Living room PC/Want to cancel my cable.

^Interesting. I do have an iPhone. Although I don't know for how long. Girlfriend and I are also looking at getting on the same plan on possibly switching carriers due to the EXORBITANT price of the data/text plans for our iPhones through AT&T.

As long as I can check my gmail and have a real browser, I'm not that attached to the iPhone.

Sprint would cut our combined phone bill by approx 60%. Ditching cable and getting on the same plan with a different carrier has the potential to save us as much as $200 a month in expenses. NOT insignificant.

But let's keep this thread focused on HTPCs for now.

Yeah, the girlfriend and I both have iPhones, but we don't hardly use our minutes so we have 400 to share between us and since I used to work for UPS, I get a 20% discount on our family plan. Otherwise? No iPhoney for us.

Right now we have limited basic cable and their standard internet. I really hate paying to use the internet twice, but I've not found a way around that yet.

In reply to scardeal:

The basic Mac Mini is close to $600, and goes up to $1K.

For a system that doesn't need much processing power you can do pretty much the same stuff w/ a Nettop for half the price, or a full PC w/ better specs from Dell (or built for even cheaper w/ a Linux distro on it if you want to cry about virii from five years ago).

Watch Woot.com, every once in while they have deals on reman'd systems.

That and the Dell Outlet.

"Dude! You're getting a Dell!"

fromeast2west wrote: In reply to scardeal: The basic Mac Mini is close to $600, and goes up to $1K. For a system that doesn't need much processing power you can do pretty much the same stuff w/ a Nettop for half the price, or a full PC w/ better specs from Dell (or built for even cheaper w/ a Linux distro on it if you want to cry about virii from five years ago).

I got my refurb'd Mac Mini for under $400 from the online Apple store - they don't turn up every day so you need to be patient and ready to buy when they do.

Nobody likes my AppleTV? Combined with a decent antenna fed directly to the TV I'd think it would do everything the OP wants with minimal hacks, which are easy, well documented and easily reversible. It is just a very basic Mac after all.

I went through this last year, lived with hooking up a laptop with hdmi for a while, but this past christmas got an actual pc. I just got the most basic computer I could fine with a dedicated graphics card (it ended up being an acer) from fry's electronics, hooked up the hdmi and got a wireless keyboard/mouse system guy and have been happy since. We use the windows medai center software sometimes.

Use Kylo for the browser (built for large screen tvs, it is awesome) and hulu desktop. Other stuff is just played in movie players.

An iPad is the perfect living room computer, but I'm liking the used/refurbed Mac mini idea.

I'm not opposed to building one either, in fact after doing a bit more research last night, it's the direction I'm leaning.

Thankfully I've got a buddy who is an IT guy here at a local hospital who can help me get it setup and ready to roll. Since he knows all the little tricks to get the best performance and what software I'll need.

Any suggestions on cases/mobo/CPU/graphics card? I do want dedicated video since this will also serve as the main compy in the house. And may get used for light gaming/photo editing.

Hey, nobody mentioned XBMC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC

In reply to fromeast2west:

In my experience, you get what you pay for in a Mac.
In relation to Linux, I don't have to fuss around with package management, adding mp3 and dvd support, wondering if my hardware will work, etc. I don't have to configure, configure, configure to get it where I want.

In relation to Windows, I don't have to reboot after every update, I don't have to worry about the constant threat of virii. IE is not part of my life. Multimedia doesn't seem like an afterthought. Plus, I can actually read the fonts from my couch and see the icons. I don't have to uninstall programs. I don't have the registry to deal with. My computer does not get slower month after month. I don't have a bazillion taskbar icons and add-on programs that I need to get it to run how I want.

Now, I have a Linux box that I use for work occasionally, and a windows laptop at work. I've done desktop support professionally for windows and Linux, and, per capita, the Windows boxes gave me much more trouble. So, I use a Mac.

My TV vice is college football. I'm too cheap for cable, but I wanted High Def DVR capability for the games. Here's what I do:

TV tuner card on a PC in the garage. I get all the local channels (most in HD) over unencrypted QAM with our cable internet feed. I record the programming using GBPVR which is a free media center application. Nice thing about GBPVR and QAM is that I am able to record NBC, CBS and ABC simultaneously with a single tuner. This is nice during college football season.

In the living room I have a Popcorn Hour A-100 which plays media files off the PC in the garage. From the popcorn hour I can access TV guide to set recordings etc. similar to a Tivo setup. It will also stream ripped DVD & BluRays from the PC in the garage and play them in 1080p with digital audio output. The Popcorn hour is silent and uses very little electricity.

Although I have not done it, I believe Netflix can be set up on GBPVR as well. The Popcorn hour doesn't have an internet browser though, we just use the laptop for that.

Not sure about legality, but there are sites like channelsurfing.net that let you proxy to someone else's TV and watch cable type programming online. That might be a way to get WRC/F1.

Some more good reading on Ion vs. Ion2, XMBC and the forthcoming "Play To" function of WMP.

http://anandtech.com/show/3702/zotacs-zbox-hdid11-review-next-gen-ion-better-worse-than-ion1/1

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/07/wd-tv-live-hd-gets-play-to-functionality-full-windows-7-compl/

What's the realistic cpu/memory specs for a decent non-HD HTPC setup? I just need a way for the MIL to watch MSNBC, wifey to watch vh1 and food network, and maybe scifi for me( I'm not real big on tv). I know movies can be handled by netflix, and the local stuff by antanee(sp?), but what about the basic cable channels? Is there an outlet for that, that is "spouse-friendly"?

^Excellent question. Anyone?

I haven't heard of anything that fully replaces cable/dish for free.

A lot of networks are starting to offer full episodes online, which makes sense because it will eventually allow the networks (and eventually the content producers) to ditch the middlemen.

It's not quire 'there' yet though. There is still a lot of content that isn't available (at least both easily and legally).

slefain wrote: Hey, nobody mentioned XBMC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC

Yes we did. Several times in fact and their derivatives (Boxee & Media Portal)

mrwillie wrote: What's the realistic cpu/memory specs for a decent non-HD HTPC setup? I just need a way for the MIL to watch MSNBC, wifey to watch vh1 and food network, and maybe scifi for me( I'm not real big on tv). I know movies can be handled by netflix, and the local stuff by antanee(sp?), but what about the basic cable channels? Is there an outlet for that, that is "spouse-friendly"?

For basic cable channels, most are unencrypted and can be managed by your TV tuner card. Just plug it into your cable line and scan the channels.

For channels that are encrypted, you'll need to route the output of the cable box (which does the decryption) through the TV tuner card and control the cable box via an IR repeater that is controlled by the TV tuner card software. It sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Realistic system specs depend on the operating system you're planning on using. Many people are using low-power Intel and AMD embedded motherboards to build ultra-small systems.

The way they are able to do that is by leveraging the video card to do the heavy lifting, leaving the CPU to manage the rest of the system. So bottom line? Get a good video card and a good sound card to reduce the load on your CPU and you could run a Pentium III or a Celeron.

Give you an example:

I have 3 HTPCs at home. I got lucky and scored a bunch of spare computers that were being written off. So two of them are simple HP Pentium 4 2.4GHz small form factor PC's running WinXP. Cute buggers, HP D530's I think. So far, I've added: an HP USB Media Center receiver and remote ($20), a Wireless N network card ($15), a Sound Card ($5) and an ATI 3450HD half-height video card ($50). The hard drives are only 20gb (that is what was in them) in size and they only have 1gb of ram (managed to rummage through the pile of systems and mix/match memory to get that).

They've not failed to play anything, HD or otherwise that I've wanted to.

I keep one in the garage to play TopGear while I'm working on cars.

Bottom line? To watch/play TV on your PC you need the following:

Decent video card (128mb of video ram or better)

TV Tuner card

IR Remote

Wireless N or 100mb LAN network connection

DVD-Rom

Keyboard/mouse (wireless is nice)

A TV/screen capable of displaying the signal from the PC.

The rest is just adding the parts, connecting the cables and loading the software.

Here are some helpful articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_theater_PC

http://lifehacker.com/5462275/which-media-center-is-right-for-you-boxee-xbmc-and-windows-media-center-compared

http://lifehacker.com/5103464/five-best-media-center-applications

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/guides/2008/04/guide-200804.ars

Hope this helps,

In reply to turboswede:

Thanks for the info. I looked into this awhile back, but the online forums want you to buy the latest and greatest setups for everything. Linux or windows based. My goal is to use one of the spare systems in my attic. I like the look and feel of mythtv and dbpvr. Don't really want to invest in a setup that I'm not relatively sure that everyone in the house can be comfy w/ it. Its no good to me if no one but me will us it. Thanks for your help. This is becoming more of an issue as we are trying to get down to one income.

Yeah, its like PC Gamers, they're always looking to be on the cutting edge. Me? I know enough to both be dangerous and to be mindful that living on the cutting edge means that many times you have bleed for it.

Yep, buy a few cheap parts and put it in an old box you've got, see how it works. Worst case? You'll need a slightly faster board/processor, which are usually cheap these days.

I love the concept of using Linux and MythTV, and they've made great strides towards a workable solution for the average person. However, be aware that many times a Windows system still works well and you have less potential driver issues and potentially more support available.

Boxee and Media Portal are both great solutions for Windows that is also free.

Posting from our new HTPC now.

Used a normal gaming Antec gaming case, with a quick processor and stuff. It's fantastic.

I have Beetelgeuse going in a window on Netflix next to this window.

Just disappointed we waited this long to do it.

Congrats! Welcome to the New World Order :)