Ongoing New budget HTPC build (down under!) (1 Viewer)

craigparris1

Portal Pro
May 20, 2008
189
15
Home Country
Hi guys,

I figured I'd get a thread going to let you all read about my upcoming HTCP build. There were a couple of things that got me started down this track:

1. wife requesting access to HD channels for the Olympics broadcast
--then--
2. the death of my old twin-tuner SD set-top box :mad:

So, the choice was to look at a twin-tuner HD set-top box, or go for a HTPC ....... and HTPC it is! :D This should allow me to use the PC for DVDs as well, rather than the stand-alone DVD ....... minimal remotes required! The PC is only going to connect to a standard TV (not HD), but there's no doubt that channel 7 will have additional Olympics coverage on their HD channel - hence the need for HD tuners. And twin tuners is a must ....... we've been battling along with a single-tuner SD set-top box for the last couple of weeks :mad: too hard to choose when there's two shows we want to record at the same time ........

So, first things first - I've ordered all the bits and pieces, just waiting for a couple of things to get ordered in at the shop. Here's the list:

Antec 2480B case
Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2 m/board
AMD LE-1600 CPU
Gigabyte 8500GT GPU
Samsung SATA2 500 GB drive
LG DVD burner
2 GB RAM
2 x Winfast DTV1000S
USB wireless adapter

All up, around $580. Not quite sub-$500, which is what I was aiming for, but close. Things like the 500 GB drive, wireless adapter and the 8500GT pushed the overall price up a bit. I've got a second 160 GB IDE drive (pulled from the dead STB :D) that I'll use for the OS, apps and probably the timeshift buffer. The 500 GB drive will be for recordings.

The shop didn't stock the MCE remote (which, by all accounts, is meant to be excellent with MediaPortal), but I'll probably take a look at the Leadtek one first, then go with the MCE one if it's no good. (I've got an existing universal remote - nothing fancy - so if all the commands work on the Leadtek remote, I'm hoping I can just use that). In terms of hooking up the cards, I'll definitely need a co-ax splitter, but until I get everything up and running I don't know if I'll need a booster or not.

I really like the look of the 2480B case (in my budget anyway - there are definitely some nicer looking cases over $250), and am thinking it will fit OK on one of the shelves in my TV unit. I wasn't intending to get the 8500GT (was aiming for the Leadtek 8400GS) but the shop I went to didn't stock the Leadtek card. They had a Gigabyte 8400GS, but that one didn't come bundled with a TV/component out cable, so for a little extra I went for the 8500GT which comes bundled with all the goodies. ;)

I'm also taking a bit of a punt on the 2 x DTV1000S cards :eek:. Originally, I was tossing up between the AverTV Duo and the DNTV Live hybrid cards, but had also considered the DTV1000S. Again, the shop I ended up buying from didn't stock the AverTV card, and the DNTVs are out of stock till August (too late to get ready for the Olympics)! I've read plenty of "for"s and "against"s on the DTV1000S (and not many posts at all from MediaPortal users of this card), so fingers crossed! If nothing else, my experiences may well be able to serve as a guide for future users of the card. I really wanted to get a card with S-Video in, as well.

So, there you have it. Oh, in terms of a media centre app, well ....... obviously, I'm planning on MediaPortal! :) What I've read on the forums seems very encouraging, and the community is obviously very active (which is good). Plus, if it really comes down to it, I won't mind getting my hands dirty with a bit of coding (if I can actually find some spare time, that is).

Now I eagerly await the arrival of many boxes, and the fun that is sure to come after that ....! :D

Cheers,
Craig
 

craigparris1

Portal Pro
May 20, 2008
189
15
Home Country
Parts have arrived! Let the fun begin .....

Hi all,

OK, so I picked up the bits and pieces from the computer shop on the weekend. I had asked for the machine to NOT be built (didn't want to spend the extra $), but one of the techs didn't read the order and went ahead and built it anyway ..... fine by me - saves me some time and of course they didn't charge me for the build.

Initial impressions are:

NSK2480B - nice looking case. I wasn't sure what to expect - it's always hard to tell exactly what the case will look like from pokey pictures on the internet, but it looks really slick. Nice little blue LED around the power switch - swanky!

8500GT - wow, what a big card! (Now, I'm no gaming tech-head, so I'm sure it's actually quite a small card compared to a lot of others, but it's definitely fat). Passively cooled, but the heatsink covers the whole surface area of the card. This also means that it encroaches over the top of the PCI-e 1.0 slot, which makes me happy that I bought the 2 x PCI cards (as long as they work). Picture even looks fantastic through my crappy old monitor!

DTV1000s - haven't got up to testing TV or anything yet, but my first impressions of the remote are that it at least looks reasonable. Seems pretty well laid out. I'm hoping I can use this remote with MediaPortal, so that fact that it appears to be functionally OK is a plus.

I'll try and take a few pictures of the case setup. I've discovered that the DVD drive I purchased is a SATA2 drive, so that means I can stick in 2 x IDE hard drives (bonus! I have an extra 60gig drive sitting around doing nothing), but I need to get some rails first so it can fit in the 5 1/4" bay.

I've made a start down the oh so fun road of software install ... so far, OS, drivers etc., SQL 2005 express. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll install the Winfast PVR software to test the cards and remote with, then get on to MediaPortal over the weekend. I'll also do a bit more of a detailed post about the installation process.

Cheers,
Craig
 

ThaClown

Moderator - Dutch Forums
May 28, 2006
808
26
Den Bosch
Home Country
Netherlands Netherlands
You have some nice parts there, prepare the wife.... this HTPC stuff gets addictive and befor you know it you are wanting more and better!

Good luck with the build.
I can say for a fact that HD coverage is worth it, just say Holland win 3-0 for Italy (YESSSSS!!!!) in perfect HD!!
 

craigparris1

Portal Pro
May 20, 2008
189
15
Home Country
Hi ThaClown,

Yeah, well I think the bank balance will be the main thing that stops me from going bigger and better ......!!!!!

Hopefully I'm building something that will at least keep me going for 6 months ...........

Cheers,
Craig
 

craigparris1

Portal Pro
May 20, 2008
189
15
Home Country
Good and bad news

Well, I had a little bit of time last night, so I went ahead and did the MP install. All went hunky-dory, and when I go into the Tv-Server configuration I can see both the tuner cards there waiting eagerly ....!!!! (haven't hooked it up to antenna yet).

The bad news is that I'm having trouble playing a DVD (plays OK in Windows Media Player) - MP just has a blank screen. Need to do a bit more tweaking and testing, following review of some posts today, otherwise I'll have to trap some logs and get some more advice. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

Gonna have a bit of a poke around in SQL as well, and see how the database hangs together ......

Cheers,
Craig
 

craigparris1

Portal Pro
May 20, 2008
189
15
Home Country
Short progress update - tried a couple of things with the DVDs but still no joy. I'm hoping to play around with the remote this weekend and have found a utility for the CoolCommand remotes that does some key mappings but also has built-in controls for Windows Media Player. My thinking is that between this utility and the keyboard input plug-in for MediaPortal, I can control all the MediaPortal stuff with the remote and also use Windows Media Player as an external DVD player (since it has no problems with the DVDs). Fingers crossed, anyhow!!!!!

I'm also hoping to get to the computer shop this weekend and pick up the 3.5" -> 5.25" drive rails and a longer IDE cable so I can be finished with all the hardware setup. I need to pay a visit to Jaycar as well and work out how much I'm going to have to spend on RF splitters and cables (I want to get good quality splitters and cabling so that hopefully I won't have any signal problems).

Till next time,
Cheers,
Craig
 

Marcusb

Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • February 16, 2005
    1,995
    29
    Melbourne
    Hi Craig,

    DVD can be tricky. The reason for this is that it is difficult for an OpernSource project to decode DVD signals as commercial disks use encryption and any codecs that can decode the encryption are meant to pay royalites.

    The good news is that there is an easy solution :)
    Just install a program like PowerDVD (even just the trial version) then in MP configuration for the DVD section, where you specify the DVD Codec to use, specify the PowerDVD codec. This will have the facility to read the commercial disks.
    Also, MP has to abide by region codes, so if you are plauing disks from different regions then you need to use a program that will automatically remove the region coding. Since this web site is hosted in Germany and Germany has some very strict copyright laws, I can't actually link to any such app, but if Google doesn't help, PM me and we can have a chat.

    Ah, Good old Jaycar :)
     

    craigparris1

    Portal Pro
    May 20, 2008
    189
    15
    Home Country
    Hi Marcusb,

    "DVD can be tricky" - you're telling me! So, I ended up installing PowerDVD Ultra 7 and now all the troublesome DVDs are playing OK (which is good news), however navigation on those troublesome disks is a bit of a problem (which is not such good news). The problem is kind of like those described here. Anyhow, I'm at least happier that they're playing, so I guess I'll wait and see if a solution is found ....

    Meanwhile, on to TV. I got one of the cards hooked up to the aerial and live TV is playing fine ..... sweet! That makes me even happier than getting further with the DVDs, because (as I said in my first post) I took a bit of a punt with the DTV1000S cards. But all TV was playing smoothly - even HD channels! Nice! Now I've just got to get my arse to Jaycar and pick up a splitter and some new cables and I can hook it all up with both cards and do a full test.

    I got the remote working, too, but I'm a little unsure about how practical it's going to be. The WF_RemCtrl utility for mapping the remote commands to other actions/keystrokes (here) isn't really going to suit my needs because there are a bunch of extra keys on my remote that aren't recognised. Also, if I run the remote NOT in MCE mode, then there are about 6 or 7 keys in total on the remote that active the "power" function (which subsequently opens WinPVR2) - and I don't really want this to happen. If I run the remote in MCE mode, then it looks like it just basically sends all different keystrokes for each button pressed, so I just need to figure out what they all are and hopefully I can use one of the keyboard plug-ins to perform the various MP actions.

    Cheers,
    (a slightly happier) Craig!
     

    craigparris1

    Portal Pro
    May 20, 2008
    189
    15
    Home Country
    Hi all,

    Another update - things are progressing ... slowly. Have had all sorts of fun with the Leadtek remote since my last post. Once I actually tried ALL the keys, I found out there were even more that weren't working - Grrrrr! Anyhow, after lots more playing around, I ended up un-installing the latest version of WinPVR2 that I had downloaded from Leadtek's site and installed just WinPVR from the CD that came with the card. Oia-la! (almost) ALL of the buttons are working! There are a few extra buttons on my remote that aren't listed in the Coolreceiver plug-in configuration (but apparently I should be able to log debug information and find out what they are ....... fingers crossed!).

    I played around a bit with the WF_RemCtrl app and it works pretty well. I managed to get all the PowerDVD shortcut keys mapped to the remote control, so if worst comes to worst I can use PowerDVD to watch DVDs (I'm waiting to see how the next SVN pans out in relation to the navigation issues reported by people). The only problem is that the WF_RemCtrl app doesn't appear to grab commands from the remote when MP is running in full screen, so if I setup PowerDVD as the external DVD player, the remote doesn't work when MP kicks it off. However, if I close MP, then open PowerDVD, the remote works fine. This is OK as a workaround anyway - I've mapped the "blue" key to start MP, and the "red" key to start PowerDVD, so I can switch back and forward. Not ideal, but we do still have our stand-alone DVD player, so that's another option. The other thing I couldn't do (although I only tried briefly) was to try and get the remote to wake the PC from standby ..... didn't work. I'll need to investigate this a bit more.

    I finally got to the computer shop over the weekend, as well, to buy a longer IDE cable and the 3.5" -> 5.25" drive rails. This is because I wanted to install my second IDE drive in the spare slot under the DVD player (which is a removable drive cage on the other side of the case to the first IDE drive and motherboard IDE slot). So, with much cursing I managed to get it all installed and working (it's been a long time since my PC support days of playing around inside computers) ....... it was at this point that I realised I could have, in fact, just moved the SATA drive to the other bay and put the second IDE drive RIGHT NEXT TO THE OTHER ONE!!!! DUH!!!! Oh, well, that's what kids do to your brain, peoples - they fry it! Anyhow, I'll keep it like it is for now - besides, I kinda like the funky looking IDE cable (pictures of the setup are coming very soon). I also took the opportunity to go to Jaycar and pick up the antenna splitter and new cables, then I re-jigged the TV cabinet so that all the cabling's ready for the PC to slot into its new home!

    So, what's next on the list:

    - see if I can get the rest of the remote buttons recognised within MP
    - keep an eye on SVN posts to see if it's worth trying a new one for DVDs
    - get MP fully configred (ie. both TV cards tuned, directories setup, whatever else ....)
    - RIP some CDs to the PC
    - sort out the remote control stand-by wake up problem
    - get the bugger setup in the TV cabinet!!!

    Cheers,
    Craig
     

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