- October 28, 2007
- 30
- 0
Hi aal,
Not been posting for a while as the htpc got 'finished' and put into use..
I have been busy testing so not had much time to report back!
Anyway, on the whole it's performing well, very good for games on the big screen!
Problems still existing are: (in order of how much my lady complaines about them)
The noise - apart from the smartfanpower control on the mb and the 'whisper' zalman cpu cooler I fitted it still makes hell of a humm in the living room, I have tried limiting fan speeds and even running less fans but most of the noise comes from the fans on the 7600gt graphics cards (I have a pair in sli mode) I have tried swaping them out for so called noisless fans but it makes no odds. The noise is also a major issue when listing to quite music late at night.. Thinking - Water cooling, but lots of hassle and another box in the living room or I move the pc out alltogether and run some long av cables and an ir extender for the remote back in again..
Startup issues: I have set up the plasma and hifi amps to turn on (via rs232 control) whan the pc comes out of standby, they all work fine, Issues are mp wont respond to the remote control (but works fine if I plug in a usb mouse, It looks like somthing to do with the irMon software, if I exit MP before I standby the irmon works fine on resume so mp is involved somehow.. I also find about a third of the time I get a turner card error (unable to build graph etc) on resume, again if i exit mp before suspend and then restart it after resume it normally works.
TV issues: 2 or three times a week the tv freezes (like a pause) I am unable to use the live rewind etc, if I change channel and then change back again it will start working ok. About once a week when i bring the thing out of standby I get the 'no signel is being recived' on all channels, i have to do a full restart but they all come back instantly.
Recording issues: I have 2 black gold dual tuner cards fitted on picexpress slots (total of 4 tuners). I can mostly only ever use one of them, if I am watching something on one side and try to use the tv guide to record something or record the current side and try to change over to something else I just get 'unable to create graph'.
If I set somthing to record and put the pc into standby it is compleatly random as to if it will actually work, about 3 times in 10 it turns on and records but only if it was turned off on the channel I want to record on. It has never once gone back into standby after recording, it either crashes and the whole pc is locked (hard powerdown needed) or it just keeps playing the telly.
It keeps saving all the recordings to its defult folder that it created when i installed mp originally. I only fitted a small hard drive for the OS and the appliactions (after advice on these forums) and have 2 extra hdd's I have an empty 500gb drive for saving recorded tv onto and a 750gb for the music, I have gone into the config and tried to edit the tuner cards to save recordings onto the 'e' drive. I can select the path and folder fine but there is no 'apply' button on the menu page so as soon as i exit setup it reverts back to the defult, not really an issue but I now only have about 3 hours of recorded tv that I would like to keep and it is giving me 'disk full' messages whenever I try to change tc channel.
Remote control issues: could be the IrMon software, the irmon mp plugin or mp itself but - the pause button wont pause tv, works for music, rewind works ok so timeshifting is good..
Various niggles.. when watching tv - right click button to get the osd, first option on the list is 'tv guide' which is normally highlightet letting me press enter to get the guide, about one time in 6 when I do the right click when watching tv for some reason it highlights no.4 (crop settings) for some reason..
Sometimes when I exit the tv guide by pressing enter on a current program it goes to the program ok but brings up the 'on now' windo over the top of the pictuer which I then have to close again.
My system specs should be in my sig, I am running ver 2.3rc3 so I am sure most of these things will be fixed by now but I really don't want to bother spending the next 10 mths sorting out the issues I will get with that..
To sum it up, it was fun but wait for internet tv on demand or get sky+ with a 500gb hard drive hack..
HTPC's are for hobbiests and fans not mainstream use. I would consider myself as a fan and cretinally have fun fiddling about with it. Problem is the instant it goes into the living room and infront of the better half it has to work 100% and it aint there yet
Not been posting for a while as the htpc got 'finished' and put into use..
I have been busy testing so not had much time to report back!
Anyway, on the whole it's performing well, very good for games on the big screen!
Problems still existing are: (in order of how much my lady complaines about them)
The noise - apart from the smartfanpower control on the mb and the 'whisper' zalman cpu cooler I fitted it still makes hell of a humm in the living room, I have tried limiting fan speeds and even running less fans but most of the noise comes from the fans on the 7600gt graphics cards (I have a pair in sli mode) I have tried swaping them out for so called noisless fans but it makes no odds. The noise is also a major issue when listing to quite music late at night.. Thinking - Water cooling, but lots of hassle and another box in the living room or I move the pc out alltogether and run some long av cables and an ir extender for the remote back in again..
Startup issues: I have set up the plasma and hifi amps to turn on (via rs232 control) whan the pc comes out of standby, they all work fine, Issues are mp wont respond to the remote control (but works fine if I plug in a usb mouse, It looks like somthing to do with the irMon software, if I exit MP before I standby the irmon works fine on resume so mp is involved somehow.. I also find about a third of the time I get a turner card error (unable to build graph etc) on resume, again if i exit mp before suspend and then restart it after resume it normally works.
TV issues: 2 or three times a week the tv freezes (like a pause) I am unable to use the live rewind etc, if I change channel and then change back again it will start working ok. About once a week when i bring the thing out of standby I get the 'no signel is being recived' on all channels, i have to do a full restart but they all come back instantly.
Recording issues: I have 2 black gold dual tuner cards fitted on picexpress slots (total of 4 tuners). I can mostly only ever use one of them, if I am watching something on one side and try to use the tv guide to record something or record the current side and try to change over to something else I just get 'unable to create graph'.
If I set somthing to record and put the pc into standby it is compleatly random as to if it will actually work, about 3 times in 10 it turns on and records but only if it was turned off on the channel I want to record on. It has never once gone back into standby after recording, it either crashes and the whole pc is locked (hard powerdown needed) or it just keeps playing the telly.
It keeps saving all the recordings to its defult folder that it created when i installed mp originally. I only fitted a small hard drive for the OS and the appliactions (after advice on these forums) and have 2 extra hdd's I have an empty 500gb drive for saving recorded tv onto and a 750gb for the music, I have gone into the config and tried to edit the tuner cards to save recordings onto the 'e' drive. I can select the path and folder fine but there is no 'apply' button on the menu page so as soon as i exit setup it reverts back to the defult, not really an issue but I now only have about 3 hours of recorded tv that I would like to keep and it is giving me 'disk full' messages whenever I try to change tc channel.
Remote control issues: could be the IrMon software, the irmon mp plugin or mp itself but - the pause button wont pause tv, works for music, rewind works ok so timeshifting is good..
Various niggles.. when watching tv - right click button to get the osd, first option on the list is 'tv guide' which is normally highlightet letting me press enter to get the guide, about one time in 6 when I do the right click when watching tv for some reason it highlights no.4 (crop settings) for some reason..
Sometimes when I exit the tv guide by pressing enter on a current program it goes to the program ok but brings up the 'on now' windo over the top of the pictuer which I then have to close again.
My system specs should be in my sig, I am running ver 2.3rc3 so I am sure most of these things will be fixed by now but I really don't want to bother spending the next 10 mths sorting out the issues I will get with that..
To sum it up, it was fun but wait for internet tv on demand or get sky+ with a 500gb hard drive hack..
HTPC's are for hobbiests and fans not mainstream use. I would consider myself as a fan and cretinally have fun fiddling about with it. Problem is the instant it goes into the living room and infront of the better half it has to work 100% and it aint there yet