Media Centre Build Help/Recommendations?

Culinia

Culinia

Culinia

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Joined
10 Jan 2010
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662
Hey guys. I am not sure what I am after despite the thread title but I thought it would be that or similar so please excuse me if I am wrong. I was thinking of getting a new low-power media centre pc. I intend to use it for

1)Record and playback recorded television shows.
2)Act as an overnight downloader.
3)Perhaps act as a QoS router - need to look into this.
4)Playback dvds & pos later blu-rays in the future

Please can you point me into the right direction -- has somebody done something like this before, did it work out, was it easy to set-up? Is this what I really want --a media centre pc? If so could someone recommend me some specs or tell me if I am just wrong lol. I don't really want to get one of those dvd recorders or hdd recorders - I've had enough of this and want something a little more advanced to do other things as mentioned and want it in one unit instead of having a 100 different remote controls for each different box piled on top of each other.

Probably will need digital tv cards (think I would need 2 at least) so I can record 2 things simultaneously, operating system, big hdd & probably need 2 ethernet ports, smallest-as-possible case, blu-ray possibly but leave it as an expansion area, remote and anything other I have missed out.

I was thinking actually getting one of those Intel Atom pcs for this purpose, but I'm not sure if it will be able to handle all this going on at the same time plus I doubt if it will have enough PCI-slots for everything?

Thanks for any help!
 
Looking at your uses I would suggest having a look at the AMD Fusion systems. These use an APU which combines a CPU and GPU and they can decode HD video smoothly and efficiently.

Here is a review of the one I like the most - the Asus E35M1-I Deluxe. It is fully passively cooled and sports a PCI-E slot. One thing it doesn't have is dual-gigabit ethernet ports. As for TV cards, you could use a dual tuner card - which packs two tuners onto one card - so you can record two different things or watch one thing while recording another.

If you really need dual-gigabit, then you may want to look for a Mini-ITX board and a low-power AMD CPU, a HD 5450 graphics card (or a HD 6450 if you want to play 3D in the future) and a dual-tuner TV card.

May I ask what type of TV tuner you are looking for, Freeview (DVB-T), Freeview HD (DVB-T2), or digital sattelite (DVB-S/DVB-S2)?

Depending on your budget you should consider investing in a small, cheap SSD just to instal the OS and the few key applications on. This will mean it turns on super-quick, is very responsive in use and crucially is silent in operation. Something like this for example.
 
Hey -- thanks very much for your reply. I will definitely look into both those options!

At the moment we only have standard Freeview in the area, we do not receive HD channels (assuming that the HD-ready TV does include Freeview HD and the other boxes do not receive these HD channels also).

In the near future we may be looking into Sattelite (Sky/Freesat) -- but if we do then I suppose I could just buy another card.

Thanks for the SSD suggestion -- although I am not sure I want to go down that route just yet i.e. since it probably be turned on most of the time so the need for it to start up quickly not necessary right now. Although again, I'll look into it in the future probably if I have more funds.

Thanks again for all your help!

PS: Any good case you/anyone else could recommend :D ?
 
Freeview HD has rolled out pretty far by now - so more than likely you can recieve it in your area. If you have a look at this page you will be able to see if you can recieve freeview HD or when it will arrive. Most TVs don't include FreeviewHD (it is pretty new) so the fact that your existig TV doesn't recieve HD channels doesn't necessarily mean your area isn't activated.

If you do have a HDTV and freeview HD is available then I would strongly recommend you get it - it really is a big step up in picture quality and the number of HD channels is always increasing.

Blackgold currently do the BGT3620 which is a dual tuner that supports DVB-T2 (freeview HD) and fits in a PCIE slot.

As for the SSD, I really shouldn't have mentioned the fast start up - it really isn't the main feature - the big benefit is the excellent resonsiiveness (an SSD has a response time ~100x faster than a HDD and it's random read/writes are also around 100x quicker - so for running the OS it is excellent). Plus, since it is the primary drive and makes no noise - then when you are doing something like streaming from the internet then your box should make basically no noise.

As for case recommendations, it really depends on what form factor (M-ITX or micro-ATX) you decide to go for and how many HDDs you plan to install. Just to throw one out there, the Antec Fusion Micro is a nice case if you go for micro atx.
 
I'd second the suggestion of an AMD based fusion system. Despite their low power consumption they'll play full hd 1080p video and 23.976fps fine thanks to the integrated apu. Most tv tuner cards have dual tuners which will allow you to watch one channel whilst recording another. If you can get away with just a single card/expansion card & single hdd then a miniITX would be better where as a mATX form factor will give you more upgrade options and allow more storage. As for an SSD, yes its a luxury but I would definitely recommend one for a htpc. I got a Crucial M4 64GB originally for my main rig in sig but decided to test it in the media pc and was very impressed as I'd been sceptical of SSDs. Even though its on SATA 2, still boots in Windows/XBMC in about 12 seconds. Absolutely great when you fancy quickly switching it on watch a film or tv show. Built mine around AM3 Athlon II X2 as I had a few spare components but otherwise would definately have gone with fusion.

Link to a few images of my htpc.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18273208
 
Hey thanks andi for the BGT3620 suggestion, that looks like the best card at least from all the reviews I've checked on it.

I was rather confused by the freeview link -- all the channels it claims to be available after the switchover, we can only get one of them, and the channels it claimed we were able to get before the switchover we can only get after the switchover.

Ok sure thing the SSD sounds really convincing...

Shadow nice system btw - just checking your pics :)

I think the fusion sounds good, sorry I am confused -- could a miniITX system house both a SSD and a HDD then? Or was you refering to the mATX as been able to have SSD & HDD? Thanks.

Would Windows 7 be okay for a HTPC? I'm not sure you have it set-up in XBMC but someone says it doesn't record tv so I would need something else!
 
Culinia said:
Hey thanks andi for the BGT3620 suggestion, that looks like the best card at least from all the reviews I've checked on it.
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Glad you like the look of it. From what i've read it is a nice one, I reckon I will pick one up for my parents HTPC soon enough, since it offers DVB-T2, dual tuner and works in WMC.

Culinia said:
I was rather confused by the freeview link -- all the channels it claims to be available after the switchover, we can only get one of them, and the channels it claimed we were able to get before the switchover we can only get after the switchover.
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That is strange - but often it can depend on your aerial. We had to get an aerial upgrade to receive freeview properly in our house (aberdeen) before the switchover.

Culinia said:
I think the fusion sounds good, sorry I am confused -- could a miniITX system house both a SSD and a HDD then? Or was you refering to the mATX as been able to have SSD & HDD? Thanks.
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Yes, a M-ITX system can happily run a HDD and SSD fine, most of the fusion boards have 5 SATA ports - so plenty for an SSD, HDD and optical drive. As for the case, there are quite a few that are both M-ITX and can fit a 3.5in and 2.5in drive (or fit two 3.5in drives- you can then use an adapter for the SSD). Also bear in mind that an SSD is tiny and doesn't need to be secured much (since it doesn't spin -it's solid state) so you could just slot it in somewhere random in a small case if you don't have an extra mount available.

Culinia said:
Would Windows 7 be okay for a HTPC? I'm not sure you have it set-up in XBMC but someone says it doesn't record tv so I would need something else!
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Yea, win 7 is great for a HTPC. I have my parents' one humming along nicely with windows 7 and mainly using WMC for playing videos and music. It's also nice to be able to easily load up BBC Iplayer or throw on a Blu-Ray, since win 7 can support all these things. That said, for just playing video files - XBMC does look very nice. I'm considering adding a XBMC partition (as well as Win 7) when I upgrade my parents one with a SSD - I am very much a SSD convert after using one in my main machine and laptop.
 
Nice one thanks, tell me how it goes since I don't know when I will set this up.

Lol, I will have to sort the aerial out another day I think, too much expense atm :D

Ok thanks, it looks like I will go with the Asus E35M1-I Deluxe w/ Windows 7

Oh yes exactly - iPlayer as well so it's good to know that it would work!

And could someone recommend a good hdd pretty please -- either 1TB or 2TB would be grand :)
 
One thing about iplayer - if you want to use iplayerHD then at the moment this can't be accelerated with the GPU (unlike other streaming video services like youtubeHD), so with the relatively low speed CPU in the AMD fusion it won't run smoothly.

If you want to run iplayerHD then you will want to invest in something more powerful (perhaps a dual core sandy bridge, low power board+CPU) or skip iplayerHD until the BBC sort out GPU decoding. Standard iplayer works great on an AMD fusion system btw (not very CPU intensive) and to get iplayerHD streaming smoothly on any system you still need a relatively quick internet connection (actual speed of 3.5Meg or more I believe) - you can check what your current connection will handle using the test on this page.

As for a 2TB drive recommendation, I would wholeheartedly recommend this one. Nice storage drive, really nice price.
 
one other option (the option i use) is a PS3 and a Synology box, does BD dvd, and pulls straight from the synology box (pics, vids, music ect) in a nice tidy interface, you will struggle to make a media center for the cost of a PS3 :D

+ u then get music video on demand, Iplayer, 4oD, ITV netplayer all free
 
cmndr_andi said:
One thing about iplayer - if you want to use iplayerHD then at the moment this can't be accelerated with the GPU (unlike other streaming video services like youtubeHD), so with the relatively low speed CPU in the AMD fusion it won't run smoothly.

If you want to run iplayerHD then you will want to invest in something more powerful (perhaps a dual core sandy bridge, low power board+CPU) or skip iplayerHD until the BBC sort out GPU decoding. Standard iplayer works great on an AMD fusion system btw (not very CPU intensive) and to get iplayerHD streaming smoothly on any system you still need a relatively quick internet connection (actual speed of 3.5Meg or more I believe) - you can check what your current connection will handle using the test on this page.

As for a 2TB drive recommendation, I would wholeheartedly recommend this one. Nice storage drive, really nice price.
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Hi Andi. I'm not meaning to contradict you, however I have an Acer Revo which has an ION + Atom Based system. It can stream BBCi HD via XBMC no problem at all. However it can't be done via a web browser. Has to be within XBMC, but that's not an issue as it's a much nicer experience within XBMC.
 
Ah, that is very interesting to know - I haven't used XMBC myself (just HTPC through windows 7) - so it sounds like the XBMC implementation makes use of the GPU for decoding the iplayer HD stream.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Ah, that is very interesting to know - I haven't used XMBC myself (just HTPC through windows 7) - so it sounds like the XBMC implementation makes use of the GPU for decoding the iplayer HD stream.
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It does indeed. It took me around an hour to figure it all out last week. I was messing around with beta versions of flash etc trying to get it work in firefox, IE etc.

Eventually found it could be installed on XBMC. I was under the impression for months it wasn't available anymore and that it had been removed bla bla. It would appear not. It's not available directly under XBMC, you have to download the zip file and then place it in the addons directory of XBMC. Very easy to do and if you play 1080p via XBMC then you already have it configured for GPU decoding and Iplayer HD works a treat :).
 
Hey guys. I actually bought the tv tuner card and made a HTPC out of existing unused hardwawre (bought a full atx media case though) -- but the Blackgold there seems to be a problem -- I can pick up HD channels (yay) and view them it after a quick test but if I want to go to another channel like non-HD i.e. Channel 5, Yesterday it says No Signal -- plz help!!!
 
iplayer uses flash and the current version doesn't support gpu acceleration

However there is an experimental beta version that does support it
So u can make use of that or wait for it to be added to the offical version

But it means iplayer should eventually work on any ion/fusion systems
 
I had a simular problem when using the latest BGT_8.1.0.8 driver, just download and install the older BGT_8.1.0.0 driver and it should work properly, also get the backgroundscan.reg from the product hot topics page as this also helps and make sure you follow the uninstall/install instructions by the letter as there are files that need to be deleted manually.
 
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