- Jun 16, 2007
- 3,102
- 24
- 81
I'm a long time computer guy that never really built a HTPC. I've messed around with some OTA tuner cards before, but that's about it. However I'm kinda tired of the ever increasing rental fees cable companies charge me for boxes that look like they are 10 years old. So I'd like to build something and be able to ditch the boxes. Part of the problem though is I need to also make sure it's simple enough to use for the no tech literate people in the house.
I went out and bought a Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH. A 6 tuner box that connects to my network.
And I'm using a Dell Inspiron 580s machine that's probably about 2 or 3 years old with a Core i3-550 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 750 and 1TB hard drives. And running Windows 7 Pro.
Question 1. Alternatives to Windows Media Center?
I have a cable card installed and a tuning adapter from the cable company. With Windows Media Center I'm able to get all my cable channels, including the premium channels like HBO. From what I've read it sounds like Windows Media Center is the only program that will let me watch all the encrypted and premium channels. And things like Media Portal can only see unencrypted channels or something. Is this correct? Because I don't particularly like Windows Media Center so far and am a little concerned that Microsoft is abandoning it.
Question 2. Does AMD suck?
I have an AMD Radeon 4350 card, I used this card in my work PC for a while and it's a nice low profile passively cooled card. I figured it would be awesome in my Inspiron 580s turned HTPC machine (I can only fit low profile cards in it). But for some reason animations in Windows Media Center are super laggy. When I open the guide and video is playing behind it, the video gets real stuttery, the guide is slow to navigate. When I took out the AMD card and use the integrated Intel graphics, everything got much smoother. Unfortunately the Intel graphics on my older i3 apparently don't support HDCP (and a lot of people on the AVS forums seemed to back this up), so I still need a discrete graphics card. So I put in an Nvidia GT620 and its was smooth like the Intel as well. I'm not sure if it's the older 4350 that's the problem or just AMD drivers in general. It seems like the 6450 would have been a better card than the GT620, but I am having trust issues with AMD since I've had driver headaches with them in the past for other issues as well. I guess the question is, do people have AMD graphics card in their HTPCs and not have issues with Windows Media Center lag?
I tried Catalyst 13.1, 13.4 beta (apparently no newer drivers for 4000 series cards now) and stock Windows 7 drivers, none of those fixed the animation lag in WMC. Also tried disabling the PCI-E power management in power options and disabling video enhancement features in Catalyst.
Question 3. Silicon Dust or Ceton?
I'm starting to think the Ceton tuner might not have been a good choice. It's slow to tune channels (even with the different video card), take 3 to 5 seconds. Seems like people complain their customer service isn't as good (though I haven't had to use it yet). And I think I probably didn't need to spend $300 on a 6 tuner device anyway. I'm contemplating returning this and getting a Silicone Dust HDHomeRun Prime with 3 tuners for $130 or waiting on the new Silicone Dust 4 tuner device I hear is on the way. I've seen some comments that the HDHomeRun Prime may tune channels a little bit faster. And I also like that Silicone Dust hosts it's own support forums. Sounds like they are more engaged with it's customers. Though I do see some guy named Eric that I think works at Ceton posting a lot of the AVS forums.
Question 4. Power management?
I'm having an odd issue where when I press the sleep button on my HTPC remote, the machine goes to sleep, but then it immediately wakes up. And another issue where it sometimes doesn't even go all the way to sleep, it turns off the display and the hard drive starts churning away, but doesn't actually go to sleep (white light doesn't turn orange as it should on this Dell) and I can't get the display to come back on without hard booting it. This might be some isolated weird issue with this Dell, so I'll need to trouble shoot this more.
I'm wondering about power management though. Do people leave their HTPCs running 24/7? Can you put an HTPC into sleep mode and would it wake up automatically to record a show (something I can't seem to test at the moment)?
Question 5. Media extenders?
I have an Xbox 360 that I'm testing with as a media extender. It works, but it doesn't seem that practical since I don't know if I really want to keep the console running 24/7 or having to boot it up and launch the WMC app each time.
Are there any low power devices that I could use as a media extender? I know of the Ceton Echo, was hoping for some more alternatives.
I went out and bought a Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH. A 6 tuner box that connects to my network.
And I'm using a Dell Inspiron 580s machine that's probably about 2 or 3 years old with a Core i3-550 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 750 and 1TB hard drives. And running Windows 7 Pro.
Question 1. Alternatives to Windows Media Center?
I have a cable card installed and a tuning adapter from the cable company. With Windows Media Center I'm able to get all my cable channels, including the premium channels like HBO. From what I've read it sounds like Windows Media Center is the only program that will let me watch all the encrypted and premium channels. And things like Media Portal can only see unencrypted channels or something. Is this correct? Because I don't particularly like Windows Media Center so far and am a little concerned that Microsoft is abandoning it.
Question 2. Does AMD suck?
I have an AMD Radeon 4350 card, I used this card in my work PC for a while and it's a nice low profile passively cooled card. I figured it would be awesome in my Inspiron 580s turned HTPC machine (I can only fit low profile cards in it). But for some reason animations in Windows Media Center are super laggy. When I open the guide and video is playing behind it, the video gets real stuttery, the guide is slow to navigate. When I took out the AMD card and use the integrated Intel graphics, everything got much smoother. Unfortunately the Intel graphics on my older i3 apparently don't support HDCP (and a lot of people on the AVS forums seemed to back this up), so I still need a discrete graphics card. So I put in an Nvidia GT620 and its was smooth like the Intel as well. I'm not sure if it's the older 4350 that's the problem or just AMD drivers in general. It seems like the 6450 would have been a better card than the GT620, but I am having trust issues with AMD since I've had driver headaches with them in the past for other issues as well. I guess the question is, do people have AMD graphics card in their HTPCs and not have issues with Windows Media Center lag?
I tried Catalyst 13.1, 13.4 beta (apparently no newer drivers for 4000 series cards now) and stock Windows 7 drivers, none of those fixed the animation lag in WMC. Also tried disabling the PCI-E power management in power options and disabling video enhancement features in Catalyst.
Question 3. Silicon Dust or Ceton?
I'm starting to think the Ceton tuner might not have been a good choice. It's slow to tune channels (even with the different video card), take 3 to 5 seconds. Seems like people complain their customer service isn't as good (though I haven't had to use it yet). And I think I probably didn't need to spend $300 on a 6 tuner device anyway. I'm contemplating returning this and getting a Silicone Dust HDHomeRun Prime with 3 tuners for $130 or waiting on the new Silicone Dust 4 tuner device I hear is on the way. I've seen some comments that the HDHomeRun Prime may tune channels a little bit faster. And I also like that Silicone Dust hosts it's own support forums. Sounds like they are more engaged with it's customers. Though I do see some guy named Eric that I think works at Ceton posting a lot of the AVS forums.
Question 4. Power management?
I'm having an odd issue where when I press the sleep button on my HTPC remote, the machine goes to sleep, but then it immediately wakes up. And another issue where it sometimes doesn't even go all the way to sleep, it turns off the display and the hard drive starts churning away, but doesn't actually go to sleep (white light doesn't turn orange as it should on this Dell) and I can't get the display to come back on without hard booting it. This might be some isolated weird issue with this Dell, so I'll need to trouble shoot this more.
I'm wondering about power management though. Do people leave their HTPCs running 24/7? Can you put an HTPC into sleep mode and would it wake up automatically to record a show (something I can't seem to test at the moment)?
Question 5. Media extenders?
I have an Xbox 360 that I'm testing with as a media extender. It works, but it doesn't seem that practical since I don't know if I really want to keep the console running 24/7 or having to boot it up and launch the WMC app each time.
Are there any low power devices that I could use as a media extender? I know of the Ceton Echo, was hoping for some more alternatives.