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Last week, I had written about my Home Theater Setup and this is a continuation of that post.

6. Dell Inspiron Slim 537ST HTPC Contd…
On Black Friday, last month, I got lucky with a Bing promo that was advertising 25pc cashback on all Dell Home Office stuff and managed to pick up an Inspiron 537ST for about $350.

The specs are as follows

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 (2.33GHz, 4MB)
- 4GB DDR2 SDRAM,800MHZ- 2X2GB DIMM
- ATI Radeon HD 4350 512MB
- 640GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM
- 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
- Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio

Not bad for the price paid huh? In fact, a quad core might be a little bit of an overkill for most media today but you never know what will be here in the next few years.

Here are a few pointers about the Inspiron that I think I should share with you. I had a hard time getting info on these things before I bought the machine.
- The form-factor of the Slim is about the same as an XBOX-360, a tad wider maybe but overall, fits really well in the entertainment center. The piano black is about the same finish as the PS3 and is highly recommended if the rest of your setup is in black. Check out this video to get an idea about the size.
- The ATI Radeon HD 4350 that this Dell ships with has an HDMI out and it can do 7.1 Audio via LPCM. Here is a great article that explains in detail LPCM Audio via HDMI.
- If you’re thinking a quad-core box would be too noisy for the living room, well you’re in for some great news; the thing is extremely quiet, way quieter than your PS3!
- Is it beefy enough? Can it do 1080p? Well, with a quad core, it could do 2160p if it had its way! Jokes aside, almost all of your media needs will be taken care of; including even video editing and some excellent HD video streaming over the network.

Price paid: $350

That is my Home theater setup for now. I still have a few things on my list to complete the setup:
- Harmony One Universal Remote
- A wireless keyboard with a trackball (Looking at the Dinovo Mini or the IOGear Mini Wireless Keyboard).
- A NAS to put all my media in a single place and RAID it preferably.

All in all, the entire setup has cost me around $3500 (excluding the camcorder) and I should say I’m really pleased with the performance. Not to forget, 1080p with 7.1 surround with 24p all the way.

Happy Holidays and have a great new year!

UPDATE: I have posted part 2 of this article here.

Here is how my Home Theater setup looks like right now.

Components
- Panasonic 50PZ800U THX-certified 50 inch Plasma Display.
- Pioneer 1019 AH-K Audio-Video Receiver.
- Sony Playstation 3 Game Console/Bluray Player.
- Dell Inspiron Slim 537ST Desktop Computer.
- AT&T U-Verse Cablebox/DVR.
- JBL Northridge EC35 Center Channel Speaker.
- JBL GS500 Front Floor Speakers.
- Onkyo HT540 Rear Surround Speakers.
- Polk Audio PSW-505 Sub-woofer.
- Canon Vixia HF100 HD Camcorder.

Click on the image to enlarge.

This is basically my budget HT setup so far. Since I’m as frugal as I’m an Audio/videophile, in addition to throwing some light on the technical details of each component, I shall elaborate on the bargains that I got as well.

1. The Television
- My first flat panel display was a 42″ Philips Plasma that I bought about 3 years ago. Even though it was a 1080i panel, I absolutely loved the picture (I’m making it sound so bad ). Last year, I finally gave in and decided to go for a 1080p display. After reading raving reviews about the latest and greatest Samsung LCD, I got one home and the very next minute, I started regretting the decision. The blacks were way off when you sat off-axis and the pixelation during fast-moving scenes was driving me nuts. I returned it within a week. After that, I did a couple of months worth of research (without a TV ) and after repeated visits to pretty much every Circuit City/Best Buy/Frys/ in Austin, I pulled the trigger on the Panasonic 50PZ800U. You can check out the CNet Reviews on this display and see why I bought it. It was the first display to be THX-certified and came in a close second to the Pioneer Kuro in terms of black-levels. I am extremely happy with the purchase.
Price Paid: $2200 including taxes.

2. The AV Receiver and Sub-woofer
- This is an interesting story. I bought this receiver about 2 weeks ago and I didn’t know I was getting one until I actually got one. We were at Best Buy to buy a Washer/Dryer set and they were running an offer in the Home Theater department that gave you 36months Interest-Free financing if you spent $1000 or more. We had already spent about $1200 on the W/D set so I was kinda annoyed that we were not getting the same deal as the HT guys. The sales lady told us that we could qualify for the offer if our bill showed at least one item from the HT department. So, we walked into the HT section without knowing what to buy. We looked at the Harmony remotes (on my list for over 2 yrs now ) but found out they were priced almost double. Then I stumbled upon another offer which said if I got a Pioneer receiver along with a Polk Subwoofer, there was a $150 discount on the total. The receiver and the subwoofer were priced pretty competitively (close to Amazon). I checked a few reviews on Amazon.com right there and most reviewers had nothing but great things to say. After a few minutes of ‘discussion’, I got the green light from the wife and within a few minutes, we were out of the door with a 7.1 channel HDMI AV receiver. I was wanting to get one for a long time but just hadn’t done enough research in that direction. Most of the research came after I had brought the thing home and fortunately, it is one of the best ones in the market right now.
Price paid: $600 + tax

3. Sony Playstation 3
I don’t have to talk much about the PS3 do I? Other than being a great gaming console, it is also a superb Bluray player. Even ordinary DVDs look magnificent, thanks to its wonderful upscaling capabilities. I have had the PS3 for a while now and the primary reason for getting one was just the BD player. I started playing games on it only recently and I must say, that’s working out great too It can do excellent Dolby and DTS and at the same time, some awesome 7.1 (Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD) via LPCM. As you can see, my current setup is only a 6.1 and I cannot wait to add another speaker to the mix to make it a true 7.1 configuration.
Price paid : $250 (It was $400 at that time, got it brand new on Craigslist for almost half the price. So, look around.)

4. The Speakers
- I have had my Onkyo system for over 5 years now and honestly, it was pretty much a ‘bachelor’ setup. I was raring to get rid of the system but just hadn’t found the time and energy ($) to get a better one. Last year, I got the JBL GS500s, used from Craigslist. You will be surprised if I tell you how much I paid for the speakers. I got the mammoth front floor ones for $100. Yes, both of them together for $100. After a few months, I added the center channel (EC35) which cost me about $75 (again, used from CL). It was in an almost-new shape and I just fell in love with the gold-plated connectors. The surrounds are from my previous Onkyo HTIB which I had purchased for $400, for the entire set that is (receiver + 6.1). I sold the receiver, the sub and the front speakers for $225. I was left with the surrounds and you could give them a current market value of maybe $50.

5. Canon Vixia HF100 HD Camcorder
Until last year, I was using a Sony Hi-8 DV Tape Camcorder to record most of my home videos. Almost all of the other stuff in the household had gone digital but for the camcorder. After a while, it just felt there was too much work involved in recording videos and then transferring them to a digital format before storing them to a digital medium (SD, HDD etc.). I had almost resigned from using it for over 3 years as I was getting back to stills via my Canon DSLR. Finally, I gave in to the temptation and got myself a 1080p HD-capable Canon. I wanted to future-proof my purchase for at least 4 to 5 years (if not more) and since the Panny supported reading media directly from an SD card, I wanted something that recorded to SD media.
Price Paid: $700 (I will exclude this from the total sum since this is not a mandatory item for an HT setup)

24p
The reason I included the camcorder in this setup was to highlight the fact that it can record in 24p Cinema mode and the Panny 50PZ800U can receive and display 24p signals. If you’re a video-enthusiast, this might be something that would fancy your interest. But wait, there’s more! The PS3 is also capable of playing back media recorded @ 24fps and so is the Pioneer 1019 AH-K AV Receiver. So, your entire setup pretty much can handle 24fps throughout, just like in the movies? Yes, it can! If you’re planning on taking the 24p route with your setup, this would be a configuration you might want to look at.

6. Dell Inspiron Slim 537ST HTPC
Now comes the HTPC, the driver that hosts and streams all of the media to the other components. Ever since my classic XBox started failing on playing HD content, I started toying with the idea of building an HTPC. Previously, I used to stream all of my content via the XBox or my PS3 (thru TVersity) and it worked really great. The only downside was that I had to keep two components ON at all times, the XBox and the desktop that the media resided on. And as I mentioned before, the newer skins and high-bandwidth video formats were a straight no-no for the aging XBox. There were very few choices available in the market for an OEM HTPC, even as of this writing. I wanted something that could handle 1080p video and beyond (it will be here in a year or two, I’m telling ya!), so it had to have a good GPU with an HD output that could deliver 7.1 audio to my receiver. I looked at the ASRock ION 330, the Acer AspireRevo and the newer Dell Zino HD. All of them used something on the lines of an Intel ATOM processor in conjunction with NVidia’s recent ION onboard GPUs and claimed to seamlessly do 1080p. I hadn’t looked at one first hand, so there was no way to tell if they really did. And if at all they do, I have a feeling that it is going to be borderline. Add something advanced like the BD Live and I am sure they will start crapping out. Most of them were selling for somewhere between $300 to $450.

To be contd…