Ongoing Snowhite HTPC project (1 Viewer)

[lsandini]

Hello there,

Having received all the components I initially ordered, I am getting ready to install them and start configuring. I count on you experienced people to comment this project.

Case Silverstone SUGO SG02W, no window, no extra fans (?)
PSU SilverStone Element ST50EF-Plus Short Cables
Mobo Abit F190HD (Radeon Xpress 1250, HDMI)
CPU Core2Duo E4600
Cooler Silverstone Nitrogon SST-NT06 Lite
RAM 2X1GB
HDD WD Scorpio 2.5" (160GB, laptop hdd, SATA)
DVD ... mmhh, not decided yet
DVB-C FloppyDTV
Soft Windows XP, MP latest stable
Amp Harman & Kardon AVR-235
Loudsp BOSE Acoustimass 5 white
TV Philips 32" PF5320 (1368x766)

It's a "low-end" machine, the purpose of which being that of getting rid of the external DVD player, DVB-C box and many remotes. Also playing some 720p files would be nice, no need for 1080 or a bigger screen for now. The TV is already wall-mounted, and the BOSE system installed and connected to the Amp, through which I currently play my DVDs and music. The little white box will be the last addition. Maybe I'll stick to the HK DVD31 for playing my DVDs and music, and add a BR/HD-DVD drive in the snowhite box later.

As you see, no extra graphic board or soundcard, I am planning to use the mobo's integrated components. Also the HDD is quite "minimal", but I'll use the gigabit ethernet network in our house for storage and mounting virtual DVDs.

I am a bit anxious to see/hear the Silverstone PSU in action. The case is short, so a longer PSU won't fit if I have an optical drive. Since I haven't included one, I could put in there a Bequiet PSU, but that's fine tuning at this point. Modding the PSU by changing the fan is a second option if I need an optical drive in there anyway.

I'll include pics as the machine is assembled and running in a few days.

Lorenzo

 

[kszabo]

Also playing some 720p files would be nice, no need for 1080 or a bigger screen for now. The TV is

If you build a HTPC in 2008, you should consider BlueRay and HDTV. Where do you find 720p? The satellites in Europe broadcast 1080i so do cable providers, BlueRay is (AFAIK) 1080p. The size and resolution of your screen/TV is not deciding. If your system cannot decode 1080 than you will not be able to watch any HD-Material except downloaded 720p trailers! I have a Pana Plasma with 1024x768 px and enjoy HDTV very much (HTPC encodes 1080, GFX downscales it to 720).

BTW with the x1250 onboard you can play 1080! I do. You just need a good CPU (2 cores with at least 2,3 GHz each) and a good codec like CoreAVC. Better solution is an ATi HD 2600 XT passive cooled. With that you can even play newer games, so you have your Playstation also. With the x1250 forget any gaming!

I hope that your Silverstone has enough PCI slots for at least 1 TV-Card and 1 good graphic card (better is 1 more for WLAN and 1 more for the 2nd TV-Card)

The x1250 does not run good with XP! I had to abandon it and switch to Vista. MP will freeze with it (with reflection flipY skins)

 

[lsandini]

I hope that your Silverstone has enough PCI slots for at least 1 TV-Card and 1 good graphic card (better is 1 more for WLAN and 1 more for the 2nd TV-Card)

Well, no need for WLAN since there is gigabit ethernet, and I have a TV card (DVB-C FloppyDTV), that needs no PCI slot since it's a Firewire card, so there is plenty of space for upgrades (gfx card for example, or DVB-S one day).

Thanks for your suggestion about the winXP / Vista compatibility problems. I might try Vista if I run into problems.

Gaming ? I am not planning to use that HTPC for any but very light gaming.

There is actually a VoomHD in 1080i on the cable, but I don't think anyone here would watch it, either than as a HDTV demo when I have friends coming over. But I agree, if/when there will be more channels, I'll watch them scaled down to 720.

 

[kszabo]

Why don´t you consider waiting for the new 780G chipset motherboards from ATi/AMD? They have onboard Radeon 3200 graphics with full HD support (VC1, h.264 etc). They will be cheap.

Vista: as I experienced and read from others h.264 1080i works better under Vista (why? dunno).

Edit: or in few months, if a Blueray drive is cheap and MP fully supports it then you can do a MoBo upgrade, till then x1250. I will do so. BTW shouldn´t we write Snowwhite with two w-s?

 

[lsandini]

...BTW shouldn´t we write Snowwhite with two w-s?

Hahaa, I wondered how log it would last until someone would ask. You could write it any way, the box will be renamed soon according to its looks, not sure about minifridge or microwave

I gave away a Sony DRU-500 DVD-RW drive something a few weeks ago, and I am getting it back soon. The front bezel of the DVD was perfectly white and silver, so it will fit the case style.

This is my first project so I am still experimenting. I experienced MP crashes with the latest ATI drivers, so I reversed to 7.2 and SimpleMP skin, and it seems to work perfectly for watching/recording TV. The Microsoft MCE remote also is working fine, so next thing will be configuring the EPG grabbers, music players, and DVD players.

So far so good

I am not too impressed with the Silverstone PSU and Nitrogon coolers though, too much humming in that case for my taste, and now that I have it assembled, I see better what replacement CPU coolers will fit or not.

Lorenzo

 

[lsandini]

Well here we are, connecting the HTPC for the first time to the TV, and watching the VoomHD channel (1080i) scaled down to 720 (i/p ?)

The windows task manager shows how much the E4600 is being used.

Still some more work to do. MediaPortal apparently needs to be fine-tuned, as the visual quality of the non-HD channels is much worse than using my previous dedicated DVB-C box. Probably only a matter of codecs...

Lorenzo