Well, I took the plunge into HD...

[bastian74]

My old Home Theater PC just died and so did my old Toshiba 50" 4:3 tv.

Just bought these items

New TV:
1 X ($2000) Samsung HL67A750 67" LED DLP RPTV

New HTPC:
1 x ($109.99) 700W PSU PCPWRCL|S61EPS RT - Retail $109.99
1 x ($129.99) HD 1TB|WD 16M SATA2 WD10EACS % - OEM $129.99
1 x ($149.99) BD/HD-ROM COMBO LG|GGC-H20L SATA RT - Retail $149.99
1 x ($39.99) CASE COOLERMAS|CAC-T05-UW BLK RT - Retail $39.99
1 x ($126.99) MB GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R P45 RT - Retail $126.99
1 x ($189.99) CPU INTEL|Quad C2Q Q6600 2.40G 775 8M R - Retail $189.99
1 x ($82.99) MEM 1Gx2|OCZ OCZ2RPR12002GK R - Retail $82.99
1 x ($144.99) VGA DIAMOND 3870PE4512SB HD3870 RT - Retail $144.99

New PVR Device:
1 x ($219.99) VID DIVICE HAUPPAUGE 1212 HD PVR RT - Retail $219.99

Total so far: $3239 (ouch!)

I've yet to upgrade my DirecTV hardware/account.
I'll ponder getting LCD 3d glasses. The TV supports them natively at 120hz.
I'm not sure about ATI's 3d glasses support though. NVidia just re-entered the market.

Hopefully after THAT I'll be done for quite some time.

[bhyman1]

Thats quite a build.

That PSU is huge!

[bastian74]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

Thats quite a build.

That PSU is huge!

It just occured to me I already have two extra new PSUs in storage. Oh well.

I figure the cost of the pc is justified, its' like a PS3, PVR blu-ray ripper in one.
The quad core cpu is probably over-kill since the ati video card has hardware h.264 decoding (supposedly) but it will make transcoding faster.

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by bastian74

It just occured to me I already have two extra new PSUs in storage. Oh well.

I figure the cost of the pc is justified, its' like a PS3, PVR blu-ray ripper in one.
The quad core cpu is probably over-kill since the ati video card has hardware h.264 decoding (supposedly) but it will make transcoding faster.

Trust me, the quad-core was a good move, especially at today's tiny price premium. The hardware decoding doesn't work in some cases so best to be covered.

[OttoNP]

seems like a lot of pay given most cable and other companies give out free DVRs...

I'm kind of struggling with that now...

[Beefcake550]

In my area, no one gives out free HD DVRs. SD DVRs are "free", but you still pay a "DVR fee" monthly. The HD DVRs cost money and have another "HD fee" to go along with it.

-Brian

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by Beefcake550

In my area, no one gives out free HD DVRs. SD DVRs are "free", but you still pay a "DVR fee" monthly. The HD DVRs cost money and have another "HD fee" to go along with it.

-Brian

Aside from the "HD Fee", a HTPC gives you way more options than a closed box DVR. Additionally, with UHD and HDNet Movies showing some pretty good films at night, it's very easy to record them, and then offload them to another storage device for permenant access instead of taking up your recording storage... Oh, and then there's the whole completely integrated home entertainment console. Something that no cable or sat. co. DVR can come close to, but that's a completely different story

[sic0048]

Looks like a good build. If you are not using a smaller HD from the old computer (or one that was laying around), I would recommend that you get a small drive (80gb perhaps) to act as your OS drive. Leave the 1tb drive for DVR and other media files, but don't put any of the OS on it. Also remember to format the 1TB drive with 6400k clusters.

1TB will be OK to start with, but you'll be surprised at the size of the files created by the HD-PVR, so you'll probably want to add more eventually. The good news is the 1TB prices are falling. There have been several sales recently where a good Seagate 1TB drive was under $110. It won't be long before they are under $100.