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Erkki

Building a home theater...

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Couldn't get a demo anywhere, but decided to order the BenQ W1070 anyway! What the hell, if the rainbow effect is really bad for me I can sell it at a bit of a loss or perhaps exchange it for a different (LCD) projector from work.

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The rainbow effect drives me crazy, but from my limited experience, most people either never notice it, or do notice it but don't care.

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It arrived! Even with some ambient light (sun is close to setting) it puts a great picture even just on the wall, without a screen! So far I don't see any rainbow effect, but I've only seen the PS3 menus and tried Journey (not 1080p I believe) for a bit. It makes a bit of noise but I think with the final setup I'll be sitting far enough from it.

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Wow, this thing is great so far! I tried Limbo as I thought that might show the rainbow effects, but didn't see anything. The only thing I noticed was when the screen went from dark to bright the black parts got a lot lighter. But I didn't expect this thing to be able to do real black on a white screen anyway, it seems the eye interprets unlit things as quite black, though, when juxtaposed with brighter things.

 

I set up a 92" screen borrowed from work and in a completely dark room the picture was really good. Tried watching TV (for that the screen was even a bit too big, maybe), Django Unchained (not HD), YouTube on PS3 (sadly 720p), Diablo 3 demo. The 92" screen seems big enough, and with Diablo the UI elements were nicely in peripheral vision so they didn't bother much, but I only needed to move my eyes a bit to see them.

 

Pretty happy after the first tests!

 

I'm thinking about maybe getting a permanent screen, not one that is pulled down, since the Elite Screens seem to be pretty wavy (I tried a tripod one that you pull up).

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PS Does anyone know if DVI-to-VGA adapters are supposed to work just like that? My PC only outputs DVI and the projector takes VGA. I only had DVi-to-DVI and VGA-to-VGA cables, bought an adapter, but got "no signal". Laptop with VGA-VGA worked fine.

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VGA is analog and DVI can be either digital analog or both so it depends.

Edit: if the DVI connector has just a - shaped pin next to the others it's a DVI-D cable so it's digital only, if it has a :-: shaped set of pins it's DVI-I or A and supports analog.

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Ah, so digital-only DVI was the problem. I would use HDMI except I already used the inputs for the PS3 and TV box. Maybe it's better to get some kind of HDMI switcher box, though, instead of trying to come up with creative ways to fill all the inputs.

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Don't you have an A/V Receiver? That's how I route all my HDMI stuff to my TV.

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Don't you have an A/V Receiver? That's how I route all my HDMI stuff to my TV.

 

This is the only way to live.

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I use an HDMI switch and find it quite sufficient for my purposes. Can't afford a $200+ HDMI-switching receiver, personally.

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Switch pipes audio to TV over HDMI, TV sends audio to soundbar using optical.

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The projector even works somewhat during midday (I don't have any darkening curtains yet)! Of course the contrast disappears, especially with darker colors, but for surfing the internet it is fine. For gaming, probably not.

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Ok, so now I have a projector, it's great so far (but haven't been using it much as the temporary setup is not the most comfortable). I haven't decided on what kind of screen to get -- size will be 92" or more and perhaps I will build it myself.

 

I'm thinking about a home theater PC (or what do you call those?) next. I eventually want it to become a Steam Box, probably not powerful enough to run the latest games by itself, but would be nice if it could run *some* games itself. Quietness is probably more important than running games, and smaller size is better. Any advice? Should I buy a ready made computer or build it myself? Should I wait for more info on Steam Boxes or even wait till Steam OS is out?

 

Anyone has some speaker advice? I've never had more than stereo speakers before.

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I have been super happy with my surround sound setup. 

  • Yamaha 7.2 receiver - ~$500
  • Set of 5 Klipsch speakers and a Klipsch subwoofer - ~$550
  • Set of 2 Polk bookshelf speakers (front left and front right speakers) - ~$200

If you're looking for a recommendation on just speakers I would go with Klipsch.

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The common term is HTPC. You can either build your own, or get a barebone. It doesn't really matter much in costs. Barebones are generally smaller, and often quieter. If you want it to become a steambox you probably want something with an nVidia GPU (it's also better if you want proper hardware decoding of most video formats) when running Linux. My most recent HTPC was a Zotac ZBOX with an Atom CPU, but the new i3s are also quite cool and low power when idle. I haven't tried much games on my ZBOX. The GPU is quite good, but the CPU is just an Atom. But I think it will work great with streaming games with Steam.

I think the Steambox will be about a year away. Steambox like barebores are here much sooner. For example Gigabyte's BRIX 2 looks like a powerful machine.

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Man, I hope Steam OS will be less than a year away. Can't wait that long. Yesterday after upgrading Ubuntu I'm really starting to hate linux again. It's becoming the worst OS for running software other than what is provided by official packages, mainly for the fucked up menu system.

 

I have heard good things about Linux Mint, but on their home page they describe different versions with words that mean nothing to me. I know I don't want KDE, but what the other versions are, I have no idea. Linux on the desktop has become a fucking joke again when Ubuntu went crazy.

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Man, I hope Steam OS will be less than a year away. Can't wait that long. Yesterday after upgrading Ubuntu I'm really starting to hate linux again. It's becoming the worst OS for running software other than what is provided by official packages, mainly for the fucked up menu system.

 

I have heard good things about Linux Mint, but on their home page they describe different versions with words that mean nothing to me. I know I don't want KDE, but what the other versions are, I have no idea. Linux on the desktop has become a fucking joke again when Ubuntu went crazy.

 

For some reason, I don't think Linux devs know how confusing their terminology and general method of presenting information is for anyone who's not incredibly well versed in Linux as a whole. Here's my general understanding of it all, forgive me for any uninformed statements.

 

Their different versions just correspond to different desktop environments. Ubuntu runs on GNOME, which is their more "intuitive" interface for people who haven't used a computer or something.

 

Then there's KDE, which is probably the most traditional and most widely used environment that more closely matches Windows. It's kind of an old environment, though, so it's not nearly as flexible but it does use less system resources. Mint actually decided to do their own spin on KDE, in a way, by adapting the GNOME environment to mimic KDE so you get the visual flair of GNOME with the more traditional layout and style as KDE. This implementation is called Cinnamon.

 

MATE is just a fork of GNOME 2.0, meant for people who didn't like the GNOME 3.0 update that basically is exemplified by the main differences between Ubuntu and other distros. And finally, XFCE is just a barebones, low-resource desktop environment meant for older machines or machines focused on performance.

 

Hope I got that all right, in any case it's all super dumb. Last time I used Mint, I just used Cinnamon because it seemed to be Mint's lead/preferred environment and I don't like that dumb Ubuntu interface junk.

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My living room HTPC runs Ubuntu 12.04, but using Mint's GNOME2 fork. My bedroom HTPC simply runs XMBC on Ubuntu 12.04. It still has the unit shit installed. If SteamOS comes out I will probably will convert my bedroom HTPC to it.

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Thanks for the info on MATE and Cinnamon. I actually like part of Unity though, but not that it makes some apps (like a custom install of Eclipse) have NO menus. After switching to built-in Eclipse my rage against it died a little.

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The common term is HTPC. You can either build your own, or get a barebone. It doesn't really matter much in costs. Barebones are generally smaller, and often quieter. If you want it to become a steambox you probably want something with an nVidia GPU (it's also better if you want proper hardware decoding of most video formats) when running Linux. My most recent HTPC was a Zotac ZBOX with an Atom CPU, but the new i3s are also quite cool and low power when idle. I haven't tried much games on my ZBOX. The GPU is quite good, but the CPU is just an Atom. But I think it will work great with streaming games with Steam.

Would something like this one http://www.zotacusa.com/specsheet/ZBOX-ID36BR3D-U.pdf be good enough for streaming and perhaps 2d games?

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I think you'll even be able to play old 3D games. I don't know if ION received an update in the past years, but this article has a benchmark of the ION I have in my HTPC: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2718/3

That's a machine about 2 years older than the setup in that zotac. For streaming (or any video/audio decoding) it will work for sure, 2D/3D games depends on the game. I wouldn't be surprised if you could play Darwinia or FTL with ease.

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I just tried to play The Cave on my zbox id-86, on 1080p with everything enabled I think it was averging on 15fps. I'm not sure, no FPS counter. First part of the cave flucuated between 60fps and 15 fps. Anyway... didn't take the time to properly test it.

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