My original plan was to use the second Optiplex I had purchased for my Man Cave setup. However, that quickly changed when I realized that my old Samsung Blu-Ray player/surround sound setup wouldn’t play the sound very well. That brought on my new mission to have the XBMC box output HDMI audio to a receiver and then to the TV. Earlier in the year I had purchased a Samsung 55″ LED 240Hz Tru Motion TV and got it mounted up on the wall, so I was good on the TV side of it. However, my existing receiver I was using for my wall mounted speakers throughout the basement did not have HDMI inputs.
Some quick Craigslist searching landed me on a nice set of Klipsch speakers for only $200. It included 4 surround speakers, a center speaker and the sub all of which were in beautiful condition. I drove the 40 miles and picked them up that night. On my way home I stopped and Best Buy and saw they had a Pioneer (I think that’s what it was) receiver on sale for $230 and it had HDMI inputs. That sounded great. So I went to my local Best Buy where they let me know that it was out of stock and that I needed to go to the store about 20 minutes away. No big deal – I was on a mission. I get to the store, 20 minutes away, and they informed me that the receiver that was on sale had actually been recalled and I couldn’t purchase it. He was surprised that the other Best Buy didn’t know that and I was pissed that I had just driven 20 miles for nothing. Still on a mission I went to our local American (about the only other place open at 8:30 at night that sells receivers around here). At American I was able to find a nice Denon receiver on sale and that ended up working out. It was an extra $20 or $30 but was probably a better receiver overall.
Now I had my speakers, receiver, and TV but not an XBMC box that I was satisfied with as the Optiplex just didn’t look that sexy sitting on my entertainment center. So, I found the Silverstone Black Aluminum HTPC case, I had an SSD lying around from a previously failed project, and purchased a new motherboard as the Optiplex desktops use a BTX motherboard instead of ATX. I got all of that ordered and had all the parts within a week. Although there were some problems with installing XBMC on that machine, which I will outline in a blog post, it all has gone pretty smoothly.
I was finally able to actually use this new setup a few times now, other than just TV shows, and it works amazing. The sound is perfect and the video quality is fantastic. All fully accessible via my Android phone as a remote (well – the interface, still don’t have that tied into the IR yet)