Hi ive been running evrything to my projector through my pc and its a couple years outdated (6-7). currently im running it off a budget nvidea 5200 fx card on 2.0 ghz intel celeron processor on xp home with 512 mb of ram. I notice soem of my video is choppy and i would like to upgrade the whole system. I noticed dual core mother baord combos going for pretty cheap on pricewatch.com. I also noticed most people on here are running theirs off of "htpc". what is htpc? and what should i look for bfore i purchase it? thanks a ton in advance

Home Theater PC - basically any computer that plays video, sometimes has extras like a TV tuner or video in for recording. For some, smooth HD(1080) playback is a big deal, but I think most new computers these days could handle it.

One word of advice whatever you get in the future: Celeron = BAD

Ya i kinda figured that one out on my own using it for the last 5 years. Thanks a lot, but is htpc anything specail? i guess i dont know why people dont just call it pc, because wev'e been able to play media on it since win 95.

actually the new celeron dual cores are awesome for the money... they are a great deal and very cheap, they will handle almost anything you can throw at them

This is an example of a well setup HTPC...

my HTPC is setup as follows:

CPU: Intel Dual core e2140 (overclocked to 3.2GHz)

Motherboard: EVGA 630i / HDMI

RAM: DDR2 800 2GB

Hard Drive(s): (2 x 1TB) 2,000GB

Video Card: Nvidia 8400GT 256MB

Video Capture/TV tuner: ATI 550 PVR

Case: Silver Stone HTPC case(looks like a stereo)

Keyboard/Mouse: wireless RF

Optical Drive: 16x DVD rom

Operating System: Windows XP PRO

Software: Beyond TV 4

Extras: Snapstream Firefly remote, and Snapstream Firefly Mini Remote

I'd look into a graphics card that supports HDCP (High-Definition-Copyright-Protection). That way when you upgrade later to a Blu-Ray optical drive, then you are all set to go to watch some nice HD movies!

Wow thanks YZ. you aswered my next question so fast i didn't even need to ask it. Now which card can i buy for under $100

most modern Nvidia cards do supoort this feature...

You'll have a hard time finding a card right now that supports blu-ray high def for a hundred, but I'd say this time next year one should be on the market. The shelf life for graphics cards is only about six months, then they drop 40% to 60%. Someone feel free to correct me if there's a sub $100 card on the market that supports blu-ray, I'm in the market for a new card.

this one looks pretty hot for the price. you can't go wrong. i might pick one up if i figure out my motherboard situation, but check it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...Inc.-_-14133193 and it's hdpc ready and from the reviews it looks as if it plays everything smoothly with no lag.

that will work with any new motherboard you get. pretty much (90+%) of all new motherboards have a pci express 16 slot.

SMASHED_99CBR....Any other good setups you may know of? I'm looking into building an HTPC myself as well, but am not sure of all the things I will need for a good pc. Would like to do HD have plenty of storage for my movies, plus mirrored storage. So, I'd say 3 TB HDD to start.

Any options that don't require overclocking?

What about being able to watch a movie from any room in the house....?

Thanks.