Minimalist HTPC Recommendations?

[jjlawren]

I'm looking to build an HTPC for my living room, but I am on a pretty tight budget. I'll be using it primarily to stream and play divx, svcd, and other random media formats. Recording TV shows might be an option too, since I have a Winfast TV 2000 XP that I could use (possibly processor-intensive for real-time MPEG-2 encoding?). So I'm looking for hardware suggestions, keeping in mind that budget is big concern. Onboard hardware is fine, since all I really need is an S-Video connection and analog audio at this time. What has everyone around here had success with when building their HTPCs with these considerations in mind?


Edit:

Here's the idea I'm working with after the suggestions posted here:

ASUS Pundit
2.2GHz Celeron (Northwood)
256MB RAM
5400RPM 40GB HD
Winfast TV 2000 XP
DVD drive

Should this be powerful enough to handle PVR? I'm sure it can handle playback of anything I can throw at it. Is there anything else obvious that I'm missing?

 

[squidman]

whats your budget?

 

[jjlawren]

Originally posted by: squidman
whats your budget?

I'd like to stay within a few hundred dollars if possible. I just need this for media playback, not gaming or anything else. It doesn't even need to play DVDs, since I have a standalone player for that.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

If budget is #1, I'd try to find a Shuttle SV25 and a Tualatin-core Celeron. Coupled with at least a half-gig of RAM, that'll handle HTPC on a shoestring fairly well.

- M4H

 

[DaveSimmons]

for hires divx playback you want about an 800 MHz CPU. For video out most people recommend a $40 Sapphire ATI card (newegg, get a fanless model for low-noise). A Soyo SY-TISU o815ep and Tualatin Celeron 1.0A is a cool / quiet combo that would be great for this, or you can get something louder (but maybe cheaper) from AMD in FS/FT.

For recording, you want a much better CPU -- best deal is probably an XP 1700+ - 2000+.

Since you're on a budget, a nice MSI booksize P4 is out, as are the MSI mega and shuttle cubes. An Antec case with quiet PS or a dirt-cheap case and Seasonic 300 watt.

If you really want recording and have a 1.7 - 2 GHz rig now, the thing to do might be to buy a new faster rig for gaming and make your old one the HTPC box.

 

[squidman]

It kinda doesnt match; u wanna do MPEG2, recording, and yet u're only ready to spend couple hundreds? Needless to say, M4H is right. Celery and a nice i815et based mobo shall carry out the assignment really well. But if u decide to do recordings, encodings - then P4 system will not be couple of hundreds.

 

[chocoruacal]

My "weakest" HTPC is about what I'd consider to be the minimum. Handles all types of audio/video just fine, and has enough left over to double as a file server.

800mhz (p3)
512MB RAM (pc133)

Mainboard doesn't really make a difference, though its nice to have onboard USB 2.0, Firewire, NIC etc. This particular machine has a PCI Radeon 7000 w/svideo out, which is great because it has hardware MPEG decoding.

If I was going to build another now though, with prices so cheap, I wouldn't go with less than...

XP1700 ~ $50
ECS to 8RDA+ ~ $50-85
512MB RAM ~ $25-$75, depending on the direction of the wind

Of course you also need some serious hard drive space to back that all up. I have the same leadtek card, and an hour of video using MJPEG comes in at around 6-8 gigs....HDs fill up quickly that way

 

[jjlawren]

Okay. Assuming no MPEG encoding would be necessary, would a Mini-ITX board be sufficient, like the EPIA M9000?

What are some good small cases you guys would recommend? Or would a case/board combo (Shuttle, MSI, etc) be a better choice than the Mini-ITX + case?

I'm not really sure what route I want to go now (as you can probably see) so I'd like to hear as much input as I can get.

 

[jjlawren]

One more question. What about wireless LAN? I would like to network this HTPC with my current PC wirelessly. Is there a preferred cheap, easy way to do this (PCI cards)? I would just need something fast enough to stream video and music stored on my PC to the HTPC.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I'd be a little concerned about divx on the Via Epia, but mpeg should be fine. TV-out won't be nearly as good with the onbaord compared to getting an ATI card though. I've read mixed reviews of the onboard sound.

This $182 booksize at newegg might be a better choice: MSI Model MS-6243VA-040 Hermes 845GV SLIM PC -BLACK RETAIL
It was reviewed at (TomsHardware?) and they said it was quiet. If you don't like the onboard video you can add an ATI card and still have a second slot free for a TV card.

Pair it with a budget P4-Celeron now (2.0 for Northwind) and 256 MB DDR to stay on budget.

 

[bocamojo]

I would suggest not building an HTPC at all. What you should be looking at are set-top boxes that are wireless LAN capable. Then, you can stream everything from your main PC to the set-top box, since that's all you want it for (since you already have a stand-alone DVD player). The new Tivo's can do this, I believe, as well as several other boxes coming onto the market. If I were you, that's what I'd be researching right now.

 

[afzan]

I use a p3 500, 256ram, matrox g450 for divx playback .. works pretty well, ffdshow scales the detail down on some of the higher bit rate stuff (ie: 1500kbps+), I'm just going to replace the cpu with a celeron 1.0A @ 1.333ghz soon

You also might want to consider a XBOX with modchip

 

[bluemax]

The ASUS Pundit is a nice, low-profile, ****QUIET**** machine that sells pretty cheap. Pop in a processor, RAM, HDD and you're good to go. 2x PCI means it's not going to be a monster gaming machine, but its sleek, silver look makes it look more like a DVD player than a computer. And you won't hear any #$&% buzzing fans!

If you want some gaming on the side, I suppose you could replace the perfectly fine onboard video with a GF4MX or Radeon 9000/9100 PCI.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
If budget is #1, I'd try to find a Shuttle SV25 and a Tualatin-core Celeron. Coupled with at least a half-gig of RAM, that'll handle HTPC on a shoestring fairly well.

- M4H

I agree, but I'd only go with 256 MB of RAM. I'm able to capture with Xvid in real time w/ a 90% quality setting on a 1.3G Celeron at 320x240 (standard NTSC res is just a tad over that, so I'm not losing that much) and can use ffdshow w/ zoomplayer to clean it up & have those captures looking very good, much better than anything I've gotten with MPEG-2. Plus, as you probably know, the files are much smaller than you'd get with that, so hard drive space wouldn't be as much of an issue.

 

[piasabird]

I have seen many complaints against the Mini-ITX motherboards when it comes to encoding and playing DVD for just the purpose you suggest. I think a P4 Matx fully integrated motherboard may be best.

 

[piasabird]

Via Arena has a Forum for Mini-ITX

Via Arena

As a suggestion I suggest you ask them what they think.

 

[jjlawren]

Originally posted by: bocamojo
I would suggest not building an HTPC at all. What you should be looking at are set-top boxes that are wireless LAN capable. Then, you can stream everything from your main PC to the set-top box, since that's all you want it for (since you already have a stand-alone DVD player). The new Tivo's can do this, I believe, as well as several other boxes coming onto the market. If I were you, that's what I'd be researching right now.

As far as I know, Tivo's and the like can only stream music and still photos from a home network. I also need video to be supported, with a wide variety of codecs.

 

[jjlawren]

Originally posted by: afzan
You also might want to consider a XBOX with modchip

Hey, I'd like this to be at least slightly portable. ;-)

After using my friend's XBOX w/ modchip, there were a good amount of high bitrate divx movies that it couldn't handle. Not sure if it was the processor or what but things did get choppy.

 

[bocamojo]

Originally posted by: jjlawren

Originally posted by: bocamojo
I would suggest not building an HTPC at all. What you should be looking at are set-top boxes that are wireless LAN capable. Then, you can stream everything from your main PC to the set-top box, since that's all you want it for (since you already have a stand-alone DVD player). The new Tivo's can do this, I believe, as well as several other boxes coming onto the market. If I were you, that's what I'd be researching right now.

As far as I know, Tivo's and the like can only stream music and still photos from a home network. I also need video to be supported, with a wide variety of codecs.

Ok, that was a bad example. I guess what I'm saying is that the time of the networked set top box is approaching. There are devices out there now that connect to your PC via a network (wired or wireless), and connect to your TV. Check out this article on the PRISMIQ: Link

This device will eventually support more codecs. This is still something that is in the early stages. My point is, something like this could suit your needs without forcing you to build another PC. This box sells for about 250, which is a lot cheaper than most PC's you would build. Just trying to give you some options to consider.

 

[chocoruacal]

1. Wireless is a baaaad idea. Its just too slow right now. MAYBE you could get a decent stream, but wait until you have 10 gigs of Xvid files you want to transfer from one machine to another.....it'll have you on the floor crying like a baby its so slow

2. Epias are a baaaad idea. They are slow and I wouldn't trust them for high bitrate + AC3 Xvid files. I also don't like the idea that you're severly handicapped when it comes to upgrades.

3. Set top box....worst idea EVER. I can't believe anyone would suggest that outside of a Best Buy or Circuit City environment.

But you know what....I have yet to see you post a budget for any of this, so how are we REALLY supposed to suggest hardware?!?!?!

 

[jjlawren]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
1. Wireless is a baaaad idea. Its just too slow right now. MAYBE you could get a decent stream, but wait until you have 10 gigs of Xvid files you want to transfer from one machine to another.....it'll have you on the floor crying like a baby its so slow

I would of course have an Ethernet connection as a backup, but I would like to be able to move the box to any TV in the house, connect it, and start streaming a video or music. As long as the wireless can handle a few MB/sec, it should be able to stream any media I have right now.

2. Epias are a baaaad idea. They are slow and I wouldn't trust them for high bitrate + AC3 Xvid files. I also don't like the idea that you're severly handicapped when it comes to upgrades.

Yeah, I've pretty much scrapped this idea already

3. Set top box....worst idea EVER. I can't believe anyone would suggest that outside of a Best Buy or Circuit City environment.

I still haven't even found a set top box that would cover all types of media I would like to play, so this isn't an option for me, either.

But you know what....I have yet to see you post a budget for any of this, so how are we REALLY supposed to suggest hardware?!?!?!

Ok, I'd like to stay under $500 at the absoulute maximum. I'd prefer around $300-$400, but I'm not sure if this is possible.

 

[bluemax]

ASUS Pundit review

 

[bocamojo]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
1. Wireless is a baaaad idea. Its just too slow right now. MAYBE you could get a decent stream, but wait until you have 10 gigs of Xvid files you want to transfer from one machine to another.....it'll have you on the floor crying like a baby its so slow

2. Epias are a baaaad idea. They are slow and I wouldn't trust them for high bitrate + AC3 Xvid files. I also don't like the idea that you're severly handicapped when it comes to upgrades.

3. Set top box....worst idea EVER. I can't believe anyone would suggest that outside of a Best Buy or Circuit City environment.

But you know what....I have yet to see you post a budget for any of this, so how are we REALLY supposed to suggest hardware?!?!?!

Choco, you shouldn't be so quick to shoot down the idea of a networked set top box. Believe me, I'm no Circuit City neophite. I can just see the writing on the wall. I myself have a P4 with an AIW 8500DV that I use for a PVR, etc. In fact, I've owned a PVR capable PC for the last 3 years (which I've built myself), so I know a little bit about the subject. In the last six months or so, I've seen networked DVD players, PVR's and a few other dedicated media devices come on the market, which can be used for streaming audio and video over a home network from a central PC. Also, as far as streaming goes, I can stream divx, WMP, SVCD, and MPEG-2 files over my wireless and wired 11MBPS network with no problems. With that in mind, and with the temptation for manufacturers to be able to capture market share in the living rooms of users (those who have home networks), I would say that there is a good possibility we will be seeing a lot more capable set top boxes that handle all the same codecs as regular PC's in the very short term. Just because it seems silly today, doesn't mean it won't seem completely obvious tomorrow.

P.S. Here's another angle: Game consoles doubling as the media player... Check out this interesting article about the PS2: article

 

[jjlawren]

Please check the first post and throw any suggestions you might have my way.

 

[jjlawren]

One more bump to try to get some final opinions.