Ongoing Mini HTPC - Shuttle X27D (1 Viewer)

[hbryce]

I have been playing around with a proof of concept HTPC system based upon a Dell GX280 (P4, 512Mb, 40GB) on and off for about a year now. I have tried out both Media Portal and GBPVR and prefer MP.

So having lurked on these forums and been very interested in LittleKahuna's "Mini ITX - D946GCLF2" thread, I have now started building what I hope will be my working system. It is based upon a Shuttle X27D barebones system. It has:

M/B: Shuttle mini ITX proprietary with no PCI/PCIe expansion slots.
CPU: Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz dual core with hyperthreading
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 2048MB 533MHz DDR2 - single stick
HDD: Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB, 5400rpm, 2.5inch SATA
ODD: Samsung slim 8x DVDRW SATA
OS: MS Windows XP Home SP3
TV: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T USB2
Case: Shuttle proprietary
PSU: Shuttle proprietary (totally silent) 60W external power brick and DC-DC converter board.
Graphics: Intel GMA950 integrated with both VGA and DVI outputs.
Remote: Hauppauge standard 45 button (non-MCE)
Keyboard/Mouse: Keysonic integrated mini-keyboard/mousepad with RF connection
Internet: Linksys WKUSB54GC Wireless-G USB adaptor


At the moment I am installing and configuring software using a 19inch Samsung wide screen monitor but intend to move to my Sony KDL 32V4000 TV in due course. I have been following the advice given by Infinity Loop in setting up an XP based system. So far I have found that the 10GB recommended for the C drive partition is not big enough, as there is insufficient spare space to allow hibernation. I do not really understand this - I wonder if there is a huge hidden portion where the non-SP3 back up files are; I upgraded to SP3 from a previous SP1a installation. I have increased the C drive partition to 15GB.
I installed Norton Internet Security 2008 because it came with the Shuttle barebone. However I think it is too resource hungry so I have uninstalled it and replaced it with AVG Free anti virus and Windows XP firewall. There is no personal information on this HTPC and it connects to the internet via a wireless ADSL router so this should be adequate.
I have installed the Hauppauge USB TV card and also BBC iPlayer download software. The next stage is to back-up and then install and configure Media Portal.

 

[Wolen]

I have heard that the Atom doesn't have enough power to be used as a media pc. Let us know how it works out for you.

 

[hbryce]

Here is an update. I installed MP with the TV Server option. I found that it seemed to be too much for the system. Even without anything running, CPU usage was about 27%. I accept that it may have been entirely down to my poor configuration. So I then uninstalled MP and reinstalled with the Classic TV engine. I should add that at present I have little interest in HD. After a certain amount of experimentation with different codecs I now appear to have live TV, EPG, live radio , DVD playing and picture viewing working reasonably well. I have yet to try TV recording or playback. When watching live TV, CPU usage was 17-20%.
I have tried both the VGA and DVI outputs from the Shuttle X27D and the DVI output seems to be superior (as one would expect); interestingly the reaction to remote button presses seems much sharper and more reliable with the DVI, though that is just a subjective judgement.

For Wolen: It depends what you mean with regard to enough power for a Media Centre. Full HD, i.e. 1080p is certainly beyond an Atom, at least with the onboard Intel GMA950 graphics, though I believe that 720p is certainly possible as reported in a number of independant reviews.

Over the next few days I want to get to grips with TV recording and playback and move the system to its final home under my TV.

 

[ibmonkey]

i've been looking at this model today, it certainly looks the business (great size), but that atom may not be enough. although it may be more suited to a client only machine, then i think it might be fine. also i think if you use coreAVC you should also be able to play HD (720p) content on this.

also in my personal experience, if you're using a pc as a media centre i would not bother with any third party antivirus software.

 

[hbryce]

Further update - I was getting into all sorts of bother with having two (C & D) partitions on the hard disk. Clearly I was not clever enough to change all the MP defaults correctly. I filled my C partition inadvertently while trying to record TV.
So I decided to re-partition the hard disk to have only one logical (C) partition. I then re-installed MP with the classic TV engine and the default configuration. I have not really experimented with using different codecs; the default seems to work well enough - "if it ain't broke don't fix it". I put in TV and radio channel logos and used the Multishortcut plugin to give options on the MP menu for the BBC iPlayer, itv Player, 4oD and demandFive streaming/downloading TV facilities. Since I can watch live TV with the Sony TV's built-in Freeview DVB-T tuner, it means that I can also now record one channel of live TV with the Hauppauge DVB-T tuner and watch streaming IPTV or download previously broadcast programmes from the major UK TV stations. I can also use MP for displaying pictures and playing DVDs (and music if I want to).
I have the Shuttle set-up under my TV and connected to it with DVI-D to HDMI digital video and stereo audio cables. The DVI output and Intel GMA 950 graphics produce a 1360x768 digital output which matches the native resolution of the TV display.
The piano black Shuttle X27D looks stylish, is unobtrusive and uses little electricity ~ 30W; it is also inaudible in normal use - it has only one built-in fan cooling the Northbridge chip.

The barebone was very easy to build, the hardest part, which is common to many systems using laptop optical drives, was coping with the minute screws used to secure the ODD. The barebone comes complete with custom made SATA cables for the HDD and ODD. Despite having a SATA HDD, the BIOS is set-up to allow Windows XP installation on a SATA HDD by default; SATA drivers were not included in early versions of XP; more modern BIOS make a SATA drive emulate an IDE drive to XP.

So I think that I have achieved what I set out to do - time will tell how it all works out.

 

[thebalance]

Just to chip in on the power of the Atom chips - I built a machine using an Atom 230 - would do 720p just about using Core AVC (don't do anything else at the same time) - I imagine the 330 would work well on anything except full hd.

 

[NTM]

Hi, I'm currently building a HTPC on the D946GCLF2 board and I can run most 1080p mkv packed movies on it using CoreAVC and som tweaks. I've been successful in running movies in the size of 8 GiB. I have it running on the ESD bag right now so I have not been able to test it so much yet.

So I can really recommend this board, it really cheap and can do almost everything.

If you want I can put up a project about my build.