New XBMC/Win7 HTPC - Picture Heavy!!

[shadow_boxer]

Just thought I'd post a few images of my new HTPC I've built for my Dad. At the moment its a pretty basic setup. Video running to a 40" Sony LCD via HDMI and analogue audio to two 2.0 200W speakers but soon it'll be connected upto the new AV receiver and 5.1 surround sound system for some DTS-MA and True HD goodness!

Spec is;

AMD Athlon II X2 240
Foxconn Cinema II Deluxe 785G
4GB Corsair DDR3 Dual Channel RAM
64GB Crucial M4 SSD
LG Blu Ray ROM
2TB Western Digital Green
XFX Radeon HD 5450 512MB Passive
Low Profile Vision Media Center Case w/ 250W PSU
D-Link DWA 556 Low Profile Wireless N PCI-e

Windows 7 64 bit and XBMC. Speedlink SL 6399 USB IR remote.

Thanks to the SSD, boots into XBMC in <15 seconds and use Windows 7 Media Center with Cyberlink Power DVD 10 Ultra for Blu Ray playback.

Most things arrived together thankfully, the 5450 and M4 SSD a bit later tho.

The case is from a well know competitor and has a branding sticker on the front. Thankfully this came off really easily (with very little glue and residue) to give the front of the case a nice look. Case is low profile and finished on the front and top/side with brush aluminium effect. Very scratch prone and is a finger print mangnet (hence the dusting cloth)

The case is pretty basic. Comes with a 250W PSU and a built in IR receiver and remote too. Haven't tried this one as the Speedlink SL 6399 works perfectly in XBMC (after a bit of tweaking in evenghost). Cooling is also pretty limited. There are no grill on the sides or top. There is space to install a 120mm fan (only with ITX boards) or 80mm fan towards the front of the case but that's all. Also if you do install an 80mm one in the "correct place" it actually blocked all of my SATA ports! Luckily due to the larger grill I managed to shift it along a bit to free them up.

The drive bay adapter is removable, only allows you to install two drives, one 3.5" and one 5.25" drive.

The M4 is just attached with some double sided tape. The PSU doesn't get very hot all so I'm hoping it'll be fine there! I took the Speedlink SL 6399 receiver apart and managed to do a bit of a mod so that it is all internal now, so no horrid external USB receiver! Just makes for a better finish. It doesn't power the system up but will shut down fine. Boots into XBMC in around 14-15 seconds from POST. Ran AS SSD Benchmark and getting around 250-260MB/s Read speed so quite happy with that on this board.

Using the latest build of XBMC, whatever version we're upto, and transparency for the skin. Plently of my own personalised backdrops to give it a nice media centre feel on the home page. Images change every few seconds too.

I prefer quite simple skins and themes so gone for fairly plain fanart backdrops for movies, where as for music videos and TV shows prefer thumbnails and banners.

The system idles a nice 30 deg C with the stock cooler and just a single 80mm intake fan. During blu-ray playback and 1080p video sits around 40 degrees which isn't too back. Blu Ray playback is very good at 23.976fps and very rarely get frame stuttering thanks to the Radeon HD5450. System is surprisingly quiet, not even audible from 3m even on very quiet scenes. Finally the best bit for me...total outlay £235! [exc Windows]

 

[shadow_boxer]

Thanks, buttons on the front are for Movies/Pictures/Music etc. Work in Win7 Media Centre but not in XBMC unfortunately. Still trying to figure out what the rest of them do!

PSU is a generic 250W micro ATX. Case won't take full ATX PSUs which is a bit of a shame. Comes with a fairly decent number of SATA/molex connections, only has a 4pin 12v EPS connector, but the system runs fine even though motherboard has an 8 pin socket.

Using the transparency skin here, but have imported all of my own backdrops to the menus to illustrate what the content is. It does have a separate home menu tab for music videos but a lot of them seem to go missing in the library mode unfortunately.

At the moment the TV has an inbuilt freesat tuner so don't use it to watch live TV but works well with iplayer and catchup etc.

Temps are pretty reasonable, usually about 30-40 degC during video playback. Case is a real bargain, it's a real shame OcUK don't get more like this. Very difficult to get budget end HTPC cases but this one is £50 and has a PSU.

 

[shadow_boxer]

How easy was it to get your remote working? I bought a Speedlink a while ago but have never been able to get it working. However, that was when I was using MediaPortal as the front end ...

Picked it up dirt cheap of the bay and was pretty surprised it all worked. The remote worked straight out of the box and most buttons were already mapped and functioned well with both XBMC and Windows 7 Media Centre.

I added the following code into the XBMC keyboard.xml file to map a few more of the buttons.

<t mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, TV power, 3)</t>          <!-- TV power -->
<menu>Notification(Key, More, 3)</menu>                   <!-- More -->
<z mod="ctrl,shift">Notification(Key, Aspect, 3)</z>      <!-- Aspect -->
<e mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Red/Videos, 3)</e>        <!-- Red/Videos -->
<m mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Green/Music, 3)</m>       <!-- Green/Music -->
<i mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Yellow/Pictures, 3)</i>   <!-- Yellow/Pictures -->
<t mod="ctrl,shift">Notification(Key, Blue/MyTV, 3)</t>   <!-- Blue/MyTV -->
<g mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Guide, 3)</g>             <!-- Guide -->
<o mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, RTV, 3)</o>               <!-- RTV -->
<f1>Notification(Key, Help, 3)</f1>                       <!-- Help -->
<return mod="alt">Notification(Key, Maximise, 3)</return> <!-- Maximise/restore -->
<a mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Radio, 3)</a>             <!-- Radio -->
<m mod="ctrl,shift">Notification(Key, DVD, 3)</m>         <!-- DVD -->
<a mod="ctrl,shift">Notification(Key, Audio, 3)</a>       <!-- Audio -->
<u mod="ctrl">Notification(Key, Title, 3)</u>             <!-- Title -->

As for the front case buttons;

Obviously there is the power and reset then also quick links for music, videos and pictures which work in both XBMC and Win7 MC straight from the box.

Will be using evenghost to get the remote setup more the way I like it, but I'm quite happy with it how it is to be honest so not in any rush.

 

[shadow_boxer]

very nice. Would love to build one myself but as a replacement for my Virgin V+ box to record, pause and rewind live TX but as already said, XBMC doesn't support this plus I'd still need a Virgin digibox to decrypt signal.

Yeah, it's a shame XBMC just isnt' quite there. Add in native Blu-Ray disc support and live TV/recording function and it'd be the perfect HTPC all in one platform. Having messed around around with it a bit last night, got Cyberlink Power DVD 10 now set as the external player in XBMC via the launcher program so saves me going into Win7 MC to watch Blu-Ray discs. (PS. Sorry about hinting the competitor above!)

Where you getting your cover art from?

Nice clean build.

Thanks. For the Movies/TV Series I'm just using the native IMDB scrapper but for the homepages or Videos/Movies etc I've just got HD images from Google Images and linked the backdrops to them.

Very nice. I approve of the excessive M4 SSD as well.

Cheers, well the M4 was on a ridiculous offer last week, and having not got an SSD thought I'd make the jump. Was actually meant for my main system (in sig) but it works well in the HTPC where fast booting is more of a priority.

 

[shadow_boxer]

You can get programs to scrape the files into the folders for you. This means that if you get another HTPC in another room, or if you reinstall your current one, you don't need to waste a whole bunch of time rescraping. I used to like Ember Media Manager which can be found on the XBMC forums. I use Sickbeard for the TV programs.

Thanks. Will try this as might be migrating the SSD to my main rig and will be having to do a reinstallation of OS / XBMC.

 

[shadow_boxer]

How are you ruinning XBMC btw? Live or boot from windows? If so how? eventghost to the remote?
Im going to be getting that case with some other gear, very tempted to put in a low profile tv card, if such a thing exists

XMBC boots from Win7. As for the remote, it pretty much worked from the box. Not the best remote by any stretch but for a few quid it does the job fine. Tried evenghost again but not had much luck with it so resorted back the the vanilla setup with some aditional keys mapped by adding some code (found on XBMC forums) for a few extra keys.

Very nice case that m8 been searching for it but can only find one place that does it and their out of stock.

PM you a while ago. Did you get the case? Thoughts. I'm finding now with the average British Summer now upon us, it does get a bit warm in there. Ideal for the likes of an i3 2100t or Zacate but not much more!