Build your own Linux Home Theatre PC

[Lyion]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1 ... 924,00.asp

[Tikker]

Equal parts cool kids club and grass roots revolution

Linux has never been cool, so now I call bullshit on this entire story

[Diekan]

So says the Windoze / AOL user.

[Gidan]

I setup a myth box not that long ago, the setup on it isn't overly difficult and with decent hardware they can run really well. Mine was more or less a test being as I was running it on a celeron 1G, 128M ram EMachine with that oh so wonderful onboard video. Managed to get it to work though.

Definatly worth the time and money especially if you are willing to put a little money into dual HV TV tuner cards (onboard encoding and decoding prefered). It would save you a HUGE amount over a HD DVR and allow for recording multiple inputes at a time.

[Tikker]

So says the Windoze / AOL user.

oh noze, you called me an AOL user


You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller

[Darcler]

jpegs to Hellen Keller.....hehe....

~LONG LIVE PoSEM~
My EMachine ownz u

[Diekan]

What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?

I like that one the best...

[Tossica]

Linux fanbois make me chuckle.

[Harrison]

You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh

Somehow, some way...that made me rofl. That is long before my time of knowing anything about computers too.

[veeneedefeesh]

TRS 80 pwns you, cassette tape backup 4tw

Anyone ever own an amiga?

[dammuzis]

informitave article but im way too busy playing with this

to have time to set up a linux based htpc

[Tikker]

What y'all wanna do?
Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers
Wastin' time with all the chatroom yakkers?
9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?
Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard?
Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?

[xKALECx]

informitave article but im way too busy playing with this

to have time to set up a linux based htpc

My 6 year old son got that for christmas!

[Gidan]

Why did I never get things like that when I was younger .

[veeneedefeesh]

Cuz you ate the welfare burgers?

What is that thing? some kind of car track I am assuming?

[Narrock]

Cuz you ate the welfare burgers?

What is that thing? some kind of car track I am assuming?

lol


sophisticated erector set with a roller-coaster built in?

[runamonk]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1814924,00.asp

What's the point of building this? Will it decrypt and allow you to record all your favorite digital cable channels?

[Gidan]

In general they work just as well if not beter then standard DVR's, they are also much easier to expand to allow for much more recording time then a standard DVR. Also, what would it cost you to go out and buy a HD capatable DVR, most are extremely expensive. To upgrade this to HD compatablility, you replace the tuner card with a HD tuner card and your done.

for $400, one of the guys I work with setup a duel tuner HD mythbox. Find me a dual tuner HD DVR for less then $400.

[runamonk]

In general they work just as well if not beter then standard DVR's, they are also much easier to expand to allow for much more recording time then a standard DVR. Also, what would it cost you to go out and buy a HD capatable DVR, most are extremely expensive. To upgrade this to HD compatablility, you replace the tuner card with a HD tuner card and your done.

for $400, one of the guys I work with setup a duel tuner HD mythbox. Find me a dual tuner HD DVR for less then $400.

Didn't cost me anything, I got mine from comcast and it works with HD and all my digital channels.

One more thing, the only HD channels you would be able to record would be those that are broadcast over the air, this isn't going to decrypt any satelite or cable HD. So basically 400 bucks for a digital VCR to record your 11 favorite channels? You could use it for your basic analog cable packages though -- which by the way are going away in order to make room for HD.

I'll stick with my motorola that I got for free. It only has a 120GB drive in it though, could easily stand to have a 300GB in there instead but then agian I haven't run out of space yet and I can pull all the mpegs off it via firewire so hopefully it'll be a while before more capacity is necessary.

[10sun]

A close friend of mine has a terrabyte media server hooked up to his DirectTV somehow. Plus a nice resolution projector = awesome home theater. Except during LAN parties when his girlfriend wants to watch a movie, so we all hammer the same files causing the server to shit itself until she cries.

-Adam

[Gidan]

In general they work just as well if not beter then standard DVR's, they are also much easier to expand to allow for much more recording time then a standard DVR. Also, what would it cost you to go out and buy a HD capatable DVR, most are extremely expensive. To upgrade this to HD compatablility, you replace the tuner card with a HD tuner card and your done.

for $400, one of the guys I work with setup a duel tuner HD mythbox. Find me a dual tuner HD DVR for less then $400.

Didn't cost me anything, I got mine from comcast and it works with HD and all my digital channels.

One more thing, the only HD channels you would be able to record would be those that are broadcast over the air, this isn't going to decrypt any satelite or cable HD. So basically 400 bucks for a digital VCR to record your 11 favorite channels? You could use it for your basic analog cable packages though -- which by the way are going away in order to make room for HD.

I'll stick with my motorola that I got for free. It only has a 120GB drive in it though, could easily stand to have a 300GB in there instead but then agian I haven't run out of space yet and I can pull all the mpegs off it via firewire so hopefully it'll be a while before more capacity is necessary.

Why would you be limited to what HD programming you could record? Its comming from the same source. I wish comcast would have made me that deal. I could have had a HD DVR for $145 + $20 a month, that I would then have to return should I ever choose to switch providers.

[runamonk]

A close friend of mine has a terrabyte media server hooked up to his DirectTV somehow. Plus a nice resolution projector = awesome home theater. Except during LAN parties when his girlfriend wants to watch a movie, so we all hammer the same files causing the server to shit itself until she cries.

-Adam

I saw a nice HD projector the other day, it was only 7 grand but man what a beauty.

[runamonk]

Because all the stuff coming down the pipe from Comcast or Dish is going to have their spin on it, it needs their box to be seen. That's why I was wondering why anyone would bother building their own box.

Still this is a better deal than paying 700 bucks for the dish/directtv tivo that records HD, what a total ripoff there.

I pay 5 bucks a month for the HD DVR, they just started rolling them out a couple months ago. So far it's been a godsend, I don't even have a VCR anymore hehe.