HTPC advise

[Arkaine23]

I haven't built a computer in about six years now, but I'm looking to set one up in my entertainment center before the end of the year. Initially, I'm not looking to use it to record or encode, but just to serve media to a laptop in the other room and to play videos/blu rays on the TV. I've got 300 mpbs wireless N. I'm not willing to run cables to the TV locations right now.

I have some spare parts lying around-

DDR2 10+ GB
Radeon HD3450 low profile (yanked out of a dell)
2x 30 GB SSD's
1x 128 GB SSD
2x 1TB external Raid HDD enclosures USB2 (using Raid 1) 5.25"/7200 drives
1x 750 GB USB2 drive 3.5"/5400
2x 500 GB USB2 drives 3.5"/5400

I guess I'm a little worried that the wireless bandwidth and USB2 external drives will slow things down. I was planning to run the 2x OCZ SSD's as a Raid 0 for the the OS(s). I think I'll wind up using the 128 GB SSD in a laptop in the near future. I could take apart the enclosures to liberate the 4x 1TB 5.25" drives and/or the 3.5" drives, I guess...

I want a slim/flat case that will blend with the rest of the equipment and that's quiet, but of course I also want to treat this as an everyday use desktop computer and would prefer to do little overclocking, so its going to be overbuilt. It's also going to fold.


So shopping around on newegg...

Silverstone Grandia GD05B looks pretty good with the 120mm fans
Rosewill Hive 650W modular PSU
LG blu ray/DVD/CD burner
Rosewill RNX N180PCe wireless NIC
Azio BTD211 bluetooth USB adapter (for a mac keyboard and magic mouse)



I've always used AMD in self-built systems. So I'm kind of just holding out for an 8150 FX. I don't see much in the way of Matx motherboards... only 880G or 760G chipsets like the Asus M5A88-M, Asrock 880GMH, and Gigabyte GA-880GMA. I hope this will change in the next month.

If I can't find a 990 matx board, what slim/horizontal ATX case and ATX board (combined cost not to exceed $225 or so) do you recommend? I don't need a whole lot of features. Raid, HDMI, USB3, moderate OC potential. I'd like to be able to fit 2 SSD's, an optical drive, and at least 1 other drive, either 3.5" or 5.25".

For RAM I was looking at 2x 4GB Mushkin Redline sticks of 1866. I'm thinking I'll have to avoid the types with large heatsinks.

I'm pretty sure a Zalman 7500 CU will fit in the Silverstone case with a few mm to spare.

I also selected an i5-2500K, Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-DH2-B3, and Corsair vengeance 1600 as an alternate build.


I'm comfortable running Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X. While I'd be happy with Myth, I think my fiance will be more amenable to Windows Media Center.

If I wanted a TV tuner should I get a card or a box? Can I easily replace the DVR boxes I rent from my cable company with this PC? I'm on Comcast now, I suppose I would need to get a CC card from them to get more than basic channels through a tuner? In the future, I'm pretty sure my fiance will only allow us to live where we can have uverse. One of the biggest issues we have right now is that we have to have 2 DVR's to record 4 shows at once and can't network them between our two TV's, but are spoiled from having uverse at our last place, where both of our TV's could access the same recordings and we could record 4 things at once.

What about a remote? Bluetooth kb/mouse are fine for me, but I may want to make this less like a computer and more like an appliance down the road.


Ultimately, my budget's $600-800. I don't need a video card, hard drives, kb/mouse, or speakers. Am I missing anything?

 

[I.M.O.G.]

The USB2 drives shouldn't be an issue. The wireless bandwidth concerns me. Streaming high bitrate bluray content has never gone well for me even on N connections, and I have a cable run to my HTPC. While N can go at 300Mbps, mine rarely established a connection at that full capacity.

I use XBMC to play my media; it supports hardware acceleration well. Does your video card do hardware accelerated decoding? I got a 890GXM-g65 and its onboard video works great for decoding HD content. That made a big difference to the smoothness of very high bitrate 1080p content, like planet earth or the life series with david attenborough.

If you want to go slimmer on the case, I have been happy with this (it will limit heatsink options):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811204030

XBMC has also passed the girlfriend test with flying colors - she uses it for all her shows. Couchpotato, Sickbeard, and Sabnzbd I've setup to make sure she has what she needs when she wants it - that would solve your DVR issues. I run windows 7. She is terrible with computers, and hates them.

With a bluetooth remote, you may encounter issues with heavy wireless traffic - even when enabling bluetooth coexistence mode on my wireless router, I would still get poor mouse connections. I haven't heard a lot of people seeing these problems, so it may just be the two different remotes I've tried that had that same issue. I've used the lenovo remote, and an nmedia one - the nmedia one has a keyboard/mouse unit, as well as a more traditional looking tv remote. The lenovo remote is more like a tiny keyboard and mouse unit, but is cumbersome if you actually want to type something.

 

[PanteraGSTK]

Since you've got so many parts already I'd use what you have and get a half way decent cpu (if it is just an htpc) it will be plenty for blu-ray plaback and anything else.

Raid 0 for ssd's for an htpc is pointless. I have a single 30gig ssd and it is 70% full, but it is just for htpc use.

Don't worry about the external drives either.

4gb of memory is more than enough. My usage never goes about 2gb and I use quite a few applications that are memory hogs.

I use an ati 3450 and it is underpowered. Consider a better card. If you go with an amd board, get a decent dual core (unless you plan to fold, then it is up to you) and make sure it has the 6 series built in graphics and you are golden.

 

[Arkaine23]

Its going to run a Linux VM and fold and basically be my main computer at home. I may do some light gaming on it also. I've kind of gotten by over the years without a computer by using work laptops at home- last job I had 4 macbook pro's/airs of various sizes and an ipad. Probably won't use the Ati card at all.

 

[PanteraGSTK]

Its going to fold and basically be my main computer at home. I may do some light gaming on it also. I've kind of gotten by over the years without a computer by using work laptops at home- last job I had 4 macbook pro's/airs of various sizes and an ipad. Probably won't use the Ati card at all.

In that case use what you've got and go with it. I still wouldn't raid 0 ssd's though.

 

[Exempt]

I used to have 3 HTPC's in my house, I still have 2x 16tb drobos, last year I switched over to the $99 Apple Tv and haven't looked back since. You can easily jailbreak it as well and run Hulu and easily connect to external media devices ( you can connect to external media devices without having to jailbreak).

It does not have the gaming ability though.

 

[PanteraGSTK]

I used to have 3 HTPC's in my house, I still have 2x 16tb drobos, last year I switched over to the $99 Apple Tv and haven't looked back since. You can easily jailbreak it as well and run Hulu and easily connect to external media devices ( you can connect to external media devices without having to jailbreak).

It does not have the gaming ability though.

It also doesn't record TV or have support for anything mpeg 2 and is limited to 720p resolution. I will say other than that it is a really nice piece of hardware. I think Apple should license airplay to anyone and everyone. The dj mode in itunes where anyone with an iOS device can vote on what song plays next is extremely awesome.

 

[Arkaine23]

Ok so I'm still learning about the PVR aspect... I'd need 2 dual HD tuners in order to record 4 things at once? And then to watch something else at the same time I'd need another one, or if I wanted to watch two things on two TV's and still reocrd 4 other streams, I'd need a third dual tuner card?

My coax has to be split to accomodate this. Won't that degrade the signal strength quite a bit? And this would have to be behind a cable device from my provider that will decode the encrypted channels? And it would record HD programming at 480i?

For a second client like a laptop to connect and deliver recorded or live shows to another TV it'd need what? Remote access software? That's handled by WMC/XBMC/Myth software et al? Console systems like an xbox/PS3/wii can do it?

Just want to make sure I know what I'd be getting into if I wind up using this as a PVR. I'm paying something like $16/month for 2 DVR boxes. (actually think they have an error in their billing/my initial order as it should have been $32) Trying to see what the ROI is and how long it will take for the tuner cards to pay for themselves.

Seems like this is what I'm looking for- http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2.asp?product=hd_pvr - the component input would let it work with uverse

or this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815706001 a quad tuner card

or two of these? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116036

 

[PanteraGSTK]

Ok so I'm still learning about the PVR aspect... I'd need 2 dual HD tuners in order to record 4 things at once? And then to watch something else at the same time I'd need another one, or if I wanted to watch two things on two TV's and still reocrd 4 other streams, I'd need a third dual tuner card?

My coax has to be split to accomodate this. Won't that degrade the signal strength quite a bit? And this would have to be behind a cable device from my provider that will decode the encrypted channels? And it would record HD programming at 480i?

For a second client like a laptop to connect and deliver recorded or live shows to another TV it'd need what? Remote access software? That's handled by WMC/XBMC/Myth software et al? Console systems like an xbox/PS3/wii can do it?

Just want to make sure I know what I'd be getting into if I wind up using this as a PVR. I'm paying something like $16/month for 2 DVR boxes. (actually think they have an error in their billing/my initial order as it should have been $32) Trying to see what the ROI is and how long it will take for the tuner cards to pay for themselves.

Seems like this is what I'm looking for- http://store.hauppauge.com/hardware2.asp?product=hd_pvr - the component input would let it work with uverse

or this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815706001 a quad tuner card

or two of these? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116036

Those are three very different devices. The ceaton can be used with WMC to record 4 things at once, but requires a cable card from you provider. If you wanted to watch live tv as well as record 4 things a 5th tuner is required. The hd-pvr (I have the internal version of this) takes the component output from a cable box and the digital (or analog) audio and creates recordings from that input. The colossus (internal hd-pvr) can use unencrypted hdmi to get the same results (which I'm doing). The 2250 is for OTA or QAM only (for HD) which requires an antenna or cable from a supported provider. QAM and OTA are usually limited to HD local channels and SD other stuff. WMC can use all of these naively except for the hd-pvr and colossus, but there are add-ons that make that possible.

Myth can use all but the cable card device (unless something has changed).

Extenders for wmc have to be xboxes. No way around that.

Myth has the ability to use pc clients as does mediaportal. NextPVR has a hacked client of some sort of media streamer, but I can't remember which.

XBMC has alpha pvr functionality that can use myth or mediaportal as the back end and can be used on appleTV's as the front end (except for mpeg 2, which lots of tv is).

 

[CarlJohnson]

The HTPC in my sig can play any 1080p movie I throw at it fine. No need for a $280 CPU for a HTPC. Find a 880G AM2+ mobo and a phenom 925 and you will be set.