Enough of PP3!

[dabretty]

Hey guys -

Love the show but I gotta ask ... can you guys cover some more HTPC-oriented stuff? I'm curious as to what you guys are using as the actual feed into the HDTV (Xbox 360, other extenders, etc). I actually don't have a WHS yet, but anticipate it's just around the corner whenever the CableCard solutions (like from Ceton) actually deliver. All of the PP3 talk has my head spinning as I cannot yet follow ... but nonetheless I'm sure I'll listen back to these shows in the not-so-distant future, when I finally acquire a WHS.

Thanks!

Brett

[jcollison]

Hey Brett - thanks for the positive comments. We are getting kind of sick of PP3 anyway!

I use the ATI All in Wonder HD card in a PC that has Coaxial in for the antenna and DVI out (with 512MB) to run the monitor (good dual purpose card). Then I use Win 7 media center to record both the HD stuff and the analog cable stuff (coming in on an ATI TV Wonder Elite) and watch it on my computer and the two XBOX 360s we have in the house.

Make sense? Get that WHS soon!

Jim

[Guest no-control]

I'm using my WHS to feed my HTPC and the 2 WDTVLive boxes. I have a 360 as well but don't really use it as an extender. Poke around the forums a bit there is a ton of setups mentioned.

I'm with you on the PP3. I didn't even know I had PP3 installed until I looked...its not as big of a deal as the amount of attention it seems to be getting. The big holy grail right now I think is WMC on WHS. Now that would be powerful good stuff!

[usacomp2k3]

I have a Media Center that I don't really use right now. I also have the xbox set up as an extender for it, but again I don't use it. The reason being that I'm an HD snob and since I can't (yet) get my ESPN in Media Center, I'm using the cable-co DVR for now.

[eobie]

I have a WHS serving out to two HTPC's. I used to run a popcorn hour but got sick of paying for a product that I was essentially beta testing. The thing had problems with 1080p MKV, had DTS dropouts amongst other things. I am going to do a nice post over the next few days detailing the capabilities of the Atom / Ion as well as what I use it for. I have to say that Windows Media Center has come a long way and is "almost" perfect.

[dvn]

@no-control - the WD TV Live looks interesting. By any chance, could you hook up an external DVD or Blu-Ray drive to that?

@eobie - I think I have to agree that WMC is almost perfect. Seems to me that there a a lot of solutions out there for different things. For my purposes, it would be nice if one unit could deal with in-home streaming, various file formats, Netflix, iTunes, etc., as well as allow you toss in a disk and watch directly from that. I know just from listening to reports about heat and fan noise that I won't be looking at an XBox. An HTPC running Windows 7 is looking more and more like the living room solution.

[IndyLux]

I'll second that the PP3 discussion is done and overwith. Frankly, we're waiting for some REAL WHS News to talk about. In the mean time, you know I love talking HTPCs. I'm sporting the Lenovo Q110 as my HTPC and am very happy with it. I added a Wireless N card, a Pinnacle HDTV stick, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. I connect via HDMI and need to upgrade my audio receiver to handle the HDMI digital audio. I'm also needing to upgrade my router to Dual Band N so I can take advantage of the speeds. That, or just wire these things together.

[dabretty]

Glad to see the HTPC talk! It's pretty cool to see all of the varied responses, but a bit concerning at the same time ... I mean, why the heck hasn't any company made a seemingly simple solution to provide what we're looking for (I guess maybe WD is close?)? The technology has seemingly been there for a while.

This slice of time - where we're all trying very homebrew setups - very much reminds me of the car mp3 player setups back ten years ago. (Any other former users from mp3car or carmp3.com here?? I bet there are, we're all geeks for life!) I had a "tupperware" PC located in the trunk of my car with a parallel-interface 40x4 alphanumeric display up front. Didn't get me any girls but was nonetheless a blast! Anyways, it seems like it was a short 2 years after that, that the car music industry finally came up with some very quick solutions that killed the need for most homebrew setups. It seems like the same for good, solution-delivering HTPC setups would be just around the corner?

As for me, right now I'm just using an Xbox 360 extending from a not-always-on desktop PC on the other side of the house. It's a far less than ideal setup, hence I see a need for a WHS at minimum in the near future. I have succeeded in wiring this 2-year-old house (bought about a year ago) for gigabit ethernet, which was not an easy task but something I see as a necessary step. Probably like many of you, I am just unbelievably anti-wireless ... not necessarily for security reasons but just rather just reliable throughput and latency issues.

Has anyone on here played around with the Eee Boxes? The last I looked at them - probably six months ago - it looked to me that they were just on the verge of being able to handle 1080p MKVs, all in a very tight and quiet box that included some fast-boot options (albeit Linux based fast-boot).