gingeRS

i am currently buildign a new media centre pc, and was wondering what the best way of connecting it to a home cinema amp is?

can you buy sound cards with phono outs, or is it just a case of going from 3.5mm line out to two phonos. have to check if my amp accepts an optical input (its quite old) as many sound cards have these

just wondering how (if any) of you guys have your pc's set up, i'll be using it for media player, and itunes, and watching high def tv shows that i can down load.

cheers

Turbocabbie

I did mine with a Via ITX M-Series platform as it has a hardware media decoder to ensure smooth playplack of media, it also does not require a lot of power so runs near silent.

I run this with the free Myth TV front end to Linux as it works and is exceptionally small thus leaving lots of space on the hard disk for media

The ITX 'M' Series is a great motherboard for media boxes costs about as much as a decent sound card and features exceptional connectivity.

Although the power of the system does not seem exceptional the system bus does run at clockspeed unlike the Pentium and Athlon which makes this mhz for mhz a great performer while the hardware codec reduces the demand placed on system resources by a huge amount.. My 1.2 ghz ITX media box plays video smoother than my daughters 2.8ghz windows media centre as a matter of fact.

With a spec that includes onboard pin headers for TV-out connections, up to six USB 2.0 ports and 6-Channel surround sound as well as S-Video and RCA TV-Out (NTSC & PAL) , allowing system designers to place connectors at easily accessible positions. Additionally, the use of pin headers allow for lower profile designs than a standard PC I/O plate, an MPEG-2 accelerator, onboard CompactFlash and a PCI slots.

You cant go wrong imho,

http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10643

gingeRS

alot of that is german to me

i have built a amd dual core pc, with motherboard that has high def out, and on board audio, line out only

havent bought a sound card or graphics card....yet

this is being built on a budget, and is for TV, windows only, no gaming. using it for my ipod, and music etc

so anything you could recommend thats cheap would be

Turbocabbie

When building a media centre running Windows I would suggest joining the following forums as all are active community's and you would get more balanced advice due to the range of users.

http://thegreenbutton.com/default.aspx

http://www.xpmediacentre.com.au/community/index.php

With regards to graphics I would personally choose Nvidia based cards as I believe they have better driver / software support than ATI - I would look for a passively cooled card as these will ensure a quieter media pc, who wants a high speed fan screaming away while watching a film ?

For sound I would take advice from the media center forums

Quiet PC is a good place to look for quieter PC products which are usefull in a media centre

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home

gingeRS

cheers mr menace

St3V3_C

This is what my MC has, but 3 times, so that you get the 6 channels for 5.1

Works

gingeRS

right now i have all the parts, just gotta start building it