We had a Netgear wireless router setup, but Verizon disconnected it when they installed their FiOS system. Now it’s a one wireless router / cable modem box that I put in my office. I also have a cable box connected to a capture card in my computer so I could watch my soccer games uninterrupted.

The picture above on the left shows the FiOS box Verizon installed outside my house. The pic on the right shows the box Verizon installed in my garage. They told me the box in the garage was a battery backup so we could keep phone service if the power goes.

With the new HDTV, I could finally call my family room a home theater room. The Toshiba 52HM84 I bought has 1 HDMI input, 2 component inputs, and 3 composite/S-Video inputs. I use the HDMI port for my 8300HD cable box. I’ve been real impressed with the 20 hours of HD storage and the ability to record two shows at once. It’s also nice having one box that does it all instead of having a TiVo and a cable box. The 8300HD’s user interface wasn’t as nice as the TiVos, but the $7/month for the box is a lot better than the $600 plus $15/month it costs for a TiVo Series 3. Sorry TiVo, your user interface is just not worth the cash. I went ahead and cancelled my TiVo subscription.

One of the TV’s component inputs was used for my HTPC while the other component input was used for the PS2’s 480p output. Honestly though, I don’t think I turned on the PS2 once on this TV. The HTPC allowed me to play games like Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R. in HD, and I was quickly spoiled by the unbelievable graphics. I just couldn’t go back to low res gaming. The same goes for the GameCube, which I haven’t turned on either.

I have to say I’m lacking on the audio side of things. The Toshiba 52HM84 has stereo output which I used to connect to my Philips stereo. I’m still using the Philips stereo as mentioned in my previous posts, but now only in a 2.1 configuration. The speakers I have are probably 20 years old and are hand me downs from my parents. My next home theater upgrade will have to be a receiver with surround sound speakers.

Have a question on how to setup a Home Theater Network or a question on HDTVs, HTPCs, routers, receivers, speakers, DVRs, cable/satellite boxes, PDA phones, Slingboxes, or video, audio, data cables? Then post a question in the HTNquestions category, and someone from the HTN community will help you out.

Early Adopter here. I got a Mitsubishi rear projection HDTV. Its big since its CRT based, but everyone who comes over is always impressed with the picture quality. Verizon’s FIOS recently came into our area so we switched to it. So far, we’re really happy with it. Channels change a lot faster, and we get all those extra HD channels including NFL Network HD, National Geographic HD, MTV HD, HGTV HD, Food Network HD and others. One of the best parts of the FIOS DVR box is that we can record a show on it, and then watch the show on any one of our 4 cable boxes throughout the house.

Connection wise, I’m using component cables from the cable box to the HDTV, and I’m also using component cables from the DVD player to the HDTV. On the audio side, I’m using the standard red/white stereo cables from the cable box / DVD player to the TV since we are just using the TV speakers.

As you can see from the connection diagram at HomeTheaterNetwork.com, I firmly believe that the home theater room should be the center of any home network. The staple of any home theater is the HDTV, and in early 2006, HDTV prices finally dropped enough where I thought it was worth purchasing one. Picking a HDTV technology wasn’t easy, but I was able to narrow it down. Plasma wasn’t an option because I planned on connecting my HTPC to the HDTV, and I didn’t want any burn-in issues. SXRD had the best picture quality in my opinion, but its high price caused me to scratch it off the list. I trusted DLP technology more than D-ILA or HD-ILA so that left LCD and DLP. It was the screen door effect vs. rainbows. I decided to go with DLP since I didn’t need a flat screen, and I always thought the picture quality of DLPs matched Plasmas. Also, the price was a few hundred dollars cheaper, which is always a convincing argument.

New 1080p DLPs were just coming out, which meant all the 720p models were on sale. I spent a large amount of time at the AVSforum.com reading everyone’s inputs on different brands, and I also went to many stores looking at different models. I decided to go with a Mitsubishi 720p model, but I couldn’t find the discontinued TV anywhere. My next choice was the Toshiba 46HM84. The reason I picked the HM84 series is because it had the HD2+ chipset. The HD2+ doesn’t use wobulation to double its pixels, and I thought it gave a sharper picture than the HD3 chipsets.

I was planning on getting the 46” version of the TV, but Onecall gave me a great price, and it wound up being $100 more for the 52” version. Naturally, I went with the 52” size, and I wasn’t disappointed. The picture quality was stunning. I think I spent the whole first week just watching DiscoveryHD. What a world of difference from the 12″TV-on-the-box.

More information:

• What to look for in a HDTV
• DLP chipsets
• HDTVs

Half Life 2 just came out and my 4 year old Gateway computer wasn’t going to cut it. I’m a huge Half Life fan so I decided to build a HTPC for it … even though I was still in the TV-on-a-box days. Technically speaking, I guess the new HTPC was more of a regular PC since it was in my office, but I made sure I could use it as an HTPC in the future when I upgraded my home theater.

Here are some of the components of my first HTPC:

1. AMD 64 3500+ Athlon processor
2. Asus A8V Delux motherboard
3. Cooler Master Wave Master TAC-T01-E1C Silver Mini Tower
4. ATI Radeon X800 Pro with 256MB of RAM
5. 200 GB hard drives (x2)
6. 512 MB Ram (x2)
7. MyHD MDP-130 capture card
8. Logitech Bluetooth keyboard and mouse

It’s been a couple years so I don’t remember all the details on why I purchased certain components. I know price was certainly an issue, and I also remember reading lots of reviews. Most of the reviews said that an AMD Athlon processor with an ATI video card worked best with Half Life, so I was sold.

Aesthetics is important in a home theater room so I couldn’t just use a regular computer case. I absolutely loved the horizontal HTPC cases with touch screen LCDs on the front. However, they were way too expensive so I went with the Cooler Master case. It’s a tower-based case so it may not look right in everyone’s home theater, but I knew I would have enough floor space. I also liked the way the front of the case looked with the blue LED glow.

Building the HTPC went without a hitch. I had the hard drives setup in a RAID 0 configuration to help speed things up, and I had no problems installing the motherboard and processor. I was a little worried about installing Windows XP onto RAID 0 drives since I never done it before, but the install went without a hitch too.

I picked the MyHD MDP-130 capture card over other HD capture cards because it had built-in hardware encoding capabilities. Some of the other HD capture cards use the processor to compress video, which would be a problem if I was recording something and upscaling a DVD at the same time.

In the end, the HTPC without a home theater played great. I was able to see the resolution, details, and textures without any frame jitter.

I’ll go through connecting my HTPC to my HDTV in another post in another day.

More information:

• Reasons for a HTPC
• HTPC cases
• MyHD MDP-130

We’ve all been there, right? …the TV-on-the-box days. The old hand-me-down Panasonic I had before finally broke. It would randomly crunch the whole picture into one horizontal line. All I would have to do was tap the side of the TV, and the picture would come back to full screen. Until one day, I “tapped” a little too hard. I was in the middle of a football game when the TV decided to conveniently crunch down my picture. I “tapped” it on the side, but this time I heard some glass break. This oh-shit moment led to the death of the 24″ Panasonic CRT.

The TV dying happened a few months before the big move into my first house. Other expenses like lawn equipment and washing machines were higher on the priority list, which made me stuck with putting my high school 12″ TV on a box. Not exactly the ideal home theater, but it had to do back then. I did hook up my Philips FW-P78 mini HIFI stereo so at least I got Dolby Pro Logic stereo sound.

The connection setup was pretty similar to my previous apartment. I had an audio/video switch box which select composite/stereo inputs from a PS2, GameCube, or TiVo. All the inputs were composite since the TV didn’t have any better inputs. I don’t think better video signals would of mattered anyway on a 12″ screen.

More Information:

• PS2 info
• GameCube
• Video inputs

I did setup a wireless router near the TV-on-the-box so I could have a direct Ethernet connection for the TiVo. I also ran Ethernet cables from the router, through the walls, up into the attic, and down to both guest bedrooms which my Wife and I were using as offices. This allowed a direct Ethernet connection to my Wife’s laptop and my PC.

The previous D-Link 614+ router I had died during a power surge. I was pretty happy with the D-Link router so I decided to buy the updated version of it. The DI-624+ used the 802.11g protocol and said it could go up to 108 Mbps. However, I found the wireless network to be unstable at the 108Mbps setting so I went back to plain Wireless-G mode.

More Information:

• How to make Ethernet cables
• routers