This HTPC stuff is the most frustrating thing I have ever done.

[pak]

I have never had such a frustrating time ever. This HTPC stuff makes me want to just go buy an xbox360 and call it a day. The whole point to me doing this was to be able to back my DVD's to my hard drive and click and play with 0 picture/audio quality loss.

ATM
1. I have a wireless keyboard that doesn't work in XP. Yeah, it is called a MCE keyboard, but who would have ever though a keyboard would be only usable in one OS. Not me at least.

2. This video card that so many people swear to be one of the best HTPC cards has nothing but bugs. Only to find out afterwards just as many people are having problems with it. Maybe I should have done more research, but this is by far the buggiest video card I have ever owned. After a few days of countless driver re installs and tweaks, it is finally watchable. But the quality is not noticably better than my GF3 Ti 200 that I couldn't even sell for $15 shipped in our classies.

3. And recently discovered, I can not get 5.1 out of my TV. I can get 5.1 if I go strait to my HDTV reciever, but not from my TV. I was hoping to reduce a few cables and plug all my A/V into my tv then pull it out to my reciever. Yes, I can go get a better reciever and plug everyting into that, then sound goes from there and picture goes to TV, but it is suppose to work this way.

/rant off

Thanks for reading

--pak

[natewildes]

unfortunately, it took me three HTPC's to realize exactly what you stated above. Currently, there is no where near the amount of hardware/software flexibility to make it worth while. Until you can truly use any piece of software with any piece of hardware, the usefulness of HTPC's will be left to those with the expertise, money and time to put one together or those who are willing to buy one at a premium from an OEM.

For now, an XBox will give you the best photo:Halo3 bang for your buck ;)

[Fr3@k3r]

pak....

I have the same keyboard and it works perfectly with my XP PRO with no added tweaking or anything.

As for the bugs on the 2600xt i havent found any yet. Mine is working absolutely fine with my computer using 7.2 Drivers..

[pak]

pak....

I have the same keyboard and it works perfectly with my XP PRO with no added tweaking or anything.

As for the bugs on the 2600xt i havent found any yet. Mine is working absolutely fine with my computer using 7.2 Drivers..


Only button I get to work with on mine is the sleep button. Did you DL drivers anywhere? Link possible?

1. Still working on this keyboard. Least of my priorities right now.

2. I so far have made this card bug free. I found that my mobo needed a bios update to go with this series of ATI cards. Did the update and my picture is glitch free in any mode with multiple windows. I am still not happy with the quality of picture. It seems to be the same as my GF3. Maybe I am limited by DVD format? I have heard of upscaling the improve PQ. I should maybe look into that.

3. I gave samsung a call today and it turns out that the optical out is very limited. In my case, it is not going to work. So I opted to use the onboard sound and used the 6channel input to my reciever. It works and I am happy with it for now.

--pak

[Jon]

unfortunately, it took me three HTPC's to realize exactly what you stated above. Currently, there is no where near the amount of hardware/software flexibility to make it worth while. Until you can truly use any piece of software with any piece of hardware, the usefulness of HTPC's will be left to those with the expertise, money and time to put one together or those who are willing to buy one at a premium from an OEM.

I disagree 100%.

Not all software works with all hardware even outside of media centers. I spent very little money on my media centers and probably even less time. I able to do everything that a media center should be able to do. In fact, it's much more capable than I even need.

My wife, and even more incredible, my mother-in-law, have no problems using any of them.

Insufficient planning, lack of research, and low patience are the problems I see with the majority of those that have HTPC issues. Come to think of it, that's the majority of the problems I've experienced in overclocking...throwing parts at a goal won't make it work.

[Maglin]

I'm going to assume you have a HLR set by chance? The day I got my 50" HLR up I hooked up the HDMI and then ran an optical out to my receiver only to find stereo output. It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Why even wast money with an optical out or in if all you can get is stereo out and the TV only has 2 speakers?

I'm planning on getting a new receiver with HDMI switching in this upcoming year. I currently own a Oppo upconverting DVD player . Really all upconverting before it reaches the TV is going to do is not make the TV have to upconvert. Now on my HLR it does an ok job of upconversion (cause everything is either upconvertered or down convertered to 720P) and SD signal or DVD. But the Oppo does an excellent job and the PQ is noticeably better. The 2600XT should do just as good a job upconverting the signal and should do a slightly better job than you old GFX card with all the new extra's it does to PQ.

I think the best setup is with a Receiver with HDMI switching. Then you should be able to hook up your HTPC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii all to the receiver. The 360 being the only one not using HDMI (unless you have an elite or new 360) and then run only one HDMI to the TV from the Receiver and depending on the receiver one component cable for the 360. I know it would definitely cut down on the cabling mess behind my TV.

On a note of sound quality. If you have a good sound card I think you could try and just use 7.1 channel out on your sound card and hook it up to your receiver. I would try both and see which sounds better. If hooked up in 7.1 instead of SPDIF your sound card does all the decoding and the receiver is justed used as an AMP.

I would like to find a HDMI switching card for the HTPC and get rid of my receiver all together. It could be replaced by a quality AMP and take up less space and give you the option to capture pretty much all Video/audio that is played as the HTPC would now be doing all the audio decoding. And I'm thinking in this configuration you would be able to get the full HDaudio stream instead of it being reduced cause of the SPDIF specs. Now I just need the HDMI switching card.

[Wicked Klown]

Dont feel bad Pak my HL-S6187W only does 2 channel out on Toslink as well. I have to agree tho that doing a HTPC is a small PITA. When I first built ours I felt like it was the first computer I ever built. I had to read so many different things, tweak this and that, hack this. However I'm loving it, DVDs look so much better then before.

[LandShark]

I disagree 100%.

Not all software works with all hardware even outside of media centers. I spent very little money on my media centers and probably even less time. I able to do everything that a media center should be able to do. In fact, it's much more capable than I even need.

My wife, and even more incredible, my mother-in-law, have no problems using any of them.

Insufficient planning, lack of research, and low patience are the problems I see with the majority of those that have HTPC issues. Come to think of it, that's the majority of the problems I've experienced in overclocking...throwing parts at a goal won't make it work.

Jon can't sum it up any better!! :thup:

yes, a htpc still might not be for average Joe especially if you gonna build one. and yes, it will take lots of research, knowledge, and patience to gets thing working the way you want. especially if you choose to use other software combo other than M$ media center. and as Jon said, it's the same thing as overclocking too! didn't do your research and buy some cheap ram, you'll be spending days to figure out why you can't clock your cpu to a certain speed while the majority of people seems able to do.

at the end, I think it just like overclocking, more of a hobby and "geek" thing. but again, once you've got things set up to the way you want, you'll be rewarded w/ great successful feeling and enjoyment too (same as overclocking)!!

I honestly haven't really "touch" my htpc setup for quite some time!! it's almost set it and forget it. it didn't require much maintainence, until I want to try something new or to improve it w/ newer technology! just remember one thing on htpc, if it ain't break, DON'T touch it!! I remember I've spent days when I try to update the video card driver of my old X1900XT from the old 6.10 to 7.4 (yeah, 1/2 yrs didn't touch it nor update!) and got screen resolution problem till I finally gave up and stick w/ the old 6.10 again.

e.g. I'm in process to re-doing the theme, and trying to recode my backup DVDs into the newer mp4 format, and trying to incorporate the HD DVD into it.
and I'm currently looking into it again to try to get more out of my htpc/meedio too.

[Overload]

Why even wast money with an optical out or in if all you can get is stereo out and the TV only has 2 speakers?


simply because they can, and most consumers dont know any better. now they can also sell you a monster cable optical cable at ridiculous markup. manufacturers rely too much on marketing, disinformation, and ignorance these days instead of making quality components that really do what they are supposed to. it makes things frustrating for people like us.

[pak]

Just an update.

I was able to get the keyboard to work. If you have MCE, it is easy as just going to windows update. If you do not, you kinda gotta look around for the driver which I found by asking in another forum.

I found out that the way I was backing up my DVD's was restricting it to a 4.7gb max. So I was loosing quality there to begin with. I now have it set to pretty much no limit and I am very pleased with the picture quality.

As far as sound goes, I think it does suck that the optical out sucks on the TV, but there is not much I can do there. I agree with Maglin and have said it several times on this forum. If I could, I would let my PC do all the processing, sound and video. Then just purchase a quality amp.

I was just really bummed out sunday when my optical on my TV did not work as I thought it would. I just kept thinking, "what else could go wrong with this." But for the most part now, everything is solved.

Next up for me is a few more big HD's and a nice silent case. After that I'll probably work work on my sound again or think about going HD or BD.

Thanks for giving me a shoulder to cry on.

--pak

[BigAir]

Just an update.

I was able to get the keyboard to work. If you have MCE, it is easy as just going to windows update. If you do not, you kinda gotta look around for the driver which I found by asking in another forum.

I found out that the way I was backing up my DVD's was restricting it to a 4.7gb max. So I was loosing quality there to begin with. I now have it set to pretty much no limit and I am very pleased with the picture quality.

As far as sound goes, I think it does suck that the optical out sucks on the TV, but there is not much I can do there. I agree with Maglin and have said it several times on this forum. If I could, I would let my PC do all the processing, sound and video. Then just purchase a quality amp.

I was just really bummed out sunday when my optical on my TV did not work as I thought it would. I just kept thinking, "what else could go wrong with this." But for the most part now, everything is solved.

Next up for me is a few more big HD's and a nice silent case. After that I'll probably work work on my sound again or think about going HD or BD.

Thanks for giving me a shoulder to cry on.

--pak


Glad you got it figured out. BTW my HD2600xt is awesome! I couldn't be happier with my htpc.. There is always a solution, just keep looking!

[Cheator]

My HTPC has been running fine for years. sometimes you run into problems, but thats general computer stuff, not HTPC IMO. I am on my way to getting a 2400 pro so I can do HDMI out.