Post your setup pictures

Hello there

Nothing phenomenal here in terms of tech but here ya go :

LG50PS8000
2x Jailbroken ATV2's with XMBC (Of course)
1x WD Live
Sonos music system Connected to below
LG 5.1 System
Ipad 1 & 2 running the Sonos app (Excellent)

Little Dell Zino in custom Ikea case (With fans and controller)
and a 26" LG TV/PC screen

My Book live 2tb NAS feeding the 2 ATV's and WD Live along with itunes libary feeding the Sonos system (No need for a running PC/Mac)

As I say, kinda basic in terms of tech, my LG 5.1 system was like £120 on Amazon yet everything works perfect and sounds good, I like my little setup.

Next is a 3D Projector and 120" screen

(2012-06-17 20:24)BlinneOrlaith Wrote:  Hello there

Nothing phenomenal here in terms of tech but here ya go :

LG50PS8000
2x Jailbroken ATV2's with XMBC (Of course)
1x WD Live
Sonos music system Connected to below
LG 5.1 System
Ipad 1 & 2 running the Sonos app (Excellent)

Little Dell Zino in custom Ikea case (With fans and controller)
and a 26" LG TV/PC screen

My Book live 2tb NAS feeding the 2 ATV's and WD Live along with itunes libary feeding the Sonos system (No need for a running PC/Mac)

As I say, kinda basic in terms of tech, my LG 5.1 system was like £120 on Amazon yet everything works perfect and sounds good, I like my little setup.

Next is a 3D Projector and 120" screen

I really like your desk Is that egg comfortable?

BlinneOrlaith,

I love your setup, its so simple and nice looking.

BlinneOrlaith,

That wall is ripe for a projection screen, 120" might be a bit overkill though. How far away are the seats?

(2012-06-18 20:01)fional Wrote:  I really like your desk Is that egg comfortable?

Thanks The egg chair is a good job, I bought it on ebay for 280 quid delivered, not a bad price. My kids don't allow me into it, im just the stupid fella at home ruled by the women.

Desk is a laptop table/desk from Ikea, they also do it in a shiny red and a shiny grey that are smart looking also.


TheAstronaut,

I think you may be correct, maybe 100" or less is a bit more realistic for viewing distance. Must measure tonight how far away the sofa is. I am gonna buy the Optima 3D short through projector for gaming and stuff, and using the playstation move.

My current projection screen is 115" and it is still pretty massive from 15' away. For how close your room looks, ~100" would seem about right, and I wouldn't go over 110". If you wanted to go the easy way, you could make your screen width just under the distance between your L-R tower speakers, then calculate the height accordingly for either 16:9 or 2.35:1 depending on your preference.

After lots of work, I’m finally able to share my HTPC setup. I initially thought this was going to be a weekend project, but it turned into about 4-5 weekends' worth of ripping media, tinkering with settings, redoing things, and so on to get everything working seamlessly.

So here’s my setup, and all of the things I learned along the way. I hope it helps anyone else trying to do the same thing. Note: I own pretty much all the content contained here.

Specs / Hardware:
------------------------------------------------
* CPU: Core i5 3750k overclocked to 4.2Ghz
* GPU: GeForce GTX 560
* Storage:
- 60GB HDD for the OS and main programs
- Four 2TB External HDDs (1 for movies, 1 for TV shows, videogames, home movies, pictures, and music, and 2 drives as backups)
- 8GB USB Thumbdrive to store fanart, videogame covers, etc.
(The reason for this approach is to make it as easy as possible to move the setup to a new computer down the road)
* Optical Disc Drives:
- LG GDR-8164B 16x DVD-ROM Drive (for ripping GCN / Wii discs)
- LG Super Multi Blue Bluray Drive (for BluRay ripping)

Software:
------------------------------------------------
* OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
* Media Program: XBMC
* XBMC Skin: Aeon Nox
* Emulators Used: Visual Boy Advanced, Jnes, ZSNES, ePSXe, Project 64, Dolphin
* Blu Ray Ripping: DVDFab
* DVD Ripping: DVD Decrypter
* DVD Encoding: HandBrake

Physical Controls:
------------------------------------------------
* General Navigation: Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 with Built-In Multi-Touch Touchpad
* PC Gaming: HP Wireless Elite Keyboard v2, Logitech Wireless Mouse M310 Dark Aces
* Non-Motion Console Gaming: Xbox 360 Wireless Controller for Windows
* Motion Gaming: Regular Wiimote / Wii Motion Plus Controller
* Bluetooth Adapter: cirago BTA-6210 Micro Bluetooth Dongle

Demo Video (or click the links below to go to specific sections):
------------------------------------------------
HTPC DEMO VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1J-4b9CP...e=youtu.be
-- Weather portion of the demo video: http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=19s
-- Music portion: http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=33s
-- Movies portion: http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=1m17s
-- TV Shows: http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=2m34s
-- Games (took the most effort!): http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=3m35s
-- Apps: http://youtu.be/i1J-4b9CPJI?t=14m11s

Screenshots
------------------------------------------------
- Weather

Quote:

- Movies

Quote:

- TV Shows

Quote:

- Games

Quote:

FAQ (aka Random Things I Learned):
------------------------------------------------
...XBMC General:
1. Removing the “Up Directory” option: Settings - Appearance - Filelists ... make sure the first option there is UNCHECKED
2. Changing Between Celsius and Fahrenheit: To change between Celsius and Fahrenheit go to Settings -> Appearance -> International and select your location under "Region".

Videogames:
1. ePSXe
- Settings for FF7 that remove the weird green lines:

Quote:http://www.crisdecuba.com/images/xbmc/epsxesettings.jpg

2. Project 64
- How to show correct aspect ratio, rather than stretching widescreen: Use the Glide64 graphics plugin, rather than Jabo.

3. Visual Boy Advance
- Show Correct Aspect Ratio in Fullscreen Mode: Change the render method to something other than DirectDraw
- Remove the menu bar: Emulation > Auto Hide Menu

4. Wii / GCN
- Program for Reading Wii-Formatted External Hard Drive: WBFS Manager
- Wii / GCN Game Backup: Program for ripping GCN / Wii games: RawDump 2.1
- Emulator Setup: Different GCN / Wii games may require different settings or different versions of Dolphin to run well. So I essentially created a different instance of the dolphin emulator for each game. This allows me to tweak or adjust the settings for each game individually without worrying about breaking something in another game.

Apps:
- Hulu Desktop – Launch Fullscreen Every Time: Open app, hit control F, close app. Next time will launch full screen

- Advanced Launcher:
--- Creating Duplicate Instance of Advanced Launcher (for example, one for Apps, one for Games:
1. Follow instructions in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMFJcxdcEg
2. Summary of instructions:
- a. Go to: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\addons
- b. Copy paste the “plugin.program.advanced.launcher” to create a new instance
- c. Rename it to “plugin.program.advanced.games.launcher”
- d. Open and edit addon.xml (2 references to update)
- e. Edit launcher_plugin.py in \resources\lib (2 references to update)
Note: Use Notepad++ for this, rather than Notepad

- Netflix:
1. Installing Netflix onto Windows Media Center:
- a. In Windows Media Center, click Tasks, click Settings, click General and then click Automatic Download Options.
- b. Click Download Now. If Windows Media Center prompts you to set up an Internet connection, complete the steps that are listed on the screen.
- c. In the Start Download dialog box, click OK. The download may take several minutes to finish.
- d. When the download is complete, restart Windows Media Center. Then, look for the Netflix option to the left of Recorded TV in the TV + Movies row.

2. Setting up a shortcut that goes directly to Netflix (instead of having to launch Windows Media Center first:
- Create a shortcut. The target is: C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe -launchcoded:{e6f46126-f8a9-4a97-9159-b70b07890112}\{982ea9d3-915c-4713-a3c8-99a4688b7c59}
For the “start in” field, enter: C:\Windows\ehome

Weather:
Where do I get decent FanArt images for the dyamic weather backgrounds: Download the Weather FanArt Pack (about 800 images, 1080p)

Movies and TV Shows:
1. Ripping / Encoding BluRay Discs
- The best approach to ripping Bluray movies, in my opinion, was to do a “passthrough” or something along those lines in DVDFab to create an MKV file. This means the program doesn’t re-encode the file – it just passes it through to create the MKV file. This option results in no loss in image or audio quality and allows you to keep the subtitles and various audio tracks.

2. Ripping / Encoding DVD Discs
- The best approach to ripping / encoding DVD movies, in my opinion, was to rip using DVD Decrypter (DVDFab kept giving me errors), and then using HandBrake to encode into an MKV file containing the subtitles, audio tracks, etc (again, DVDFab kept giving me errors for some reason). There’s a loss in quality, but it’s imperceptible to my eye.

3. Setting up a keyboard shortcut to switch audio tracks:
Follow the instructions here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Keyboard.xml (I chose “n” as my shortcut).

4. What is the shortcut for enabling / disabling subtitles?: “T”

5. Subtitles are enabled by default – how do I change this?
- a. While watching a video, hit “M” to bring up the navigation options at the top of the screen
- b. Navigate to the audio options button, press enter
- c. Disable subtitles, and then down the bottom select "make default for all movies"

I hope folks can get some use out of this, and that it encourages others to take the plunge!

Can't see the pictures

(2012-07-04 22:45)Chris! Wrote:  Can't see the pictures

Really? They're showing up on my end. Sad. :-(

Can see them now - crisis over.