Hi All My dad's just got a fancy 1080p LED TV and he's on about connecting it to the internet and being able to use it as an output for various media...so I automatically think, "hm, sounds like he could do with an HTPC" My problem is, apart from know in general what they can do, I wouldn't really know how to go about setting one up especially about - 1) spec (if it was up to me I'd be doing an i7 920 w/watercooled HD5870, but the word "overkill" springs to mind ) 2) O/S, which one? how to configure? etc So, before I set out on my quest anyone got any pointers or tips or anything? help appreciated!
Since it's your dad, I assume he's comfortable in Windows and not so much in Linux etc? Stick to XP/Windows 7 for the OS. For the spec - do you have an approximate budget in mind? The golden rule with HTPCs is noise. Pick low-heat, low-speed components because the last thing you want to hear in a quiet scene is fans ramping up to cope with toasty components.
As mentioned you really want low power, low noise if its going to be on all the time, I'm using the following low power AMD X2 1.9Ghz (forget its name) AMD HD3200 motherboard, using all the on-board components for VGA/Sound and connecting to TV via HDMI. couple of Gb of RAM Terabyte of disc some TV tuners for PVR functionality A Bluray drive 120w picoPSU, fanless and efficient. Mostly controlled via IR remote control but with BT Keyboard/mouse combo should I need more options. As most of the integrated chipsets do mpeg2/4 offload you don't need much power, I do have a fan on the CPU as I use a low profile CPU cooler (12mm high) so its cooling ability is poor, but I have everything in a case the size of a DVD player, in a full height case I would be passive completely. Only noise you can really hear is the HDD. With all the kit in mine it is perhaps not the lowest power machine, idles about 50w, peak at about 70w but its reasonable for what it does, what with being the PVR, podcast viewer, on-demand player (4od/iplayer etc), photoviewer, HD film viewer (bluray/home video) and centralized backup for our laptops. Its fair to say though that my PS3 also does most things the majority want from a HTPC and is cheap and a lot easier and user friendly, joypad is particularly good for photo viewing, you could save yourself a lot of hassle with a PS3 slim, bluray remote and playtv, though obviously its not as flexible as a PC, so you really need to know what you want to use it for.
Guys, thanks for your responses. A lot of what was said above does make sense. Yes, low-noise, low-power sounds good, plus a windows-based o/s would be great & easy for me to set up & people to use. Going to need to understand what some of the rest of your input means, though I'm interested in TV tuners and various other cards for the HTPC. Really would like to know what the possibilities are with this type of hardware...Not sure what PVR is though? I'm interested in whatever hi-def output can be driven by the HTPC... Not sure what kind of budget to set for this? As this is not going to be a gaming build, presumably that would knock a few quid off the asking price. I guess my question all boils down to this: What are the possibilities of an HTPC?
When i decided to build mine, i went with old parts that i already had. I wanted to be able to play the odd game using a 360 pad, mainly fifa and gtr games really. Overall the spec is: e5200 4Gb RAM gigabyte P43 mobo 80gb system drive, 2x1Tb storage devices ATi HD4550 'passive' GPU Be Quiet 350W PSU Its cooled with a corsair H50 for the CPU and the fan from the PSU, It only has 2 120mm fans in total, its incredibly quiet, The only thing i still need to get is is a TV card i think im going with the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S2 HD but havent decided. Really a HTPC can be whatever you want it to be, If you have a case big enough to take full size components then its could be a gaming rig, the trade off is the noise.
What factored into your decision buying a TV card? What were you looking for? I just got a wireless 360 pad last week....Love it! Grid is such a great game with the controller! Also, if using a TV card - do you still need your Sky Box (or whatever) - can these all be connected at the same time? Do you run your sky box through your HTPC?
It's worth bearing in mind that a HTPC won't replace a Cable or Sat TV box if you have either. I set up a HTPC and getting it to work with my Virgin Cable box was a nightmare. Most TV cards will either use a digital terrestial or Analog signal input. So you can watch digital Freeview channels out of the box. To get the channels that were in my Cable package, I had to use the analog signal from the cable box as input on the TV card. This presented a problem in that I had to use the cable box remote to switch channels, instead of the MCE remote I bought. I had to use a 3rd party ir red-eye to fool the cable box into accepting input from the MCE remote. It was a slog getting it all set up. You also have to perform some trickery within Windows Mdeia centre too to get the right TV listings etc. http://www.redremote.co.uk/mce.html Not sure how good you can get Sat TV to work with a HTPC, but Cable TV took some real effort. What pissed me off was the fact that in the US, the cable companies will allow their cards to be used in 3rd party cable TV card decoders. Virgin, in their wisdom, don't. Waffling here, but the crux is that if you want Freeview from the HTPC, it's a doddle with most TV cards. If you want Sat TV or cable, expect some head scratching.
old parts are definately the way to go here (although mine werent that old) but if your going new you cant beat an M4A785D-M Pro phenom II X2 550 4GB ddr2 wd caviar green 1tb and a case you like and a decent PSU inside your budget get a nice wireless keyboard mouse + Remote and your done as far as software is concerned win7 64bit media centre is fine throw in media browser and shark007 codecs and your fine oh and tunerfree MCE will solve most of your freeview issues
I think im getting that card as it will allow me to recieve freesat iirc, we have the worlds worst tv reception here so i want to use the sky dish for free view. I dont have sky we had it for years and there wasnt enough on it to warrant what it cost tbh. You can get PC cards that accept sky cards iirc but they suffer from the problem of having to be put into a working skybox every 3 months or something like that.
So satellite, or cable isn't a good idea unless i want hours of p*ssing around. Which I don't. Presumably most people can receive freeview through their TV's or Sky boxes, what's the plus to actually having a TV card, then? You make it sound so easy! I really like the idea of ripping DVDs to an HTPC, the convenience of having them stored is great. And accessing them through a snazzy frontend would be a plus Gaming's not going to be needed for this one. What about full-HD content, can say a device be installed that upscales freeview to HD content? That would definitely add value Thanks for all your input guys, learning loads here.
the build above would be fine for hd content although i have had little to no experience with upscaling only that a properly configured FFdshow will do it for you check out tunerfree MCE if you havnt already it is really good if you like iplayer although my TVcard experience has been so far unsuccessful (blame the welsh tv signals i get that are going to be the last updated) oh and in regards to DVDs there are lots of methods of acheiving the end result but i find DVD's ripped to vobs then converted into mkvs the best for me i use dvd decrypter then staxrip (to convert) then meta browser to find all the relevent metadata
Your able to do stuff like pause tv and record etc. Do you really want to waste all your time and storage doing that. tv tuners will upscale to match resolution of PC screen as will most dvd software, you can configure ffdshow to do additional processing but to be honest there is not a lot to be gained for the processing power required, needs more than I'm running for 1080p. Thing is I think you have kind of diverged from the point of your original post, is this for you or your dad? Going by the many things I end up doing for parents, mine and others, it takes some time to teach the non tech savvy and this could be a bit advanced, even if you managed to wrap a good gui around it, especially considering the fact that its clear you don't know much about it yourself (hope you don't take that the wrong way) I reckon if you want to get you dad something that will show off his screen, upscale (when connected via HDMI) tv,dvd,divx etc peform recording duties, play streamed stuff from a PC, play HD via bluray, shown family albums, plus a bit of web ability etc, a PS3 really is quite handy at all of this, requires no dicking around too, oh and it plays games cheaper than a HTPC too even after adding tuner and remote. Plus easier to sell on if he doesn't get it, course a PS3 doesn't do it all but its not bad.
Maybe Read a little more about this yesterday, apparently upscaling never truly gives you an HD output - it's all about the quality of the source. Not sure about ffdshow, though. Might have to do some more reading there. What other way is there to take that? everyone has to start somewhere... Anyway, I appreciate your point, maybe I'm overcomplicating things for the sake of my own interests. My pops does want something that upscales (as he's looking into getting one of those upscaling units - forgot the name), and he wants something he can use the internet through. I figured tying on more htpc functionality would package it quite nicely. I'll look into that, too. Sounds like a good avenue to go down. Thanks all for your input
You can't add detail that is not there, you can only do some post processing to the source data to make it look better at the greater resolution, typically TVs are quite good at that anyway. indeed, an interesting project for yourself perhaps but until you have it all figured out, and stable, you are some way away from being able to deploy this to someone else.
Im one of those people that has every dvd ive got fully ripped as .iso files, granted they take up almost 2Tb of drive space but with the cost per Gb now so low its not a problem, and i get to keep all the original features on the disk. Using slysofts anydvd and 2 disc drives i managed to rip 12-15 disks an hour without effecting my computer use. Windows7 media center + Daemontools lite + Mediabrowser = WIN
