Any reason not to buy this case?

[Supergrover]

Originally Posted by jdrom17

Regardless you still need the IR receiver for the PC...

I use a Harmony 550 with mine.

I use my Harmony 880 with my kworld's tv tuners IR receiver, it works fine but I would like to pick up a IR receiver that plugs into the Mobo. Just haven't got around to picking one up.

I think jd is right about the driver thing, I think I remember reading something at digital home but dont quote me on it.

[Dazmode]

Antec Fusion comes with IR receiver and software, so it was no additional problems for me, just some key-combination programming to emulate some keys liek Esc or Alt-Tab...

Ok well i bought a silverstone a while ago couple things you might want to know about the lcd screen. I ripped all the wiring out of mine... i was so sick of the wires everywhere and the fact that I really couldn't see it from the couch. The software that comes with the case was a huge pain in the ass... let me say that again... the software was pretty poor. and ended up being a feature I couldn't be bothered with. All my media PC gets used for is recording TV and watching movies... thats it really. Light browesing and games from time to time.

Another thing is it gets really hot in there.... the 2nd link you posted has holes out the top which makes more sense for heat... i actually modded my silverstone case only because i like the look of it and had 500 holes drilled into the top cover... i made the holes small enough that they would trap dust but big enough to dispense heat. Because of the heat the fans always needed to be cranked in the summer months... which makes for a noisy HTPC and thats never a good thing imo.

[Nodscene]

Well I ended up buying the Antec Fusion Remote Max today along with a Saphire 4670 w/ HDMI and 512mgs of ram(I know, but that's all they had and I didn't feel like waiting. Hopefully I won't have any issue with Saphire) and a WD 160gb hd. Also picked up a Enermax Liberty 400w modular as a temp power supply. I'm geting a used Corsair Hx 520 for a good price but I won't get it for a week or so. Not sure what I'm going to do about the audio, I currently have the Prelude in my main system and may use that but I'm hearing that that may be a waste since it's just going to pass-through the audio. Is that correct? Any suggestions in that regards?

I'm also wondering about consolidating some of the video and audio signals from the DVD player, Blu-ray et and Bell. Currently all the HDMI ports on my tv are taken up and I'm sure my Amp is pretty close to full. Anything I could do with the HTPC to take over some of those duties?

Thanks again guys.

[Dazmode]

Good choice you won't regret it.

For audio I feed my older 5.1 amp with analog output for DVD/Blu/Files played on HTPC and cable PVR goes to TV direct. My sound card Striker HT 7.1

[biff]

Digital coax for me & let my HK receiver do the decoding.

[Nodscene]

I have to say the case looks great. It was a pain in the ass connecting the sata and pwr cable for the hard drives though, talk about tight!. There also isn't as much cable management as I would like. The other issue is that I have two PWR SW cables instead of one PWR SW and one PWR RST and no HDD cables at all. Talk about poor QC. I don't care too much about the HDD lights although it would be nice, and I believe I picked the right PWR cables so at least those are working properly. I also have a dead fan on the CPU stock cooler so I'll have to replace that. Thankfully there is alot of room so I don't have to worry too much about height.

I'm going to give XP MCE a shot but I'm more than open to other suggestions.

Thanks biff, I'll give that a try. Although I believe the digital coax and SPDIF are not working on my old Yamaha. That's something else that will need replacing down the road.

[Dazmode]

I couldn't make my HK reciver decode any signal Optical or Coax, finally somebody told me use analog. 5 cables at home depot and it worked great.

I disprise MSE or any other stuff and just play everything from the WIndows. DVD/Blu start on their own with PowerDVD, files I have to select manually. Still have a mouse around, way faster then any remote.

[JD]

Originally Posted by Dazmode

I couldn't make my HK reciver decode any signal Optical or Coax, finally somebody told me use analog. 5 cables at home depot and it worked great.

I disprise MSE or any other stuff and just play everything from the WIndows. DVD/Blu start on their own with PowerDVD, files I have to select manually. Still have a mouse around, way faster then any remote.

That defeats the purpose of a HTPC IMO. Then it's just a computer running on your TV.

I like my MediaPortal interface, access to all my media quickly and easily, without actually looking like it's a PC running. And it automatically looks up all my movies and TV shows so I get cover/fan art and descriptions.

For the OP, this is my setup:
Actual program: MEDIAPORTAL - free media center - Home
Great skin: * NEW * Streamed MP Beta v0.8.448 [13 Apr 2009] - MediaPortal Forum
And 2 awesome plug-ins:
My TVSeries - MediaPortal Forum
Moving Pictures - MediaPortal Forum

Yes, that skin is ripped from XBMC, but MediaPortal isn't so GPU intensive, and well I find it's far easier to setup and get working how I want. Couldn't get XBMC running how I wanted.

[Nodscene]

I believe that's the second time I've had MediaPortal recommended. I'll definitely try that out.

I also just picked up a Hauppauge 1250 for this HTPC, we'll see how well it all works once it's up and running.

In case anyone is interested this is what I'm using....

Gigabyte EP35-DS4
Intel C2D 2.0 Ghz
OCZ pc2 5300 2gigs
Saphire 4670 512 HDMI
Enermax Liberty 400W Modular
Antec Fusion Remote Max
Hauppauge 1250
WD 160gig
2x Seagate 750Gig
LG Burner