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

[goulin]

Hi,

I don't mean to hijack this post, but my ongoing HTPC build is almost using the exact specs as Craig's and I am also from Australia, so I thought it would be good to have the information all in the one place!

Anyhow, my specs were as follows:

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L
Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 (1333Mhz FSB, 6M L2 Cache, 2.66Ghz)
Hard Disk - OS - 16GB Seagate IDE I had lying around, MP + Data - WD 250GB SATA2 drive
RAM - 2G-800 Transcend
Case - Antec NSK2480b
TV Tuner - Leadtek DTV2000H
DVD drive - From old PC (seems a bit dodgy so I might need to buy a new one)

Again, my budget was around $500 but I ended up spending $515, which wasn't too bad. I went for a big (Intel) processor to future proof it... if I stuck with AMD I could have probably kept it all under $500. For graphics, I am taking a punt on the onboard video, since I only really plan to use the PC as a DVD player/PVR for the moment... if it doesn't work, I will go for an NVidia 8500GT - $60 (I will get one when I buy a blue ray reader, which I plan to do when I get some blue ray discs... hence when I reused a DVD drive from another PC).

Now... BIG TIP for people considering a Gigabyte or Asus board... check that the motherboard comes with digital audio out, and that you can get the optional extra! I searched for days trying to find the cable, emailed Gigabyte, spoke to local and foreign distributors, NO ONE had it. Finally, I found this guy on eBay that seems to do it for most motherboards (eBay Australia Shop - e-speedy: Motherboard Cables, Motherboard Accessories, Other Cables) and he is based in Australia (well, that's what eBay says anyway). Just email him via eBay (eg ask a question about another product), because he didn't have my cable listed, but he said he had one he could send. It ended up costing me $22 with shipping.

So after that, I now have a connection on my motherboard for digital audio out that it going to go straight into my amp.

Anyhow, I, unlike Craig, had the fun of putting it all together. Now being in IT for 10 years+, including 5 years of PC support, should make it easy for me to put this together right? Well, I had never installed anything other than HDDs, CD drives and PCI cards into PCs, so it was all new to me. Anyhow, after lots of swearing and cursing, I think I put it all together correctly (I had an issue with the CPU fan - not sure if it is on properly, I removed and installed it multiple times, but we'll see how the temperature goes). <--- it wasn't on properly, temperature was around 45 degrees consistently, so I reseated it and it is definitely on now.... on boot up, processor is at 15 degrees and is consistently around 35 degrees in use).

OS installed (XP), all patches have been applied, and I have installed the WinPVR2 software that came with the TV tuner. I hooked up the antenna and it seems to work ok (i.e. I could watch TV and record in HD). Although I haven't hooked it up to my HD TV yet. I haven't tried the remote yet either. I hooked up the FM cable to the tuner too, but I didn't have any joy. No sound and no channels picked up when I scan for channels. Has anyone else experienced this? Not too fussed about this since I can get radio a) from the Internet and b) from my amp.

So... first thoughts? Case = awesome, looks really good, and really quiet (except for the clunky old IDE HDD which only makes noise when it boots and starts the apps, and the clunky old DVD reader which sounds like a whipper snipper). The only thing that sucks is that the 5 1/4 bays are about 1mm too far away for the standard length IDE cable and connection on a Gigabyte motherboard. TV Tuner... well, it works... except for the FM tuner. Remote - looks ok, but haven't actually tried to use it.

Oh well, this weekend will be the inaugrial install of MediaPortal... interesting to see how it all goes. I'll do this after I test that I can record and playback TV+DVDs using my wimpy onboard video via VGA (some IT guru has convinced me that this will work, albeit will use a lot of CPU). I guess it is also a good test for my CPU fan installation.

Cya,
goulin

 

[craigparris1]

Hi goulin,

Welcome - happy to share my post, no problems!

I've just done a fresh re-install of everything last weekend - I really want to try and get the Leadtek remote to wake the PC from S3 standby, and was reading a whole bunch of stuff about S3 standby not really working properly in XP unless you have the S3 option set in the BIOS when XP is first installed. Well, I only have S1 set as the standby BIOS setting was first installed, so I did the re-install with S3 set. Will see how it goes - haven't got up to testing yet.

I agree with you on the case - it is really quite good-looking and very quiet.

Anyhow, this weekend I'll endeavour to find some time and get the whole thing up and running. Only around 4 weeks 'til the Olympics, as my wife - and channel 7! - keep reminding me .....

Cheers,
Craig

 

[craigparris1]

Hi all,

On a completely separate note - just go the new Motley Crue album (Saints of Los Angeles) yesterday! Very cool! I mean, it ain't no Dr Feelgood, but it's not half bad.

Oh, yeah, the PC's still sitting there, waiting for me to find some time to get to it ....... I have also taken some photos - just need to get around to uploading them.

Cheers,
Craig

 

[goulin]

Hi Craig,

What version of CoolCommand remote are you using? It isn't Y04G0044 by any chance is it?

 

[craigparris1]

Hi Goulin,

Yes, it is the Y04G0044 remote. I've now got MP up and going, and some of the remote functions are working - but some are not. Apparently, with Seba's CoolReciever plug-in, I should be able to debug each of the buttons and work out what the correct code is - however, at the moment I'm not able to get debugging to work (no log file gets created). This may be because I'm missing a step or two ....

Cheers,
Craig

 

[goulin]

Hi,

Any luck in getting the PC to wake up from standby using the remote? I read a post that basically says you can't do it via a remote that plugs into the tuner, because the slot the tuner is in (i.e. PCI) does not have power supplied to it when the PC is in standby, hence the remote won't work. The PC only suppies power to the IR and USB ports when in standby (although I don't know what the significance of the 'Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby' option has in Device Mangler).

Edit from yesterday: I'll eat my words, I got the remote to turn on the PC from power off to an on state. Although it was a little flakey - I don't know whether it was the sensor, or something else, but the PC wouldn't turn on after I had unplugged it from the power and then plugged it in again. It worked all the time though when I had shut down my PC and attempted to turn it on again after a short period of time. So it is prompting me to think that maybe it doesn't work, and the reason it was working for me was that the PCI card still had power from when it was previously on? I don't know, just clutching at straws. I'll try again when I get home tonight and see how it goes. <--- Update... well, power on definitely works with the Leadtek remote and my motherboard. My setting is S3 and with PME on (it is Option 2 in the Advanced section of the Leadtek manual).

Meanwhile, I am in the process of rebuilding my PC, because MP keeps on crashing when I start it. I guess I should read the instructions first before I start tampering with all the settings.

Also, I spoke to someone I know using MP and he said that getting the remote configured can be quite tricky. He also suggested trying out Girder (Promixis) - which basically allows you to program Windows to do anything based on a button being pressed on a remote.

Good luck!

 

[craigparris1]

Hi Goulin,

I've had no luck getting the remote to wake up the PC - so if you've got it working, I'd love to know your settings for various things in more detail! Is your card (2000H) a PCI or PCI-e card? Any extra info you could give would be great!

Anyhow, a little bit of an update on where I'm at. Aside from not having the remote wake up the PC, I've configured all the PowerScheduler stuff and it all appears to be working OK (ie. standby when idle, wake up for recordings). I had some problems initially, but it turned out to be that my cordless mouse, which was setting on the TV cabinet, seemed to be sending "input" signals to MediaPortal even when I wasn't using it. I've moved it out of range now, and the standby / wake-up thing works sweet!

I think I will maybe grab the next SVN that's compiled over the weekend and install it sometime next week. With any luck it will fix the few DVD issues that I'd encountered and let me use MediaPortal for all my DVDs (I was thinking I'd need to use PowerDVD as an external player, since it seems to play all DVDs fine).

Cheers,
Craig

p.s. get back to me on the remote thing, Goulin, I'll be hanging out to hear what the story is .....!!!!

 

[goulin]

Hi Craig,

Yeah, my card is a PCI card (DTV2000H). It is the Version J one (Leadtek - We make dreams a reality). I really didn't do anything other than install Windows XP and plug in the remote sensor cable. I made sure S3 was enabled in my BIOS, and also had 'Resume on PME' enabled in the BIOS (under Advanced Power Management) - both were on by default in the BIOS on my motherboard. Also, I put the PC together myself, so I followed step by step and made sure all the cables were plugged onto the motherboard and that they were plugged the right way (and almost broke the processor fan ).

Not sure what else I can say to help... it just works for me. Try looking at my manual, because it had a really good section on it at the end (from page 47 onwards):

Leadtek - We make dreams a reality

Meanwhile, my build is not going anywhere. I tried to put together a Windows XP + WinPVR2 solution, but I have 3 problems: 1) PowerDVD won't recognise Stop and skip chapters from the remote, 2) I can't schedule a recording from the remote control, 3) Whenever I plug Foxtel into the TV tuner via the Composite cable, it crashes my Foxtel box (I don't think I can use S-Video because I am using SCART - Component to my TV, so I have Fox set to YUV, and when I connect SCART - S-Video to my PC, Fox comes through in black and white).

The reason I tried to do an XP solution was that I wanted to wait for the full release of MP to come out and use that as an interim solution, but I might use MCE2005 and then move to MP when the full release comes out.

I hope that helps.

 

[craigparris1]

Hi Goulin,

I setup a program called WF_RemCtrl on my PC (google it), and I configured all they buttons to use the PowerDVD shortcut keys - works like a charm. You can configure it to send the PowerDVD shortcut keys only when the PowerDVD window is open, so it works really well.

Give that I try - unfortunately, I can't provide any help on those other questions, though.

One other thought - which version of WinPVR2 did you install. I installed the very latest version which I downloaded from Leadtek's site, but there were a bunch of buttons that didn't work on the remote with that version. I got a setup for a couple of versions ago from this site (Leadtek Helpsite) - but I just took a look at the site and it's changed from what it was before. It doesn't seem to have the previous versions available for download - however, there is a much newer version available. Maybe you could try that one.

In the meantime, I'll go an have a root around with the power settings on my PC and see if I can get the remote going for wake-up.

Cheers,
Craig

 

[goulin]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for that. I will give the WF_RemCtrl a go. It is just an exe file, is that right (not sure if I got the right file)? How do you use it? Do you just start it? Or is it an installer? (I ran it on a PC that doesn't have the TV tuner in it).

With ur motherboard, it uses the Award BIOS (which is the same as mine), so you should just need to follow Option 2 on page 48 of my manual I would have thought.

Good luck!