Trying to plan a HTPC

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

strumpusplunket

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Hi all. I've been browsing this section of the OcUK forum for a while with the dream still inside me somewhere of reviving my attempts to get a basic-but-decent HTPC set-up going.

I had a brief go a few years ago, but lack of budget and planning killed it before it really got going. I only ended up with an old cannibalised desktop that could play my DivX files on my TV.

Now have a bit more money to put towards it, but not a great deal. Will need a ceiling of around £500-600.

What I want is a fairly simple system that will hook up to my 37" 720P TV and will:
Stream films from my main PC over our wireless network or over homplug (I have a spare wireless dongle) These files are mostly DivX/Xvid, and most have srt/idx subtitles.
Stream music from my PC and play various formats from USB sticks/iPods etc.
Play CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs
Work as a Freeview PVR

I have had a go at speccing a base system for this based on what I've picked up from here:
Antec NSK 3480 Micro ATX Case - Black/Silver (380W Earth Watts PSU) £80.49
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £79.34
Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader Serial-ATA Drive - Retail £57.98
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7750+ Black Edition 2.70GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £57.49
Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (0A35415) £45.99
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) £36.79
Keysonic ACK-612RF Black Wireless Keyboard with TouchPad £29.99

Total : £402.44


I know I will also need:
A digital freeview TV tuner. Can anyone recommend a good budget one?
A remote control. I do like the look of the Logitech Harmony, which some here seem to like, but it's very pricey. Any good alternatives for less cost?
Speakers/amp. I was hoping to feed the audio through my old Sony hi-fi as it has a good sound quality, but it's an old piece of kit with no connectivity options at all apart from the CD player inputs. I really hope this doesn't blow my budget.

I'm planning to use XP as the OS (as I have a copy lying around I can use) and installing Media Portal, PowerDVD, videoLAN, ffdshow, and vobsub.

I'd really appreciate comments and advice on these plans as this is not an area I know very much about. I'm just now starting saving for this, so it will be two months or so before I start putting it all together. Would like to know if it's a feasible plan with my budget, though.

Cheers.
 
First of all welcome to the forums

Everything specced out there looks fine, i brought pretty much a similar setup a few months back and love it.

one thing to watch with that motherboard is that it doesnt output audio over hdmi
also you could buy a slightly cheaper cpu if you wanted to save a bit of money

Just as quick note i would make sure you get a tv card with dual tuner functions
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone.

GFresh and DIABLO, you both summed up my thoughts on RAM - I know 4GB is more than I'll need, but at £37 it seems a paltry difference between 2 and 4GB.

I'm a bit confused on the CPU front, as there seems to be one call for upping the spec here to a tri-core (presumably the cheapest AMD Phenom X3 Tri Core 8650 would do), and one for lowering it and saving some money (presumably to the X2 4400?).

I have to say that I've no idea how much CPU grunt would be required by Blu-ray playing, PVR activities, and media streaming. Gaming I know the requirements for, media not at all! Any saving here would be appreciated, but as it's only £20, would I actually see any benefit from sticking with my specced CPU (or even upping it)?

Thanks Oxy for the call on the MCE remote - I had actually thought these would only work with Windows MCE so hadn't considered them. Will check that out.

Is the software I have planned ok? One issue I had with my previous HTPC effort was that all the front-end software I tried with my TV card was awful - the bundled Winfast software, and several different free apps whose names I've now forgotten. It took several seconds to change channel, channel searching and tuning was sub-standard, and the whole experience was much poorer than simply using the aerial straight into the TV and just using the PC for DivX.

My wife is rather against the whole idea based on this experience, so I need to convince her that this will be a good use of our finances!

Also, how about speakers/amps? Would it be possible to get the input through my stereo by using the two CD input jack sockets? What would I need to do that if so? If not, what am I looking at to get decent enough speakers to make this our main CD playing set-up (bearing in mind that whilst both of us like our music, neither are exactly audiophiles).

Thanks again.
 
triple core is ace for blu-ray. AMD realised they were getting battered in dual core market by intel. To combat this AMD came up with triple core.

I say its best to get triple as you will have 3 cores decoding blu-ray, i.e. a similar performance to an intel dual core.

Trriple core gives you headroom, thats my point :)

This is my source.

http://hothardware.com/News/AMD-Demonstrates-TripleCore--In-Bluray--Test/

EDIT: ok, as for software mediaportal is a good choice. It takes time to setup but it has some ace plugins. If you wanna watch blu-ray there is an ace plugin for media portal that intergrates ppowerdvd 7.3/8.


PS: I did a couple of HTPC, in the infancy of hd-dvd and blu-ray, it was a nightmare so a share your pain. I have since gone the PS3 route. Have you considered a ps3? I am not sure the ps3 can decode mkv yet, but everything else I chuck at it it eats it.

If you want problem free blu-ray playback I suggest ps3.

Something for you to consider anyway!!

EDIT2: your cd player i cant help with, as I bought a 5.1 with sony AV reciever a few years ago, I just use SPDIF for all my devices.
 
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Thank, Oxy. That's all really useful information.

Would I be better off with an Intel Core2 CPU, then for the price? Say, an E2200 on a Gigabyte GA-EG43M-S2H? If not I'll just swap the CPU in my above spec for an X3 8650).

I did briefly consider PS3 as a route to go down, but really, whilst Blu-Ray playback is something I'd like, it's of secondary importance to the ability to stream DivX/Xvid files with subtitles and the PVR functionality.

If PS3 can handle all varieties of DivX/Xvid/other MPEG4 files with subtitles, steam audio/play CDs and do PVR stuff, then I still might consider it, tbh. MKV compatibility isn't absolutely essential (though it would be nice).

So, Media Portal is a problem-free TV tuner/PVR then? I mean problem-free as in my technophobic wife could use it with a little tutoring without getting frustrated by it being harder/slower than normal?

Thanks for all your help. I'll have a think about a few things, and maybe look into the PS3 angle too.
 
Hell no the AMD triple core, from what I have read is perfect for blu-ray, I wasn't trying to sway you to intel. If i were to build a HTPC now, I would use a 9400m/780G board with amd triple core.

I don't think the ps3 can read seperate subtitle files, i was just throwing the ps3 into the ring :)


Mediaportal - it took me a while to get it configured how I wanted, but I got there in the end. Most of the legwork has been done for you though, if you read that link i posted above.

It includes links to all the kewl plugins for mediaportal and some awesome codec guides.

TBH, I love my ps3 "as it just works" with no messing, we got sky + late last year so PVR isnt something I need so my ps3 is perfect. Having said that sony did realise PlayTV last year, dont know much about it, might be worth looking into playtv as well.

Still would live issues with subtitles I believe.
 
google for triplecore benchmarks vs intel offerings when playing blu-ray.

You gotta be happy with your purchases lol,

EDIT: Another avenue you may wanna explore is this one.

scrounge/use any old pc parts you have/buy second hand parts - build a cheapo pc for mediaportal for your divx/subtitle needs.

Then buy an standalone blu-ray player for £150.

Would be the same price if not cheaper than building a super dooper HTPC. This way you get flawless blu-ray playback. a thrid idea for you to consider!!!
 
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In terms of the CPU, i would ensure that whatever you get is low power and really easy to cool. You do NOT want a noisey HTPC.

I run a Gigabyte MA78GM with a 5050e and a Ninja cooler. In the case i have i use no fan for the CPU. In fact the only fan i have is an exhaust (which runs VERY slowly), and the PSU :)
 
Matt said:
In terms of the CPU, i would ensure that whatever you get is low power and really easy to cool. You do NOT want a noisey HTPC.

I run a Gigabyte MA78GM with a 5050e and a Ninja cooler. In the case i have i use no fan for the CPU. In fact the only fan i have is an exhaust (which runs VERY slowly), and the PSU :)
Click to expand...

+1
 
Just as a side note as no one seems to have mentioned it. The 780G chipset can, with the right software (power dvd 8/9 should iirc) be used to decode blu-ray and reduce the cpu requirements. The gpu on the 780g is a HD3xxx series which has built in support for hdmi (with sound over dvi), blu ray etc.

I'd still go for atleast a tri core as suggested and it may be worth using windows 7 beta which has built in codecs for blu-ray etc rather than buying (assumption) xp with powerdvd.

I'd also personally go for 2 drives so that any media files (if you store on this pc) can be stored seperately to the OS/Programs
 
Thanks again for the replies.

I'll probably reduce the RAM to 2GB, yeah. It's not that much of a saving but I guess since I won't need 4GB it makes sense.

I was putting a 500GB drive here because I'm getting a 1.5TB HDD for my main PC to keep all my music/films/photos on to stream across the network. I assumed 500Gb would be enough as all it would need to do would store the OS, software for media playing and PVR storage. Is that a reasonable way of thinking?

Will definitely get the MCE remote now I know it will work in XP and Media Portal.

As for cooling, I was planning to try to undervolt and run the stock cooler with very slow fans speeds. Anyone think that would work? I have some quiet Asus fans for the case.

Will also go for the triple core. I think Oxy's suggestion of a cheaper build and specialised Blu-Ray player is not a bad one at all, though. Especially since Blu-Ray is actually way down the list of priorities really. We probably won't use it for a good while.

So I'm a bit torn now. On the one hand, any money saved could go towards improving the audio set-up, and we can always get a Blu-Ray player separately when they've come down in price. On the other hand, since I'm spending a fair wedge either way (even just considering case, PSU, RAM, mobo) I kind of think I'd like to do it properly, and the fact we won't use BR straight away means I'll have time to iron out the kinks without my wife getting frustrated by it all (again) :)

I'll mull that over, but am leaning towards just doing it all properly in one go at the moment.

lsg1r's suggestion of Windows 7 beta is a good one. I'd not thought of that. I was going XP because I have a spare copy, but W7 is free as well, so that might work out better.

So apart from audio, it looks like I'm getting a good plan sorted. Still a bit wary of how well TV tuning/PVR will work under Media Portal - would the choice of TV tuner affect this? And what would be the minimum spend for a good one?

Oh, and what's minimum network speed for streaming HD from the files stored on my main PC?
 
The Samsung 1Tb will run cooler and quieter than the Hitachi 500Gb.
Its not that much more but it means that in the future you don't have to add another drive to your HTPC.

You can use the extra space to backup your movies and stuff (which is always a good idea as no HDD is reliable)

When you get it all setup, make sure to get some imaging software like Acronis True Image to create regular backups of your HTPC. This means that you can experiment with MediaPortal and stuff and gives you the freedom to screw up and then put back to an existing image. I create weekly backups of my PC's and the images have come in handy a few times.
 
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Just remember the win 7 beta is "free" until august. I think thats right anyway.

I would use XP, as you already have it, and its proven for stability.
 
Hmm. That is a good point, photoshop. I already have Acronis Trueimage as well (absolutely love it and always keep images of my fesh install, my install with essential apps and all my tweaks applied, and use incremental backups as well - fantastic app!).

I think I'll continue my current habit of burning DVDs of media for hard backup as well, so I wasn't completely sold on the idea of 1TB storage. I also have a 500Gb external e-SATA drive that I use for backups - as well as using Karen's replicator to back-up essential media to my wife's PC. Having had a HDD die through an exploding boiler a few years ago I take no chances as it is with backing up!

Definitely something to consider, the 1TB drive. It will depend on totting up the final budget, I guess.

And I didn't realise the beta ran out, actually. I (perhaps naively) just assumed you'd be able to continue with beta-only functionality but not be able to upgrade to the full version without paying. Ok, will stick with XP.

Any opinions on how easy-to-use the TV channel-hopping/PVR is in Media Portal? Could my technophobic wife manage do you think? Any recommendations on TV tuner?

Getting excited now. Still need to sell this idea to the wife and save up the £500 or so, but... this is really feeling like a possibility now. With a 2 year old and a 1 week old in the house we spend a lot of evenings in, so this would have a great impact on our quality of life I think (I've told my wife this already!).

Ta for your continued help.

Edit: Thanks, Matt for that. Bookmarked those threads for reference when I get this project going.
 
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