I don't know much about Windows 7 but in XP can't you set the 'shell' to XBMC instead of Explorer? That way as soon as you've done your networking and drivers, set the shell to XBMC then when you turn your computer on, it will load XBMC when you switch the computer on.
Can you build a HTPC for sub £350?
- Thread starter NeilF
- Start date
Leaves you more than enough to get a pair of 200mbps powerline adapters. So so much better than wireless and work a treat. Should be able to get a pair for sub £40 at auction + dvd + hdd of your choice.
Surely that's not powerful enough? A single 1.6ghz cpu?
And no optical drive would make OS installation etc difficult? So would need to get a slimline one to fit?
EDIT: And you've not included a hard drive. The case only takes 2.5" ones so expense/small.
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Associate
- Joined
- 12 May 2005
- Posts
- 460
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- Cambridge, or somewhere else in the world
Hi Neil,
Sorry but this is a shamless plug for what I've been suing for years and is free. Knoppmyth. Linux based - so initially some fiddling underthe hood to get everything working as you want. But if you want a pc that sits there and does what a media centre does, it'd be the one I'd go for. (Shameless bias!)
Sure, perhaps not quite as pretty as Windows, but also a lot less horsepower needed. I pointed someone else in it's direction on here just the other day. The kille app for me is MythWelcome - it turns the pc on to record what I want and turns itself off again afterwards. It's easy to copy stuff over on the network via samba from my ubuntu lappy I just download, and drag and copy across. The tricky bit is usually setting up the remote control, but I believe with a usb irreciever it's quite straight forward.
Also, with the new nvidia drivers and a 8 series and above (+512 of ram) you can offload the hard work to the graphics card so low power cpu and graphics card does the work. Some people are using similar atom based systems as shown above and an Nvidia 8800gs with 512m onboard to play back 1080p.
Horses for courses, so your milage may vary. HTH
Regards
Chris
Sorry but this is a shamless plug for what I've been suing for years and is free. Knoppmyth. Linux based - so initially some fiddling underthe hood to get everything working as you want. But if you want a pc that sits there and does what a media centre does, it'd be the one I'd go for. (Shameless bias!)
Sure, perhaps not quite as pretty as Windows, but also a lot less horsepower needed. I pointed someone else in it's direction on here just the other day. The kille app for me is MythWelcome - it turns the pc on to record what I want and turns itself off again afterwards. It's easy to copy stuff over on the network via samba from my ubuntu lappy I just download, and drag and copy across. The tricky bit is usually setting up the remote control, but I believe with a usb irreciever it's quite straight forward.
Also, with the new nvidia drivers and a 8 series and above (+512 of ram) you can offload the hard work to the graphics card so low power cpu and graphics card does the work. Some people are using similar atom based systems as shown above and an Nvidia 8800gs with 512m onboard to play back 1080p.
Horses for courses, so your milage may vary. HTH
Regards
Chris
Why not look at something like the Western Digital WDTV? It's a small media box that you can connect a couple of USB mass storage devices to (HDD, Flash drive etc). Does High def, the interface is a doddle to use and it's completely silent while using about 10% of the power of an HTPC. Costs around £80 without a drive.
I messed about for a couple of months trying to turn an old P4 box into an HTPC and it was a lot of faff and never worked properly. The WDTV replaced that and is a lot less bother.
I messed about for a couple of months trying to turn an old P4 box into an HTPC and it was a lot of faff and never worked properly. The WDTV replaced that and is a lot less bother.
It was top of my list until I realised it just cannot allow you to view (in an adequate way) photos - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14119916&postcount=15
The EVA9150 seems to handle photos faster so is top of my list at the moment. But that is over £300 which seems to be pushing it towards HTPC prices. Hence this thread...
But yes, the temptation is to say stuff if, not bother with photos, and just spend £180 on a WDTV and 500gb passport drive...
Soldato
- Joined
- 26 Aug 2004
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- 3,806
- Location
- Manchester
I have our entire photo collection organised in a nice simple tree structure of folders... just like most people I expect. All these tens of thousands of photos are typically 2-8meg in size.
From my understanding NO media player is particularly good at handling photos of this size. So to just maximise a photo and look at it and flick to the next one could take in the order of 5 seconds, which is just too unfriendly.
Even if I resized & mirrored all the images (which I'm willing to do) to smaller versions (say 300-800K), from accounts I've had the WDTV (& PCH etc) is still far too slow and clunky to just allow the user to flick through images at a friendly/responsive rate.
The EVA9150 seems the fastest allowing you to move from one to the next in just about a second or more. Which although not great, is adequate.
The EVA9150 costs over £300, is if say for under £400 I could get an HTPC which is just as friendly to use as a media player, and more responsive/functional... it's tempting!
it says it's capable of playing blu-ray and hd content.
as I said choose hdd/cd drive with the money left over. Could always change the case to.
250G vs 320G for £40 between 2.5 and 3.5" hard drive. And slimline dvd drive your looking at about £6 extra. And you get the benefit of super small cases which look better in the lounge.
Hdd and cd drive pick up from members market to save some money. The dual core atom/ion combo is £160 so would be around £400 for the whole system, but would be worth it.
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That would be most appreciated. If it turns out the WDTV can navigate around folders and photos at a reasonable rate problem solved. Basically it just needs to allow us to view out collection of photos in the lounge in a fast friendly manner. If it takes too long to move from one picture to the next it will be too painful to use.
From feedback the WDTV is too slow
I imagine I'd want at least 500GB on the unit...
New spec:
Zotac ION mini-ITX Atom Motherboard £139.09
1.6GHz Intel Atom N330 Dual Core CPU
NVIDIA ION Graphics Chipset
Up To 4GB of 667/800MHz Memory
HDMI With Audio, DVI, VGA, 7.1 Audio
Wirelss 802.11b/g/n, 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Opera Case £36.23
HTPC Case / 500W PSU
USB + Audio / Full / Micro ATX
2x 5.25" / 2x 3.5'' Bays
2GB Corsair Value 800MHz DDR2 Memory Stick 800MHz £19.25
Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader and DVD Drive £50.95
500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue 3.5" Hard Disk Drive £42.95
Total £316 inc vat+postage.. leaves enough for the keysonic keybaord.
Built in wifi, blu-ray drive. Only thing I'm not sure on is noise from the 500w psu.
Install windows 7 beta on it. The wmc is brilliant.
Zotac ION mini-ITX Atom Motherboard £139.09
1.6GHz Intel Atom N330 Dual Core CPU
NVIDIA ION Graphics Chipset
Up To 4GB of 667/800MHz Memory
HDMI With Audio, DVI, VGA, 7.1 Audio
Wirelss 802.11b/g/n, 10/100/1000 Ethernet
Opera Case £36.23
HTPC Case / 500W PSU
USB + Audio / Full / Micro ATX
2x 5.25" / 2x 3.5'' Bays
2GB Corsair Value 800MHz DDR2 Memory Stick 800MHz £19.25
Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader and DVD Drive £50.95
500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue 3.5" Hard Disk Drive £42.95
Total £316 inc vat+postage.. leaves enough for the keysonic keybaord.
Built in wifi, blu-ray drive. Only thing I'm not sure on is noise from the 500w psu.
Install windows 7 beta on it. The wmc is brilliant.
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no, but the reviews are great. the atom does not do the video playing. it is the ION gpu basically a geforce 9300.
No htpc should use the cpu for video playback.
Soldato
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- 23 Apr 2009
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- Cheshire
The Ion is a bit different. Admittedly, the Atom is still very underpowered - but the beauty of Ion is that it has a Geforce 9400 onboard. This allows all the video processing to be offloaded to the chipset, leaving the CPU at low utilisiation. The Ion should be able to play 1080p movies and bluray without any problems.
Admitedly, for a very similar price you could just get the Zotac Mini-ITX s775 board and throw in a c2d e5200. You will have the same GPU but not be limited by the CPU. However, in this situation where price and low heat is important - Ion+Atom is a good bet.
Admitedly, for a very similar price you could just get the Zotac Mini-ITX s775 board and throw in a c2d e5200. You will have the same GPU but not be limited by the CPU. However, in this situation where price and low heat is important - Ion+Atom is a good bet.
Associate
- Joined
- 30 Apr 2009
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Only the DirectX hardware accelerated stuff - IE Windows Media HD and certain programs that support direct hardware rendering, like [I think] PowerDVD etc.
Try to bung an HD encoded AVI on it, then it needs a CPU that can handle it in software. The Atom can't, period.
That was a review of the base reference platform, but I don't imagine that would be any great improvement - I'll try to find it tonight when I get home.