Introduction of the Home Theater tutorial

We are going to tackle the wide subject of Home Theater PC with the aim of reading all types of videos (SD, HD, DivX, Xvid, h264, avi, MKV, DVD, Blu-ray...) with maximum quality and without spending a single penny. Indeed all softwares that we are going to use are free (except to read bluray because you must have an "unlocker" as DVDFab Passkey) in contrast of PowerDVD, WinDVD or even TotalMedia Theater which, though, are more widely used. Icing on the cake is that the obtained quality will be better than of these softwares.

I. The recommended hardware requirements for using this tutorial are :

• A Windows PC powerful enough to decode HD (core2duo 2.6Ghz mini). If your CPU is not fast enough and you have a NVIDIA graphics card you can decode the video with the graphics card with CUDA. Else you can decode the video with the graphics card in DXVA but the quality will suffer
• A flat panel TV or a projector HD Ready or HD Ready 1080p linked to HDMI or DVI or VGA to the home theater PC
• 5.1 home theater amplifier

II. For the software part we need :

• If you're on a Windows 32bits, download 32bits versions of softwares.
• If you're on a Windows 64bits, 2 choices are available:
  • If you use reclock, or madVR you should download the 32bits software, even with 32bits Windows x64.
  • If you do not use reclock, or madVR, you can, but not an obligation, to download the softwares in 64 bits.

You should know that there is almost no difference between 32 and 64bits.

Download the version without installer of Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

• Player : Media Player Classic Home Cinema x86 / x64
• Audio/Video Decoder + Postprocessing : ffdshow x86 / x64
• Pack Splitter + Audio Decoder + CUDA Video Decodeur : LAV Splitter x86 / x64

Optional but recommended :

• Renderer : madVR x86
• "Synchroniser" : Reclock x86
• "Frequency modifier" : AutoFrequency x86 / x64

Optionnal :

• Blu-ray unlocker (not free) : DVDFab Passkey x86
• h264 Decoder (not free and not recommended) : CoreAVC x86 / x64

To install the softwares you have to select them according to the audio output