Suggestions for home theater PC.

[tforce25]

I am looking to build a home theater PC budget of lets say $750 but flexible. Thanks for your help.

 

[ronintexas]

It depends upon what you want to do with it. Options would include:
1) Live TV - do you use over the air (an antenna), regular cable (no cable boxes) or digital cable (needs a cable box) - and how many tuners? How much space is needed for recording?
2) DVD/BlueRay Collection - how big - and will it grow? Will you store it on the HDDs?
3) Streaming - including Netflix, Hulu, etc...
4) Audio options - do you want surround sound?
5) Extenders

What operating system do you want to use?

 

[tforce25]

Mainly for streaming. Would connect to my tv and surround sound receiver. Basic cable. Have a large selection of DVDs and Bluray but would probably be to large to rip onto hard drives.

 

[ronintexas]

As a rule of thumb, you need 1 processing core per stream of HD video (2 SD streams = 1 HD stream). So if maximum streaming would be 4 HD streams, you should use a quad core processor. I have utilized both AMD and Intel chipsets for my builds. You also would want to go with 1.5GB RAM per stream + 2GB RAM for the OS. 4 HD streams, you should use 8GB RAM.

For storage, when you get close to the 4HD streams, you want to make sure to get SATA III drives at 7200RPM or better - size is dependent upon how many videos you want stored on the system - I find that 2TB (without DVD/Blue-RAY storage) is plenty of space.

Here is a good sample build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2sGeA

Other things to think about - Windows 7/8 doesn't natively support blu-ray - you will need to purchase software. TotalMedia Theater is 60% off - http://www.arcsoft.com/media/tmt-windows7/?gclid=COaO1omZ2LsCFQlgMgodNUQAew

Last item would be the recording device for live TV. The two choices:
Standard Cable - 2 Tuner: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345007 $75
Digital Cable (requires cable card) - 3 tuner - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345006 $100

Standard cable will give you channels 2-98 on cable (non-encrypted channels only), Digital cable gives you the 300+ channels you subscribe to via the cable card.

If you have questions - feel free to ask away.