All in one HTPC, is it possible?

kirbz

kirbz

kirbz

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Hi All,

Just got a quick question.

Looking in the future to build/buy a htpc that does everything, by this I mean does the following:

  • Plays movies/music through an AV receiver (5.1)
  • Use it as a Freesat/Freeview HD box
  • Records tv (either Freeview HD or Freesat HD would need to get dish/aerial installed)
  • Media Server (stream to phone, laptop or XBOX 360)
  • Low power so the bills stay cheap
  • Very small, I don't want a chunky case taking up a load of space
  • Quiet

So guys it possible to build something that covers all of the above?
 
Do you want bluray playback? If so you are pretty much limited to windows media center. If not then there are lots of linux options.

Hardware-wise that is all easily done. I would be looking at an ION based system if I were you.
 
Was looking at sticking movies on the hd and using xbmc to play movies, music, etc. I was looking into the tiny ion systems and getting a big hd and an external bluray drive. What about the freesat hd tuner bit?
 
There are several ways to do that. Just make sure you get a DVB-S2 card which is supported under linux. Hauppauge cards are well supported. Personally I would use tvheadend as a backend. It has a plugin for XBMC which gives you PVR functionality, EPG etc. It also has nice features like web-based recording management and saves recordings directly to MKV for easy playback. It has been rock solid for me using a cheapie compro DVB-S card.

The only issue you will have is that playing blurays directly from a bluray drive under linux isnt easily achieved and is impossible for recent titles afaik.
 
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This is certainly doable, and not that difficult. A simple HTPC with decent TV card and power saving components will do fine. Add on a properly configured installation of MediaPortal and TVersity and you have an all streaming, all dancing HTPC (See what I did there :p).
 
Redgie said:
This is certainly doable, and not that difficult. A simple HTPC with decent TV card and power saving components will do fine. Add on a properly configured installation of MediaPortal and TVersity and you have an all streaming, all dancing HTPC (See what I did there :p).
Click to expand...

+1
 
Thanks for the input guys.

I've got another question.

In a htpc would you need a graphics card and a tv card? or would the tv card process movies that are being played from the computer?
 
You only need a TV card if you want to receive live broadcasts, like Freeview.
If you just want to play back video stored on your hard drives, a graphic card will do.
 
kirbz said:
In a htpc would you need a graphics card and a tv card? or would the tv card process movies that are being played from the computer?
Click to expand...

You will need both.

The TV card just receives the TV aerial signal and decodes it to a video format that the computer can read - it does not deal with producing the output video signal that is displayed on the TV/monitor, this is done by the graphics card.

These days you do not require a discrete graphics card to play full-HD video, as many integrated graphics chips (GPU on the motherboard or the CPU) are powerful enough to do this. However, looking at this - if you want the best video quality then go for a half-decent AMD discrete graphics card.

If you want Freesat HD then I believe you want a DVB-S2 TV card. Something like the WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2 would do the job. With this you will be able to record TV to the hard disk.
 
I have a Mac Mini.
I have it connected to an EyeTv Netstream Sat. Basically I have that box connected to my satellite dish, so it uses the satellite rather than aerial, which seems to give better signal! The Netstream Sat box connects via ethernet to my home network, so any device, ipod, pc, mac, connected to my network can watch TV. You can record TV to the hard drive, which I usually do on my Mac.
The mini is very quiet, and draws little power, and the modern ones look good. So I would say that if you can justify the price, a mac mini would be a possible option to look at.
 
Ahhh I thought that was the case. The mac mini probably will be a bit steep so will be looking at a normal pc of some sort. The reason I say freesat is because our aerial has had it and I was thinking of installing a freesat dish myself (if that's possible) so that can be installed on the wall not too high up.
 
Redgie said:
This is certainly doable, and not that difficult. A simple HTPC with decent TV card and power saving components will do fine. Add on a properly configured installation of MediaPortal and TVersity and you have an all streaming, all dancing HTPC (See what I did there :p).
Click to expand...

Actually agreeing with you for once here! :P

I run MediaPortal on my HTPC for movie playback and TV watching/recording. It does the job really well! :)
 
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