Recent content by Vivek_IVB

Sorry for the delay, wife went out of town this weekend and I opted to take the young'uns out to eat for every meal rather than cook. Plus, destroying the house while mommy was out seemed to be the right thing to do:) I haven't heard of that package. Honestly, what I'm realizing is that the...

There's a chatroom here? Oh dear god. I can feel the time getting sucked away already. Thanks for the heads up.

Hi folks. If you haven't heard, my passion over the past few years has been to integrate all the various home subsystems into a common integrated system. At this point, i've got lighting, security, whole house audio, video distribution, irrigation, hvac, security cameras, and a few more areas...

Sorry, not clueing in - do you want to send 2ch or multichannel to your receiver? If your soundcard has digital out, and your receiver has digital in, you could just send the sound over the digital channels and not deal with all those cables. I have my HTPC double-connected: I use 1) the...

Sorry, just noticed this post. Yes, you could use an IR receiver ie USBUIRT to receive the IR signals, and have the system behave differently. My warning is that my screens are designed to be used with a mouse. I don't actually use a touchscreen or tablet in my HomeTheater, I use an MX850...

Nah, cool is when you can use your PDA cellphone to do it from a restaurant 100miles away from your house, so you can turn on the stereo and DVD player, and kick off a DVD for the grandparents when they babysit your kids. Or, when they call you to say "it won't work", you can respond with "don't...

To me, one of the most major benefits of an HTPC that an xBox/etc will NEVER be able to have is the ability to control my non-computer equipment over RS232. I say RS232 b/c it's a bidirectional interface where you can both control and see the current status of your equipment, as opposed to IR...

I have an ATI 9800Pro and bought the ATI purple dongle that has a component out adapter. Pretty well regarded, nowadays considered mid-end.

That's a pretty slow video card. Is replacing it with something that can do component out an option? If so, that's your best bet. I believe nowadays you should try to spend around $150-$200 to get a good video card that does component out.

For me, it was ease of use, flexibility, and extensibility. I built an HTPC b/c I was sick of learning how to use all the dang devices in my house, each through a different program or interface. Furthermore, I decided that the existing systems had awful UI's, or were too limited in what they...

odd - everything else is still there? And it's not in your recycle bin?

With all due respect, it's not the location that's an issue. It's the training. Have you tried asking anyone at a brick&mortar store a question lately? And I don't mean immigrants, I mean the native born folks. I was in a Home Depot the other day, i won't recount the story as it's...

That's a nice machine you got - why not just slap a TV tuner in there?

Ease/Cost of upgrade path: If you want to upgrade your video card to get better picture quality, you need to upgrade your tuner, which is probably working fine.

I don't do it, but in theory it shouldn't. Get a decent card, though.