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Possible HTPC build - some possible answersMark1. no contest, use SPDif and a hifi decoder rather than any PC based option. if you can enable the stereo jacks at the same time you can wire them into the SCART connector on your TV - meaning that you can listed to HTPC sourced data without having to enable the full surround sound/home cinema equipment.2. RAID 0 is a BAD idea. whilst it makes the performance better, it doubles the chance of you suffering from a disk fault and unlike RAID 1 provides no protection against data loss. IDE and SATA disks are not designed for continual use like in a HTPC (that's one of the reasons to pay more for high rpm scsi or fc disks in servers - it's also why server have RAID controllers and use RAID 1 and 5). Use RAID 1 on the two 120's and put any important data on there (stuff that doesn't change much - OS and MP3's) use the 200GB disk as video tape for recordings.as an asside - buy some extra RAM - that'll fix any issues with writing data onto the relatively slow disks.3. Anything on the supported list. However if you are in a freeview area then there is little point in getting hybrid or analogue circitry on the cards. Digital transmisions provide much lower CPU utilisation than capturing analogue (or any external source) videa streams, also there is no degredation between live and recorded. (I bought hybrid cards only to never use the analogue portion of the cards).4. this saves £20 - I'd add one as they are so cheap, bear in mind that a decent setup HTPC can drive high end HD display's (up to and including the mythical 1080p resolution that no-one intends to transmit - but I've found one manfacturer has released a display that supports it, it's £6Grand so I'll wait) and that a PC can do upscaling with all that spare horsepower it has. It should therefore be possible to get a better image from the HTPC than from your TEAC DVD PLayer. Riping CD's takes less time than playing them and can be automated (when you insert an new CD it just does it) if you have a large CD collection you'll get bored riping them by hand.5. I made the mistake of buying a small low profile case. None of the capture cards I've found come with low profile PCI brackets - even those that are actually low profile designs. also making the thing quiet is important and small low profile cases are stupidly expensive. The case also doesn't fit on top of, or underneath any full size HiFi you might have (it's too deep and too narrow !). I am therefore about to invest in one of the Silverstonetek cases (probably an LC10M I like uncluttered HiFi, the LC18 someone suggested has a built in screen making it bright and a distraction when watching a movie - and really expensive)6. Many of them are learning remotes - and the codes they use can normally be recreated by a 3rd party learning remote - however an HTPC remote will often have extra buttons that are not on normal HiFi related. Also if you buy a Silverstone case with a VFD (led front panel - so you can make the thing display track numbers and so on like proper HiFi) they come with a suitable remote. I have an NTL cable box (silver Samsung one) and control that through the HTPC (see the answer you your last question)7. However either buy a cheap analogue card to capture the NTL video, or buy a video card that can also capture video (like some Nvidia cards with VIVO function) set ths card up with the lowest record priority due to the CPU overhead and lower quality of the captured video (you'll be capturing SVideo signals at best)and buy an IR Blaster - I bought a Microsoft MCE remote control from ebay for £25 - which is one of the cheaper ways to get an IR Blaster (it comes with 2 ir buds to control 2 external STB's or other devices). then you tell the HTPC you want to watch something on NTL - it changes the channel and you watch through the HTPC. one remote (the HTPC one) and all the benefits of timshifting etc that you built the HTPC for in the first place.also a couple of other suggestions.1) buy a passive (if you can find one) heatsink for the CPU - or at least the quietest one you can find.2) buy a quiet PSU, and you shouldn't need a huge one. We measured my friends HPTC (300GB SATAII disk, DVDRW drive, Athlon 64 @ 3Ghz, 512MB RAM, Haupage HVR1100 and an NVidia 6200) and it only draws 72 - 80W when running and only 110 during bootup. My system (Sempron 2600, 512MB RAM, 300GB SATAII disk, Nvidia 6200 DVDRW disk Avermedia A16AR) is happily running of a 220W PSU (havent got round to measuring it yet)3) fit the largest diameter fans running at the lowest speed you can manage to cool the case and the system. Noise in your living room will drive you nuts eventually if you don't. I ended up rewiring all the fans in the case I started with to run on 7Volts instead of 12 (connected across +12 and +5 from the PSU) - dropping the speed massively, unfortunately they don't shift enough air at 5Volts (when they are nearly silent) to cool the system, meaning that I have to live with a constant noise. A larger case, with large diameter slow reving fans will be much quieter (hence the LC10M).4) I am also likely to buy a dual core mobile CPU based mother board (at some time soon - they are a bit pricey at present) - they use the least power, and are therefore the coolest (making it easier to run with a passive heatsink). capturing a terestial digital channel requires little CPU power - but dual cores means I can leave one recompressing recordings without affecting the use of the system.that last comment in conjunction with the lack of low profile capture cards means I am about to rebuild my HTPC into a bigger box (so I can sit it under my amp!) - spending more money replacing parts I've already purchased, hopefuly you can avoid that.Hope this helpsgood LuckMarkP.S. - all the above is highly opinionated but based on the 3 builds it has taken me to get the HTPC I really wanted in the first place !P.P.S - and MediaPortal is by far the best app, the only other contestent is MythTV - and my Linux skills are hugely lacking to get that working at all.
Possible HTPC build - some possible answers
Mark
1. no contest, use SPDif and a hifi decoder rather than any PC based option. if you can enable the stereo jacks at the same time you can wire them into the SCART connector on your TV - meaning that you can listed to HTPC sourced data without having to enable the full surround sound/home cinema equipment.
2. RAID 0 is a BAD idea. whilst it makes the performance better, it doubles the chance of you suffering from a disk fault and unlike RAID 1 provides no protection against data loss. IDE and SATA disks are not designed for continual use like in a HTPC (that's one of the reasons to pay more for high rpm scsi or fc disks in servers - it's also why server have RAID controllers and use RAID 1 and 5). Use RAID 1 on the two 120's and put any important data on there (stuff that doesn't change much - OS and MP3's) use the 200GB disk as video tape for recordings.
as an asside - buy some extra RAM - that'll fix any issues with writing data onto the relatively slow disks.
3. Anything on the supported list. However if you are in a freeview area then there is little point in getting hybrid or analogue circitry on the cards. Digital transmisions provide much lower CPU utilisation than capturing analogue (or any external source) videa streams, also there is no degredation between live and recorded. (I bought hybrid cards only to never use the analogue portion of the cards).
4. this saves £20 - I'd add one as they are so cheap, bear in mind that a decent setup HTPC can drive high end HD display's (up to and including the mythical 1080p resolution that no-one intends to transmit - but I've found one manfacturer has released a display that supports it, it's £6Grand so I'll wait) and that a PC can do upscaling with all that spare horsepower it has. It should therefore be possible to get a better image from the HTPC than from your TEAC DVD PLayer. Riping CD's takes less time than playing them and can be automated (when you insert an new CD it just does it) if you have a large CD collection you'll get bored riping them by hand.
5. I made the mistake of buying a small low profile case. None of the capture cards I've found come with low profile PCI brackets - even those that are actually low profile designs. also making the thing quiet is important and small low profile cases are stupidly expensive. The case also doesn't fit on top of, or underneath any full size HiFi you might have (it's too deep and too narrow !). I am therefore about to invest in one of the Silverstonetek cases (probably an LC10M I like uncluttered HiFi, the LC18 someone suggested has a built in screen making it bright and a distraction when watching a movie - and really expensive)
6. Many of them are learning remotes - and the codes they use can normally be recreated by a 3rd party learning remote - however an HTPC remote will often have extra buttons that are not on normal HiFi related. Also if you buy a Silverstone case with a VFD (led front panel - so you can make the thing display track numbers and so on like proper HiFi) they come with a suitable remote. I have an NTL cable box (silver Samsung one) and control that through the HTPC (see the answer you your last question)
7. However either buy a cheap analogue card to capture the NTL video, or buy a video card that can also capture video (like some Nvidia cards with VIVO function) set ths card up with the lowest record priority due to the CPU overhead and lower quality of the captured video (you'll be capturing SVideo signals at best)
and buy an IR Blaster - I bought a Microsoft MCE remote control from ebay for £25 - which is one of the cheaper ways to get an IR Blaster (it comes with 2 ir buds to control 2 external STB's or other devices). then you tell the HTPC you want to watch something on NTL - it changes the channel and you watch through the HTPC. one remote (the HTPC one) and all the benefits of timshifting etc that you built the HTPC for in the first place.
also a couple of other suggestions.
1) buy a passive (if you can find one) heatsink for the CPU - or at least the quietest one you can find.
2) buy a quiet PSU, and you shouldn't need a huge one. We measured my friends HPTC (300GB SATAII disk, DVDRW drive, Athlon 64 @ 3Ghz, 512MB RAM, Haupage HVR1100 and an NVidia 6200) and it only draws 72 - 80W when running and only 110 during bootup. My system (Sempron 2600, 512MB RAM, 300GB SATAII disk, Nvidia 6200 DVDRW disk Avermedia A16AR) is happily running of a 220W PSU (havent got round to measuring it yet)
3) fit the largest diameter fans running at the lowest speed you can manage to cool the case and the system. Noise in your living room will drive you nuts eventually if you don't. I ended up rewiring all the fans in the case I started with to run on 7Volts instead of 12 (connected across +12 and +5 from the PSU) - dropping the speed massively, unfortunately they don't shift enough air at 5Volts (when they are nearly silent) to cool the system, meaning that I have to live with a constant noise. A larger case, with large diameter slow reving fans will be much quieter (hence the LC10M).
4) I am also likely to buy a dual core mobile CPU based mother board (at some time soon - they are a bit pricey at present) - they use the least power, and are therefore the coolest (making it easier to run with a passive heatsink). capturing a terestial digital channel requires little CPU power - but dual cores means I can leave one recompressing recordings without affecting the use of the system.
that last comment in conjunction with the lack of low profile capture cards means I am about to rebuild my HTPC into a bigger box (so I can sit it under my amp!) - spending more money replacing parts I've already purchased, hopefuly you can avoid that.
Hope this helps
good Luck
P.S. - all the above is highly opinionated but based on the 3 builds it has taken me to get the HTPC I really wanted in the first place !
P.P.S - and MediaPortal is by far the best app, the only other contestent is MythTV - and my Linux skills are hugely lacking to get that working at all.
