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Building a HTPC – How hard can it be? And with those famous last words, I'll join the fray~

First off, a little background to my situation – I have some computing experience after a fair few years of fiddling and the like, and enjoy the feeling when you've reached the point when a system just *works*. When it comes to HTPC's, I'm something of a novice, so any learned opinions or pointers in the right direction would be more than greatly appreciated.

Intended Use

- Legal film downloads / rentals “on demand”

- Internet Radio

- General family use – email, Skype, ect.


Needs to be:

- Above all,*Reliable* - Fickle as they can be, I'd like a build that's for the most part stable, and will last until the next upgrade.

User Friendly – As this machine will be sat in the living room, it has to be (close to) idiotproof to work.

Fast – Speaks for itself!

- Able to connect to a Samsung LE37R4 LCD TV

- Able to work as both a normal PC and a Media Center – i.e Able to check emails/office work on a normal screen and speakers, before switching over to the TV with it's speakers to watch a film.



So far all I've settled on is that I'd like:

An Intel Processor

Dedicated GFX solution

Samsung HD103uj 1TB HDD

Tower case


As for the rest of the parts, I'm a bit lost - I don't want to spend the earth, but I don't want to end up kicking myself in a few months time either, so dear reader, I leave it in your capable hands - With these requirements, what would you go for?

Thanks to all!

My 2 cents:

Go with nVidia video...my opinion, but backed by lots of horror stories with ATI drivers. Trust me on this one. If you want to end up with 1TB of HDD space, buy 2 500gb drives and make sure you have RAID in your mainboard spec. Use RAID 0. Back those drives up. This will almost double your HDD I/O for about the same price as getting a single 1TB drive. I actually use my HTPC as a PC. I simple have a second monitor that hangs off to the side with a really damn long DVI cable and wireless keyboard/mouse. Media center will want to steal your mouse though when using the remote. About the remote, don't forget about that.

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- Nate
HP d5000t / ATI DCT / Nvidia 9800 GT 1gb / 1TB RAID 0 / Comcast

I'd go completely the opposite way...
I use a gigabyte GAMA78GPMDS2H it has an integrated ATI HD3200 with HDMI out paired with an amd 4850e. The system drive is a 2.5" sata drive that I ripped out of an old enclosure I had. Storage is taken care of by 2x1TB drives in raid 1 (for redundancy) with occasional backups to an external drive. Its quiet and uses less power than an equivalent Intel system. It plays DVD/Bluray/ripped content/h264... no problem, connected to a tosh 42z lcd.

I'm not an AMD fanboy, thats my first AMD system. My gaming rig has a Q6600.

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http://www.spore.com/view/profile/Vengence_IRL

monkeydeathsonic:

My 2 cents:

Go with nVidia video...my opinion, but backed by lots of horror stories with ATI drivers. Trust me on this one. If you want to end up with 1TB of HDD space, buy 2 500gb drives and make sure you have RAID in your mainboard spec. Use RAID 0. Back those drives up. This will almost double your HDD I/O for about the same price as getting a single 1TB drive. I actually use my HTPC as a PC. I simple have a second monitor that hangs off to the side with a really damn long DVI cable and wireless keyboard/mouse. Media center will want to steal your mouse though when using the remote. About the remote, don't forget about that.

I disagree with the hardware advice in this.  I use an Intel in my main desktop PC but recommend AMD for HTPCs - low power consumption and the 780G platform provides all the GPU power that you need providing you're not planning to play games.  Makes for a low cost and low power consuming PC which does everything you need.

Also going RAID-0 is a bad idea unless you have a really reliable backup solution (such as Windows Home Server).  I have a single HD in my HTPC and it is capable of recording 4 TV programmes and watching another all simultaneously with no issues.  RAID-0 will double your risk of hard disk failure and will add extra heat, noise and power consumption.

Something worth thinking about though is just building your PC and use an extender to watch TV with.  The Extender will not interfere with your PC at all and the Linksys models are now excellent value for money (I believe $100 or less from Amazon).

My HTPC doubles as a graphics workstation. I built my system for performance. Backing up a PC is easy, getting good performance isn't. The RAID 0 is fantastic.

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- Nate
HP d5000t / ATI DCT / Nvidia 9800 GT 1gb / 1TB RAID 0 / Comcast

no doubt. My Games rig also runs raid 0, but thats overkill fro the OP who'd probably be more concerned about the safety of the media from day to day.

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Vengence_Irl:

I'd go completely the opposite way...
I use a gigabyte GAMA78GPMDS2H it has an integrated ATI HD3200 with HDMI out paired with an amd 4850e. The system drive is a 2.5" sata drive that I ripped out of an old enclosure I had. Storage is taken care of by 2x1TB drives in raid 1 (for redundancy) with occasional backups to an external drive. Its quiet and uses less power than an equivalent Intel system. It plays DVD/Bluray/ripped content/h264... no problem, connected to a tosh 42z lcd.

I'm not an AMD fanboy, thats my first AMD system. My gaming rig has a Q6600.

I agree 100% with this statement. Intel does not really own the market on low-power high processing capabilities. The 4850e is in my opinion the best HTPC processor on the market today. The mainboard is also spectacular.

As far as tuners, HD Homerun is probably your best choice, but less the external route I would recommend Hauppauge HVR-1800.

Steinway

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AMD Athlon 6400+ BE (watercooled)
Nvidia 8600GTS
Hauppauge HVR-1600
Razer Barracuda AC-1
2GB DDR2
1TB HDD
Vista Ultimate W/ TV Pack

Hi

I plonked for an

GA-MA78GM-S2H (rev.1.0) £40 on-board graphics

AMD 4850e 45w 2500GHz processor fanless with a Scythe Ninja £50

1TB of Samsung RAID0 £180

2MB RAM £30

2* Digital Everywhere DVBS Tuners £260

MCE Vista Premium 64-bit £50

Antec Fusion Case £100

This was an economy build. Of course there were extras like fans and cables

Three regrets

1. ANTEC case is NOT a good choice.  It does not display the time at shutdown and should display system temperatures as an option.  Even though it boasts a clever internal design in reality I find it's cluttered.

2. Vista 64-bit with the Digital Everywhere tuners becasue their drivers are in BETA, although the tuners are very high quality.  I wish now I'd chosen XP 32-bit.

3.The GA-MA78GM-S2H (rev.1.0) BIOS does not have enable/disable IRQ sharing for Firewire devices. This has led to occassional blue screens when tuning with the Digi Everywhere BETA drivers. I hope Digi Everywhere fix this soon.

System temperature is not a problem with the Scythe Ninja but the 2 x 120mm noiseless fans are noisy. I feel sure I can remove one when the box is next open.

The picture quality is excellent and HD when viewed at 720p with FireDVB viewer is very good when there is something worth watching.  Little Dorrit at the moment but with sound commentary that can't be removed with the software supplied by Digi Everywhere.

As with analogue even satellite picture quality is reliant on source.

hope this saves you a few quid

Rgrds, Simon

 

Many thanks to all who have replied so far - You've given some great advice, and left me with a good deal to think about.

I'm starting to be swayed by AMD, but this still remains not purely a Media Center - I'd still like a standard DVI screen plugged in to use as a desktop whence office work and the like arises - that and the experience of three DOA ATI GFX cards, plus odd driver problems are still causing me to lean towards the Intel/Nvidia route.

Stability and Ease of use are the two main concerns here, so indeed whilst RAID is an appealing challenge, it'll be overkill for this particular machine.

Thanks once again for your replies, any further tips or advice is both welcome and very helpful, and I hope to have a post up in a day or so with the completed spec sheet to look over!

Cheers,
Gryph

You could still go the AMD/Nvidia route with the 8200 geforce boards.  I have set up two HTPCs with an Asus 8200/AMD 4850e and haven't had any problems.  Both run very stable.  Supposedly you can also get 7.1 LPCM output over hdmi as shown here, but I don't have the receiver to try it.

One other thing you might want to consider is how long you plan to run this hardware.

My last HTPC build was based on an AMD processor and an Nvidia chipset.  3 years later I upgraded to Vista only to discover a world of pain when it came to a total lack of drivers.  Nvidia had officially dropped support for the "new OS".

At the same time I still had a 6 year old and a 10 year old PC; both 100% Intel.  Both of these were 100% Vista ready, even though they were much older.

With my latest HTPC build, I decided to go with Intel everywhere practical since I know this should provide years worth of upgrades.  For a video card I went with ATI since they are the only manufacturer that properly handles overscan with HDTVs (noting that modern, digital 1080p HDTVs work fine with both Nvidia and ATI; but my "old" 1080i HDTV with ~5% overscan is not even detected by Nvidia cards, let alone can they provide decent overscan compensation).

These days another reason to select an ATI card is HDMI audio.  The 4X00 series cards are the best cards when it comes to 8-bit digital audio support.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

I was able to correct overscan with a current Nvidia 9400 card that was outputting 1080i over component.  I realize this was a long time problem for them, but is resolved now.

I can sympathize with the old intel hardware running strong though.  I have vista running on an old P4 3.0GHz and a radeon 9800 pro without any trouble.

Tyborg:

I was able to correct overscan with a current Nvidia 9400 card that was outputting 1080i over component.  I realize this was a long time problem for them, but is resolved now.

What do you consider "correct overscan" though?

Personally I want a Media Center PC that when watching movies or TV shows outputs 100% spec compliant video, exactly the same way that a hardware Bluray player would (or any hardware STB, HD-PVR, HD-DVD player, upconverting DVD player, etc.) and at the same time I want to be able to exit Media Center and use my Media Center PC as a PC, play video games, run PC applications, etc. (without having to start up the video control center to manually turn on/off overscan compensation).  I even want to be able to launch a game from inside Media Center with the remote control and again automatically see an optimal overscan compensated image when playing the game.

With ALL movies (since Jaws in 1975?) and ALL TV shows being mastered for playback on displays that have overscan, producers optimize the image layout for this.  When spec 100% compliant video is sent to an HDTV, the HDTV WILL produce an overscanned image.  When watching a movie or TV show, I want to see the image that the producer wanted me to see (and this includes not being able to see the outer perimeter of the image due to overscan).

If, instead of outputting fully compliant video, you shrink down the image to get rid of overscan while watching movies and TV shows, the image is now smaller and not displayed as it was intended to be displayed.  Since 95% of us are sitting far enough away from our HDTVs that the image detail is "eye limited", to get the best detail and best image we want the slightly larger image that overscan provides us with (test this out for yourself by watching a Bluray movie scene with a spec compliant output and then watch it again with overscan compensation turned on and compare the detail your eye is able to see).

Unless something has improved recently, Nvidia's drivers allow us to turn overscan compensation on or off and it does not automatically switch it on or off whenever Media Center is started.  To make matters worse, until quite recently, overscan compensation was buggy with Nvidia Vista drivers and it would totally screw up when switching resolutions.

ATI on the other hand, will automatically switch to fully compliant 1080p, 1080i, or 720p when Vista Media Center is started and as soon as it is exited, will automatically switch to our preferred desktop resolution without overscan compensation.  This gives us the best of both worlds - an optimal image for movie/TV show viewing and at the same time an optimal image for using the PC as a PC and game playing.  Depending on the specific HDTV, you might have to turn off the overall overscan compensation and create overscan compensated formats for 720p, 1080i/p, but it is relatively easy to do and it works flawlessly.

Can the latest Nvidia driver do this too?  Or does Nvidia still expect us to manually turn overscan compensation on and off if we want fully spec compliant video?

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Vengence_Irl:

I use a gigabyte GAMA78GPMDS2H it has an integrated ATI HD3200 with HDMI out paired with an amd 4850e. 

Hi,

Do you know what score you get for the graphics sections on the Windows Experience ratings?

Currently looking for a new motherboard, mine is having a few problems currently, but curiously only with Vista - problems going to sleep (will suspend, then starts up again, but hangs) and occasional problems starting up (M2N-SLI Deluxe has this problem reported all over the place, since after I bought mine years ago) so am now looking for a replacement.

Currently have an 8600GT graphics card, wondering if with my processor 6000Ghz dual core Athlon, I could go with onboard and not notice any difference!

Tony

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AMD64X2 6000+ | 3Gb Ram | 750Gb Maxtor SATA TV | 200Gb Samsung Spinpoint for Vista | ASUS M3N 78 PRO | FloppyDTV + Dragon CAM | Pinnacle 7010ix | XFX 8600GT Silent Video Card | LG Blu-ray/HD DVD Drive | Xbox 360 | Arcsoft Total Theatre

remind me to check this when I get home with a bump. I think its 3.9 but cant be sure...

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