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Black Friday Deals

DCDeac said:
Very true. I checked that out and they have generic 60gb drives on ebay for like $20. Figured I'll just go that route since I don't use the local drive for media storage. If you did, it might be worth getting the huge OEM version.
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Exactly. I'd just be using the XBox as an extender. I have terabytes of storage space on my network for recording OTA shows, etc, so the drive on the XBox is mostly meaningless. Besides, surely someone has hacked and installed their own larger drives by now, right?
 
vtwhat etc said:
Sorry if I'm repeating anyone... but gamertags can only be linked to one xbox and it takes about 5-10 minutes to 'recover' your account each time.

I had an original 360 that started getting very finicky (disc tray sticking, etc) so i bought an Elite with the same plan you had... it is more trouble than its worth because of the xbox live thing.
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I've read there are a couple ways around this - either using a jump drive (which I have plenty of) or using Msft's new cloud something feature.

I'm sure it will be a pain, but we'll see.
 
DCDeac said:
Eh, there's capable and there's capable. I'm running a htpc based on Media Center that streams 1080p pulled from OTA and clear-QAM which the Xbox can play directly as a media center extender. I've seen the cifs implementations on the LG side for streaming but I prefer NAS to transcoding in general, and I don't want to be fighting the codec battle with blu-ray firmware on a cheap player that will stop being updated in 6 months. The one LG I tried connecting to a samba share was less than impressive as far as pq is concerned, and ff/rw was brutal. The CPU's in those things are garbage compared to a gaming system.

The xbox is just far more flexible, has far more power, and has far better support than any cheap blu ray player - or any expensive one for that matter. A ps3 prob even more so since it has networking/media/blu ray all included - but it can't extend a WMC. Plus I barely have enough time to play video games at all, let alone own multiple gaming systems.
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I like the PC home theater setup, but don't you lose a lot of quality extending it through a network card? That's why I never really got interested in streaming everything, because their are so many variables affecting the quality and reliability. With my shitty Time Warner service, I'd be pulling my hair out with your setup.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I like the PC home theater setup, but don't you lose a lot of quality extending it through a network card? That's why I never really got interested in streaming everything, because their are so many variables affecting the quality and reliability. With my shitty Time Warner service, I'd be pulling my hair out with your setup.
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All my streaming is within my private network, so the internet provider doesn't matter. There's no way streaming uncompressed 1080p will work reliably over b or g wireless network devices though, that is certainly true. Technically some wireless technologies come close but I haven't seen any do it reliably.

If you can LAN everything together you're fine - you need maybe 40Mbps (blu ray drives are typically around 48Mbps) and any router/switch/hub with gig-e would work. I went the Powerline route, which uses the electrical outlets in your house instead of ethernet cables - it gets about 80Mbps which is more than enough.

Note that this is for generally uncompressed HD, this is totally different from the "HD" that Netflix or similar services send over the Internet, which are highly compressed.
 
DCDeac said:
All my streaming is within my private network, so the internet provider doesn't matter. There's no way streaming uncompressed 1080p will work reliably over b or g wireless network devices though, that is certainly true. Technically some wireless technologies come close but I haven't seen any do it reliably.

If you can LAN everything together you're fine - you need maybe 40Mbps (blu ray drives are typically around 48Mbps) and any router/switch/hub with gig-e would work. I went the Powerline route, which uses the electrical outlets in your house instead of ethernet cables - it gets about 80Mbps which is more than enough.

Note that this is for generally uncompressed HD, this is totally different from the "HD" that Netflix or similar services send over the Internet, which are highly compressed.
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I would love to see a diagram of your system. I am trying to follow your posts but it translates to my brain as "tech tech tech tech cool shit tech tech sweet HD tech tech awesome tech". I need pictures.
 
DCDeac said:
If you can LAN everything together you're fine - you need maybe 40Mbps (blu ray drives are typically around 48Mbps) and any router/switch/hub with gig-e would work. I went the Powerline route, which uses the electrical outlets in your house instead of ethernet cables - it gets about 80Mbps which is more than enough.
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So, you're happy with the powerline networking? I've got an old house, so dropping Ethernet to my living room was the one concern I had about going to a server/xbox setup. If the powerline setup works reliably, I'll just go that route and be done with it.
 
RacerDeac said:
So, you're happy with the powerline networking? I've got an old house, so dropping Ethernet to my living room was the one concern I had about going to a server/xbox setup. If the powerline setup works reliably, I'll just go that route and be done with it.
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Yeah, I've recommended it a couple times on the boards actually. For me, it's worked really well. I have a 42" LCD connected to my HTPC and I didn't want to pay DirecTV for another HD Box, so I installed Directv2PC on it and I stream from the DirecTV box. Works like a charm, picture quality is outstanding. My electrical wiring was pretty recent though, so in a really old house issues are possible.

They're only like $60 I think on Amazon so not too pricey to try it. I put a little 4 port hub on the other end of mine so I could plug in my blu ray player, xbox, and directv boxes.
 
DC i think i need you to come to my house and just set up my system since i am copying all your ideas. Powerline has been great, couldnt recommend it enough.

I have DirectTV and like you, dont want to pay the lease fee, or the installation fee of another box, so how does the DirectTV2PC work?
 
Question on powerline, can you have 3 or 4 plugged in and they'll all work together (same brand), or does it limit you to just two receivers?
 
BostonDeac said:
DC i think i need you to come to my house and just set up my system since i am copying all your ideas. Powerline has been great, couldnt recommend it enough.

I have DirectTV and like you, dont want to pay the lease fee, or the installation fee of another box, so how does the DirectTV2PC work?
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Basically Directv2PC gives you access to your DVR contents on any computer in your network, the interface looks exactly like your dvr.

The catch is it requires a lot of bandwidth to show HD and they are crazy paranoid about copyright issues, so you have to have a pretty recent video/sound setup in your computer. They require secured audio and video over hdmi only, which older systems don't support. If you google directv2pc you can find the download link, there's also a test program that will tell you if your system is compliant.

If you get it working, and have the directv app on your phone, in essence you can tell your receiver to start recording something then start watching the feed a minute later when it pops up. Pretty nice, and very free.

Sadly it doesn't work on a virtual instance of Windows running on a Mac.
 
TV Question -- any opinions on whether it's worth it to spend extra for an LED versus an LCD?
 
DCDeac said:
My electrical wiring was pretty recent though, so in a really old house issues are possible.
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I'd only be using it on the wiring that has been replaced (my house is half new/grounded and half old/ungrounded), so in theory, I should be ok. I think I'll give it a go. I wasn't really looking forward to crawling under the house and drilling holes in 100 year old flooring to make a cable drop.
 
RacerDeac said:
I'd only be using it on the wiring that has been replaced (my house is half new/grounded and half old/ungrounded), so in theory, I should be ok. I think I'll give it a go. I wasn't really looking forward to crawling under the house and drilling holes in 100 year old flooring to make a cable drop.
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No kidding. My house was pre-wired with CAT-6, yet somehow they screwed up the entry/exit points. Went to all the trouble to crimp the cable ends and dig behind the ethernet face plates only to find out deep within the walls something was amiss.

Powerline was like 10 seconds of effort.
 
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