R3c31v3r (Home theater PC) updated w/ pics Jan. 10th

ok then sounds good

i had a vision of like an inch of cooler sticking out of the top, and some moron puuting a phone book on it or something.

 

I'm thinking its about time for an update essjaytee.. Well, maybe I'm hoping its about time..

 

Working on one.

What's going on at the moment:

I got the htpc hooked up to my home theater setup at home, sounds really good but the picture quality is not great. I picked up a nice quality video cable (and digital audio cable) last night at radio shack and it made some difference, but it still doesn't look as good as I had hoped

The chip that I had in there was simply too weak to power the dvd playing software, so I got a P3 850 from my brother. I also added another 128 megs of ram to up it to 256. I installed windows XP because other versions of windows don't support 5.1 output. I'm hoping *fingers crossed* that I can cool the proc with a ducted 80mm fan drawing air in from outside the case at 7v... If that's not enough then I can run it at 12v, but I need it to be very quiet. The ageing 60mm fan on the heatsink there at the moment is way too loud.

The DVD slot is done, I need to do something with the eject button because it doesn't line up with anything on the outside.

The volume knob will hopefully be something cool, I will post more info when I get some progess made on it.

I have spent the morning admiring 4am Media Console. It's software designed for what I need this machine to do. I'll play with it tonight and post my thoughts.

I'm just not as happy with the remote as I wanted to be so I'm buying a smart looking compact black wireless keyboard with built in trackpad for control.

I'm waiting on two CCFLs and some LEDs from Scorpion Mods, as soon as I get them I can do more work to the inside.

The whole video quality really knocked the wind out of my sails last night though. Anyone know why it wouldn't fill the screen? (It has black bars on the left and right sides of the screen) I'm running at 800x600, with a PCI tnt2 32meg with RCA TV-Out.

So, there you go. Progress so far.

 

Well.. glad there was an update, its a great project.
A couple things popped into my head when I read your post. On hte DVD eject button, why not rewire it so its wired to one of hte normal buttons on the face of the receiver unit. If I'm not mistaken Zap has a guide on it, and Linear is coming out with a circuit on it (his worklog featured it.) By relocating it you wouldn't have to worry about it not matching up. The TV Display deal, I used a ATI Radeon 32Meg PCI card with SVIDEO out, I then converted it with a cable convertor to RCA for my TV and the quality was also lacking. Only way I can possibly read the text is if its 640x480. SVIDEO does improve it, at least when I tested it on a friends big screen, but its still lacking. I might suggest a Scan Converter. CompUSA used to sell an AverKey model I belive for like $100, it worked pretty nicely when I used it. Might pick one up and if you don't like it see about returning it. Anyway, continue the good work.

Oh I forgot, any way of getting a Model/Make of that Keyboard, I'm still on hte hunt for the perfect all in one wireless keyboard/mouse.

 

http://www.audioexchange.com/chicwirkeybu.html

It says it's a "Mouse Pad" I think it's like the little knob style pointing devices you find on IBM notebooks.

Heck, it was $24 and looks pretty darn cool, so I bought it.

As for the DVD eject, I'm working on it already, I have exactly the same DVD drive as Zap modded, so I just have to follow what he did

 

Ah Perfect, and no numPad.

 

For the TV size thing... I've read that certain tweeking apps will let you 'overscan' the tv output to fill the whole TV screen... maybe look into that.