Home theater setupsFollow

Sorry, can't help you on this one. I know that whatever we have in the house must be nice since every person with a ***** apparently falls in love with the set up and talks with my husband for hours about what he did.

As long as I can hear what I'm supposed to hear, I don't care.

Wow, that's blasphemous for me to say. /pats back

Bachelor 101:

How to ensure you'll never get laid.

EX: building up the ultimate media center PC / insane gaming rig

well my media setup is as follows:

old PC running CentOS 4.x with KDE 3.5 desktop
connected directly to a 37in HDTV LCD via a nvidia 5200 128M vid AGP card
using an older SB Live Values that runs the sound out from the GREEN port into a convert i got from RadioShack for A/B cables.

i run the red/white into my sterio. my sterio is an older one but puts out great 5.1 surround sound (bad spelling day for me bit tipsy atm).

i plan on setting up MythTV someday with a TV card, or at least with X10 so i can use a universal remote (will need to add IR port to my older computer for this) to controll TV, DVD, VCR, Sterio, and comp from one place.

i run all of my movies via my computer even DVDs as i get better quality output to the TV then i do from my settop DVD player. the only time i use anything other then my computer for displaying movies is the older VCR tapes we have laying around the house for the old kids movies like Mulan or Bambi, or other Disney movies on VCR we have had for years.

the sound and quality is unreal.

now for today top end sound cards there are 2 major brands to look at:

Creative and Turtle. both put out fantastic sound quality and with some of the higher end sterios out there and speaker sets like Bose and higher you could litteraly have your media room vibrate to the pulse of the sound.

so the options are really limited only to your cash flow. but as for media computer i would avoide windows media PC as it is nothing but a gimped vs of winXP Home that is already gimped and plauged with codec issues.

go with either OSx (new intel mac) or Linux for much better support for all media types and stability. go tired of rebuilding XP Pro every 6 months when i ran it as my media computer due to the codecs corrupting the OS over time with their conflicts and what not. first WMP would take a dump, then the OS would follow soon after, not to mention other security issues.

anyways enjoy.

here is an old write up on how i did it the first time with debian:

http://www.ssma.us/debian_media.hmtl

some of the info is way out of date, but the basics are still sound and i use this every time i build a linux box that will have any kind of media support.

I hook my PC up to the TV system in my house on occasion, pretty simple once you have all of the stuff to do it. I've got a Radeon X1900 XTX, and I use the S-Vid out and pump it into the TV. I've got an adapter to do component, but it's a PITA since all of my component jacks are used. The S-Vid's max resolution is 1024x768. Sounds bad? Well, it can be. Not sure if I'm preaching to the choir and you know this, but I'll go into it. If you're at desktop, or trying to surf, this may not be what you're interested in, and getting one of those USB PC>TV kits may be what you want. If you're looking to game or watching movies on your TV, it works fine. I watching movies on Media Player and setting it to full-screen mode pretty much makes it a big monitor, and the low resolution means nothing at that point. Nothing. As for games, MMOs would probably be annoying since the chat would be hard to read. Characters, guns, and all of the rest of it just look a lot bigger, and there's no real problem with seeing anything. You won't be able to pump 1600x1200 resolution through the game, but I'm happy with it. It's preference. If you've got a plasma, I'd bet that you have DVI inputs on it, and I'm quite positive you won't have the same resolution problems I do.

As for audio, I have a Denon AVR-3806 linking up with Infinity speakers ($1,000 a pop) and a boston acoustics subwoofer. Added with a Toshiba 65" HDTV. There's nothing negative I can say about any of the products I've got, except maybe my subwoofer doesn't knock things off the walls like my Logitech Z-5500s do. That's a brand thing though, as BA subs tend not to put out a huge ammount of bass. Playing BF2, WoW, EQ2, EvE, and any of the other graphic intensive games (WoW not really counting) on the TV is nice. Beautiful, infact. I picked up a $10 cable at Best Buy that connects the sound card to the amp directly so I wouldn't have to use any strange adapters.

In the past I've used Yamaha and Sony amps. I really can't say anything negative about the Sony amp, but I can't say anything positive about it either, as I can the Denon. It's simply an "Amp". The Yamaha, on the otherhand, was horrid. I had problems from day one. Backlights burning out, channels stopped being separated, and so on. After a year of constant service, I had my fun smashing it and bought a Denon, which was the "previous generation" of the one I have now. Aside from not being able to take the volume past 2/3 with the definate risk of blowing the fuse (Which may be due to the expensive speakers and the fact it couldn't push that much power?) I was extremely pleased. I've still got it. I'm not sure what the specs are, but the model number is Avc 3000.

Not sure if that response helps at all, though I hope it does.

Edited, Sep 3rd 2006 at 8:43pm EDT by GreatBadger

Yamaha

I got that one for Christmas last year, costs around $600. That sucker is LOUD. The speakers are crisp and hit really hard. The reciever ehhh kinda disappointed. Not as customizable as I wanted but if you are a novice then its ok. Another problem with the reciever is no Optical Digital ports, only one Coaxial Digital and a meger 2 A/V inputs. In its defense The DVD/CD player is built in so thats two less ports to worry about. The unit plays every type of media (CD-DVD) in any format.

So that leaves you with only 2 ports (3 if you use the Coaxial Digital, which you should use if you have the proper set up) How many things do you need to input?

If you have teh moneyz, and want an even better experience, pick up Monster A/V plugs to connect everything. They help boost and crisp the sound and are nice and shielded. They do though cost a lot more then your generic Radio Shack wires.