Okay I would like to know what are some good motherboards to use for htpc? Also what softwares are you using?
I'm not sure if this will end up being an answer for you or just more questions. Motherboards shouldn't be too critical in a home theater. The main emphasis in a home theater is on audio and video quality. You'll need a video card with a digital video output to properly run a digital television, and I don't believe any motherboards have a digital output, so you'll need an add-on card. Correct me if there is a motherboard that does; I haven't seen them all. The computer should do all the digital audio decoding, but I haven't done it myself (I only have 2 speakers , so correct me if I'm wrong there. Look for a motherboard with 6 audio channel outputs to output a 5.1 AC3 or whatever. The quality of the onboard chips are good, but if you really care about audio get an add-on card that is THX certified. Does onboard audio have a higher CPU useage than a good add-in card? I'm not sure on that one. As far as software goes, I think anything will work. I've seen some advertisements for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and I honestly can't understand why anyone would buy it. Maybe someone can explain it to me. It says you can record TV and burn DVDs, but if you buy a TV tuner or a DVD burner doesn't software come with it to do those things? Anyway, I hope this helps. Someone else could better answer this question, but you'd waited long enough. Post what you end up doing.
Okay well for a motherboard I was planning on using a Asus a7n8x. Not sure if I should get the regular or the delux. The cpu since I have it already will be an AMD athlon xp 2600+. The memory will be two sticks of kingston 256mb pc3200. The sound card is gonna be a maddog entertainer 7.1 DSP. Is a envy chipset sound card. The video card will be the ATI all-in-wonder 9800 pro. My dvd drive will be a plextor px-712. For the hard drives I will be using two not sure on what brand yet. One will be a 120gb. The second will be a 200gb. The casing I'm gonna be getting is a cooler master desktop cavalier. If you or anyone else has any suggestions on what I should add to my list or what would be better. Let me know. Thx
Home Theater PC:This is a complicated endeavor you need to ask yourself if you are going to make it future proof what about HDTV?I just built one and used a Dothan Cpu 2000 from Intel when building a Home Theatre PC you need one that runs quite and the Dothan runs cooler than a P4 or a AMD Desktop processor.You can use AMD's Laptop Processor also i just chose Dothan because of the L2 cache it has and wanted to try A-Open 429 pin setup it was too expensive .I would use a Asus Motherboard with a HDTV Tuner Card and if you are going to use it for everything like I did you need a very good Videocard the Geforce 6800 PCI Express will be released any day and they are cheaper than the AGP 8X version.The Asus A8V-E would be on my short list it is in Japan right now but will be released here soon it has PCI Express,Serial ATA all the new features that will make it future proof for a while.The Motherboard comes with pretty decent audio if i was going to buy a soundcard Creative would be the one to buy.Make sure you get good memory like Mushkin, Corsair,Geil and i would buy a matched pair 2X 512 which make 1 GB of memory.Harddrives to consider Western Digital Raptors 10,000 Rpm 5 year warranty I would use one or two of those and get a 300 or 400 Gig model for Videofiles Video takes up lots of space and with HDTV even more is needed I think 10 Gig per hour at 1080i.A good Aluminum case with adequate quite Cooling and a Power Supply at least 450 watt quite model would suffice.I have a Lite-On DVD recorder and it has been fantastic Plextor/Pioneer/Sony/ Dual Layer versions are all good choices.Most people buy Computer Speakers I don't I buy a dolby Digital Reciever with 5 timbre matched Speakers I use Klipsch Klipsch SB2's 5 of them there is a site that has 5 and a velodyne sub for less than 800 Bucks there are cheaper options and if you have a Stereo that is Dolby digital you could use it and add on.I hope this has helped if any more questions Post for help
Forgot the OS which I would use Windows Media Edition for your Home theatre PC. 120 Dollars and buy when you purchase your hardware for cheaper price.
If you want to lok at other Motherboards I like MSI also don't let anyone kid you the Motherboard is a very important part of any Computer that and Cpu Memory is also critical lots of people buy a good Motherboard and then buy cheap memory or a cheap Processor I don't use Celeron or Sempron Cpu's they used to make cheap processors that were a lot cheaper than AMD's or Pentiums then all you had to do was Overclock them to get a lot better performance close to what the Pentium 3's or ThunderBirds would do Duron and Celeron's were bought by people that couldn't afford the high priced one's Pentium's and AMD Cpu's were very expensive .The one area where I see People really cut Corners is Power Supply I like Antec and Enermax or you can check AMD or Intel website for recommended Power Supplies most good Computer Cases come without a Power Supply so Builder can buy the model and wattage that suits the paticular build and if you are going to add multible Harddrives the 450 to 500 watt models is not over kill especially if you are a gamer the new 6800 Geforce recommends a beefy power supply and so does ATI High end Videocards .That is some other things to consider when building any PC whether it is Home Theatre one like you are planning or just one running Word.I believe the Home Theatre PC is the wave of the future a One Box does it all Movies/Games/TV Video Phone we already have VOIP which stands for Voice Over Internet Provider
