Widescreen Gaming Forum

[quote]wow it's been a while since I built my HTPC, I might give it a work over early next year, your post has inspired me. Also back when I built the beast I was going for space and performance over looks and fuctionality.

Now rethinking it... I'd like to have a smaller case, with a cheap harddrive in it so I can run everything else of the server I have here...

One question though man, in MCE vista (I have it already) does it allow you to add content over the network or does it have to be on the local harddrive?

Oh and, 2GB enough? mine only has two and ram is cheap so would 4gb not be better to help system performance?

Yes you can 'watch" networked folders/files in WMC thats what WMC calls adding a folder to its library.

Anything that most of the family would be interested in I am placing on the HDD, my stuff like my music & anime I stream from the network.

I have subtitle and dual audio issues with some of my anime, so I have to use the moues and play it in media player classic for some of them.

Yeah I thought so, it must have been my network over in Ireland I always had problems, but home here in Australia it seems to work better, I still struggle to play 10GB 1080p files over the network though... any ideas?

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1080p is probably the problem, high bitrate.

Not sure your setup but its pretty well known that streaming 1080p is not easy to accomplish (read possible) wirelessly.

A good wireless N setup could probably pull it off otherwise wired is the way to go for that. I would definitely have any 1080p files directly on the hard drive. Anything you can do to lower the bitrate would help too. x264 is the highest qualiy @ low bitrate codec out there and thus why it is used for almost any HD stuff.

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Yeah it's wired, I only have wireless for girlfriends laptop.

Most if not all are MKV's encoded at x264 though so I think I should be right there...

It's a shame, I wanted to get a HTPC to steam 1080p stuff directly too... Anyway thanks for your help!

On last thing, hows your remote working for you?

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Does your 1080p content work fine when played from the local hdd?

Does your 1080p content work fine when played from the local hdd?

Yes and no... so I guess no... it's a PD830 2GB with a 7900GTX in it... so it goes alright, but not 100% sometimes it lags... I really should have though about that... likely cause.

Vicious, does your little amd setup play 1080p content alright?

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Yeah it plays 1080p easy, remember its a cpu thing not a gpu thing mostly. There are some cards (the HD3200 IGP being one of them) that can help the cpu by supporting hardware level decoding of files but they have to be using the right codec and be the right kind of file for that support.

edit: oh the remote is fantastic. Its exactly what I hoped it would be. It gets great reception to the HTPC and has a great button assortment and layout. Really makes WMC feel like a piece of entertainment equipment instead of a PC.

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I'm still trying to understand why one would want to build two entirely different PCs just to do what one could? The only thing that makes sense to me is if you have a home theater setup in the living room and a gaming PC in a dedicated gaming room.

Close, the Desktop is in my bedroom (aka the game room) and the HTPC is in the living room.

So anything on my PC I can watch alone in my room, but if I want to sit in the living area with the kids or family it needs to be avalable in the living area.

Also I was going to get a HAVA so I could turn the HTPC into a DIVO and record stuff off of TV but we just got a DIVO from our new TV service so I skipped that part.

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