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Help a Noobie out

4

4niKtor

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 6, 2001
Messages
289
So I have been asked by a friend to help him build a HTPC, and I obligingly accepted, although to be honest I havent built a system in over 2 years.
He wants to be able to timeshift record from his satellite (express-vu) so he can watch things 15 minutes after they start and fast forward commercials, record shows and burn them to DVD, wirelessly network with his PC and laptop, obviously output HD to his TV and output audio to his reciever. Hes not an audiophile or anything, so top of the line doesnt matter, but he did say he would prefer if it was quiet. And desktop form factor if possible.

Now obviously i know how to build a PC, so i need more help with what software is out there and what hardware is considered the best value.

If theres a FAQ I missed I apologize in advance, maybe you could direct me to it?
 
See: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=759011

I personally play hardware favorites and am biased but my choices include AMD CPU, Asus Motherboard, Antec PSU, Corsair RAM and whatever hard drive(s) and graphcis card you want. All brands of hard drives seam to die on me so I don't have a favorite next. As for a graphics card, you don't need anything fancy -- i'm using a ati radeon 9500 (really a 9700 packaged as a 9500 but thats another story) and it is working great, its actually overkill for displaying a video feed. I got this video card maybe 3 years ago before I got into linux -- my next graphics card will be a nvidia for this reason. As for hard drive(s), space runs out quickly but the good news is that hard drives are pretty cheap -- at least from what I used to remember. Newegg has a 320gb 3gb/s 7200rpm 16mb buffer Seagate Barracuda for sale for $109. If i had more sata ports i'd be getting one of two of these right now. I would recommend about 400-500gb of storage to anyone building an HTPC now. Of course you can get by with less, but I have 600gb and I can fill it up without breaking a sweat. Then again, half the stuff I record i dont have time to watch before it autodelets to make room for new recordings (but thats just because i've been super busy lately.)

If I were to put one of these systems together today, I would do something along the lines of 3000+ AMD, motherboard with 4 sata 3gb/s plugs, 2gb (although 1gb will work fine) unbuffered corsair DDR 400 (PC 3200), some pci express nvidia graphics card (I don't pay attention to whats good in this area and haven't had to buy one in 3 years so don't ask me.) As for the TV Tuner, you have lots of options and I haven't done much research. I just know that my Hauppage 150 works amazingly and I am very happy with it. Primary reason I picked it was for linux compatability and price ($100 or less with remote!)

Edit: Forgot to say, AMD prices are going to drop soon. I forget when but i think its the day after intel's next big thing releases. You may tell your friend to wait for this. I'm talking big price drops ... like half off.

As for software, you can go the windows or linux route. With windows you will want to get a copy of windows media center edition -- i'm sure you can figure that one out. For linux, you get/have to make lots of choices. The choice you have to make is deciding on a distribution. Regardless of the distribution you pick, you will be using MythTV for all your recording and such. For a beginner i'd say use KnoppMyth. KnoppMyth is designed to be super easy and to autodetect tons of hardware configurations -- this will save you some headaches as long as it does it right (i've never seen it screw up.)

If nothing else, install KnoppMyth it before you buy windows media center and see if you like it. Its free so you have nothing to lose except for an evening. Another nice thing about KnoppMyth is that the install process takes under 20 minutes and you are recording and watching TV. No linux skills required to get it working. Other popular linux distributions for use with MythTV are fedora core, ubuntu and debian among many others. I personally use gentoo, however, don't let that be your first linux experience -- you will never use linux again (it is very customizable but along with that comes the responsability of having to do everything yourself.) My roomate just installed xubuntu lastnight and has MythTV working -- looks pretty neat. It is a varient of ubuntu that uses a skinny window manager named XFCE.

The reason that I even mention the linux route is that it has far superior recording options over windows media center. If you schedule two programs to be recorded and there is a conflict, it will check the next week of the tv schedule and try to find a re-run of one of those episodes such that it can resolve the conflict. You also get many choices on how to setup a recording, for instance "Record all Mythbusters on channel X", "Record all Mythbusters on all channels", "Record one occurance of Mythbusters on all/channel channels/X each day", etc. There are tons and tons of these types of settings. Then on top of that you can set a priority for each show. South Park can have priority 1 and Mythbusters may have priority 5, so mythbusters will record over south park unless it finds a way it can record both by catching mythbusters as a re-run in the next week. This is all hard to describe by typing out but I think you can see some of the power that MythTVs recording scheduler has. Also, you can throw multiple TV tuners into your computer and it can record multiple channels at the same time. Or you can watch tv from one card while another is recording. I don't know how Windows does in this department, I actually haven't ever used one, i've only talked to some friends that have.

One more important point to make is that with MythTV you can set it up to transcode all (or some if you want) recordings. What this does is convert your recordings to divx or another compressed video format to save space. With my 3200+ the transcodes are faster than real time. Meaning it takes less than 30 minutes to transcode 30 minutes worth of video. I don't know if windows media center offers this feature or not. But I do know that transcoding cuts filesize into a third of its original -- a 1gb file becomes about 330mb after transcode and the video doesn't look too much worse. If I wanted it to look nearly lossless I could set up the transcode such that it cuts file size in half. What does this mean in practical terms? More recordings can be stored on the same ammount of hard drive space, or if you want you could also say, buy a smaller hard drive and be able to hold the same ammount of video. To be fair, I am using a TV in 800x600 with component cables so maybe i'm losing detail that I just cant see anymore. I just bought a Westinghouse 37" LCD TV today (on ebay) so we will see about this transcoding in a week or so.

edit: As for your friends wireless networking with his other computers. I'm sure there is hardware out there that linux supports for wireless (but cant tell you what it is off the top of my head.) However, you could also have the HTPC connected to a wireless router using a wire, then just have all of your friend's other computers wirelessly connect to the router. That may be the most cost effective way since the desktop wont need a wireless card.
 
Best value and one of the most popular combos at the moment is the MSI 6150 based motherboard and whatever Athlon64 socket 939 chip you can afford to put in it. The onboard video obviates the need for a graphics card (unless it's used for gaming, but for htpc use it's fine), it's a small form factor, has a spdif output for audio, and expansion capability. If you want to hedge your bets for future expansion, there's a 6150 based motherboard for the AM2 socket. Athlon64 single-core chips have already dropped significantly, dunno if they will drop further at the end of July or not. 1GB of ram is enough for htpc duty, 2GB wouldn't hurt.
 
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