Home Theaters

[DaMadFiddler]

The world of home theaters is moving forward leaps and bounds, wih a bunch of new options that weren't even considerations ten years ago. I was just curious: since there are so many different (good) options to choose from nowadays, what would you prefer in your living room?

[Deth2k7]

The AppleTV looks nice.

[Thomas]

I use XBMC.

[APE]

XBMC works for 90% of my current needs but I finally hit a wall when anime release groups starting putting out h264 and 720p videos. The colors are so much more vibrant at half the file size but the XBox simply cannot play it.

The AppleTV is nice but it seems rather restrictive overall, a regular x86 pc crammed into a corner somewhere would be the best solution overall.

This article might be useful as well:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=855576

[Caboose]

I would probably just hook all my shit up (computer, xbox, xbox 360) to a big TV and some surround sound speakers and be done with it. The xbox with XBMC will be awesome for pretty much everything, with the computer as the backbone behind the setup ( for obtaining the content to be streamed and being the streamer). Then for the High def stuff I'd use my xbox 360, it's awesome with that stuff except for the format restrictions (you can get by most of them easily though, especially if you have Media center).

[MulletMan13]

Once iTunes gets HD content, I'll be going with the AppleTV.

But XBMC gets things done well.

[hearld500]

Vista and the 360. Looks way better then anything out there in my opinion. You can stream movies, acts as a dvr, music, pictures, you name it.

[Zealous zerotype]

Besides having my computer hooked up (like I once did) I'd say go with myth tv. Also, check out http://www.mini-itx.com for some ideas if you want to conceal it.

[MapleBuster]

There seems to be no mention of my preferred system, teh Dreamcast running DCPlaya connected to an old valve radio, outputting through a 14" portable tv complete with twin trumpet-shaped horn speakers.

In which case I'd have to say the XB360 with Vista PC sounds attractive. There's no mention of that either ? Looks like I won't be voting.

[Covar]

I'd say an appleTV. it can communicate with any computer running iTunes, and can pretty much run anything iTunes can, which means all my movies and tv shows i already have there (i watch stuff on my iPod, h.264 at 640x480 still looks great on tvs) .

[melancholy]

I'm a traditional home theater person. A DVD player, a few consoles under the TV, and a receiver for the audio. For the very rare times that I want to watch something that's not a standard DVD, XBMC works well enough for it. But my needs are different since my television is only used for consoles and the occasional DVD.

[Lartrak]

XBMC is the thing for the regular Xbox right? I might be getting an xbox in a while just for that feature, as I could certainly use an extra region free DVD player and such.

However, I generally now have a standard home theatre. I can hook my laptop up fairly easily into my projector when the need arises.

[Roofus]

XBMC is good, though it's annoying that it doesn't do DVR or the new 720p releases. (Not that it matters much as I don't have a 720p TV.) When/if the Linux XBMC port materializes, I'll probably build a media center PC for that.

[APE]

I'd say an appleTV. it can communicate with any computer running iTunes, and can pretty much run anything iTunes can, which means all my movies and tv shows i already have there (i watch stuff on my iPod, h.264 at 640x480 still looks great on tvs) .

iTunes sucks though, Samba is the de facto standard.

[Quzar]

I'm currently using my standard desktop hooked up to an HDTV via dvi/hdmi. Brilliant quality.

[Ex-Cyber]

I'd be inclined to go with an OpenSolaris (for ZFS) server stashed away somewhere semi-convenient for mass storage, and a SFF PC running MythTV for the front end.

[BlackAura]

I'm using an old PC. It's basically just spare parts - the old motherboard and CPU I had spare from the last time I upgraded my PC, a spare 1GB of RAM left over from when by brother upgraded his PC, a spare GeForce 5200 that we had absolutely no other use for, a hard drive, and a digital TV card.

Obviously it needed some modifications to make it quieter. It works quite well now, though.

Ex-Cyber - that might be a good idea if Solaris had drivers for any TV cards. It doesn't have many. Certainly not as many as Linux does.

[Wagh]

In my old setup I had a htpc and xbmc hooked in. Both were great. I ended up just using the pc more because of the ease of it all.

[Gmc]

A PC (Using a HDMI/DVI output to a HDTV ). Lets face it, appleTV's wayy too restrictive on what it can and cannot play. And I cannot be arsed to convert ALL my other content to a format the appleTV will play. XBMC's excellent, but the inability to play 720p ruins it for me. Not seen mythTV so I dont know how well it works

[MapleBuster]

Lets face it, appleTV's wayy too restrictive on what it can and cannot play.

What content can't it play ?