Mini's Home Theater (Not 56k friendsly / Please post yours too!)

[Kenshiin]

Where's a good place to download dvd covers for my movies?

[mootsfox]

A+ on building your own speakers sir.

This is my new TV:
http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...x/DSC_7032.jpg

And my room, where the good audio is.
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1932/dsc7106.jpg

[kareface]

Where's a good place to download dvd covers for my movies?

Are you talking about printable inserts for blank DVD cases? Or posters of the movies to be used with a program like XBMC?

A+ on building your own speakers sir.

Thanks. Nice setup, got a few questions. Is that a 42"? How do you like the TV? What receiver do you use (the one next to the computer)? What happened to the dell monitor on your shelf? lol

[Kenshiin]

Nah, I dont want to print them out, just have them show up in the programs like XBMC.

Speaking of that, after doing some research on the HTPCs I found that my PS3 can do it all too. Windows Media Player sucked but I found a program called PS3 Media Server that does almost everything I want at this point. It's not as nice looking as those HTPC programs but it's better than having to build a computer for it.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:
PS3 Media Server

[mootsfox]

Are you talking about printable inserts for blank DVD cases? Or posters of the movies to be used with a program like XBMC?



Thanks. Nice setup, got a few questions. Is that a 42"? How do you like the TV? What receiver do you use (the one next to the computer)? What happened to the dell monitor on your shelf? lol

It's a 42 or 46", I'm not quite sure, but it is 1080p which I think is far more important. It's pretty nice, I bought it used ($200) but it has a stuck green pixel on the left side.

The receiver is a Onkyo A-RV401. It's a nice four channel unit that I use strictly for audio (the two monitors, and a 10" long throw behind me), though it has composite video connections. The speakers are from Design Acoustics, the PS model line. The 22" on the desk needs work, something is wrong with the power circuit... I think... And the 2408 on the shelf needs a new panel.

[Akiyama]

Nothing amazing.
Haven't decided to shell out for the sound system yet.

Oh and this is just my room

Spoiler for hugeness

Spoiler: show

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e2...n/DSC01961.jpg

First off, Avatar: The Last Airbender for the fucking win. I hated those line of episodes where Appa gets stolen and Aang is rather.. Zuko-ish (Season 1-2) for like half the season. :/ It was okay after that though!

And moot, that's a great TV and $200? Christ. I got my Samsung for like.. 850.. last year and it's only 32". Talk about a huge ripoff when comparing to the times now. =[

[kareface]

Nah, I dont want to print them out, just have them show up in the programs like XBMC.

Speaking of that, after doing some research on the HTPCs I found that my PS3 can do it all too. Windows Media Player sucked but I found a program called PS3 Media Server that does almost everything I want at this point. It's not as nice looking as those HTPC programs but it's better than having to build a computer for it.

Here's the link if anyone is interested:
PS3 Media Server

themoviedb.org (TMDb) | The open movie database

&

Online TV Database - An open directory of television shows for HTPC software

Are the best 2 I know of for media center art.

[The_OG_Nelta]

First off, Avatar: The Last Airbender for the fucking win. I hated those line of episodes where Appa gets stolen and Aang is rather.. Zuko-ish (Season 1-2) for like half the season. :/ It was okay after that though!

And moot, that's a great TV and $200? Christ. I got my Samsung for like.. 850.. last year and it's only 32". Talk about a huge ripoff when comparing to the times now. =[

Avatar HD is pretty fucking awesome.

But tugged some heart strings when

Spoiler: show

The sand benders tell Aang where Appa is and he goes crazy and mad.

[Hogie]

Hey Mini do you have your HTPC on your LAN and you just download straight to it, or do you download on another computer and then upload to your HTPC through your network?

Edit: Also, what made you choose to build your own HTPC rather then get something like a Apple TV with network shares for the movies and TV?

[Amastacia]

Very nice build Mini. I don't have the time nor the energy to build my own speakers, but I didn't really need to in the end.

I guess I'll post up my own, apologies in advance for the mess (I really need to clean up my apartment) and the crappy picture quality. Left my point-and-shoot in the car and the iPhone's camera is nothin' special.

All speakers are Paradigm Monitor series, few years old now but in great shape.

HTPC sits next to the TV stand. It's horrendously overbuilt for what it usually does, but I wanted it to be a useful backup PC to schlep to LAN parties or for friends to be able to game on when they came over. That's also why it's in a traditional Lian Li case rather than a HTPC case. Important innards are Q6600, 3GB of DDR2, GeForce 8800GT, and 2x400GB HDDs.

View of the front. My living room is very narrow and long, which is inconvenient (mainly leaves me with nowhere good to put my rear channels).
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/4342/htfront.jpg

Close-up of the center. Receiver is a Yamaha RX-V861BL, which I picked up at an end-of-MY clearance for $500 off list.
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/2076/htcenter.jpg

Left main with the cover off.
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/782/htmains.jpg

Rear with the cover off. This one's sitting on a small nightstand by my PC desk, the other channel is on the corner of my breakfast bar. It's quite ghetto, but sounds alright in large part thanks to the good calibration tools of the receiver.
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7184/htrears.jpg

[Artemicon]

I like the lighter grain wood finish better.

[kareface]

It's a 42 or 46", I'm not quite sure, but it is 1080p which I think is far more important. It's pretty nice, I bought it used ($200) but it has a stuck green pixel on the left side.

200$?! Nice! Now noticeable is the pixel? That's awesome.

Hey Mini do you have your HTPC on your LAN and you just download straight to it, or do you download on another computer and then upload to your HTPC through your network?

Edit: Also, what made you choose to build your own HTPC rather then get something like a Apple TV with network shares for the movies and TV?

I have a dedicated server for downloading on a comically beefy connection (I've sustained 32megs a second down) & transfer the movies to my file server or the HTPC. All of my computers are connected together via gigabit ethernet & I have XBMC setup so all the movies on my file server are playable via the network along with the ones I house on the HTPC. I have about 7TB of HD content and ton of SD content where HD wasn't available.

I tried using a few bot top solutions to start with:
Home > Products > TVIX HD M-6500A
Review: Western Digital WD TV HD Media Player

However, I ran into the same problem with almost all of them. Most of the encodes I get use the latest and greatest codecs. Most of the time the players had huge issues with mkv containers even when it says on the box that it's compatible. A huge portion of my collection is international flicks or anime. Building a HTPC was the best way to make sure I could access all of my media on the television and it's a lot more future proof (ie new codecs or containers) then a hardware solution. The cost wasn't even much greater then most of the other solutions.

Very nice build Mini. I don't have the time nor the energy to build my own speakers, but I didn't really need to in the end.

No kidding, Paradigm was one of the brands I was considering prior to the build. They make awesome speakers. My friend has a setup with the Studio 60's from Paradigm, and they sound hot. He came over to my place after I got the speakers setup for the first time with a hard drive filled with lossless audio, and even he had to conceded that the speakers I build could likely match his setup. His surrounds & sub kick the shit out of mine tho.

All speakers are Paradigm Monitor series, few years old now but in great shape.

You got a beautiful setup for home audio. Do you "get" your movies from the internet? Have you ever heard any of the B&W speakers? The high end ones are so nice, kick the shit out of anything I've come across outside of demo rooms.

HTPC sits next to the TV stand. It's horrendously overbuilt for what it usually does, but I wanted it to be a useful backup PC to schlep to LAN parties or for friends to be able to game on when they came over. That's also why it's in a traditional Lian Li case rather than a HTPC case. Important innards are Q6600, 3GB of DDR2, GeForce 8800GT, and 2x400GB HDDs.

That's as fast as one of my main computers. Nice setup. How do you attach the HTPC to your receiver?

My living room is very narrow and long, which is inconvenient (mainly leaves me with nowhere good to put my rear channels).

Do you rent? You could do an in wall setup for the rears.

Nice setup. I'd love to hear it in action. Post a picture of your center w/o the cover on.

I like the lighter grain wood finish better.

That directed my way? I assume your talking about the unfinished fronts. They looked nice before the stain, but the fronts really wouldn't of matched with what I plan to do with the sides. Red & black match a lot better then light brown & black. I'm pretty happy with the results. I wanted a really vibrant red, something that was eye catching, and it took a lot of trial and error with mixing colors to get it just right. You can actually see a few of my demo stains against the right wall in the top image. Testing out different combinations of red & orange. At one point I was going to go with orange fronts, but decided against it later. If done right it can turn out really well. I was unable to get the shade and effect that would of resulted in them looking nice.

I decided instead of attaching the legs to the speaker, I am going to make little bases for the right and left speakers to slide into. I've got all the speakers stained and 1 or 2 clear coats on them now. But, when I went to sand them the clear coat says it can be done with a palm sander, but the thing took a bite right through the finish and part of the stain on one of the speakers. I'm in the process of repairing the damage, but it really pissed me off because it was the speaker I felt that stained the best. Just goes to show, don't trust the instructions on the cans. I've all but ignored the instructions for a lot of the products I've used and it's been for the better in almost every case.

[AzazaelFenrir]

Those speakers look so nice. I really need new speakers for my new Onkyo receiver, buy building them has me pretty intimidated. I don't solder well at all ><

[Amastacia]

No kidding, Paradigm was one of the brands I was considering prior to the build. They make awesome speakers. My friend has a setup with the Studio 60's from Paradigm, and they sound hot. He came over to my place after I got the speakers setup for the first time with a hard drive filled with lossless audio, and even he had to conceded that the speakers I build could likely match his setup. His surrounds & sub kick the shit out of mine tho.

So I inherited my audiophile-on-a-budget tendencies from my old man. He's got two rooms with good setups, living room and den. He didn't pay retail for a single speaker in either room, mostly picked them up slightly used through reliable channels, and everything's in great condition.

The den (5 channels onry) has a pair of Studio 100s as the mains, they sound so good it's not even funny. Sitting next to the Studio 100s are a pair of Studio 60s he's not currently using (that I'm seriously tempted to try to buy from him). I think the rears are currently a pair of Axioms, but he might've swapped them for Paradigms to match the mains and center.

The living room's just bonkers. The mains are made by Marantz and are older than I am, but sound at least as good as the Studio 100s. Larger/more drivers so with the volume pumped they have much more oomph. The center, sides, rears, and sub are all Studios. TV's a Pioneer 1080p DLP, watching movies in that room is an almost otherworldly experience.

Your mains are extremely impressive for DIY work. I'm not surprised they're of equal quality to professional units. Most homemade units I've seen fall down because of shortcuts during the build process, and it doesn't look like you've taken any.

You got a beautiful setup for home audio. Do you "get" your movies from the internet?

Thanks.

The one piece that's missing is a stand-alone sub. Since I'm in a multi-unit dwelling at the moment, I've not been in a rush to address that. My neighbors might not appreciate it, and the bass response on the Monitors is good enough that I'm not pulling my hair out from the lack.

The other niggling little issue is I have a crappy SD cable box with 2 channel audio, and the right channel has some static. It's very audible, and incredibly annoying. I'd have thrown the set top out the window if I actually watched TV on a regular basis. Seriously considering canceling my service and just using Hulu + downloads to get my fix.

And yes, I have some physical media but much of my collection is from the interwebs. I've started trying to replace existing SD rips with 720p or 1080p H.264 rips. BluRay ISOs are just too big and I don't care so much about special features. I'll settle for 720p on movies that aren't visually stunning (or old as dirt) to save a bit on download time, and hold out for 1080p on anything where it matters.

Usenet is a godsend, if you're not already taking advantage of it, I'd most definitely look into it.

Have you ever heard any of the B&W speakers? The high end ones are so nice, kick the shit out of anything I've come across outside of demo rooms.

I've heard a few B&Ws, but not enough of them to consider myself well-versed or an expert by any means. That said, they've been quite impressive.

The main reason I've stuck with Paradigm is that there's that niggling voice of common sense that limits my expenditures on home theater components, and they are virtually unbeatable if you're in the market for "excellent, but priced sanely" speakers.

That's as fast as one of my main computers. Nice setup. How do you attach the HTPC to your receiver?

For the moment, I'm using component out, which limits me to 1080i, and a digital audio cable for multi-channel audio.

I'm not thrilled with things working that way, but the 8800s don't do audio pass-through on HDMI, and I had all the hardware to set it up that way. I really need to pick up a DVI -> HDMI converter, but I also need to double check and make sure my receiver can handle HDMI for video and composite digital audio from the same input source.

Do you rent? You could do an in wall setup for the rears.

I do, so I'm stuck for the moment.

I want to take advantage of the tax credit for first-time homebuyers, so I've been looking at a number of places. Haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I'm definitely going to make the audio install cleaner once I have my own place.

Nice setup. I'd love to hear it in action. Post a picture of your center w/o the cover on.

Thanks again for the kind words.

And the picture you asked for:
http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/3...ternocover.jpg

[aalryn]

I am really impressed with the HTPC in your system. I think you may have inspired me to do this myself for my system. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400-500 DVDs and 30ish blu-rays so being able to rip them to a HD and free up some much needed bookshelf space would be worth whatever it costs to build the PC.

As some of you know I -REALLY- don't like pirating anything... I really don't want to just download movies from torrent. Is there any software that can be used to copy/compress my DVDs and Blu-Rays to a hard drive (i'll pick up a terabyte external for it) or is it next to impossible with the encription on the disks? If there is i'll just go ahead and start ripping now.



Oh and as far as your plasma vs projector argument I must disagree. A plasma/lcd tv doesn't hold a candle to a good projector. I have a 52" sony XBR plasma in my living room and a PJ in my office. I barely even use my plasma anymore for anything.

(here is my system as of now, and some terrible pics of the screen taken with a cheap little point & shoot)

Spoiler: show

(taken with iphone while my gf plays rag-doll kung foo WAY too close)
http://imgur.com/NdEie.jpg


lights off pics with a shitty point & click digital
http://imgur.com/3yZnb.jpg
http://imgur.com/KrIAG.jpg
http://imgur.com/xgwku.jpg
http://imgur.com/oMFV3.jpg

[Amastacia]

DVD Decrypter works fine for DVDs. I haven't gone looking for the equivalent for BluRays, since I don't currently own a player or collect the media.

A decrypted DVD will work just fine in VLC.

Nice setup, btw.

Edit: If you're serious about not just ripping the disks into decrypted files on your hard drives, and actually want to compress them and slot them into containers (e.g. MKVs), that's a bit more involved.

[aalryn]

DVD Decrypter works fine for DVDs. I haven't gone looking for the equivalent for BluRays, since I don't currently own a player or collect the media.

A decrypted DVD will work just fine in VLC.

Nice setup, btw.

Edit: If you're serious about not just ripping the disks into decrypted files on your hard drives, and actually want to compress them and slot them into containers (e.g. MKVs), that's a bit more involved.

Yea it seems that AnyDVD HD seems to be the one to rip both DVD and blurays to the hard drive.

I would need to compress the data. I believe most dvd movies are about 4 gigs uncompressed without extras etc. Blurays are close to 25 gigs. Entirely too big.

The MKV format looks pretty nice as you can keep all of the menus/chapter selection along with it. I've only just searched it now so i'm looking for how to compress to the format now.

[Amastacia]

A lot of direct BluRay rips are closer to 50GB. You can get a H.264 1080p rip down to about 10-15GB.

DVD rips are usually about 4.5GB, cut that down to 1GB or so and keep a decent enough H.264 rip.

MKV is a spectacular container, I'm happy it's becoming more widespread because it's fantastic.

[kareface]

Those speakers look so nice. I really need new speakers for my new Onkyo receiver, buy building them has me pretty intimidated. I don't solder well at all ><

The soldering was really easy. If you don't have one just pick up a cheap iron and all you need to do is heat the metal where you want the solder and press the solder to it. Just make sure that you don't heat too close to the base of a capacitor or resistor. It's really so easy that it's almost a joke. The hardest part is just figuring out what to solder together. The crossover is nuts, I've never seen a design like it before. With a little help you can figure out it out tho. I had help with my crossovers. If you build the bookshelf sized ones, you can even buy a pre-made cabinet from the site. They have them pre-finished, so you can have really classy looking speakers w/o needing to assemble the cabinets yourself. I wanted floor standing ones, so I went the DIY route on the cabinets.

So I inherited my audiophile-on-a-budget tendencies from my old man. He's got two rooms with good setups, living room and den. He didn't pay retail for a single speaker in either room, mostly picked them up slightly used through reliable channels, and everything's in great condition.

The den (5 channels onry) has a pair of Studio 100s as the mains, they sound so good it's not even funny. Sitting next to the Studio 100s are a pair of Studio 60s he's not currently using (that I'm seriously tempted to try to buy from him). I think the rears are currently a pair of Axioms, but he might've swapped them for Paradigms to match the mains and center.

The living room's just bonkers. The mains are made by Marantz and are older than I am, but sound at least as good as the Studio 100s. Larger/more drivers so with the volume pumped they have much more oomph. The center, sides, rears, and sub are all Studios. TV's a Pioneer 1080p DLP, watching movies in that room is an almost otherworldly experience.

I'm sporting a half chub at the idea. Sounds awesome, I've never heard the 100's, but if the 60's are any indication I can only imagine the beasts. You should mention to your Dad he might want to have the capacitors in the older speakers checked out. They tend to decline over time and it will affect the quality of the sound.

ELNA AMERICA, INC.

Your mains are extremely impressive for DIY work. I'm not surprised they're of equal quality to professional units. Most homemade units I've seen fall down because of shortcuts during the build process, and it doesn't look like you've taken any.

Yeah, I went with the best sounding options over anything else. MDF, high quality dampening foam, nice parts where it matters. I love the way they are turning out. The sound is so crisp you can hear every detail and they look exactly like I was picturing. I've never done anything like this before, it's been a ton of fun learning about everything along the way and seeing them come together.

The one piece that's missing is a stand-alone sub. Since I'm in a multi-unit dwelling at the moment, I've not been in a rush to address that. My neighbors might not appreciate it, and the bass response on the Monitors is good enough that I'm not pulling my hair out from the lack.

I'm in the same boat. I'm moving out in about 4 months from now to a house. I'm planing on building a killer sub for the new place, something that'll shake the entire house with bass.

The other niggling little issue is I have a crappy SD cable box with 2 channel audio, and the right channel has some static. It's very audible, and incredibly annoying. I'd have thrown the set top out the window if I actually watched TV on a regular basis. Seriously considering canceling my service and just using Hulu + downloads to get my fix.

And yes, I have some physical media but much of my collection is from the interwebs. I've started trying to replace existing SD rips with 720p or 1080p H.264 rips. BluRay ISOs are just too big and I don't care so much about special features. I'll settle for 720p on movies that aren't visually stunning (or old as dirt) to save a bit on download time, and hold out for 1080p on anything where it matters.

Usenet is a godsend, if you're not already taking advantage of it, I'd most definitely look into it.

I don't use usenet, I'm more of a torrent guy myself. I belong to a ton of HD trackers and have somewhere around 10tb of upload credit between them all, so keeping my ratio is never an issue. I'm the same way with my movies, I always prefer 1080 when it's available. Alot of the time I'll get the 720 version and redownload the 1080 version when it's released in the cases where theres a delay. I have enough credit and a fast enough connection that it doens't really matter. The other day I finished a 14 gig encode in 5 and 1/2 min with many other downloads going at the same time.

I'm not thrilled with things working that way, but the 8800s don't do audio pass-through on HDMI, and I had all the hardware to set it up that way. I really need to pick up a DVI -> HDMI converter, but I also need to double check and make sure my receiver can handle HDMI for video and composite digital audio from the same input source.

You should just upgrade the video card to something that does both. Makes things so much easier. Besides speaker wire, the only things I have going into the back of my reciever is 1 HDMI in, and 1 out. It's so clean back there compared to most high end setups it's silly.

I love the look of those woofers. I like ones with a little more then flat black to them.

I am really impressed with the HTPC in your system. I think you may have inspired me to do this myself for my system. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 400-500 DVDs and 30ish blu-rays so being able to rip them to a HD and free up some much needed bookshelf space would be worth whatever it costs to build the PC.

As some of you know I -REALLY- don't like pirating anything... I really don't want to just download movies from torrent. Is there any software that can be used to copy/compress my DVDs and Blu-Rays to a hard drive (i'll pick up a terabyte external for it) or is it next to impossible with the encription on the disks? If there is i'll just go ahead and start ripping now.

Here's what I would suggest. First off, you'll likely need a little more then 1tb, especially if you want to future proof a little. I'd suggest getting two 1tb drives and putting them in a raid 0. You'd loose all your movies if one if them failed, but you'll have all of the original disks anyways, so it wouldn't be a problem. I've got mine in a raid 0 and it's been working great, it's much faster then a single HD. Just make sure you don't get seagates, they have been having issues. For the DVD's, because they take up so little space to begin with you could just rip them as ISO's. XBMC will play ISO's through the application and that way you don't have to deal with encoding hundreds of videos. Ripping an ISO is pretty quick and easy, and it doesn't take any special understanding of codecs because you aren't changing the compression of the video.

For blu-ray movies, it's a lot harder. The process takes a lot more effort and knowledge. The security is harder to get around (not by a lot, but enough that it can be annoying at times.) and encoding files that large takes a huge amount of time and if you don't do it right it'll turn out choppy during the action scenes or apply a filter that changes the look of the movie too much. I'd suggest just downloading the encodes from a good source. Good encodes are usually hard to beat. They are a fraction of the original size and there are no visual differences between the original and the source. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to download them if you own the movie. It's considered a digital backup, that's why I own all 500 or so bluray's that I've downloaded *cough*.

The single best reason to get a HTPC is access. If you have someone over that wants to watch a movie, being able to browse the entire collection, see images of the movie, a plot outline, ratings, you can browse by actor, studio, genre, recently added films, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. For TV programming you have details for each episode with a preview image. It's packaged in a way that's sure to impress anyone and the best part is the auto resume. You can stop watching a movie, turn the computer off, come back whenever you feel like it and pick up right where you left off. You can make a favorites list and even mark videos as watched or unwatched. Nothing really compares to having a proper HTPC, and I think it's worth every penny.

Oh and as far as your plasma vs projector argument I must disagree. A plasma/lcd tv doesn't hold a candle to a good projector. I have a 52" sony XBR plasma in my living room and a PJ in my office. I barely even use my plasma anymore for anything.

To each their own, but as nice as good projectors are you can't really make up for the difference in black levels. I've never seen the sony XBR's first hand, so I can't speak to the quality of the image, but all of my friends that have projectors that have come over agree that the plasma has a more fluid motion and better image quality. What projector are you using? Have you had your plasma or projector tuned? What's hrz are both displays running at? What is the lighting situations in both rooms? What's the dimensions of the image projected?

Either way it's an awesome setup. What speakers are those?

[Amastacia]

Man, I'm on a roll for epic essay posts.

I'm sporting a half chub at the idea. Sounds awesome, I've never heard the 100's, but if the 60's are any indication I can only imagine the beasts. You should mention to your Dad he might want to have the capacitors in the older speakers checked out. They tend to decline over time and it will affect the quality of the sound.

I thought the 60s sounded good until I heard the 100s.

I don't think my dad's that worried about the capacitors in the Marantz cabinets, the worst case is he has to pull the 100s out to the main setup and use the 60s in the second room.

Yeah, I went with the best sounding options over anything else. MDF, high quality dampening foam, nice parts where it matters. I love the way they are turning out. The sound is so crisp you can hear every detail and they look exactly like I was picturing. I've never done anything like this before, it's been a ton of fun learning about everything along the way and seeing them come together.

That's exactly how speakers should be. Nice flat frequency response and super-crisp. I get annoyed when people worry more about how loud their speakers are than how faithfully they reproduce sound. Props to you for having it right.

And hearing the difference when they're just right is one of the most rewarding experiences when you're an audiophile, in my opinion.

I'm thrilled for you that you did it yourself, and it came out exactly how you wanted it. I'm sure that feels fantastic.

I'm in the same boat. I'm moving out in about 4 months from now to a house. I'm planing on building a killer sub for the new place, something that'll shake the entire house with bass.

That will be a hell of a fun project, I suspect. Some folks I know at the college I went to decided to build their own subs, ended up with a couple of 18" monsters that could move an absurd amount of air. For fun they took some rack-mounted effects units to cut the hertz of the input down, found their speakers could hit about 6, which made people in the room feel ill.

That's probably a bit overkill, but given how much of a silly premium there can be on subs, doing it yourself is definitely going to be the cheapest way to get what you want.

Even more for subs than speakers though, I recommend trying to maximize crispness. A muddy sub vs. a very clean sub is a night and day difference, especially for movies. The Studio in my folks' living room made me a believer. It can be plenty loud when it wants to be, but having every bass hit perfectly clean, no matter how fast/close together they are is spectacular.

I don't use usenet, I'm more of a torrent guy myself. I belong to a ton of HD trackers and have somewhere around 10tb of upload credit between them all, so keeping my ratio is never an issue. I'm the same way with my movies, I always prefer 1080 when it's available. Alot of the time I'll get the 720 version and redownload the 1080 version when it's released in the cases where theres a delay. I have enough credit and a fast enough connection that it doens't really matter. The other day I finished a 14 gig encode in 5 and 1/2 min with many other downloads going at the same time.

I get where you're coming from, but switching was one of the best things I ever did. Availability of HD rips is as good or better, there's no uploading at all, downstream can be encrypted.

I'd kill for your broadband though. I have Comcast Business Class that's 16/2, which is fast enough (and which my Usenet service will happily use all of), but it still takes a couple hours to pull down a 10+GB 1080p rip.

I don't think the business class service is monitored and capped, but the more I take advantage of Usenet and the less I torrent, the less I have to worry about it.

You should just upgrade the video card to something that does both. Makes things so much easier. Besides speaker wire, the only things I have going into the back of my reciever is 1 HDMI in, and 1 out. It's so clean back there compared to most high end setups it's silly.

I should, but I have a wedding to pay for and a down payment on a mortgage to think about. What I have will work until the discretionary fund is available again for tech toys.

The back of my TV stand is a horrible mess. It makes the OCD part of me rage hard. It doesn't help that my VPN router for work, personal router, and gig switch all sit right there, which adds even more cabling to the rat's nest.

I love the look of those woofers. I like ones with a little more then flat black to them.

Same. They're usually wearing their covers for protection's sake, but flat black is boring. Really boring.

Just make sure you don't get seagates, they have been having issues.

My understanding is they've gotten better. The old-version 1TB 7200.11 drives had some serious firmware issues, but they've been resolved. WD Caviars are also great drives, so it's not like it's a bad thing to not take risks, but my gaming system is chock full of Barracudas and I've had no problems at all.

I'd suggest just downloading the encodes from a good source. Good encodes are usually hard to beat. They are a fraction of the original size and there are no visual differences between the original and the source. Also, I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to download them if you own the movie. It's considered a digital backup, that's why I own all 500 or so bluray's that I've downloaded *cough*.

I agree with this. Doing your own DVDs isn't bad, but BluRay is not the same. I *think* digital backups are considered legal (gray area though), and so much less of a hassle than trying to do it yourself with a 50GB source.