When speaking of HTPCs everyone wants the same. Powerful, easy, stable and foremost quiet. My friend Peder Pfister and I set out to accomplish this for his needs. You can see below what those were.
Prerequisites
already in place were the following components:
- speakers: Teufel Theater 5 THX Select 5.1
- AV receiver: Pioneer AV Receiver VSX-AX4ASi
- projector: Sanyo PLV-Z5 1280x720p projector
Essentially we were seeking to build a HTPC that would do the following:
- play DVD and Bluray titles
- play video files including HD
- play music
- record cable PAL SDTV
- host a Linux virtual machine for development
- output 5.1 Dolby or DTS sound (new uncompressed formats were not needed)
- remote control
- play and select music without using the projector
- quiet enough for the living room