Media Center | The Coffeehouse

spivonious

I don't know if any of you can help, but I figured I'd ask anyway.

So I'm planning out an HTPC build. It will be used to watch and record TV (NTSC/ATSC), watch movies (DVD and Blu-Ray), and listen to music.

I've got the computer itself all spec'ed out, but I'm wondering which connector will give me the best results. My TV has a VGA input, which lets the computer run at the screen's native resolution (1366x768). HDMI would only give me 720p. Should I plan on using VGA or HDMI?

edit: after doing some more research, it seems that blu-ray works over VGA for now, but the discs could have a downsample feature enabled when using a non-hdcp connection. Has anyone run into this?

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

I personally always use "always run at the native resolution" as a rule of thumb, but I have no idea how accurate that is nowadays. Have you hooked up anything else to that TV via HDMI? How does it look?

I personally went with HDMI so that I could get both the video and sound over a single connector (although finding an AV receiver that'll actually do anything with the audio coming in over HDMI is another matter). But then it's a TV with a native HD resolution.

CannotResolveSymbol
{insert caption here}

In reply to Bas

#Jul 28th @ 10:54 AM

Why won't HDMI let the computer run at the screen's native resolution? Unless the screen's reporting different capabilities over HDMI, HDMI is essentially the same as DVI (plus audio)... it can transport any resolution the monitor (or TV) is capable of.

spivonious

In reply to Bas

#Jul 28th @ 10:54 AM

I have the DVD player hooked up via HDMI right now but that will be going away with the HTPC.

The thing I'm most worried about is blu-ray with the HDCP stuff. Is using VGA the same as using DVI to a non HDCP monitor?

CRS - I never thought of doing that. I don't know if the TV can handle a non 720/1080 signal coming over HDMI. If it can, then my problem is solved, since I'd rather keep it digital the entire way.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 28th @ 11:09 AM

I'm actually in the same process right now. In short, to properly play protected BR media, you need hardware that implements the Protected Video Path. Luckily today that means a video card and a display that supports HDCP (and not a whole OEM machine like it was a couple of years ago).

You can only have HDCP over DVI or HDMI, not VGA, so your media (if protected) will be rendered in a lower resolution. But if your display is not HDCP, the whole point is moot and you'll get low resolution anyways.

spivonious

In reply to PaoloM

#Jul 28th @ 11:19 AM

Thanks for the reply Paolo. My TV definitely supports HDCP since HDMI has included it since v1.0.

I guess I'll plan on going with HDMI so any blu-rays I watch don't get "downgraded" to 480p. It seems silly that I'll have to put up with blurrier text just to watch movies.

LeoDavidson

You can use AnyDVD HD to remove the HDCP requirement and thus the protected video path requirement and downmixing, I think, though I may be wrong.

It'll also remove the region-coding crap for both Blu-Ray and DVD.

You may find you have to get AnyDVD HD anyway as it fixes compatibility problems with some discs. (e.g. PowerDVD won't play discs that do their menus in certain ways and AnyDVD will re-write those discs on the fly (in memory) to avoid the problem. For some reason the people who make AnyDVD care about this more, and fix the problems sooner, than the people who write the actually movie playback software. Go figure!)

It also removes annoying things like intro movies that disable the Menu button and cannot be skipped. It's a must have, IMO, and one of the best things about PC-based movie playback compared to consumer kit.

HDMI is a nightmare of complexity, especially if you mix-in high-definition audio. Sad It'll give you a better picture than VGA, though. (Bit like DVI vs VGA.) Might depend on your TV, though... I use VGA on my TV because the VGA input displays the whole PC screen without any overscan while the DVI input zooms and crops the screen (by about half the height of the start menu). Pretty inexplicable for a digital format where half the benefit is 1:1 pixel mapping. (Not that my screen could do that as it has rectangular pixels, too, which nothing can output to properly.)

LeoDavidson

(Edit: Removed strange semi-double post. Not sure what happened there!)

Shining Arcanine

In my opinion, building a media center PC for a living room isn't worth it. The only instance in which I believe having a media center PC can be worth it is if you have an existing desktop PC that you are willing to upgrade to act as a Media Center PC 24x7. In my case, I had my own computer in my room, which I had tried to get to record TV shows for me for a while using ATI's TV Wonder/AIW cards after having had my own TV in my room. ATI's software didn't work very well, so after a few years of headaches, I went with Windows Media Center 2005 Edition and haven't looked back. After that, adding the media center extender to the living room was the next logical step, but I already had the infrastructure in place to support this, which eliminated the cost of actually building a PC. I only had to do a refresh installation of Windows after I had brought a tuner with the Windows Media Center 2005 Edition CD.

My advice is to get a TiVo. If you ever want to switch to doing high definition recordings (like I do), your TiVo will be capable of doing so, whereas your media center PC will not. This is because Cable Labs requires computers to have a special BIOS in order to use Cable Cards in PCs. If anyone was ever to make a special BIOS with the required BIOS modifications that enable a Cable Card to be used with a PC (assuming you have the hardware from ATI), Cable Labs can just flip a switch at their end that will disable the hack. This mandates that anyone that wants to use a media center PC to record television shows in high definition buy a very expensive computer from an OEM manufacturer like Dell or Hewlett Packard.

CSMR

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jul 28th @ 10:59 AM

The HDMI inputs on sub-1080p TVs normally don't work. They only accept a limited range of inputs in general not including native. Some of the engineers that designed these interfaces need to be shot. TVs made by PC makers I'd guess won't have this problem, but they don't seem to be making many good TVs these days.

spivonious

In reply to Shining Arcanine

#Jul 28th @ 12:52 PM

Oh I'm only thinking about it now because I can build the whole thing for about $400. Less than the cost of a nice blu-ray player and HD-dvr. I do have an old PC that I could throw some upgraded hardware into (would need a new motherboard for PCI-E x16 slot, n new video card for blu-ray decoding, and new tuner card for HDTV) but the fans are super loud and the case has a big window and lights. Not exactly subtle home theater styling.

The cablecard doesn't matter to me, since I only get basic cable. All of the channels are picked up fine (including HD) by the ATSC/QAM tuner in my TV, so I'm sure the ATSC/QAM tuner card I chose will find them too. If there's some recording restriction that I don't know about, then please enlighten me.

edit: Actually, I couldn't use my old PC, since upgrading the motherboard would mean I'd have to upgrade the CPU and RAM too, and at that point there wouldn't be any original pieces except for the case and hard drives.

spivonious

One more question...is it worth it to get a tuner with a hardware MPEG2 decoder?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 29th @ 6:52 AM

I was under the impression that pretty much every tuner (and GPU) released since 2001 had that capability built-in.

LeoDavidson

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 29th @ 6:52 AM

You shouldn't have to worry about MPEG2 but if you want to decode Blu-Ray (or other high-definition formats) then you should ensure your GPU can accelerate the decoding (or that you have a very fast CPU).

The PowerDVD website has some pages which help you know which hardware will work for Blu-Ray playback.

Main page with links to other pages + tools you can use to test your hardware:

http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/enu/index.jsp

System requirements:

http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/enu/system-requirement.jsp

Supported GPUs:

http://www.cyberlink.com/prog/support/cs/product-faq-content.do?id=2577

spivonious

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Jul 29th @ 7:23 AM

Thanks for the links. I just didn't want to tax the CPU (right now it's an E5200, but I might drop it to a E1000 series to save some money) with decoding duties. I'll be using a fanless HD3450 for blu-ray decoding, as I read that even the i7 doesn't have enough horsepower to decode that smoothly.

Webbo - surprisingly, all of the entry-level tuners still use software decoding. I wonder if PureVideo/Avivo takes over those duties from the CPU?

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 29th @ 11:28 AM

Tuners don't do decoding, that's left to the GPU.

spivonious

In reply to PaoloM

#Jul 29th @ 11:43 AM

D'oh! My eyes saw "encoder" and my mind read "decoder".

Ignore that question then! Smiley

CSMR

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 29th @ 11:28 AM

You don't need a discrete card for HTPC, it just adds cost and heat. On the Intel platform the best bet is something with the NvIdia 9300 chipset. There are various motherboards in microatx and mini-itx flavours. SPCR has reviews of good motherboards and cases.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to CSMR

#Jul 29th @ 4:27 PM

That depends on whether or not you use a HTPC for gaming; otherwise why aren't you using an AppleTV or XBMC? My computer has a GTX280 in it and it's fairly quiet at idle, I imagine in a suitable enclosure or with watercooling it could be made silent.

LeoDavidson

In reply to W3bbo

#Jul 29th @ 5:28 PM

I use Windows + Media Center over other network video players because:

PVR. (It lets me record & rewind broadcast TV, schedule series to be recorded, etc.)
I can keep recorded TV forever by simply copying the files, and I can play recorded TV on any machine, take it with me on holiday, etc. (This depends on how it's broadcast though. I'm lucky that the digital-terrestrial broadcasts in the UK don't flag any no-copy bits.)

I can rip a box-set of DVDs to the HDD and not have to keep getting up to swap disks. (Very important when a cat is sat on you and you finish the last episode on a disc! heh)
I know it'll play almost any file that I throw at it. (Sometimes I have to futz around with different programs & decoder options to make obscure stuff work but I know it'll always be playable in the end, aside from hardware limitations like Blu-Ray HD audio (where I could upgrade the gfx card if I really wanted it, and might do so; decided to wait and see how this high-colour-depth stuff in Windows 7 will pan out in case I get a TV that can handle it as well).
Multi-region Blu-Ray playback (& because my HTPC is much quieter than my PS3 (I seem to have one with a louder fan than most)).

I used XBMC years ago and was really impressed by it, though. That "hobby" project put dedicated, commercial consumer network-video units to shame at the time.

I think a HTPC with Media Center is a fairly unique combination of TV/video/audio features, although people who don't have all those requirements may find other things make more sense. You can certainly do all of those things on other devices but I don't know of any which let you do them all on a single device.

Speaking of which, has anyone checked out the newer Blu-Ray programs/versions that are supposed to integrate into Media Center? I watch so few Blu-Rays that it's not a big deal -- I personally don't feel that the extra pixels of high-def adds that much to most movies; there are exceptions, though -- but it'll be nice to have Blu-Ray playback integrated into the 10" UI and never have to reach for a mouse.

spivonious

In reply to CSMR

#Jul 29th @ 4:27 PM

I chose a discrete solution because that card + a geforce 7100 mobo came out cheaper than a mobo with integrated graphics that could handle blu-ray (g45/geforce 9300). If you can find me an integrated mobo with optical audio out and an HDMI port for under $100, let me know, as I'd rather not have the extra heat of a separate card.

edit: Okay, I see the Intel G45 board is $99.99 on Newegg and it fits the bill. I may switch to that one when I buy the system.

In case anyone's curious, here's what's on my HTPC wishlist. My main priority is to spend as little as possible but still have a useable box.

Case - InWin IW-BT553T.300L w/ 300W power supply ($45)

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H ($69)

CPU - Pentium Dual Core E5200 ($66)

Memory - 2x2GB DDR2-800 ($45)

Video - Asus EAH3450 Silent/Low Profile ($30)

Tuner - Hauppage HVR-1250 ($52)

Optical - Lite-On 4X BD-ROM ($70)

Storage - 500GB WD SATA2 (already own)

OS - Win7 RC (will be replaced with 7 HP after October)

Input - remote included with tuner, wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse ($25)

Webbo - why not buy a pre-built box? Because it's more fun this way Smiley

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 30th @ 6:17 AM

Webbo - why not buy a pre-built box? Because it's more fun this way

Definitely:

spivonious

In reply to Bas

#Jul 30th @ 7:01 AM

Awesome! How'd you do the drive bay/card reader cutouts? (And why on the side and not the front?)

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 30th @ 6:17 AM

This is what I have in my wish list now:

Link Depot 10 ft. HDMI TO HDMI A/V Cable Model HDMI-HDMI-3 - OEM
$5.99

ASUS M3N78-EM AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$89.99

AMD Phenom II X3 705e Heka 2.5GHz Socket AM3 65W Triple-Core Processor Model HD705EOCGIBOX - Retail
$129.00

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail

$29.99

2x Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM
$159.98

LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08 - Retail
$69.99

Subtotal: $484.94

I have all the rest (case, PSU, tuners, etc) already.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to spivonious

#Jul 30th @ 7:30 AM

Like this:

I cut some holes in the panel, took the faceplate off the DVD-RW drive, and took the card reader apart. Then I glued them flush with the panel into the holes, filled up the gaps with some polymer, and painted the entire thing. Then I clicked the drive back onto the faceplate and put the card reader back together.

I put them on the side because I didn't want to look at those black slots or a blinking DVD light while watching a movie. I wanted the whole thing to look as little like a PC as possible, so putting those things on the side wat the best way to hide them without resorting to putting them behind a door that the DVD tray might slam into.