MY HOME PC & MEDIA SETUP
After many years of trying this & that in the realm of home office & home media center setup's, I have settled quite firmly on the following setup. A brief rundown:-
My PC's
My own everyday PC at home is a Dell Studio Laptop, Intel Dual Core P7350 Cpu @ 2GHz, 4Gb Ram, 500Gb Hd, Windows 7 (32-bit). I used to have a dedicated room in the house dedicated as an office.....but the wife complained she never saw me, so I did away with it and now use the Laptop from the living room.
I also have a tidy wee 11.5" Laptop, an Acer Aspire 1810TZ Intel U4100 @ 1.3Ghz, 4gb Ram, 250Gb Hd. Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). This is the laptop that I use out-and-about, to work and anywhere else. Must admit, I am liking Windows 7.
Workshop PC
My workshop laptop is an old Toshiba running XP.
Tracey's PC
The wife's PC is an Advent ECO PC. It runs an Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 CPU (normally found in a laptop) and running at 1.5Ghz. 2Gb Ram and a 160gb Hd. The PC is connected by way of VGA cable to our main living room Tv (42" Plasma). A wireless keyboard c/w trackball is used. The great thing about this wee PC is that it only consumes 25W on standby.
My Media Setup
Here's a list of the media components that form my Home Media setup:
- The wife's Advent PC above also doubles as an interface to to our collection of MP3's via Winamp.
- Panasonic TXP42G-10B (600Hz) 42" Plasma (& connected to my 1gb home Lan). This Tv is the dogs bollocks!
- Dvico Tvix6500A media center - Interfaced to the 42" Plasma via HDMI (& connected to my 1gb home Lan). We use this to browse the 10000+ digital photos I have, the many MP3's and various video's I have stored.
- Denon PMA-255UK amplifier & Mission speakers.
- XBOX360 (connected to my 1gb home Lan).
- Samsung DVD-HD850 upscaling HDMI Dvd Player.
- SkyHD.
- Bluetooth Receiver. The stereo audio output is interfaced to Denon Amp, I can stream audio from my Iphone & Laptop.
- Wireless AV Tx - This unit transmits the SkyHD output around the house and is picked up by various receivers. We can watch Sky in any room in the house without Sky multi-room.
It's not the most expensive setup, but it's reliable as it's used everyday.
PS. I should really talk about my extensive home burglar alarm setup.....article coming soon!
Photos:
Here's the Tv and with all my goodies below it.
Here's Winamp running:
Here's the Dvico Tvix6500A running:
Here's the customized Input selection screen on the Tv:
(Current setting shown is "MEDIA" which is the Tvix6500A)
