Maximum PC Moonlights With a HTPC Build

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

Original Article Link

I read this article when it first came out and thought they made some odd choices, but keep in mind that this was a cover article in their August issue, which means it was probably written way back in May or June.  Quite a bit has changed since then.

[Andrew Van Til]

1) They should have known in June (I did) that the 460/450 were coming soon, so that was a bad time to do a feature on building a 3D HTPC
2) We all know that lossless multi-channel LCPM is the same thing as bit streamed HD audio
3) $200 for a PSU?
4) Green drive for a quad HD tuner?

[Matt]

Yeah I read it back when it showed up on newstands in late-July/early-August and as usual I was disapointed with it. Most mainstream “PC power user” type magazines really don’t know much about the HTPC niche.

[Mike Garcen]

i feel bad for the newbs that will build a system based on their recommendations alone :-/

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

I don’t.  I think most of MPC’s readers know enough to go online and research first.  For those who don’t…  live and learn, I guess.  Maybe they’ll make their way over to MR through their eventual research.  😉

[autoboy]

I don’t think it is THAT bad.  At least they used a fanless graphics card and a 45W CPU.  Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card, could have spent half what they spent on the motherboard, and probably don’t need a fanless PSU, but the overall build could be much worse.  I’ve seen much worse HTPC builds.

The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds.  At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu.  Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.

[captain_video]

There are a lot of people that may not be regular readers of Maximum PC but would buy the issue based on the article alone.  I haven’t subscribed to any magazines in quite a while but I’d pick one up if I saw something that caught my eye.  You would think that subscribers might look into this a bit further and explore other options but that is not always the case.  If MPC is the only exposure they have to the world of PCs then they might tend to take the article as gospel.

Case in point – My Dad got ionto PCs long before I did, but he never explored the world beyond the local Radio Shack.  His idea of PC heaven was an old Tandy Color Computer with a cassette drive for loading software.  Of course, the internet was nothing more than a twinkle in someone’s eye at the time so his resources were much more limited than ours.

[mikinho]

[quote=”autoboy”]
Yeah, they didn’t need the sound card[/quote]

One one of the pre-reqs was 3D HDTV and HD Audio bitstreaming so a discrete sound card was needed since the NVIDIA 4xx series weren’t available at the time of the article.

[quote=”autoboy”]
The worst HTPC builds are the Atom/ION builds.  At least when these guys are done they can play Hulu.  Those guys that build ION systems can’t even play all the videos they throw at the ION systems.
[/quote]

We’ll have a review next month that will disagree on that.  The AtomION builds can be a great HTPC if done right assuming you aren’t a big add-inextra software user.  For a long time Flash was worthless with Ion builds but since their introduced hardware acceleration it works quite nicely.

[Andrew Van Til]

[quote=”Mikinho”]
One one of the pre-reqs was 3D HDTV and HD Audio bitstreaming so a discrete sound card was needed since the NVIDIA 4xx series weren’t available at the time of the article.
[/quote]

While that’s true – the problem is that the stated goals are bizarre given product timing that they should have known about.  I don’t think it’s possible for them to have picked a worse time to build that box; had they waited a month (or two) significantly cheaper/better hardware would have been available as well as nVidia’s HDMI 1.4 driver.  Anyone who follows their guidance to achieve similar objectives and doesn’t do some homework will be completely screwed.

[mikinho]

[quote=”babgvant”]
While that’s true – the problem is that the stated goals are bizarre given product timing that they should have known about.  I don’t think it’s possible for them to have picked a worse time to build that box; had they waited a month (or two) significantly cheaper/better hardware would have been available as well as nVidia’s HDMI 1.4 driver.  Anyone who follows their guidance to achieve similar objectives and doesn’t do some homework will be completely screwed.
[/quote]

Very good point.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

[quote=”Mikinho”]
[quote=”babgvant”]
While that’s true – the problem is that the stated goals are bizarre given product timing that they should have known about.  I don’t think it’s possible for them to have picked a worse time to build that box; had they waited a month (or two) significantly cheaper/better hardware would have been available as well as nVidia’s HDMI 1.4 driver.  Anyone who follows their guidance to achieve similar objectives and doesn’t do some homework will be completely screwed.
[/quote]

Very good point.
[/quote]

This is probably why magazines don’t do these types of builds very often.  There’s never a “perfect” time.  I won’t begin to understand how long it takes for a magazine article to go from “idea” to “newstand”, but I get the feeling that’s the piece we’re not aware of and it probably played a bigger role than we realize.  Too bad there’s no website out there, devoted to HTPCs, which could publish something in a more timely fashion…  😉

It happened so fast, I missed it.  Who had their hand up first?  ;D

[Andrew Van Til]

[quote=”Skirge01″]

This is probably why magazines don’t do these types of builds very often.  There’s never a “perfect” time.  I won’t begin to understand how long it takes for a magazine article to go from “idea” to “newstand”
[/quote]

Timing is part of what distinguishes that know what they’re doing from those that don’t 🙂

FWIW – I have a feeling that Jan/Feb 2011 will be the perfect time to build a low power, quiet, 3D, HDMI 1.4, bit streaming HTPC.

[George L. Schmauch Jr.]

[quote=”babgvant”]
Timing is part of what distinguishes that know what they’re doing from those that don’t 🙂

FWIW – I have a feeling that Jan/Feb 2011 will be the perfect time to build a low power, quiet, 3D, HDMI 1.4, bit streaming HTPC.
[/quote]

D’oh!  Very, very good point!

[DavidStein]

[quote=”babgvant”]Jan/Feb 2011
[/quote]

i haven’t been too much attention, but what is coming out then? sandy bridge?

[Andrew Van Til]

Sandy Bridge should be out in early Jan (~CES), AMD/nVidia will have had their mid-range GPUs out long enough to get a decent selection of cards and there will have been enough time for everyone to get the worst of the early adopter kinks worked out of the software (PDVD/TMT) and drivers.

There’s also a really good chance that non-exclusive content that doesn’t suck will finally be there.

[Author]

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