Questions on HTPC components

[Booty]

I've been waiting to build a HTPC for years, and now with some cash and gift cards at my disposal I think it might finally be time...

I want to replace our current DVD player with this box. I'll most likely be buying a BD-ROM/DVD-RW drive, though maybe not at first because we don't own any BR movies right now. Either way, I'm hoping/wondering if the PC will up-convert (or whatever the proper terminology is) our DVDs... I've read a lot of talk about newer standalone players with this capability, and it'll be a while before we replace our ~250 DVDs, so it'd be nice to get a little better quality out of what we have. So - any special requirements to get this done (either hardware or software)?

I also want to do some gaming - I haven't built myself a new PC in about 5 years, and I used to love FPS's. However, when I moved in with my wife I sold my house and gave up my "man cave" which had a huge desk for all my PCs and Logitech 5.1 setup... now I have a small desk in the corner of the dining room and I use the built-in speakers on my monitor. So, needless to say, PC gaming is not the same. With the new HTPC in the living room, I'd like to be able to play some of the newer FPS at a reasonable framerate (think midrange video cards) and have everything output properly through our receiver/surround sound. If it weren't for wanting to game, I'd just throw together a system with a Nvidia 9400 chipset and use the onboard video, which I may still do at first if I can just add a discrete card later and have everything work right. Our current receiver is, again, about 5 years old and doesn't have HDMI inputs, but I will probably be replacing the receiver sometime this year. So I'm looking at starting out running the video straight to the TV via DVI/HDMI and the audio through the receiver using SPDIF, but would like to eventually run both over HDMI... not sure if/how that's possible with a discrete video card. Maybe it isn't?

Finally, I've been ripping all our CDs to FLAC and/or MP3 for a while. Right now we're using a (Logitech) Squeezebox to play our music through the home stereo, but once the HTPC is done we'll just be streaming the music off the server through it. I'm sure if the audio is working fine for videos and games that it'll be just fine for standard "PC" stuff, but I thought I'd just mention this in case I'm overlooking something or there's something different I can/should do in this area. We listen to a LOT of music, and it will be nice to have our library on screen for playback instead of scrolling through everything on the Squeezebox.

I've read the recent sub-$1000 PC article here on Anandtech and would probably build a system more or less directly out of the HTPC section of that guide. I guess my main questions/concerns are the "upconversion" and how the addition of a discrete GPU for gaming will affect the setup. Any feedback? TIA...


[Update 2008.01.20]:

Here's a list of the hardware I ended up buying... as I mentioned, almost exactly what's in the recent Anandtech article...

Processor: AMD Phenom 8650
Motherboard: Asus M3N78-EM
Memory: G.Skill PC2 6400 (2 x 2 GB)
Optical: Sony Optiarc AD-7221S
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black (1TB)
Case: Silverstone LC13B-E
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling Silencer PPCS500
Graphics: Using integrated video (for now)
Audio: Using integrated audio
Remote: eData DEC-200B (Newegg had a combo deal on this)

The rest of my setup...
Receiver: Panasonic SA-XR50
Display: Toshiba 40RV525U
Speakers: Fluance AV938 (Front), AVSC (Center), and AVBP2 (Surround); Dayton Sub

At the time I bought my speakers and receiver (~5 years ago), I basically posted on hometheaterforum.com asking what I could get for under $1000. It may not be anything great, but I've certainly heard worse.

In any case, right now the PC is hooked up to the TV using a DVI-HDMI cable I already had, and to the receiver using the optical S/PDIF output. I really didn't have any trouble setting this stuff up - had to choose the S/PDIF output via the sound options in control panel and that was about it. I still might connect the system using the analog output to the 6ch DVD input on my receiver, but at this point I'm thinking "if it aint broke..."

Only outstanding issue with this stuff is that every time I switch inputs on the TV, when I go back to the HDMI (HTPC) input, I have to change the picture size back to native. Not a huge deal, though.

Vista Media Center is a breeze to setup, for the most part. Once I installed ffdshow-tryouts, pretty much every video format I've tried playing has worked. I had to install Haali media splitter for .mkv files, and had to check a couple options in the ffdshow audio setup to pass DTS and AC3 to the receiver, but everything pretty much just plain works.

I initially changed the registry to enable the DVD Library menu in VMC, but then later installed Mediabrowser so all movies were in the same menu instead of being split between the DVD Library and Video sections. Once I did that, I realized that I didn't have a "Play DVD" option for when I rent a movie, so I restored the original registry setting.

I'm ripping DVDs straight to the hard drive... not doing ISO files because, honestly, I don't trust Daemon Tools anymore. I know it's easy to install it without the spyware, but I guess it's the principle of the matter. So I'm waiting/hoping for Virtual CloneDrive support before I mess with ISO files. I don't have a blu-ray drive or movies yet anyway, so no big deal.

A major complaint I have with VMC has to do with the music library and how it handles album art. From what I've read, the only way people seem to be able to always have album art show up is to actually imbed it in their MP3 files. I think that's ridiculous. I'm, again, waiting/hoping for a fix so it just reads uses the folder.jpg file in the album directory, but right now that only seems to work with the first track on most albums. If anyone else has experienced this and has a fix or suggestion, let me know!!

Still on my to-do list:

- Research whether using a different DVD codec will upscale better. Things look good to me now, but curious if it gets even better.

- Install BR-ROM drive, setup system for archive/backup/playback of BR movies

- Experiment with DXVA

- Drop in a different system drive and try out MediaPortal

 

[yh125d]

Anything on this list will handle the playback/uponversion paired with a moderate CPU (think E2xxx) well. All Nvidia cards with HDMI and ATI HD4xxx cards will carry the audio over HDMI for when you get a HDMI capable receiver

 

[heyheybooboo]

You should come in for a lot less than $1k - even with a tuner card, OS and htpc case ...

 

[Booty]

Originally posted by: yh125d
Anything on this list will handle the playback/uponversion paired with a moderate CPU (think E2xxx) well. All Nvidia cards with HDMI and ATI HD4xxx cards will carry the audio over HDMI for when you get a HDMI capable receiver

So, stupid question maybe, but how does the sound get "added" to the HDMI output on the video card? Is there an internal/external cable/dongle that takes the onboard sound from the motherboard and sends it out the graphics card instead? Is there, more or less, a "sound card" built into the video card? Just a little confused here...

Like I said, this isn't as big of deal immediately as my current receiver only accepts optical or coax digital sound, and I'm not using it for video switching. So I'll be using video only over HDMI to the TV and sending the sound out to the receiver. But eventually both will go through the receiver, once I replace it.

Oh, and regarding the upconversion - is that configured in whichever media player software package I run, or...?

Thanks

 

[olds]

Sound from mobo to video card.
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...enterthread=y#30201762

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: Booty

Originally posted by: yh125d
Anything on this list will handle the playback/uponversion paired with a moderate CPU (think E2xxx) well. All Nvidia cards with HDMI and ATI HD4xxx cards will carry the audio over HDMI for when you get a HDMI capable receiver

So, stupid question maybe, but how does the sound get "added" to the HDMI output on the video card? Is there an internal/external cable/dongle that takes the onboard sound from the motherboard and sends it out the graphics card instead? Is there, more or less, a "sound card" built into the video card? Just a little confused here...

Like I said, this isn't as big of deal immediately as my current receiver only accepts optical or coax digital sound, and I'm not using it for video switching. So I'll be using video only over HDMI to the TV and sending the sound out to the receiver. But eventually both will go through the receiver, once I replace it.

Oh, and regarding the upconversion - is that configured in whichever media player software package I run, or...?

Thanks

Pretty much no (and this is a big ol' can of worms we are opening here that I don't want to debate).

Your video card technically does the scaling through hardware acceleration when it outputs to the panel. (Thus, the debate begins ...)

You can output multi-channel analog PCM from your computer to your reciever - just watch out for the ground loop

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: Booty

Originally posted by: yh125d
Anything on this list will handle the playback/uponversion paired with a moderate CPU (think E2xxx) well. All Nvidia cards with HDMI and ATI HD4xxx cards will carry the audio over HDMI for when you get a HDMI capable receiver

So, stupid question maybe, but how does the sound get "added" to the HDMI output on the video card? Is there an internal/external cable/dongle that takes the onboard sound from the motherboard and sends it out the graphics card instead? Is there, more or less, a "sound card" built into the video card? Just a little confused here...

Like I said, this isn't as big of deal immediately as my current receiver only accepts optical or coax digital sound, and I'm not using it for video switching. So I'll be using video only over HDMI to the TV and sending the sound out to the receiver. But eventually both will go through the receiver, once I replace it.

Oh, and regarding the upconversion - is that configured in whichever media player software package I run, or...?

Thanks

Honestly, HDMI audio over PC is such a fustercluck right now I wouldn't even worry about it, especially given your budget. The Asus HDAV 1.3 card seems to finally be getting good drivers so that might be an option down the road, but that card itself would take up a quarter of your budget.

On my HTPC I use three RCA cables to my receiver's multichannel in ports, and the sound quality is amazing for BluRay and HD-DVD playback. You can use a SPDIF cable but PowerDVD compresses the audio for digital output. No such limitation is there for analog.

Right now HDMI audio on HTPC is neither cheap nor easy, so I wouldn't waste your time or money. About half of the posts in the HTPC forums on AVS are some sort of issue with HDMI audio.

As to your other question. Upconversion is done automatically based on the display resolution set at the HTPC. Thus, if you have your display run at 1920x1080, Vista Media Center will scale all playback to that resolution.

 

[Booty]

Originally posted by: XMan
Honestly, HDMI audio over PC is such a fustercluck right now I wouldn't even worry about it, especially given your budget.

Exactly - not a lot of clear-cut, "this will definitely work" solutions out there. It's not that I'm on a sub-$1000 budget per say... it's more like I don't see the point of spending $2000 now when I can spend under a grand now, get most of the functionality, and then swap out some parts a year or two down the road that will work better and still probably cost less in the long run.

On my HTPC I use three RCA cables to my receiver's multichannel in ports, and the sound quality is amazing for BluRay and HD-DVD playback. You can use a SPDIF cable but PowerDVD compresses the audio for digital output. No such limitation is there for analog.

So you're using 3 of those cables that have the mini-jack (headphone sized) on one end and red/white RCA on the other? One for front, one for rear, one for center/sub? Or some other type of cable...? My receiver is a Pansonic SA-XR50, so I'm assuming I would just plug everything into the DVD/DVD 6CH audio input? How do you know which of the white/red RCA connections is for center and which is for sub?

As to your other question. Upconversion is done automatically based on the display resolution set at the HTPC. Thus, if you have your display run at 1920x1080, Vista Media Center will scale all playback to that resolution.

You mention both Vista Media Center and PowerDVD... but from hhbb and your posts it seems that, really, this is the case for all software, be it media player, vlc, mplayer, whatever... switch to full-screen and there's your "upconversion". Right?


My current PC is running a 7800GT (XP, not Vista BTW), but I have an 8600GT laying around from another machine I'm working on that I could pop in if either of those would be sufficient to test everything out. If so, I might run out and pick up all the cables and see how things work with my current computer... then I can just use the same setup with the new PC once its built. Anyone know if those cards won't display properly on my TV? Not testing blue-ray yet, obviously... just checking the DVD playback quality, etc.

Thanks again for everyone's feedback.

 

[XMan]

So you're using 3 of those cables that have the mini-jack (headphone sized) on one end and red/white RCA on the other? One for front, one for rear, one for center/sub? Or some other type of cable...? My receiver is a Pansonic SA-XR50, so I'm assuming I would just plug everything into the DVD/DVD 6CH audio input? How do you know which of the white/red RCA connections is for center and which is for sub?

Yup, those exact cables. Sounds like you have a similar receiver to mine. On mine, I just matched up red/white because it had three pairs of inputs in a row. You might have to swap them around if the bass is coming out of the center when you test the audio. One thing I did that saved me a lot of headaches - I used my wife's labelmaker to label each audio cable with the right jack color. That will save you time and hassle if you have to pull the HTPC off of the TV stand.

You mention both Vista Media Center and PowerDVD... but from hhbb and your posts it seems that, really, this is the case for all software, be it media player, vlc, mplayer, whatever... switch to full-screen and there's your "upconversion". Right?

Correctemundo. I know for a fact that VMC and PowerDVD utilize GPU acceleration - not sure about the others. That might be a consideration for you if you're looking to save a bit on a CPU.

My current PC is running a 7800GT (XP, not Vista BTW), but I have an 8600GT laying around from another machine I'm working on that I could pop in if either of those would be sufficient to test everything out. If so, I might run out and pick up all the cables and see how things work with my current computer... then I can just use the same setup with the new PC once its built. Anyone know if those cards won't display properly on my TV? Not testing blue-ray yet, obviously... just checking the DVD playback quality, etc.

Honestly, if you've got an 8600GT, you can scratch a video card off of your list. It will accelerate Blu Ray playback just fine.

Here's my HTPC, for comparison's sake.

Core 2 E6400 @ stock
Gigabyte DS3 (using onboard HD audio and gig-E)
4GB Generic DDR2-667
80GB OS
500GB Recorded TV
9500GT (in all honestly not much faster than an 8600GT)
Two PVR-500 SD tuners
Two HVR-2250 HD tuners
LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD reader

So, needless to say, you can get a fully-featured HTPC for under 1K and it will be reasonably future proof. My rig can handle games, record 8 shows simultaneously, and play back all HD media. Can't beat that with a stick.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I'm probably going to screw this up and confuse you (so you may want to ignore this), but ...

The 8600gt will provide hardware acceleration for h.264 and this most likely includes Blu-ray.

IIRC when the series was first introduced nVidia promoted them as "HDCP-capable" and left it up to the OEM as to whether it would be enabled. Some of the original cards did not enable HDCP capability. Ooops.

Welcome to DRM Hell.

HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) through a PMP (protected media pathway) was established to annoy the living crap out of the 95% of us who are honest but presumed guilty of piracy.

The PMP works with something called AACS (Advanced Access Content System).

Content on a Blu-ray (or HD DVD) disc is encrypted using a media key. Your media player (either the stand-alone player or the PC drive) provides a corresponding device key. If there is a 'love connection' between the keys the content can be decrypted and played.

The good thing is (to the best of my knowledge) no movie studio has yet to enable the most onerous of their ?content protection? schemes. This includes downsampling of the video and audio (substantially reducing the quality) or preventing any playback what-so-ever.

You and many among us have HDTVs, video cards, monitors, receivers, etc., that were manufactured prior to the development of AACS and HDCP. To our benefit the studios are smart enough not to completely drop the DRM bomb and piss off their customers who have big investments in their home media rigs - but the time is coming ....

The last I heard the DRM 'can' has been kicked down the road until 2011 or 2012 for the most part.

 

[acole1]

OP, regarding heyheybooboo's post:

I have an XFX 8600GT that I made sure supported HDCP. If you want to know if your card is HDCP compliant, just check with the manufacturer and see if that model/part was built with HDCP support.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: acole1
OP, regarding heyheybooboo's post:

I have an XFX 8600GT that I made sure supported HDCP. If you want to know if your card is HDCP compliant, just check with the manufacturer and see if that model/part was built with HDCP support.

And if it's not, just download AnyDVD HD.

 

[Booty]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. Over the weekend I hooked my current PC (with the 7800GT) up to the TV using a DVI-HDMI cable and attempted to run the audio out using the analog output from my PC as XMan discussed above. I only had a couple of the cables I needed for that, but it appears that should work alright. If not, I suppose I can always try SPDIF on the new box once it's built... it sounds like, one way or another, I should be able to make it work. My current machine is running XP and doesn't have a BD-ROM, so I obviously couldn't test that, but I popped in my Dark Knight DVD and it looked fine... I'd have to make a copy of it, put it in the DVD player, and switch back and forth between inputs to see if the PC "upconversion" it making much of a difference.

I'll probably go ahead and order all the new parts today or tomorrow. Will definitely post an update once everything's been delivered and assembled.

As a side note, I was over at a colleague's place on Friday who has a 60" plasma and a Sony receiver that upconverts his DVDs. He showed us a couple BR movies (Transformers, Cars), then switched over to a live blues DVD while we were all just hanging out. I actually thought the DVD was another BR disc though - the upconversion was definitely noticeable over standard DVD quality to me. So I'm hoping to get similar results...

 

[Booty]

Well, everything's put together now... haven't done a lot of tweaking or anything but I've watched a couple DVDs and everything's working fine. Right now I'm outputting the audio to my receiver using the optical in/out - I haven't made it over to Radio Shack yet to pick up the cables to use the 6 channel output. I'll do that this week to compare the two.

At this point I'm trying to figure out how I want to rip our DVDs to the hard drive... not all of them yet, but just the ones we watch most frequently for now. I also apparently am going to need to install some additional codecs, as some divx videos I have aren't currently working in Media Center (I installed VLC and they're fine on there, but I want to be able to browse to/watch anything through MC).

What is everyone else out there using for this stuff? I'm probably going to mess with "My Movies" once I figure out what format to rip everything to. Should I be creating ISOs? Ideally I'd be able to convert whatever format they're ripped to back to a DVD in case anything happens to the original...

I'll update again with more details as I get this thing setup. Thanks again for everyone's input on this...!

 

[wetech]

Originally posted by: Booty


What is everyone else out there using for this stuff? I'm probably going to mess with "My Movies" once I figure out what format to rip everything to. Should I be creating ISOs? Ideally I'd be able to convert whatever format they're ripped to back to a DVD in case anything happens to the original...

Just copy the DVD's VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders directly to your hard drive. No conversion necessary. ie.

Spider Man\Video_TS
Spider Man\Audio_TS

Just about any software DVD player will play this format, and you don't have to worry about mounting ISO's.