:D New system to build (need some advise) (2 Viewers)

[userjan]

Hey guys...

I finnally can start the build of my new MediaPortal system, i want to use a Shuttle system to build from and play the video on a 42" inch full HD LCD screen.

With the casing, audio and memory etc i will find my way, the Graphicscard and TV card get a litle harder i also don't have any experience with HD and MP's TV server yet.

I got a few questions....

1) I've got a digital comcast reciever, but only see anolog outputs on it, so how do i connect it to the MP system?

2) I can imagen the comcast reciever streams the tv signal trough MP, this makes MP basiclly a slave of the comcast reciever without bieng able to record or show the guide, can somebody explain what i'm missing here ?

3) I'f I gave you money to buy me a TV card and a graphics card, what would you bring ? ( and be good, no hookers drugs or booze )

ThX in advance..........

Greetz Jan

 

[etheesdad]

3. hauppauge hvr 2200
ATI hd 4550 (passive cooling model)

 

[solas989]

I would choose the Hauppauge 2250 - two tuners than can do either Analog or Digital (good for cable since they take a long time to transition to digital). I have one and it is pretty good - not the best but good. If you have space, I would recommend individual cards because on the 2250, when I am recording one analog channel and watching a different analog channel, it does not look as good as when just watching 1 analog channel...could be because of the splitter. I would have liked to see two inputs...but oh well. I didnt have the room for two individual cards.

I do not know how to control a set top box. I have my digital cable plugged into the tuner card directly. I get all my local channels in digital form and all my analog channels as well. This card is good because the analog decoding is done on the card (mpeg decoder), and not on the cpu.

Then again, I could be very well missing your whole set of questions.

Solas

 

[userjan]

ThX for your reply's guys....

@Solas

I think understand your explanation of the anolog recieving:
"cable comes in, all analog channels can be sucked out of this cable/connection, when you split this you can record a channel with one card and watch a channel with the other card"

Now digital: (as i understand it)
cable comes in (comcast) digital reciever, digital reciever only puts out one channel, the channel selected on the comcast reciever.

So if i connect this to my MP system it will just stream trough this one digital channel trough my MP system, making it pretty useless to run it trough MP, i can just aswell stream it directly to the TV.

Basicly i want the tuner card inside MP to do what the Comcast digital reciever is doing (but no idea if that is posible)

I hope somebody can clear this up a bit.....

ThX in advance

Greetz Jan

 

[solas989]

You will not be able to get a normal tuner card to do what the Comcast set top box does. Normal tuner cards can only tune unencrypted QAM channels. Depending on your franchise...you can get any where from local digital channels to all the franchise hd channels. But likely they will only have your local channels as unencrypted.

There are cable card tuners, but they are NOT cheap and hard to come by.

So you can connect the output into the tuner card input and record what ever is on the set top box. Not easy. Further, I dont know if this will work, but there are plugins to control certain set top boxes (I think) - but I think that is for satellite...either way I am NOT familiar with this process so you will have to do some research here.

With my 2250, I tune all my digital unencrypted QAM channels as well as all my analog channels. I only get local channels via digital though. If not being able to TUNE or RECORD encrypted QAM channels is ok, then a tuner card is great. You can record 1 channel and watch another. Or in my case, I can record 2 channels and use the TV tuner to watch another.

Hope all this helps.

Solas

 

[userjan]

ThX all for your advise...

I've desided tho that running the Digital TV trough my MP system doesnt bring me to much benefits, so i will keep this seperated from MP.

I came down to this setup, please tell me what you think: (i want to run Windows XP on the sytem)

Shuttle Prima XPC SN78SH7 AMD Socket AM2+ / AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 2 x 240Pin GeForce 8 series Black Barebone - Retail

Seagate ST3640323AS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Microsoft USB 2.4 GHz Bluetooth Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 - OEM

A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

AMD Phenom II X4 920 2.8GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor - Retail

ASUS Black 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-Ray DVD Combo Drive Model BC-06B1ST - Retail

ThX in advance.......

 

[solas989]

I can only comment on a few of the items

Seagate is a good manufacturer. Depending on your needs, 640GB may not be enough. Either way, since you are going to run XP, I suggest partitioning it into 3 logical drivers. 1 ~14GB for the os (if you slip stream all the updates into the install, you can get away with 9GB). This is larger than your actual OS install so you have room to install what ever programs you want and still defrag effectively. You can get even less space if you KNOW what you want to install. The second partition is for the swap file...USE THIS ONLY IF YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE CHANGING SWAP FILE PARAMETERS. If you do not feel comfortable, use only TWO partitions. The last partition is for your media. I though 500GB would be enough for me...I was WRONG. I am at 1.5TB and that is still pushing the limits of my media. I have only about 200GB of expansion...so plan accordingly.

RAM, not critical in HTPC. But ADATA has received some good reviews. I have not used ASUS media drives before.

Otherwise, it looks good.

GOod Luck

Solas

 

[userjan]

Thanks again Solas....

The hard drive could have bien bigger i agree, i also thought about a Blue-ray burner, but i wanted get the price of the total system down a bit, and those are parts i can upgrade very easy at a later stage, i also havent used any of my slots yet, so that will also leave some room for expansion in later stage.

I havent desided yet how i want to split this 640GB drive yet, but knowing myself this will be a constant process of installing, tuning and messing up so i will keep my media safe on a seperate partition whille i can play around with the windows/install partition.

Greetz Jan

 

[Whisper]

I just thought i would add a comment here, i only stumbled by, because i'm curious about buying the 2250 myself.

Then i noticed your conversation about partitioning your main hd.

I have to say i'm rather surprised that people are still partitioning drives, at the cost of harddrives today.

You have to realize that partitioning a harddrive will reduce the performance quite considerably, especially if you place the swap file on a seperate partition.
If you think about how a harddrive works mechanically, you will realize why.

Very simplified you can say that a harddrive works by having a mechanical arm reading and writing data from and to a spinning disc. And by splitting the same disc up in more than one partition, you are forcing the arm to jump in and out the width of the disc, when reading and writing from seperate partitions.

So imagine how you are forcing the harddrive to act, if you split it up in three partitions, with the system on the inner circle, the swap file on the middle, and general storage on the outer circle of the disc. When booting the drive arm will have to jump back and forth like mad, to load the system, and fill the swap. And then imagine doing something data-intensive like compressing movies etc. on the third partition, while swapping, and the system downloading automatic updates...

It is true that separating the system from your data helps you fool around with the system, without compromising the data, but you're paying heavily for that in I/O performance.

It goes without saying that the best performance comes from splitting jobs on physical drives, instead of logical drives. Most optimal is one drive for OS, one for swap, and one for general data. But a very reasonable compromise is OS and swap file sharing one drive, and then another drive for general data.

Any decent defragmenting software places the most used system files, and the swap file close together, in the fastest part of harddrive, exactly due to the fact that the more the mechanical arm has to move around to find your data, the longer it is going to take to get it.

Think about it, it's simple physics.

 

[solas989]

Well, considering not all HTPC's can actually support ALL those drives...we have to work things out. Yes, it IS best to have 3 physical drives...but in my HTPC, that is NOT possible (SFF).

Ideally you should have 1 small physical drive for OS, 1 small physical drive of swap and then big drives for data. But not all HTPC's can do that.

So...it IS better to partition when physical drives ARE limited, well IMO. If you can have two physical drives, you should put the swap on the first partition of the second physical drive. Even better is to have TWO swap locations as the OS is most likely to use the least active drive (well, XP does anyway).

Now, if a single drive is being used, I still suggest partitions. The first partition is the Swap file. Quickest access because lots of files moved in this location. Then the second partition is the OS, second fastest. Then the final partition is your data which does not need huge performance. I didnt clearly state where each partition should be in my previous post.

If a partition is NOT used, it will still work obviously. But one needs to place certain files in certain area of the HDD for best performance possible. Partitions do this. If partitions are not used, XP will place the swap where it deems - not always best place physically on HDD as well as all the other files.

Since XP will place files where it can with a single partition, it will still have to physically move the HDD head physically all the time like you stated to find what it needs, ALL HDD will do this whether partitioned or not. Using a single partition does not eliminate the moving of the HDD head. It can be less movement in some cases with a single partition, but it can be more movement, especially after you place static files on your HDD (like movies). When movies are installed, a big chunk of space is taken and it will still have to move the head a large distance for new files. Using partitions imo creates static performance and helps reduce or eliminate performance loss over time.

Further, not using partitions in recording tv,dvds etc creates a MASSIVELY fragmented HDD. My drives get up to 30-40% fragmented in 3 days because I record and delete so much TV. I would rather NOT fragment my OS drive because it is more difficult to defrag it (if you want to defrag ALL of it).

I will clarify
99.99% OF ALL USERS ARE BEST TO LEAVE THE SWAP ALONE. One should ONLY change it if they are comfortable configuring detailed system parameters.

Since I am a computer geek and nerd, I do NOT have auto updates on. I will go out and update when they become available. Thus NOT use HDD time and internet bandwidth when I do not say so. I also turn off and disable all unnecessary services to improve performance.

Also note with all DUAL tuners with a single HDD...if you are recording two HD shows and watching another HD show (thus processing 3 HD shows)...you WILL see shuddering because it is trying to write 2 HD shows while reading another. This is why two physical HDD are necessary imo, unless you have a Raptor or other SCSI 10K-15K drives. In my case, I can record one and watch another on the same physical drive without issue. But when I add in the second recording, all bets are off. This does not seem to happen with SD, but I dont record a lot of SD.