plasma+home theatre->hdmi->notebook = ez

Get WDTV Live or asus playon. Even patriot has a good media player. Popcorn hour is nice but expensive.

cheap htpc would be an 'acer aspire revo' or just build a small system around an atom + ion mobo/cpu

I bought a WDTV live for my uncle and Iam using it currently since he hasn't picked it up yet. Works like a charm. Plays DTS files just fine.

naked girls dancing in front of my PC

Why not go for a Tvix 6500? Super easy to configure, doesn't crash that often, supports dts and pretty much every video/picture/sound format there is.

PS3 hooked up to LCD TV via HDMI

asrock ion 330

wmc

MPC, but it crashes too much when I use the playlist, so I have been using VLC ever since.

Huh? Never crashed when I use the playlist. Are you using mpc homecinema that comes with CCCP?

I tried the Home Cinema version, it was very strange, don't remember what was strange about it, but I didn't like it. I'm talking about the original, and it's crashed for years, I just got tired of it eventually. But VLC works just as fine, I just have to accept that it has all the codecs in it and that I'm not totally in control over the codecs..

mpc hc+cccp+coreavc is just pure win

Using 1-5% cpu on 720p files and less than 10% on 1080p easily beats out using vlc imo.

I think it was something about the sound that was weird. I need to be able to output to SPDIF properly, and I couldn't IIRC. Then my soundcard drivers will mix it properly for me to give me a feeling of surround for headphones (X-Fi Fatal1ty) with X-Fi CMSS-3D turned on. It works very well when set up correctly, which is why I bought that card. Only for headphones though, not stereo speakers.

Edit: I might have a new look at that setup to see if it works better now, it's quite a while since I tested it, cause I do run into 1080p movies that run like crap, though most run just fine.

i use mpc-hc with dxva + haali + ac3filter

not sure what's better.

configged MPC ftw

Isn't that obvious? That it's configged? :P

LDO :D

Oh noes :( I actually didn't see that one comming :O

BAZINGA

media player classic + CCCP

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You know it Sir!

TViX

mpc, like Ignignokt says, very low CPU usage on HD porn files.