Homeplug might not have enough bandwidth for Blu-ray movie. Note that 200Mbps is theoretical speed and depends on noise in your power line and if it is in the same gang. You would be lucky to get consistent 30Mbps out from Homeplug and remember it is share network. If you are doing from ground up, best go for Cat5e (up to 30m) and Cat 6 (100m) for gigabit network. I do a copy from network for large file and the speed is almost as fast as eSATA HDD local copy. Also get a gigabit switch instead of hub.

Regarding power line and network cable, normal recommendation is to cross the cable instead of running parallel. Normally UTP cable is quite good at noise rejection due to twisted pair. If you are paranoid, go for STP (shielded twisted pair).

This post has been edited by pierreye: Mar 28 2010, 07:24 PM

If you are not pc savvy, get a blu-ray player. HTPC had an advantage to be a universal player. Any format also can play + you can play PC game on your big screen.

I watched on PS3 vs HTPC and feel that HTPC had a slight advantage in PQ.

Yes. Previously PS3 is outputting 720p to my 720p projector and it's a bit soft compare to HTPC outputing 720p. I think scaling is better with HTPC.

Upgrade to Win7. WinXP is a b**** to work with on HDMI. Problem with WinXP is it doesn't support PAP. You need Win7.

PAP = Protected Audio Path = Needed for HD Audio.

i3 + h55 can bitstream HD audio.

Personally I prefer USB DAC to internal soundcard. This is to isolate the PC internal noise from the DAC. You can get one from few hundreds to thousands.

Note: USB DAC is only for 2 channel music. For movie, I prefer HDMI audio out from H55 or ATI 5xxx for HD bitstreaming. GTX460 is supposed to support HD bitstreaming but not on current driver.

This post has been edited by pierreye: Jul 14 2010, 10:03 AM

Biggest problem for i3 with H55/H57 board is no true 23.976 framerate support. You will see a slight jitter when the movie is panning.

Problem with ATI 5xxx is the RGB 4:4:4 Full Range is screw as it output at wrong level. If you go for YCbCr 4:4:4 there is a slight greenish tint but not so serious.

Nvidia GTX460 I had no idea if it is perfect for HTPC. But one advantage is it support 3DVision if you have 120hz display.