Whats your Home Theatre Setup?

[IsMe2003]

lol, I seem to have bitten the bug myself.

The misses resisting the heavy spending though so my modifications will have to be modestly priced.

Also, neighbours already under pressure with my Logitech 5500. imagine if I dropped in a sub like IsMe's lol.

They'll call EMA for my ass.

As mentioned earlier in the thread....the z5500 serves as a mini receiver in my setup. Planning to add a real receiver. Reason being, all my device could then connect via a single hdmi cable. At present I have a number of optical cables in the mix doing audio duty.

It works but makes for some messy cable arrangements and requires a 3 way optical switch when I want 5.1 surround sound from the consoles in particular.

Very reasonably priced but a little on the heavy side so the shipping cost could be out of control.

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AVR-1312-Channel-Theater-Receiver/dp/B004U403S6/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=OCD1CJVDOB4H&coliid=I2HQYZD24MM87R

Going to take a look around locally to see if there are any decent options.

Heard of a Sony with HDMI but it was out of stock in West Mall.

Recently threw Windows 8 on the HTPC but it shockingly didn't support higher than 1024x768 on my 52" display.

So that fast tracked my plans to replace it with a modern HTPC, one that can double as a living room gaming rig.

More on that later.

Boy that Meealy-HT-Bug bitin hard yes hehehe,

Denon is make good stuff, it heave so cause of the transformers they use, this is one brand where the Wattage per channel on paper actually matches to tested real life values,

they is buss yua head weight wise on freight ah wah?

[RustyPlumber]

^yea they do,only if monsteraudio was still around,they were the local dealer for Denon and Klipsch,i got my floorstanders and receiver from them some years ago,their prices actually match the price on them on amazon,minus shipping and handling,as well they offered manufacturer warranty with all their products.Sadly they closed their doors sometime late last year,which sucks,cause i paid over $200 USD just in shipping and taxes for my RC 52 center channel when i brought it down,and i did devalue it severely cause i know customs was gonna rape me anyways.

There's another local company,triniwattage,i bought my sub from them back in 2009,their prices were equivalent to what you would pay for them online minus shipping and handling,they got some pretty good brands which include Definitive Technology and Mirage (smaller brother to klipsch)

http://www.triniwattage.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=52_53

[TriniXaeno]

Excellent info there Veggieman, thanks

+1

Checked out their site and they have a very comprehensive selection.

[TriniXaeno]

Like Logitech brought out a new harmony just with me in mind.

I currently use a harmony and a mini bluetooth keyboard/mouse

This baby may unify them so I'll be back to one remote for the living room.

Pricey though

*edit*

Maybe vapourware

Seeing a lot of "cannot confirm nor deny" responses from Logitech staff online about it.

[TriniXaeno]

So as mentioned elsewhere around the forums, decided to retrace my steps and return to a desktop for my HTPC.

Been considering this for sometime but Windows 8 forced my hand.

Upgraded my existing HTPC laptop to Windows 8 and unfortunately found it could not run my 52" LCD at any resolution higher than 1024x768. Lame. Updating drivers and such didn't help the situation.

It is a reasonably spec'd laptop (details below)
Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz (T8300)
2GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X2300 - 128.0 MB
AD1981HD
160GB SATA HD

Moving on:

Enter the new HTPC

A full desktop running:
3GHZ Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
ALS880 (With Optical Out to Logitech Z5500)
Nvidia 9400GT 512MB (DVI to HDMI to LCD)

Installed Windows 8 and voila, full 1920x1080 resolution restored!

Being a glutton for punishment, I am also going to throw on Ubuntu + XBMC on this HTPC to see how it compares to Windows 8 + XBMC

Wish me luck

[IsMe2003]

So as mentioned elsewhere around the forums, decided to retrace my steps and return to a desktop for my HTPC.

Been considering this for sometime but Windows 8 forced my hand.

Upgraded my existing HTPC laptop to Windows 8 and unfortunately found it could not run my 52" LCD at any resolution higher than 1024x768. Lame. Updating drivers and such didn't help the situation.

It is a reasonably spec'd laptop (details below)
Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz (T8300)
2GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X2300 - 128.0 MB
AD1981HD
160GB SATA HD

Moving on:

Enter the new HTPC

A full desktop running:
3GHZ Core 2 Duo
2GB RAM
ALS880 (With Optical Out to Logitech Z5500)
Nvidia 9400GT 512MB (DVI to HDMI to LCD)

Installed Windows 8 and voila, full 1920x1080 resolution restored!

Being a glutton for punishment, I am also going to throw on Ubuntu + XBMC on this HTPC to see how it compares to Windows 8 + XBMC

Wish me luck

Good Luck, how come you going DVI to HDMI? the card don't have HDMI outs to go HDMI to HDMI?

on the  Ubuntu version of XBMC, i dont think it support the new HD-Bitstream audio engines they just came up with where the wasapi drivers etc are built in for passing DTS-MA type tracks directly to DAC without decoding it, could be wrong though.

[TriniXaeno]

Its a very old card, that 9400 GT. Doesn't have HDMI but that's not a bad thing since I won't be passing audio through to the TV in any case.

For those who missed it, 99.9% of LCD TVs do not pass through surround sound audio. They only do two channel stereo sound. The reason for this is beyond me.....(aside from making a thriving market for audio video receivers from the likes of denon to fill the gap)

So in my situation, it is best to route the audio directly to the Logitech Z5500 by way of an optical cable to get that dolby digital lovin'.

Just finished the Ubuntu install.

Easy as pie. Very slick.

I'd say, I felt more at home in Ubuntu than I did in Windows 8 with that jarring metro interface. WTActualF!

You know linux, they couldn't make it TOO easy. Once the install was done, I fired up the very convenient "ubuntu marketplace" to download XBMC.

Installed smoothly.

No apt get commands required. Didn't even touch the command line for the entire process to be honest.

GUI is going places.

Playing movies in XBMC is where the excitement started. Boom, error immc.

It could not play any DD files. No 5.1.

Stereo files with their lame two channel audio played just fine.

So I went into XBMC's settings and configured it for 5.1

Now AC3 files played fine but the stereo files, which were working fine before, now spat the same error.

You could have one or the other....not both apparently.

An hour of googling later, found several work arounds to try. Opted for what appeared to be the easiest, which recommended installing a PulseAudioManager and hard setting everything for optical out and surround sound in ubuntu and xbmc.

Voila, worked like magic.

All files are now playing  audio beautifully.

(Here is a link to the fixes in case anyone else gets adventurous and wants to try Ubuntu on their HTPC: http://askubuntu.com/questions/138194/cant-configure-5-1-audio-with-12-04)

[Arcmanov]

Hmmm... Not too concerned with all them DD shenanigans, the tech-enthusiast in me demands that I try out this 'XMBC' that you speak of.

Which version of Ubuntu did you use?
I'm wondering if it will work with the Radeon HD 7750 I currently have in my test rig.



SwiftKeyed from my Samsung Galaxy S3 with Tapatalk 2

[Eroo]

Wyatt there is the XBMC Live which is a modified Ubuntu distro with some unnecessary stuff removed. I use it on my HTPC, its pretty good and boots straight into XBMC.

Also on a personal note having used Windows 7, Windows 8 Preview, OS X Mountain Lion, Ubuntu and Linux Mint (ubuntu distro with cinnamon ui) I have to say Linux Mint is the most user friendly OS with Ubuntu and Windows 7 tying for second place.

[rassmatic]

It's XBMC not XMBC eh people! Proceed....

[Berzerk]

wouldn't lie after trying out XBMC a few months back, I couldn't go back. Awesome media watching experience.

[TriniXaeno]

lol @ XMBC

Rage, why yuh so?

Yeah boy Arc, HIGHLY recommended as far as HTPC usage goes. Been using it for years as a step up from Windows Media Center.

I've tried pretty much every HTPC software out there and keep coming back to XBMC. It's that good.

Not without its quirks (the configuration options are confuluted and inaccessible, buried deep in a million places) but all in all, an awesome app. Best of all, cross platform and FREE!

Eroo, I've used the UbuntuXBMC live disc but it doesn't come with the astounding driver support of the full Ubuntu 12.04 installation + xbmc. Not to mention the numerous bug fixes in the linux 3.2 kernel


It is also slower (as a result of more generic drivers and booting off cd)

With Ubuntu 12.04 being easier to install (or rather just as easy) as Windows 8, there was no reason to hide behind a live disc anyway. Go full hog.

@ Arc, your 7750 will actually be overkill. lol

I used it with an Nvidia 9400GT and an ATI 4350. Real powder puffin' cards.

[Arcmanov]

Can X-f@#king-BMC be used with Linux Mint?

Looks like I'll have a lot of experimentation to do.

All in good time.



SwiftKeyed from my Samsung Galaxy S3 with Tapatalk 2

[TriniXaeno]

Yeah, Mint is based off Ubuntu (which is itself based off debian) so it will work there just fine.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_for_Linux

XBMC is available for all major linux distributions and exists in their respective repositories.

Minor update to the rig. Just replaced my age old 9400 GT and even older ATI 4350 with a brand new ATI 4350 (not a typo). lol

The two older cards were acting flakey and showing artifacts. Understandable given their age. The new card comes with HDMI as well.

If I do get that Denon reciever in the future, the HDMI will work splendidly as a replacement to the current TOSLINK optical connection.

Cost a whopping TT$300 locally. Retails for US$30-40 online so that wasn't too bad.

Works like a champ.

HTPC is flying.

Good times.

[TriniXaeno]

Consideration for your future HTPC hardware:

Currently, despite ATI having opensource drivers available...some key features are missing. Features that the opensource community cannot fix themselves and are lobbying to have ATI resolve.

Read more about it here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_xvba_xbmc&num=1

You can get around the limitations using software decoding which is less than ideal

Nvidia doesn't offer opensource drivers but thankfully their proprietary drivers for linux work wonderfully. So much so, that for today, if running non opensoruce drivers on your rig isn't a "moral" problem for you....Nvidia is the way to go.

Thirdly, intel has made strides in their driver implementation for linux which is also opensource. In fact, it is a worthy rival to Nvidia and if you would prefer a complete opensource solution for your graphics that offers hardware acceleration, intel is the way to go.

This is very interesting.

You can get a more verbose summary of the state of affairs in this article here:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyNDk

Note, that ATI's drivers on the windows platform are feature complete. They are only lacking if you choose to go linux for your HTPC and want hardware acceleration.

As a result, I may consider going with an intel box for my next build instead of an AMD/ATI APU.

Hopefully, ATI will fix the issues in their driver before that time comes, one can only hope.

[Arcmanov]

OK, so I tried Linux Mint 13, and XBMC for a day...

Lets just say, I'll be going right back to Windows 8.        Yes...seriously.  Not a typo.  Windows...  Muthaf@#kin...  8.


I thought Linux had advanced to the point where trips to the command line, and 'apt-get' commands were unnecessary.
Sadly, this was not the case...and my experience was less than stellar.  All this on the SAME hardware that runs Windows 8 with disinterested aplomb.

How is it that the same video files that play so smoothly with Media Player Classic over wi-fi in Windows 8,
could play so atrociously over the exact same wi-fi in Linux Mint is beyond me.

.....

/facepalm..... wow...

Maybe I was just 'doing it wrong', but no thanks.  You can have your Linux.

I never thought I would hear myself saying that I'd rather use Windows -muhfuggin- 8 for an HTPC over Linux.


I can rag on the metro UI from now till First Contact, but everything.  Just.  Works.

[TriniXaeno]

Did you try ubuntu 12.04?

It was exceptionally easy to get that up to speed with drivers and xbmc without touching the command line.

Very windows like experience.

What is the specs of your HTPC btw?

Posted mine earlier in the thread.

All files work just peachy on mine with ubuntu (mkvs, mp4s, mpeg2, etc...)

I use it over LAN though, not wifi.

Although, I do use it over wifi on that old laptop that failed with Windows 8.

For me, the reverse is true there. Windows 8 played files choppy that Ubuntu + XBMC played absolutely smoothly.

Like with most things tech, YMMV

Again, this is with ubuntu, not Mint.

[Eroo]

Very shocking indeed I havent use apt-get on my htpc in well I'm not sure if I ever had to use it. Of course I've never used wifi in Linux so it may be the linux wifi drivers that are your problem.

Still seems worth it to try to figure out the issue than have to pay for a Windows 8 license but thats just me.

[Arcmanov]

Who said anything about 'paying'? 

Won't hurt to give Ubuntu a try though.

[TriniXaeno]

My thought process is the same as eroos.

I'm fine with a legit windows 7 license on my main gaming PC.

The other machines in my house, don't need it. Especially not an HTPC. Linux immc.

Running a dual boot of windows 8 release candidate (which is free) and ubuntu on a laptop and tbh, I have no need to boot into the Windows side at all.