Ongoing My HTPC: MILO + mobile CPU + HDMI (1 Viewer)

gyring_eddy

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  • January 2, 2008
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    Hi, this is my first post so be gentle :) I thought I should start by introducing my machine.

    I finished my new HTPC just before Christmas (that's '07 in case this thread becomes a timeless classic). I opted for the Silverstone ML02B-MXR after a lot of searching and procrastinating. I know a larger case would have given me more options, but I wanted something compact that looks a bit special. The rest of the specs are as follows:

    Motherboard: Abit IL90-MV
    CPU: Intel mobile Core 2 Duo (Merom) T7200 @ 2.0GHz
    HSF: Silverstone NT07 low profile (for s479)
    PSU: Integrated Silverstone 120W + external brick
    RAM: 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 PC-6400 DDR2 4-4-4-12
    GPU: Onboard Intel GMA 950 with HDMI
    HDD: 500GB Samsung SATA2
    DVD: Optiarc slot-loading DVD-RW DL
    TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T PCI
    OS: Windows XP
    TV: Samsung LE32R74 32" 720p LCD

    I'm pleased to say the machine works quite reliably as a freeview viewer/recorder using Mediaportal (timeshifting is soooo good). There are occasional glitches, but they are few and far between. Getting everything set up has been a long process, aided by the Mediaportal community, and there's still plenty to do but pc builds are always like that.

    Anyway, I thought I'd just ramble through a few of my experiences with these components for the benefit of anyone else who may be considering them. I have some Mediaportal issues but I'll post those in the appropriate places.

    First the positives...

    The motherboard was chosen on two main criteria - mobile Intel CPU support and the HDMI connection. Both turned out better than I could have hoped for. The Intel T7200 CPU is more than powerful enough even with video postprocessing enabled, and the whole system never exceeds 45W power consumption. The digital 1280x720 display just looks beautiful on my LCD TV.

    The Hauppauge TV tuner is very good overall. Startup and channel changes are a bit slow (it's a USB device on a PCI card) but image quality is excellent with bicubic upsampling to 720p using ffdshow, and recording two channels at once never gets old. It also copes with my iffy freeview reception impressively well - the tuner is very sensitive and audio drop-outs seem reduced compared to my TV's inbuilt tuner.

    The Silvertone 'MILO' case is one of the best looking I've come across, and it's solid. I was amazed at how quickly the actual build went for such a cramped design, and it booted first time (applause). It has one 60mm fan which is quite audible but not annoying. The finish on the front is a little disappointing up close. It's plastic, and I had expected there to be some nifty push-open mechanism on the little door, but alas no. Also the DVD drive is hard to find sometimes in the dark recess, but the rest of the design and features more than make up for these small flaws.

    ...and now the negatives.

    Firstly the display works perfectly at the correct resolution, no problem there. But switching the TV off causes the display chipset to disable the HDMI output, so when I switch the TV back on I have to press a keyboard combination to re-enable it. By this time, depending on what was being displayed, there's a good chance the Mediaportal GUI has gone missing. Presumably it was using directshow when the output was disabled, which it didn't like. I can get around it by switching from fullscreen to window mode and back, but it's not ideal.

    I hear Gefen make a thing called the DVI Detective which basically sits between the HTPC and the TV and fools the GPU into thinking the TV is on, even when it's not. There's a hint in their forum that an HDMI version with audio pass-through may be on the way. A small graphics driver modification would probably sort the problem out, but I doubt Intel will get round to it since the GMA 950 is a laptop chipset that was never intended for HTPCs.

    On the subject of the GMA 950, it handles HD resolutions and content perfectly well but lacks the kind of hardware postprocessing you get with nVidia or AMD cards. I found that MPEG2 content decoded using the Hauppauge decoder was poorly scaled, so I switched to ffdshow. I now have resampling to 960x720 enabled (this ratio preserves the option for 4:3 in Mediaportal) using a bicubic algorithm and the results are excellent, albeit at some added CPU cost - about 35% usage on average whilst viewing live or recorded TV.

    As regards the VFD, it turns out that getting it to display anything Mediaportal specific is going to be harder than I thought, and I'm still working the system with keyboard and mouse because the imon remote is shocking. I find it's over-cluttered with buttons and the central PAD controller is too sensitive/quirky. Does anybody actually like it?

    Despite all that it still beats my old VCR hands down. Even just after completing the software installation when my room was still in build-mode (i.e. a bomb site) I was already timeshifting with it using my old, beige, bacteria infested spare keyboard. I've got nearly 200GB of recordings on it now, and I have no reservations about recommending the whole home-made HTPC business. The only things I'm considering replacing at the moment are the remote with a decent MCE one, and possibly the TV card with a more responsive one. Has anyone tried the Pinnacle Dual DVB-T card?

    Anyway that's it, all comments and suggestions welcome. Cheers.
     

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