never built an HTPC, have a lot of questions

[dfn]

I've stayed away from HTPCs for a while, but after thinking about it, I've decided I want one. I have a million questions before I start building one...

Here are my goals:

1) put in a blu ray, watch it
2) put in a dvd, watch it
3) watch dvd/blu ray images from hard drive
4) record HD & SD (no analog) stuff from cable box & play it back
5) stream video & audio from other computer
6) watch or listen any media file that is on my HTPC

For the above, I'd like to have access to any/all Audio tracks. So if it is trueHD, that's what I want to hear. I don't want any compression (audio or otherwise), or downsampling to stereo etc. My idea is to send everything to my AVR (Denon 890) and have it decode whatever audio it is getting. So, are my goals above achievable? Obviously, I don't want to experience stuttering while watching blu rays, recording stuff, and so on.

Is it better to build the HTPC by buying individual components, or just buy an assembled one? Are there even assembled ones? I've been assembling my own PCs since my first 386, so that is the preferred route for me.

I assume that I can find many video cards that will carry audio over HDMI (bitstream), and that will work fine for feeding video and audio into my receiver?
Assuming I can do this, I don't need a sound card, correct?

What do I need to record stuff on my HTPC, from my DCT (HD & SD)? If I get a tv tuner card, how can I be sure it will be able to read the signal from my cable company? As far as I know, my cable company requires a DCT, then they put the DCT's # on your account - otherwise, you would see nothing from them.

What is the minimum speed/performance I need from my cpu (and ram) to achieve stutter-less blu ray playback, streaming, and so on? How much of a difference can video cards make here?

Finally, what software would you recommend to start? I haven't used *nix since university, but I have no preference and am willing to try any OS. My only concern is HDCP compliance, and I don't know if I can get that on *nix OSes. I know you can get around it on windows by loading AnyDVD HD, but AFAIK, there is no *nix version of AnyDVD HD.


Here is my current home theatre setup:

HD PVR --- HDMI ---> Receiver
Blu Ray player --- HDMI ---> Receiver
DVDR --- HDMI ---> Receiver
Xbox360 --- component+stereo ---> Receiver
Receiver --- HDMI ---> TV

What I envision it being after my HTPC is finished:

HTPC --- HDMI ---> Receiver
DCT --- HDMI ---> Receiver
DCT --- ??? ---> HTPC
Receiver --- HDMI ---> TV
Xbox360 --- component+stereo ---> Receiver

Will it be possible to do all this, AND have it fit in a space LESS than 16" x 8 " x 20" (depth; can't have the "face" be on the longest side)?


I appreciate any help, pointers, and recommendations!

 

[s44]

You need Win7 and a lot of money. See here for general considerations and one of the many Ceton cablecard tuner discussions for the specific $400 tuner you'll want to get. (It isn't even out until the end of the month.)

 

[dfn]

Heh, how much is a lot?

For the card, couldn't I do something like this? Then I could connect my HD DCT to the card, and the card to the AVR?

 

[jdjbuffalo]

You need Win7 and a lot of money. See here for general considerations and one of the many Ceton cablecard tuner discussions for the specific $400 tuner you'll want to get. (It isn't even out until the end of the month.)

This.

If you are building a new computer for this (I would recommend it for a quiet, low power usage and powerful system) then you should probably budget around $900 - $1400 for this (this includes the $400 for the Ceton 4 tuner card).

In answer to your specific questions, yes you can bit-stream your audio in it's native/uncompressed form over a HDMI cable through an ATI 5000 series card or Intel i3 processor with an H55/H57 motherboard. The Intel solution is my preference as long as you aren't planning on gaming.

For the Ceton card, I would go to their website. They have answers to many of your cable card questions.
http://www.cetoncorp.com/buy.php
http://www.cetoncorp.com/support_faq.php

Windows 7 with Media Center (This comes with Home Premium and above) will be what you'll need for the Ceton card.

I would recommend AnyDVD HD. It is great for moving your DVD and Blu-ray collection to your HTPC or media/file server. It's awesome having your whole collection at your finger tips. If you don't currently have AnyDVD HD then wait for one of their sales (they typically have one each month). I also recommend getting the version with the updates "forever". They update the software all the time and you'll need those updates as new movies come out.

For Blu-rays you will need separate software (Windows does not decode them). The best one out there, in my opinion, is Arcsoft Total Media Theatre (TMT3). Get the SIMHD add-on for it so that the player has the option to upcovert all your DVDs to near HD quality. This will be noticeable on most TVs above 40".

You should be able to find plenty of cases that will fit in 16" x 8 " x 20".

 

[dfn]

Thanks.

I'm still a bit confused with the Ceton card. If I have a DCT from my cable company, and already get HD programming through that, and it is hooked up to my Receiver (with HDMI), can't I simply take the HDMI cable going from the DCT to the receiver and redirect it to the card I linked in my previous post?

 

[tweakboy]

Just a quick comment. Get the Hollywood Bridge , My dad has one works amazing and its firewire. thanks

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Thanks.

I'm still a bit confused with the Ceton card. If I have a DCT from my cable company, and already get HD programming through that, and it is hooked up to my Receiver (with HDMI), can't I simply take the HDMI cable going from the DCT to the receiver and redirect it to the card I linked in my previous post?

DFN, I'm not familiar with what a "DCT" but I'm going to assume it's a cable box / DVR. One of the main reasons to go with an HTPC is that it's pretty much the best DVR solution available (assuming you are using Windows 7). If you don't want to record programs on your HTPC then you don't need the Ceton card.

The Ceton card will require a CableCARD M-Card from your cable company. This typically costs $0 - $5 per month. Whereas most DVRs typically cost $9 - $25 per month. You will make money within a few years on the Ceton card, especially if you are paying close to $25 per month for your DVR.

 

[dfn]

DCT = digital cable terminal (set top box)

Sorry, I thought it was a common term. I do want to record programs on my HTPC. Right now, my PVR does it. I plan on replacing my PVR with a plain STB. My cable company does not (to my knowledge) support Cablecard, so as far as I know, I have to use some type of set top box.

My plan was the following:
1) give PVR to parents
2) get HD cable box that is not a PVR
3) get something like the card I linked to record from the HD cable box

That's why I'm wondering if the card I linked can be used. If cablecard was an option, or something else that could totally replace my HD box/PVR, then I'm all for it.

FYI, my cable company = Shaw Cablesystems (I'm in Canada).

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Oh, sorry. I just noticed you are in Canada... I thought you were in the US. I don't believe that the Canadian cable companies support the CableCard standards.

Here is a post on the AVS Forum from someone who also has Shaw's Cable:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=855550

The AVS Forum is really the best place to get answers for a lot of the questions you have because that is what they specialize in over there. Just using the search feature you should be able to find answers to most of your questions.

 

[Fallen Kell]

You need Win7 and a lot of money. See here for general considerations and one of the many Ceton cablecard tuner discussions for the specific $400 tuner you'll want to get. (It isn't even out until the end of the month.)

Actually, I personally don't recommend a Ceton cablecard solution. I would instead recommend a Hauppauge HD-PVR for capture/playback. You have a LOT more freedom in terms of software, and interfaces since you are not forced to use MS Media Center and Win7.

The HD-PVR would connect to the component + spdif outs from the cablebox (DTC) and connect via USB2.0 to the HTPC. I believe you can use SageTV, Media Center, MythTV, or a few others to control the HD-PVR (personally I use SageTV). The captured files are straight non-encrypted/DRM'ed H264 .ts files, which can be played back on any computer with the correct codecs or can be transcoded to other formats, or even be played back from a PS3.

You also get the benefit that anything that you can watch on the cable box, you can record with the HD-PVR, including Pay-Per-View, On-Demand, or premium channels. This will work until they stop broadcasting HD over component.

You now have the freedom to use any front-end you really like. While I have SageTV, I no longer use it as a front-end. The only time I pull it up is to schedule new recordings (typically maybe once a month where I will mark down new movies that have come out on the different movie channels like Encore, Stars, HBO, Showtime, etc). I have also already setup my TV series to record, and have little need to have direct interaction, so it simply runs as a service in the background simply changing the channels on the cable box and starting/stopping recording at the appropriate times.

The front end that I use is actually "Media Portal" which is free. It integrates very well so that it will open up the correct software for watching a Blu-Ray vs a HD-DVD vs a DVD. It have a great interface (with plugins like "StreamedMP" and "Moving Pictures") for keeping track of your TV series and movies that you have captured and DVD's/Blu-Ray image files.

 

[kalrith]

The HD-PVR is an interesting method. If you want to record two shows at once (or record one while watching another), you'll need two of them and a cable box with two tuners (or two cable boxes). I'm not sure if that's a lot more practical and cost-effective than the cable cards. The OP would have to weigh the costs of both solutions.

Freedom is a good thing. I also use MediaPortal and really like it, although I'm going to try out Win7 MCE in the near future. I don't even have a DVD/BD player in the HTPC (I use my PS3 for that), so that's a problem I won't have to worry about with MCE.

 

[Mant]

Guys I am bumping this thread because you are answering plenty of my questions too. Kell, can you tell me where to read about your setup? You still pay for a set top box and SageTV is where you schedule recordings even from the cable company's offerings? Sorry if I misunderstood, I am just getting into this.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yes, I still use set top box (I get up to 3 free HD boxes), but I use the same box that I would use otherwise for the TV itself (you do not have to do it this way, but that is up to you if you want to rent a box specifically for the HTPC, again some cable companies offer several for free).

I use SageTV since I already owned it. I bought it a good 5-6 years ago and paid a $5-10 upgrade fee a few years back. SageTV has services for getting your TV channel lineup, and has a very good scheduling system (I can say record all first-runs of a particular show, or just re-runs, or both, can say record it from any channel the show happens to be on, or limit it to certain channels). If something has a time-conflict, I can see other air-dates/times for the show and say to record that one instead. I mean, it really is a nice setup, just that the user interface has lagged behind some other offerings, but I have yet to find something that has as robust a scheduler.

Basically when you setup SageTV, and setup a "capture device", you will input your area code and it will then list all the TV listing/channel line-ups that are in the area. You select the appropriate line-up for that source and then optionally edit the channel listing adding/removing premium stations that you may or may not get depending on what you are paying for. Another nice thing with SageTV is that you can have different channel line-ups for different capture devices (unlike Media Center where it is just one line-up for all your devices, and too bad if you have a tuner which only gets the cable-ready channels, but have another which gets the premium stations as well). So some people actually get both cable and satellite and with Sage you could have two tuners connected one with the cable channel line-up and the other with the satellite channel line-up...

As for how things are connected:
Cable Box->component+spdif->HD-PVR/HTPC->HDMI->Integra DHC-9.9 pre-processor->HDMI->Sharp 46" LCD TV

Cable Box->HDMI->Sharp 46" LCD TV

My HTPC is in my sig for specs. It does pretty well, but could gladly use a quad core processor (which is my next upgrade, I just added the Powercolor HD5750 video card for HDMI output to allow me to bitstream audio to my pre-processor for blu-ray/HD-DVD playback, previously I was using a s/pdif connection from a Azuentek X-Plosion audio card for DTS-Live encoding...which I gladly give up for the bitstreaming and the HTPC was connected via DVI-I to my TV which accepts a DVI connection as well as 4 HDMI).

The one side effect of not using SageTV as my interface anymore is that I periodically need to go and rename the recorded files. Yes, I can view them without renaming, but if I rename them with the season and episode number in it, I can use MP-TVSeries plugin to Mediaportal to organize my TV shows. It is a really awesome interface. See the below link for an idea of how it works:

http://code.google.com/p/mptvseries/wiki/GettingStarted

I also use the "Moving Pictures" plugin to Mediaportal for accessing and cataloging my movie collection. Here are some screen shots of my own setup:

Movies are listed as follows:

If I select one is shows this:

And if I hit the "ok" button again on my remote, it plays that movie.

 

[Modelworks]

Capturing off component is analog so the quality of the D/A on the capture card is a big factor with how good the picture quality will be, you got two conversions before it ever gets to the hard drive. The audio will also need to keep sync with the signal so you might want to find a card that samples both the video and audio. Sometimes using a separate audio card for the capture can cause loss of sync .
From my experience , and I have used everything from multiple cable companies, directv and dish network and recording to pc I would choose whatever the local provider is offering in DVR devices. Usually you can rent them for under $10 a month which means that it will take about 3-4 years before you reach what it would cost to buy the hardware to do the same thing.

The other thing is getting the computer, tuner cards, IR transmitter, etc all working with the cable system. Be prepared to spend a fair amount of time getting it to work and stay working. I use a pc now for recording live tv but it is all OTA broadcast which is really easy to set up.

If you give up the idea of recording then it gets a lot simpler. You can purchase a blu ray player that does everything you want except record live tv. LG has a bunch of bluray players that play netlfix, pandora, media streamed from your pc and of course bluray disc.

Plug it in and it is ready to use, no messing with drivers, worrying about HDCP or software. To do the same thing with a pc and also have it be quiet, another issue, will cost about 3 x as much and really not add much in terms of features.

The final straw for me and HTPC for video is when I was watching a movie and up pops a windows update window right in the middle of the good part of the movie. HTPC to me is something for people that love to tinker with their setups not people that just want to watch tv.

 

[Fallen Kell]

If you are worried about the quality of the capture from a HD-PVR being analog you won't have to. Just a quote from a review on the High Definition Blog:

...the quality of the recordings is quite good and I can’t tell the difference from the original recording. As an archival device for recordings from a DVR I would say there is nothing that compares.

http://www.highdefinitionblog.com/?page_id=331

In the above review, he was actually seeing how well the HD-DVR would work to transfer recording from a cable DVR to a PC.

From another review, this one at GeekTonic:

The HD-PVR video quality is excellent. I was a little worried about how much picture quality loss I’d get since the device is essentially taking a once digital signal that is converted to analog and encoded in H.264 and pushed right to your HTPC. I can say that after testing 1080i and all the other formats I can get out of my Time Warner cable box and comparing it to OTA HD shows and unencrypted QAM shows from my HDHR, the picture is very, very good. I’m unable to tell the difference between an HDHR recorded show versus a HD-PVR show.

http://www.geektonic.com/2008/06/hauppauge-hd-pvr-update-good-bad-and.html

As for the "ugly" in the above review, that issue has since been fixed with the newer revisions that are now on the market. If you have one of the old revisions, Hauppauge has been replacing them under warranty.


Now for Modelworks experience, that is basically the whole question of to do a HTPC or not to do a HTPC. I will tell you straight off the bat, that there will be quite a bit of setup time. The software/hardware can and does get ugly during the initial configuration. Plan to spend a good weekend getting everything working. It took me the better part of the last few nights trying to get surround sound to properly work over my HDMI, all because I used the latest driver, when I should have used one point release prior (spent probably 5-6 hours figuring that out).

Cost is another factor. If you have the PC parts sitting around, it won't cost too much more to add capture. The HD-PVR for instance is around $200. A blu-ray drive will cost about $80. You can get a AMD HD5450 for audio/video for $50. Yes, you could rent a DVR from your cable provider for 2-3 years for about the same price. However, that DVR will not playback Blu-Ray, nor will it do bitstreaming of HD-DTS, or True-HD like the above HTPC would. With the rented DVR you will also not be able to burn the captured movie to a DVD and watch it from anything that has a DVD player, or stream it to a PS3 or XBox360 to watch on another TV in your house. The rented DVR will only be able to store maybe 200 hours of shows. It also won't catalog and make it easy to access your entire DVD and Blu-Ray collection like a HTPC can. I currently have 200+ of my DVD's online and accessible from my HTPC with the touch of a button. I also have the entire series of Futurama, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: TNG, most of The Simpsons, the current season of Stargate: Universe, V, FlashForward, the last 3 seasons of Heroes (just to name a few) at the touch of my remote. I can have over 1,000 hours of recorded shows simply online and availble from my HTPC, let alone what I backup to DVD for archival purposes. A rented DVR does not give you any of those features, but a HTPC can, because you are in control.

 

[Modelworks]

Yes, you could rent a DVR from your cable provider for 2-3 years for about the same price. However, that DVR will not playback Blu-Ray, nor will it do bitstreaming of HD-DTS, or True-HD like the above HTPC would.

It is a DVR it isn't supposed to play back bluray. It is for watching and recording TV and they do that very well. disc are what the bluray player is for.

or stream it to a PS3 or XBox360 to watch on another TV in your house. The rented DVR will only be able to store maybe 200 hours of shows.

My DVR can stream to any pc or ps3/360 in the home or any device that supports DLNA. Storage is 50 hours HD, 150 hours SD, and however many more hard drives I want to add to its drive port on the back of the unit. Both esata and USB can be used. DVR can stream anything from the pc or NAS to my TV as well.

It also won't catalog and make it easy to access your entire DVD and Blu-Ray collection like a HTPC can. I currently have 200+ of my DVD's online and accessible from my HTPC with the touch of a button.

You can do the same thing with a networked bluray player and a NAS holding the DVD collection and it will be easier to set up and cheaper. It also will only use about 30 watts total power. You can even do that with a $100 set top box and a NAS if you like.


HTPC were great when they were the only way to get things done, but that isn't the case now. There is specialized hardware and chipsets on the market in the last 6 months and coming in the next 6 months that makes it pretty much obsolete except for people that like to tinker with things.

Just look at how many media player type hardware boxes are on the market and coming soon. The flood gates are opening.
http://www.iboum.com/net-media-players.php

For $220 you can get boxes like this:
http://www.hdx1080.com/

Powered by HDX Voir, for user-friendly interface.
Convenient playback of retail Blu-ray and retail DVD Discs. *
Supports playback of full Blu-ray structures from over network or internal/external hard drive.
Playback of video, music, photos from any media source.
Internet browsing with wireless Bluetooth desktop support.
BT and Usenet Client.
Auto-sensing Upnp server support (works with twonkymedia, tversity, yazsoft playback etc)
Fanless design, efficient heat dissipation through 100% high quality aluminum casing.
Easy hard drive installation, without unscrewing.
Smallest footprint of 17x16x5cm

Connectivity:
Bonjour
UPnP SSDP
UPnP AV
Windows Media Connect
Windows Media Player NSS
Samba
NFS
UPNP Media Servers: TVersity, Twonkymedia
BitTorrent P2P
Usenet downloader
NAS Access : SMB, NFS, FTP


Video containers:
MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB)
MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
AVI, ASF, WMV
Matroska (MKV)
MOV (H.264), MP4
AVS
Video Decoders:
XVID SD/HD
MPEG-1
MPEG-2 MP@HL
MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
MPEG-4.10 (H.264) : BP@L3, MP@L4.0, HP@L4.0, HP@L4.1
WMV9 : MP@HL
SMPTE 421M (VC-1) : MP@HL, AP@L3

Audio Containers:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
FLAC
OGG
APE


Audio Decoders:
Dolby Digital
DTS
WMA, WMA Pro
MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3
MPEG-4 AAC-LC
MPEG-4 HE-AAC
MPEG-4 BSAC
LPCM
FLAC
Vorbis
Audio Pass-Through:
DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA
Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD


Other Formats:
ISO, IFO navigation
AVCHD navigation
Blu-ray** ready (requires addition of compatible external BD-ROM)
Photo Formats:
JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
Subtitle Formats:
SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB/IDX

 

[Mant]

The rented DVR will only be able to store maybe 200 hours of shows. It also won't catalog and make it easy to access your entire DVD and Blu-Ray collection like a HTPC can. I currently have 200+ of my DVD's online and accessible from my HTPC with the touch of a button... A rented DVR does not give you any of those features, but a HTPC can, because you are in control.

That's it exactly. I already have a HD in my cable box and I love taping shows that I miss, but I pay $17/month just for this piece.

I have recently upgraded my home computer (with quad-core and a 4650) and I am putting it into a HTPC case so I can play games on my LCD-HDTV. I want to be able to game, websurf, watch/record cable, all on my HTPC. I don't mind spending some time to set it up and I was thinking of going the CableCard route. But, I'm still learning so I expect to change my mind a few times during this process.

Great stuff on this thread so far. Thanks.

 

[QueBert]

Use XBMC for your front end, with a little work and finesse you can configure it to use external programs seamlessly to do things it can't do natively. Like play Blu-Ray & record TV. Windows Media Center & any other HTPC software are absolute crap compared to it. I have 5,000+ songs on mine plus about 100 DVD's and a few hundred TV shows. The interface when you're using a slick skin like Aeon or Alaska will make it look infinitely better than any other program out there. XBMC is also free and has one of the best communities of people surrounding it. So there are tons of plugins and mods to make it do anything you want.

 

[Modelworks]

Use XBMC for your front end, with a little work and finesse you can configure it to use external programs seamlessly to do things it can't do natively. Like play Blu-Ray & record TV.

The one thing I did not like about XBMC was that you couldn't use filters for things like sharpening video because of the way it is designed. I really wish someone would make it possible to use filters with DXVA decoding on the video card.

Windows Media Center & any other HTPC software are absolute crap compared to it.

I wouldn't go that far. windows MCE may not be as good as XBMC but it still is a good HTPC application. It does netflix natively and supports recording which is something XBMC is just now starting to focus on. There are also a bunch of good addons for MCE that give a lot of the features of XBMC.

Some of the addons I like:
http://www.mediabrowser.tv/
http://mychannellogos.com/default.aspx
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/01/adding-weather-to-media-center.html
http://en.mcetools.de/


How to change themes in MCE
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/make-your-own-7mc-themes.html

 

[Fallen Kell]

The one thing I did not like about XBMC was that you couldn't use filters for things like sharpening video because of the way it is designed. I really wish someone would make it possible to use filters with DXVA decoding on the video card.

This is the reason I love MediaPortal. You have full control as to exactly what codec is used (and in user friendly way... you can even change it from within the application with just a remote control).

 

[dfn]

Thanks for the info!
Informative discussion...

I kinda forgot about this thread and followed jdjbuffalo's link. Did some more investigating, and the only option for me, right now, is the Hauppauge HD-PVR, as Fallen Kell mentioned. This is because I'm in Canada, haha. No cable card from any cable companies here, so no tuners will achieve all that I want. The Hauppauge device would. I might go down that route in the future, but not for now. I'll settle for a normal PVR for a bit longer...

 

[The Boston Dangler]

this thread delivers the goods. don't stop now!

 

[Fallen Kell]

What else is there still to be said at this point?

The OP got an idea of what is available and what can be done. Most others got a crash course in HTPC's, reasons for and against. The nitty gritty hasn't really been fully covered in here, so I guess we could go on with that, but the reality is there are so many different ways/philosophies with building a HTPC that it is hard to go to those nitty-gritties without knowing what the person is looking for/trying to do.

I'm of the do-it-all-in-one-box kind of guy, which means my HTPC needs to be of a form-factor that will fit things like big-massive heatsinks so it can stay quiet with higher performing parts. Yes, it is showing its age in the CPU department, but that is because I try to spend less than $300 a year on it (this year I went over that limit due to hard drive space and a dying power supply, but the power supply lasted 7 years so I can't complain).

But many people like to go the micro-build direction. Use low power and heat producing components which they can put into a very small box that can tuck away/hide in their entertainment center. And rely on network services for the storage needs, or simply don't record TV, and just use it for blu-ray/internet/netflix/music.

Again, there are so many different ways to go that it is hard to state anything without knowing what someone is trying to accomplish.