My Home Theater setup ( No Pics included .... YET. May have pics next week )


HDTV: Sharp Aquos 42'' A63M 1080p LCD monitor with a 1920x1600 Native resolution.

AV Receiver/Amplifier: Yamaha RX-V663

Networking Device: Aztech 200mbps HL109E Homeplug. This is a ethernet over power line to connect my media streamer to my pc upstairs without having to use a long ugly ethernet cable all the way to the stairs.






Source Device 1: Popcorn Hour Media Extender ( It supports many formats such as MKV, H264, AVI, XVID, Mpeg2, Mpeg 4. I can pass through DTS to my receiver to decode to get DTS support And FLAC seems to work after letting my receiver handle audio processes )

Source Device 2: PS3 ( For Blue Ray games, or to watch Blue Ray movies. However i most likely will not be buying blueray movies as i can download for free online and stream over my popcorn. This is why i will not be using a DVD player for my home theater as all my media are digital format )

Source Device 3: Astro ( Just to watch CNN only until they hop on the 720p bandwagon )







Front Left/Right speakers = MA BR5

Center speakers: BR-LCR

Surround speakers: UNDECIDED whether it will be BR-FX OR BR1

Sub woofer: Using my old Creative Gigaworks S750 instead of the BRW-10 because not enough money to buy it





This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2008, 09:59 AM

My source will be my Popcorn Hour that will stream media such as videos and music from my computer upstairs using the Aztech 200 MBPS HL109E homeplug.

Flac music files work

*I update the above post to include my other devices.



SKY - When i bought my system, the guy from CJ Audio is coming over to setup my speakers to the receiver for free When i bought my Receiver from Legend i had to pay for them to come over to setup my speakers I should have gotten the people from Yamaha to come as they would know how to setup better.



This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2008, 10:01 AM

I agree that using the PS3 to play an original Blue Ray movie disc to get MA DTS, HD DTS would be the very best solution.

It is possible to download such things online however i think such things would be 10 gig + or something

I am currently downloading 4 gig 720 p or 8 gig 1080p blueray rips I will check online and see if i can find any HD DTS or MA DTS videos to download.



But for Music i think popcorn can stream via HDMI to the Receiver so the quality should be fine right ? The FLAC are lossless encoded with EAC

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2008, 10:04 AM

Pic will be ready by this Saturday. Be patient young Padawan

I post now first the hardware as i will be too busy playing with my new home theater

Can also be argued whats the point of pics when no sound ? LOL

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2008, 01:11 PM

Aiyah can lah.

Flac is playable from popcorn streaming no problem there. Flac is lossless so should be comparable to an actual disc

As for HD DTS and MA DTS yes so far no pass through yet .... I am fine with DTS, AC3 or AAC. And hopefully soon OGM. I did my research before i bought.

I could use PS3 to stream a media with HD MA, HD DTS as PS3 can decode them My system quite flexible if you are bothered to take the time to set it up.

The reason why it's called budget system is because my media is free cauz thats what i can afford. When BD prices drop to MORE REASONABLE PRICES then can buy loh

Until then 720p 1080p bluray rips for the win



Anyway i got a suggestion, Mega you bring your bluray discs and we can watch together on my new pesant home theatre system win win !

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2008, 01:14 PM

Media streamer is still not yet 100% do it all.

For things it can do, you remux and convert to a playable format. This is only solution now.

I think the new Sigma Design chip devices that come after popcorn will be able to support or pass through MA DTS and HD DTS.

I posted an article somewhere about it.

If popcorn cannot do MA DTS, or HD DTS, then use PS 3 to stream it loh. If the format not supported just REMUX/RE-encode the video but keep the audio track as is loh

I am talking about future hardware devices LIKE popcorn, that will be using the new Sigma Designs chip that supports sata, MA DTS, and HD DTS. As for whether the chip does 1.3 hdmi i am not sure you will need to see the specs yourself

= nub.

Rx i am using a software called Audio Converter by Heartware. He made a thread under a thread there for user made applications.

It's only good for MKV by the way ....

Anyway it videos audio tracks such as Vorbis, DTS to AAC or AC3, and automatically remux it There is also an option to keep the original track in addition to the newly converted audio track !!

However for what we were talking about were videos with audio tracks such as dts hd ma or dts hr audio. For these videos, we need to make sure the video format is playable by playstation 3, if not then have to convert to a format that it supports while retaining the original audio tracks that are playable by PS3.

I am unsure whether PS3 supports MKV container or not ..... but i do know it supports H264 codec o_O: correct me if i am wrong.

So i think it would be better to convert the video to h264 video encode, with original DTS MA/ DTS HR Audio, and put into a MP4 container.

What do you think

Ok anyway BACK TO TOPIC.

My layout of my theater will look like this.


The center speaker will be on a wall shelf slightly above my HDTV.

The front left and right BR 5 floor stander speakers will be at the sides of the HDTV table.

The surround speakers will be on the wall slightly above our head level when we are sitting. I heard bipolar/dipole speaker setup doesn't require the speaker to be directly facing you to get the surround effect so i hope that is true Can surround speakers be at the back of you ? Or must they be beside you ???

S750 Sub Woofer undecided yet where to put since running out of space

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 15 2008, 10:25 AM

My surround speakers are Monitor Audio BR-FX. Is this a bipole or dipole o_O; ?

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 15 2008, 02:36 PM

Posting my pics so this will be update.



My PS3 Roughly RM 1600
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0010.jpg


My Yamaha RX-V663 AV Receiver [ RM 1890 from Legend ]
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0033.jpg


My Popcorn Hour A100 media streamer [ Roughly Rm 800 ]
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0032.jpg


Watching Ghost in the Shell Blue Ray rip ( H264/MKV/DTS ) movie Free
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer.../IMG_0023-1.jpg



My Aztech 200 mbps Ethernet homeplug ( downstairs )
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0035.jpg



My Aztech 200 mbps Ethernet homeplug ( upstairs ) beside my computer rig connected my Dlink DIR-655 router. I have about 1-2 TB of storage
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0036.jpg



My BR5 floor standing speakers with the BR-LCR on the wall shelf i bought from Ikea. Tucked in the left corner is my Creative S750 Gigaworks subwoofer.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0027.jpg

This is my left BR-FX surround speaker mounted on the wall
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0028.jpg

This is the left BR-FX behind the wall where we hid the wiring and put under the rug to neaten it up
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0029.jpg

This is the right BR-FX which as you can see is hiding the cables behind the couch and is along the curtain rail.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/Cer...us/IMG_0034.jpg



The BR5, BR-LCR, BR-FX and the Rhodium wiring cables all total to RM 4.2 K :]






Anyway if you see from my setup, i have eliminated the need for a dvd player as dvd sources online are freely available. For blue ray i have 2 choices. Download 720p or 1080p blue ray rips online to watch over the popcorn, OR pop in a blue ray disc into my PS3 to watch.

Popcorn makes my home theater media experience so much flexible and enjoyable

With my setup i got the following support which i tested and confirmed.

Videos:

H264

XVID



Containers

MKV

AVI







Audio:

AC3

DTS

AAC 24000 hz

AAC 48000 hz

MP3

WMA Pro

Mpeg 1



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image tag removed, please use thumbnail - fariz


This post has been edited by fariz: May 19 2008, 10:32 AM

Looks fine on my 24''

Also i scared to scale it because people would then complain why i post low reso pics LOL!

On my forum i installed an auto scaler mod that lets you show full screen and back to scaled image

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 18 2008, 04:05 PM

Yap what HDTV is that ? Looks very impressive my friend

Hei i saw an article in the newspaper today tech section about the Mission speakers. Looked good

The popcornhour official website. I order online pay by credit card. Since i am in Malaysia they will ship from their outlet in China for the Asia region.

I however had to wait a whole month to get mine .... i wasn't taxed because i ask them to put it as a gift



Anyway RX says he bought his from Penang, so maybe they have stock and can ship to you faster ? Not sure how much their asking for though

I paid around Rm 800 for mine ( shipping cost for courier UPS tallied into that ).

How long did it take between ordering and for it to arrive for you rx ?

The popcorn A100 plays videos that use containers such as AVI and MKV that are pc formats meant for pc usage originally.

If you have an original blueray disc and an internal blue ray drive for your pc, you can encode it to H264 and put into a MKV container using AUTOMKV which is the program i recommend for that. There is a popcorn A100 profile in AUTOMKV latest beta by the way :] to gurantee your encode will play smoothly on the popcorn.

Instead of blueray sources, you could also choose to do the same for DVD disc sources

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 20 2008, 03:16 PM

My home theater roxors joor boxors

Popcorn has 100 mbps ethernet .....

I would suggest getting the newer 200mbps homeplugs. My aztech one is good :]