< $250 HTPC?

Jenspm · Post by **Jenspm** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 2:08 am

$250 being the price of the Popcorn Hour, is it possible to build something better for that price?

Requirements:
1. It should send both audio and video through HDMI
2. Has to be silent
3. Has to be powerful enough to play anything at 1080p (most of my stuff is x264, but it should be powerful enough to play untouched blurays as well)
4. 2 HDD drive bays would be lovely
5. Has to be in a reciever-like case (horizontal, you know what I'm talking about)

I have a spare 3800+, DFi Lanparty S939 and a gig of 540mhz DDR Ram lying around - Don't know if any of this can be used..

Thanks

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 3:04 am

Sure it can. Its not most energy effecient one, but pair it with let's say sapphire HD 4650 GDDR2 with HDMI and you got plenty power, HDMI and Iron level HD playback in quite powerful GPU even for medicore playing.

But since your motherboard is old DFI lanparty, which is ATX, your only chouice for HTPC look is Antec Fusion Max, which is big but also stylish and good case for full ATX htpc set up.

review in here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/Antec_Fusion_Remote_Max
Case itself is around 200$ and HD 4650 is anything between 40-60$

Of course if you don't care about looks you can get regular tower and use it and save quite bit.

Ideal combo would still be 780G mATX motherboard with AMD 5050e 2GB memory and regular NSK2400 ( http://www.silentpcreview.com/article591-page1.html ) which basicly about half of the price of Fusion max. In mATX 780G you don't need VGA card, but have VGA, DVI and HDMI and integrated videocard is plenty powerful for off loading really well the HD playback from CPU.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 3:15 am

Consider this http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MzE= and a low profile graphics card like NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS. Is plenty for HTPC and accelerates HD video nicely. Many versions don't have HDMI natively, but have an S/PDIF input header and carry audio through DVI and using a DVI-HDMI adapter you'll get what you want for very little money. You just need a Micro-ATX motherboard and are good to go. If you can push the budget further, consider this http://www.silentpcreview.com/article892-page1.html and pair it with any budget CPU

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:39 am

Offtopic: LOL there's something wrong with SPCR, the title for this thread in the "SPCR Forum" column is:

LodeHacker, 26/06/09 (2 Replies

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:25 am

Mats wrote:Offtopic: LOL there's something wrong with SPCR, the title for this thread in the "SPCR Forum" column is:
LodeHacker, 26/06/09 (2 Replies

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 2:04 pm

Jenspm wrote:$250 being the price of the Popcorn Hour, is it possible to build something better for that price?

I think it depends how comfortable you are fiddling around with Linux. To get the cost that low, you will definitely need the OS to be free. There are some good packages out there that have exactly the functionality you want, but still not as easy as Popcorn Hour where OS is pre-configured. However, you also get flexibility beyond what PH offers . . . The downside of going with Linux over Windows is that you are far more restricted when it comes to adding peripherals like remote controls and VFD -- but your choices will be even more constrained by budget, at $250, anyway.

Honestly, I think you need to be prepared to spend more to get something that is truly better. If $250 is actually your budget, something like Popcorn Hour is probably the way to go. DIY is probably more in the $400-600 range, depending on OS choice. Both choices are potentially a good value for the money, it really all depends on how much flexibility you need.

mgarl10024 · Post by **mgarl10024** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 5:21 am

Hi Jenspm,

I can't comment so much on the hardware side of things as these guys can, but I can tell you that I recently built a HTPC from a 780g and 5050e combo.

To keep costs down, I went the Linux route and put on MythTV - http://www.mythtv.org/.

I have personally found the MythTV software to be excellent. It's very flexible (which you can read two ways - it will do just about whatever you want it to (and more if you are a coder), but that does mean there are about a million and one configuration settings).

The trickier bit for me (partially my knowledge) has been getting the 780g and the sound working reliably at the OS level for MythTV to sit on top of. The support for the 780g is not great (very simply, you have a choice of a limited opensource driver or two, or a proprietary driver which does more but doesn't work well with MythTV), and the state of sound in Linux is a bit of a mess.

In short, if you're comfortable with Linux (or prepared to give it a go), do try MythTV - it wont cost you anything, and might save you loads. Plus, if it all goes pearshaped you can always fork out for Windows Media Center.

Hope that helps,

MG

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