So I was thinking of building an HTPC...

[mperfct]

My father-in-law had a power supply crap out so he went and bought a whole system. I snatched up his old system and has going to turn that into a HTPC.

Long story shorter, I was over at AVS looking through the lexicon of HTPC info, when it dawned on me, why not use the PC as a NAS and just get a Popcorn Hour? That way I wouldn't have to upgrade the RAM, Video Card, Audio Card, and who knows what else.

My intent is to be able to play some trailers on big movie nights, and primarily to stream DVD rips. I'd like to be able to stream blu ray rips of the kid movies as well, and let my Pioneer handle the grown up BR's.

Am I crazy, or would this work?

 

[jinjuku]

That should work. It supports Matroska (MKV) media container. So you would need to encode to this format.

I haven't played with the Popcorn hour. I wonder how it compares to Vista Media Center (which is what I run).

I think the only bummer is you can't tune Un-encrypted QAM or OTA HD.

 

[krzywica]

PH blows MC out of the water man. I have one and it plays just about everything right out of the box. Even does DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD

 

[Ben_in_COSpring]

It comes down to time vs. money vs. customizability.

If your time is valuable to you and you are not interested in monkeying around with a HTPC for the sake of learning, get the Popcorn Hour of Mvix. They both run about $200 and will run pretty much everything you throw at them. They have limited customization options though.

If you want to go down the HTPC route, check out XBMC on Linux. They recently got VDPAU working, which is hardware accelerated decoding for NVIDIA cards. I took an old P4 3.4 GHz with 1 gig of RAM, threw a $50 fanless videocard in it, and now I can play all my Blu-Ray rips. Plus XBMC is so much prettier than the PCH and Mvix. Get a $12 IR receiver from irblaster.info, spend 2 weeks getting it to work, and then you will have remote control too.

BTW, I have both a PCH (replaced my Mvix), and an HTPC that I've spent way too much time setting up. They both have their benefits and I love them both equally.

 

[krzywica]

It comes down to time vs. money vs. customizability.

If your time is valuable to you and you are not interested in monkeying around with a HTPC for the sake of learning, get the Popcorn Hour of Mvix. They both run about $200 and will run pretty much everything you throw at them. They have limited customization options though.

If you want to go down the HTPC route, check out XBMC on Linux. They recently got VDPAU working, which is hardware accelerated decoding for NVIDIA cards. I took an old P4 3.4 GHz with 1 gig of RAM, threw a $50 fanless videocard in it, and now I can play all my Blu-Ray rips. Plus XBMC is so much prettier than the PCH and Mvix. Get a $12 IR receiver from irblaster.info, spend 2 weeks getting it to work, and then you will have remote control too.

BTW, I have both a PCH (replaced my Mvix), and an HTPC that I've spent way too much time setting up. They both have their benefits and I love them both equally.

I will be completely sold on my HTPC when they come out with DTS-HD and Dolby-TrueHD support. Until that time I am still convinced that the PCH is the best offering. It is also highly configurable if you add an internal HDD and add some packages.

I'm still playing with the PCH but have found little to complain about and much to rejoice over.

 

[jinjuku]

I will be completely sold on my HTPC when they come out with DTS-HD and Dolby-TrueHD support. Until that time I am still convinced that the PCH is the best offering. It is also highly configurable if you add an internal HDD and add some packages.

I'm still playing with the PCH but have found little to complain about and much to rejoice over.

There is Power DVD and Total Media Theater 3 with plug in support for Vista MCE. TMT3 even supports LPCM.

The Popcorn Hour box is great. Vista offers me 90% + of the flexibility I desire with none of the head ache that can accompany a Linux offering. I guess I will have to give Linux another shot. I give it a go about every two years and something simple that should work invariably involves editing the crap out of a conf file somewhere.

I will have to play with the PH. Trust me, my VMCE box is not vanilla. The My Movies plug in, the Netflix plug-in, Hulu, ability to browse etc...

 

[krzywica]

There is Power DVD and Total Media Theater 3 with plug in support for Vista MCE. TMT3 even supports LPCM.

The Popcorn Hour box is great. Vista offers me 90% + of the flexibility I desire with none of the head ache that can accompany a Linux offering. I guess I will have to give Linux another shot. I give it a go about every two years and something simple that should work invariably involves editing the crap out of a conf file somewhere.

I will have to play with the PH. Trust me, my VMCE box is not vanilla. The My Movies plug in, the Netflix plug-in, Hulu, ability to browse etc...

I haven't played with an MCE mods at all. Maybe I will have to try it out as I will be doing a Win 7 upgrade soon enough as I am already running it on 3 of my systems.

 

[Nemo128]

PH blows MC out of the water man. I have one and it plays just about everything right out of the box. Even does DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD

Truth be told, any NMT device can do this in theory. They are all based on the same hardware, and the interface is customized by the company. PCH is the only one that paid the licensing to decode DTS to analog, for people without AVRs. Other than that, all NMTs can do what the PCH can do, in some cases for less money.

The one exception, the Western Digital WDTV, has no network port and an HDMI1.2 jack, so it can't stream through network or play LPCM, DTS-HD, and DTrueHD. My newest toy to replace the WDTV, the eGreat EG-M34A, does everything the PCH can do minus downmixing (seriously, who on Audioholics cares about that) for a good amount less in a smaller form factor.

Sigma Designs 8635 <3.

 

[krzywica]

Truth be told, any NMT device can do this in theory. They are all based on the same hardware, and the interface is customized by the company. PCH is the only one that paid the licensing to decode DTS to analog, for people without AVRs. Other than that, all NMTs can do what the PCH can do, in some cases for less money.

The one exception, the Western Digital WDTV, has no network port and an HDMI1.2 jack, so it can't stream through network or play LPCM, DTS-HD, and DTrueHD. My newest toy to replace the WDTV, the eGreat EG-M34A, does everything the PCH can do minus downmixing (seriously, who on Audioholics cares about that) for a good amount less in a smaller form factor.

Sigma Designs 8635 <3.

Nice Nemo, thanks for the info. I have been searching for a more cost effective solution to the PCH as I don't own one but borrowed my buddies PCH for 2 weeks. I liked it a lot but still had a few issues with it. I will be getting 2 or 3 units in the future to be placed in my master and guest bedrooms. I have been trying to find a better looking more cost affective solution to the PCH that has wired network capability. This Egreat may be the solution!

 

[Nemo128]

FYI, dropped to $149 + shipping.

http://www.egreathd.com/

I ordered Friday and received it Monday. It is awesome.

 

[mperfct]

FYI, dropped to $149 + shipping.

http://www.egreathd.com/

I ordered Friday and received it Monday. It is awesome.

Bookmarked, that looks pretty sweet!