HTPC Devotees?

[Mark1966]

As I posted in the November acquisitions thread I have just received a new case, PSU and Bluray player for my HTPC setup. So this begs the question - what do I have already?

Here is my HTPC build, done about 2 years ago:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
CPU Cooler: Scythe Shuriken SC-SCSK-1100
Motherboard: ZOTAC NVIDIA GEFORCE 9300 MATX
RAM: Kingston 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL6 DIMM (Model: KVR800D2N6K2/4G)
HDD 1: 3.5" Western Digital 320Gb (AV-GP Series, SATA II, INTELIPOWER, 32MB Cache)
HDD 2: 3.5" Western Digital 1TB (AV-GP Series, SATA II, INTELIPOWER, 32MB Cache)
Case: Inwin BL641 (with Power Supply)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-R8-1800 80mm Case Fan
IR/Receiver: Antec Veris Multimedia Station Basic Internal IR receiver and remote
GPU: (On-board Nvidia GeForce 9300 mGPU)
Optical Drive:Pioneer BDC-SO2 BluRay combo
TV Tuner: DigitalNow DNTV Live! Dual Digital PCI tuner card x 2
PSU: With Case
O/S: MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 HOME PREMIUM 64BIT OEM

The case was chose to fit a particular space in our TV unit. Because of overheating I've moved it from the original location and it now sits atop my Yamaha RX-V465 AV Receiver.

The problem is that the current case is completely the wrong dimensions for this and it really doesn't look good.

So I went looking for a new case with dimensions similar to the Receiver – (W x H x D = 435 x 151 x 364 mm) – although the height is obviously not critical and the depth less so than the width.

The case needed an external 5.25" slot for the Blu-ray and an external 3.5" slot (or 5.25 with adapter) for the Veris IR receiver.

This is where it has become difficult to find one I ended up with the Antec case with the built in IR.

So what does everybody else have out there?

 

[Nick the Knife]

Mark you genius, what a great idea for a thread! Love the quick actioning too!

Nice setup! Good to see that I'm not the only one out there hanging in with the C2D era gear. I mean really apart from footprint & lower power usage I don't think there's a significant advantage to upgrading one's HTPC core parts to the current gen. stuff. If it's a pure HTPC (no gaming) and you're not running massive amounts of AV filters etc then older or entry level gear should get the job done quite well. Plus there's that old adage in HTPC circles that if its working DO NOT mess with it!

Well I've had a dedicated HTPC since the MCE 2005 days (gawd now thats one unstable platform!). I've built a bunch of them for friends and also paying clients (side hobby). I'm very utilitarian in my approach & also hate to upgrade just for the sake of it - plus as there's no obvious usage for this build I've hung in with it for the past 3-4yrs, despite a lot of it having been a desktop system for me prior to that.

It comprises:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E3300
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Big Typhoon (passive)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R(full ATX board from desktop duty retired to HTPC duties)
RAM: Uncertain but pretty sure it's Team DDR2 800mhz 2 x 1gb sticks (ah remember the days before you felt compelled to put 16gb in the system!)
HDD 1: 3.5" Seagate 500gb 7200rpm (unsure of the model was a warranty repair one) - has OS and recorded TV partition on it
HDD 2: 3.5" Samsung 1.5tb 5200rpm (this and below are data storage only.....linux distros of course
HDD 3: 3.5" WD Green 1tb 5200rpm
Case: Antec Solo (my utilitaran side likes the performance benefits an ATX case has over HTPC/horizontal one - my cabinet allows it to be stashed away behind a door & largely kept out of sight - is almost silent.
Case Fan: Noctua 120mm on rear and Antec trispeed on low 'ghetto' modded in front of HDD bay, works very well
IR/Receiver: Microsoft MCE remote & receiver - thought about going to a Logitech type solution but this works so well couldn't justify
GPU: Gigabyte ATI HD 4300 (passive)
Optical Drive: Some Pioneer DVD burner - I very rarely use it, held off getting a BR drive till next upgrade.
TV Tuner: Hauppauge HVR-2200 dual tuner PCIe
PSU: Seasonic 430w S12
O/S: MS Windows 7 Pro x86 (I use XMBC for all non-FTA TV media playback(both vids and music) via MCE integration mod, works brilliantly and far superior IMHO than any codec packs etc which never worked on absolutely everything).

FWIW the rest of my gear is:

Display: Panasonic Viera TH-P50V20A
AVR: Panasonic SA-XR55 - these have a bit of a cult following as they were 100% digital amps (D class), quite sought after but rubbed analogue owners up the wrong way when they were found to beat receivers several thousand $$$'s more in blind tests. Some weaknesses but amazing value & sought after.
Speakers: Orpheus Aurora 2's (fronts only) - biwired & biamped (fun feature of the XR55).

Overall, is older tech but performs perfectly with no issues whatsoever.

Cheers, Nick

 

[JugV2]

Well just to be a little different here:

I've previously used older PC's with VID out to a 32" LCD as a HTPC, and used software such as TVersity or PlayOn or Pandora.

I then dug out my old old Xbox and chipped it and put in a large drive, and that became my Midea Centre. Not sure if that counts as a HTPC or not?

Certainly not as grand as the one posted above here.

These days I just use a 3TB MyBook with a WD Live Media Player and a Logitech Harmony remote, outputting to an LG 42" 3D Smart TV.

 

[Mark1966]

I started down the HTPC path when I was looking at PVR options because our existing PVR only allowed 1 1/2 channel recording. Seriously limiting with kids.

Then I got the Blu-ray player on special and I was committed.

I got the components around Christmas/New Year (PITA time to be ordering from on-line suppliers and trying to be home for couriers to deliver) and did my first ever build with my daughter.

After assembling everything and booting up the OS it then stopped working and would not boot. I tried everything I could think of software wise and then started working on the hardware angle. The case was tight so I looked at the possibility of cables connections not working etc until eventually I worked out that the HD had failed :amazed:

The WAF was seriously depleted by now and I'm still not sure that it has been regained - she gets the kids to use it for her.

The kids, of course, have adapted fine and make full use of the two twin HD tuners, ie four channels, to record TV shows. I thought initially that four was excessive but with the way shows overlap starting and ending times you would be amazed at how often it is necessary.

Have had a couple of hiccups along the way and if I had my time over again I would not bother with Blu-ray. They are much more finicky than DVDs and I think will be overtaken by streaming. In fact I think with the installed base that DVDs may outlast Blu-ray (my brave prediction).

 

[Nick the Knife]

I started down the HTPC path when I was looking at PVR options because our existing PVR only allowed 1 1/2 channel recording. Seriously limiting with kids.

This is kind of what got me into HTPCs....well I was just sick to deal of upgrading standalone components in the AV area....we had a SD STB and a DVD player....then upgraded to a HD STB.......then to a DVD recorder.......then I was looking at twin tuner HD PVRs (when they very first came out) and thought this is silly as I'll always be chasing additional functionality.

Thats the beauty of a HTPC - build what you want to suit your needs. So much better now as Win7 really was a massive step up in providing a simple, stable platform (albeit with the usual stupid codecs needed to do all popular modern digital media e.g flac, mkv, mp4, flv).

Much more software choices now for folks with mature offerings by a few co's and also hardware allowing a very nice compact footprint rather than an ATX/mATX solution required.

So as long as you can avoid the need to needlessly upgrade it does pay for itself quite quickly - particularly if you can use an old desktop system or are one who normally upgrades his AV gear often.

After assembling everything and booting up the OS it then stopped working and would not boot. I tried everything I could think of software wise and then started working on the hardware angle. The case was tight so I looked at the possibility of cables connections not working etc until eventually I worked out that the HD had failed :amazed:

Ouch.....very annoying but a good reminder to have atleast 2 copies of everything you couldn't bear to lose in a minutes time! HDD failures are par for the course, I've had heaps over the years and I always look after my gear extra well....nothing you can do but backup.

The IT gods kinda smiled on you with that one - HDD fault is pretty quick to diagnose compared to some MB glitch or a PSU issue - you'll be ripping your hair out if/when you get one of those suckers.

The WAF was seriously depleted by now and I'm still not sure that it has been regained - she gets the kids to use it for her.

Really? Damn I'm amazed you're game enough to have it in the house. Haha thats another of those golden HTPC community rules - don't put it in the main TV area until it's absolutely, 100% rock solid! I had a friend who ignored this and it made his life a misery as once women lose confidence in something they REALLY struggle to give it a second chance.......haha consider it a warning sign for us all fellas.

Well from an old hand compared to your relative newbie status in the HTPC realm, make sure you use a good HDD imaging program and get your OS & overall setup going perfectly and then make a master copy image of the OS partition and keep it somewhere safe. As if and when you tweak it and you stuff it up (trust me it will happen) - this will be a lifesaver from having to reinstall things all over again. I'm sure you know but disk imaging is different from a file backup.

A great free program is EaseUS Todo Backup. Highly recommend it.

You're using some codec pack like Shark 007 and playing back through MCE or using a 3rd party app like TMT (which I suspect as you need this or PowerDVD for BD playback anyway)?

If I could do it over I'd have moved over to use XBMC through Win7 a lot earlier - its sooooooo vastly superior to Win7 + all the bolt on bits. I think it did have some issues with BD playback but they may have solved this but IIRC it was a licensing issue that perhaps they couldn't solve via the distro so you had to use an extra bit as well. But its better looking than anything in Win7 and I literally have only it....and the lil integration app - not a single other bit of media oriented software on the system. Makes for a very stable setup.

 

[Monsta_AU]

I don't HTPC at all. I have a Samsung Smart TV, hooks into my network to play whatever I want. It can record to a hard disk plugged into it.

It even has Youtube, iView, etc etc on it - play directly from the net.

 

[eggbert]

Jug - I think yours is perfectly acceptable as a htpc. If I could find one cheap enough that I was considering using a PS2/3 or one of those.

As most of you know from my previous wittering on the subject I ended up getting one of the HP N40L Microservers.

Loaded up Win 7 (for Mrs Egg's ease of use) on the free 240GB drive that came with it, and store the data on a 3TB drive.
I plan at some stage to swap the 240GB drive for an SSD, and can then expand the server to 18TB of data storage using 3TB drives if necessary.

I was going to add a dual tuner to it, but we really don't watch enough Aus tv to warrant it.

Running XBMC Eden, Couchpotato, Sickbeard, and Sabnzbd+ for all my linux iso requirements.

I use a logitech wireless mini keyboard for controlling it. It runs off 2 AA batteries, and I haven't had to change them once in 5 or 6 months so far.

 

[JugV2]

I got sick of messing around with different things to make my HT setup work.

I had an MCE remote unit and a PC, I could get most things working but then got annoyed with some things and couldn't get everything working.

Also MKV. I don't know how many times I yelled and got angry because MKV wouldn't play across my network. I tried streaming from one location across a 10/100 network and everything but VOB and MKV worked.

So once I got my new LG Smart TV, I decided I had had enough of messing around with everything and bought a WD Media player and a 3TB drive.

End of issues.

Now I enjoy 1080P and MKV goodness.

 

[Drubbing]

Too many bloody acronyms in this thread...

 

[Pjotr]

To be honest, I was lost at HTPC.

 

[JugV2]

How To Paste and Cut

 

[Nick the Knife]

I got sick of messing around with different things to make my HT setup work.

I had an MCE remote unit and a PC, I could get most things working but then got annoyed with some things and couldn't get everything working.

Also MKV. I don't know how many times I yelled and got angry because MKV wouldn't play across my network. I tried streaming from one location across a 10/100 network and everything but VOB and MKV worked.

Yeah, this is how it ends for a LOT of folks and even those who hang in at it have been through this. HTPCs tend to be bloody finicky things where you change something silly like the decoder you use for x264 material and all of a sudden something bizarre is happening like you've got no audio and your live TV is out of sync!

Thats why I love the concept of XMBC being there to handle everything but the live/recorded TV - no messing around at all with ANY of the MS MCE codecs, settings etc - they're like completely separate entities....all the codec packs like SHark007's etc do cross over and have the potential to phark everything up completely.

I had exactly the same issues as you everything would play exactly as I wanted but I had issues getting FLV to play and also certain audio files - and something finicky like subs for x264 material in MP4 containers......suffice to say it shyted me well and truly. Hence I've never looked back from the change.

Also enables you to use a 3rd party app to get rid of all the extra menus in MCE that you don't need - makes it even simpler for SWMBO.

So once I got my new LG Smart TV, I decided I had had enough of messing around with everything and bought a WD Media player and a 3TB drive.

End of issues.

Now I enjoy 1080P and MKV goodness.

I can definitely see the attraction of this route....but it also has some limitations that once you've been the HTPC route would be a trade off - the main one being the metadata etc that you can have shown in a HTPC via something like XBMC so that instead of just seeing a little folder with the files name written on it you get the whole shebang! Full screen fan art and all the info etc. Once smart tellies get that down (which I'm sure won't be long) I'll defiitely run the ruler over them for my next purchase.

Plus they really need atleast a dual tuner capability to record FTA broadcasts. Also as I run all my audio out they'd need playback and the ability to bitstream the material out to my amp.

If we'd more folks in our house I'd definitely look at a home server like RM and a few others have but for just the wife and me its not real feasible.

 

[bodge]

My HTPC setups have always been hand-me-downs from the study. Whenever a new pc build happens, the older components make there way to the htpc, currently some dual core pentium. I use 'tv out' to a 50" 4:3 tv. Win XP and logitech wireless keyboard mouse. A couple of external hdd's. Wife is very familiar with xp so all is well.

 

[hunnymonster]

I'm experimenting with a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC to stream from the DLNA server (HP Microserver running Ubuntu with PS3mediaServer) and using a phone/tablet as uPnP controller... seems to work pretty well although I suspect for "best" I shall have to go wired rather than cocking on with wireless as I am just now...

 

[Pjotr]

How To Paste and Cut

That's almost beyond me too.

 

[Mark1966]

This is kind of what got me into HTPCs....well I was just sick to deal of upgrading standalone components in the AV area....we had a SD STB and a DVD player....then upgraded to a HD STB.......then to a DVD recorder.......then I was looking at twin tuner HD PVRs (when they very first came out) and thought this is silly as I'll always be chasing additional functionality.

As I said - the quad tuner has been SOOOOOOOO useful, I'm not sure we could survive with anything less now

Thats the beauty of a HTPC - build what you want to suit your needs. So much better now as Win7 really was a massive step up in providing a simple, stable platform (albeit with the usual stupid codecs needed to do all popular modern digital media e.g flac, mkv, mp4, flv).

I gave up on codecs - just Win7 MC and PowerDVD to run Blu-ray. We don't have downloaded stuff - just recorder FTA.

Much more software choices now for folks with mature offerings by a few co's and also hardware allowing a very nice compact footprint rather than an ATX/mATX solution required.

So as long as you can avoid the need to needlessly upgrade it does pay for itself quite quickly - particularly if you can use an old desktop system or are one who normally upgrades his AV gear often.

Upgrades? You mean like the new case I got since I had to update the Blu-ray player? Or the quieter fans to replace the stock fans in the new case? Or the SSD I realise I now have space for in the case? One like this would make the OS faster ....

Well from an old hand compared to your relative newbie status in the HTPC realm, make sure you use a good HDD imaging program and get your OS & overall setup going perfectly and then make a master copy image of the OS partition and keep it somewhere safe. As if and when you tweak it and you stuff it up (trust me it will happen) - this will be a lifesaver from having to reinstall things all over again. I'm sure you know but disk imaging is different from a file backup.

A great free program is EaseUS Todo Backup. Highly recommend it.

Yes I do that BUT - I keep forgetting to before I make changes .....

 

[Mark1966]

Of course, have moved things this morning I wake up to a complaint about an error message. Some device is not recognised

So some more 'fun' today playing around with this ...

 

[gthomas04]

I'm experimenting with a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC to stream from the DLNA server (HP Microserver running Ubuntu with PS3mediaServer) and using a phone/tablet as uPnP controller... seems to work pretty well although I suspect for "best" I shall have to go wired rather than cocking on with wireless as I am just now...

The only response I can think of to this is WSL (wet lather shave)

 

[eggbert]

The only response I can think of to this is WSL (wet lather shave)

And even then you can't get spell the acronym.

 

[gthomas04]

And even then you can't get spell the acronym.

It was my moment Jedi young bertegg