Planning Advice required - HD Encoder Box

Hi chaps,

I'm planning on building a HD encoder box, to allow me to archive stuff off my Sky HD box. It will comprise of three seperate devices:

Hauppage HD PVR
HD Fury 2
HDMI Splitter.

All three devices are powered by seperate 5v wall warts, of different current ratings (The HD-PVR is 2A the Fury 500mA and the splitter 1A)

What I'd like to do, to make the install cleaner and nicer looking in my AV stack is to take all three and re box them in a dedicated enclosure, with one power supply, HDMI in and out on the back and a USB on the front.

Inside the case, the HDMI in will be plugged into the splitter, and one feed sent to the HDMI out socket. The other HDMI feed will be plugged into the HD-Fury, which will convert the HDMI into YUV video at the same resolution as input, and LR Audio. This will be sent to the HD-PVR, which outputs a H.264 file to a laptop via USB where it is captured using the Hauppage software.

What I need your advice on is:

1) Are there any nice slimline AV looking cases or enclosures out there? I've had a look at the boxes / cases you can get in places like Maplin, but they're not that great looking. And the Mini - ITX cases look pretty naff, or if they look nice, they're either expensive or have all sorts of unneeded bits (Drive cut outs etc)

2) Should I look toward having a single PSU, supplying all 3 devices inside the case (Something like 5v, 4A) - doing away with the seperate wall warts... Or crack each of the warts out of their cases and run line voltage to each inside the new enclosure from a panel mounted power socket?

Links to cases would be great.

Thanks in advance

GOO

 

Not sure I can help with your other queries, but my opinion on this is to have one common mains adapter rather than three separate ones.

You could easily set up some sort of power bus inside the case that then splits the incoming power three ways - a board with an external power input and screw terminals to supply each device would probably do the job well enough. Though, depeding on the quality of your external supply, you may want to filter/regulate each output to give "cleaner" power.

In theory you could also use a 12v wall-wart and regulate each output on the power bus to the required voltage. Though if all three devices use 5v, this is overkill for your needs.

EDIT: I must have mis-read the thread the first time - you weren't proposing to use three separate power jacks on the box... Using an external 5v power source still seems to me like a better idea; you would save loads of space inside the case you plan to use, not to mention the possible implications for heat dissipation of having three transformers.

 

Thanks for that, BLC.

OK chaps - case recomendations?

 

Well, I've sorted it out. I just got a large electronics project box, and put it all in there. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it does the job.

I did have to remove the guts of the HD-PVR from it's original case, to get it to fit in the new case - but I have installed it in such a way as to allow it's removal and reinstallation in it's original case, should I ever want to send it back for repair or sell it.

I solved the power issue by getting a 5v 4 amp external power supply, and a case mounted 2.1mm power jack. The power jack feeds a strip of vero board which acts as a power distribution bus, with fly leads and the correct sized power adaptor plugs going to each of the devices in the case.

So now all I have to do is plug a HDMI lead from the Sky HD box to the Encoder IN, another from the encoder out to the TV, and the power lead. The splitter and HD Fury is powered at all times, so the pass throughs work, and the HD PVR is turned on and off by a push button on the front.

When I capture video, I plug a USB lead into the socket on the front, fire up the software on the Mac, hit play on the Sky box and click on the record button on the mac. Lovely h.264 mp4 goodness!

I can post pics later if anyone is interested.