs....
Windows Media Center, has always had limits that were very "tight" having to hack things to make QAM work until recently.... And lets not forget the broadcast flag.... These things make HTPCs not high sellers, which had to hurt PCAlchemy......
 
I really wish Microsoft would make softsled a reality. It's ridiculous that Sage can do it, but Microsoft won't.
 
I for one can say that Sage releasing the extender product has kept me from building over a half dozen full blown HTPC's. I have 3, and my parents have 3 as well.

There's just no need when I can buy a $200 extender than does everything I need, even if it doesn't support playing a DVD disc directly. Especially since buying a decent inexpensive dvd player gets the job done.
 
I have a PC in each one of our rooms any way. I have SageTV running on my HTPC connected in the family room; I have SageTV Client running on my main PC in the "computer room". I have a PC in my son's room which uses MCE 2005. When my 16-month gets older, I'll put a PC in his room. It would just be easier if I could run some type of client on everything. I know I could get Sage client for each one, but it would be nice if the ability was already integrated into Microsoft's own OS.
 
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