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Handiklap fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Apr 10, 2007 |
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Apr 9, 2007 16:54
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So I was thinking about buying a Slingbox, but then figured that since I'm going to build an HTPC relatively soon, if I put a TV Tuner card in it I can stream content to the internet that way as well. What sort of software would I need for that functionality?
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Apr 9, 2007 23:18
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Started a HTPC project a little while ago and it has progressed quite well so far ... AMD Athlon 64 3200+ ASUS M2NPV-VM Mobo (only one I could find with component out) 512MB DDR2 30GB Quantum Fireball IDE HD (has outlasted a number of newer hard drives so far) 250GB Seagate SATA2 HD Leadtek Winfast DTV2000H PCI Tuner Pioneer Silver DVD/RW Netgeat WG311 Wireless NIC Antec HTPC Case MS MCE Remote Control, Keyboard, etc. Feeding to a 106cm Panasonic Viera Plasma TV Originally I had a cutdown version of XP Running along with Mediaportal but got the shits after a while as it was slow and buggy. Ended up just over the weekend converting the whole setup to Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft + OpenBox + MythTV with Xine as the main playing software. I can say it has definitely made a difference, and most important of all ... everything works (remotes, wireless, etc.) little interference needed. Just need to install an FTP server to transfer new movies easily. MCE Keyboard support is in progress on Sourceforge, so thats the next thing to try.
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Apr 10, 2007 03:30
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m3jsh posted:So I was thinking about buying a Slingbox, but then figured that since I'm going to build an HTPC relatively soon, if I put a TV Tuner card in it I can stream content to the internet that way as well. What sort of software would I need for that functionality? What kind of content, exactly? Streaming TV broadcasts is likely going to run you into some licensing issues. I think that BeyondTV, MythTV, and at least a few others have some sort of IP content streaming available OOTB.
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Apr 10, 2007 04:04
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Well basically I'd like to view hockey games from wherever I am. I mean, the Slingbox can do it I figure I can do it for free with my HTPC.
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Apr 10, 2007 05:17
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Can anyone who has a slick Meedio setup please try their hand at writing a guide, or point me to a RECENT guide? I'd like to have online and offline media split into TV and Movies. I'd love to have art like TVnight and Movienight seem to offer. Right now I've just been hitting stop points that are frustrating. The main problem I have at the moment is manually importing TV and Movies into separate databases, and having Meedio display them to me separately from each other. I have no need to capture TV. Thanks for any help.
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Apr 11, 2007 02:51
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I found mediaportal works well if you use MPC as the video player, its built-in video decoder drops frames with 720p x264 even on my dualcore 2.4 ghz Opteron. Hell even my 2.4ghz Northwood can decode 720p x264 with CoreAVC. Does anyone know how to improve x264 playback in MP? Or, how to enable/disable subtitles in MPC using a MCE remote? God, I wish XBMC just ran on x86 hardware, it's loving perfect but the xbox is just too slow these days. edit: cpu load is only ~35% so I assume MP either sucks for HD or I just can't configure it right..? I tried adding coreavc as a filter plugin in the mediaportal preferences but it didn't improve anything. mr_package fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Apr 11, 2007 |
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Apr 11, 2007 03:43
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ShaneB posted:Can anyone who has a slick Meedio setup please try their hand at writing a guide, or point me to a RECENT guide? I'd like to have online and offline media split into TV and Movies. I'd love to have art like TVnight and Movienight seem to offer. Right now I've just been hitting stop points that are frustrating. The main problem I have at the moment is manually importing TV and Movies into separate databases, and having Meedio display them to me separately from each other. If you have some time tomorrow, PM me with your issues, and I'll see if I can help out. You could also post on meedios.com/forum as well. I'm not sure what you would like, though. You create sep. libraries for both TV shows and movies, and you use sep. modules to view them both. When you say manually, are you talking about having to actually run the import (which you can schedule to occur at regular intervals or everytime you enter Meedio)? The online/offline thing can get a bit complicated, so you should probably should get the online stuff working first.
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Apr 11, 2007 04:39
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EC posted:If you have some time tomorrow, PM me with your issues, and I'll see if I can help out. You could also post on meedios.com/forum as well. I don't seem to be able to get Meedio to use the databases I create with the import modules, instead of it making me navigate through directory hierarchy. When it installed it asked me how I wanted to add my media. I could either let Meedio find it (which I didn't want), or I could navigate through my directories to have Meedio play my media. I want neither solution - I want to set up my imports and have them run automatically.
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Apr 11, 2007 04:53
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ShaneB posted:I don't seem to be able to get Meedio to use the databases I create with the import modules, instead of it making me navigate through directory hierarchy. When it installed it asked me how I wanted to add my media. I could either let Meedio find it (which I didn't want), or I could navigate through my directories to have Meedio play my media. I want neither solution - I want to set up my imports and have them run automatically. Gotcha. You can skip the whole gui setup altogether, it's really there for people who don't want to do stuff manually. Here's the checklist (it sounds like you're almost there, though, so ignore the stuff that doesn't apply): 1. Create the library (Meedio Config > Media Library > New) 2. Create the imports (After creating the new library, click the imports tab on the right, then click new). You'll need to select the importer that you'll use, typically a tag mask importer to bring in the files. If you have your movies all in one directory you can use something like "<name>.<>", or if you keep them in genre folders you can use "<genre>\<name>.<>". My TV shows tag mask is "<>\<>\<SeriesName> - S<SeasonNumber>E<EpisodeNumber> - <name>.<>". Make sure you input the correct file types to import, and uncheck "use same image for all files in the directory". If you want it to import at a certain time or in certain intervals, configure it at the bottom. 3. Check to make sure the items were imported correctly by going to the Items tab. 4. At this point, you would usually go through and create views for your media, but I'm going to skip that one since you can find lots and lots of resources on that stuff if you search either one of the popular Meedio forums. 5. Now, go the Menu section of Meedio Config. Select the second "Meedio" in the list, and click Add > Music and Movies > Media Module. Point the new Media Module to the library you created in step 1. When you open Meedio, there will be a new menu item and it will point to your library of items. Here's the difficult part of this whole thing: these instructions are only partially correct when using TV Night and MovieNight. You will need to create a library and import your items into it, but the similarities end there. With TV shows, you'll add an additional importer to the library that will pull lots and lots of fun info and images from the TVdb. That importer will have all sorts of properties and things to play around with as well. Then you'll add a specific TVNight module to your menu, point it to the library and go from there. Meedio is really like its own miniature OS, in terms of the flexibility and, proportionately, the confusion to first time people. It takes awhile to figure out the terminology and then how the various things work together, but once you get it its as easy as changing settings in Windows. Well, at least until you get into the wonderful world of screen files...
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Apr 11, 2007 15:33
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Do you have any suggestions on mass-renamer tools, specifically for files named in the "scene" nomenclature?
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Apr 11, 2007 18:00
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does any one have a link to the installer for meedios? i usualy have no problem finding things but this one has me stumped.
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Apr 11, 2007 18:48
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What the hell... now when I try to play a x264 video with Meedio it's crashing.  This wasn't happening before!Edit: fixed it, I think it was a subtitle issue. So currently I have figured out how to add media and create categories, which is awesome. Stuff is playing fine, besides a weird issue with one video that plays upside down.... I'm going to tinker with TV and MovieNight and offline stuff soon. ShaneB fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Apr 12, 2007 |
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Apr 12, 2007 00:26
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Does anyone know of an easy way to convert a vga output to s-video or component output? I have a pc that only has a vga output and my tv is a little bit old, it doesn't have dvi or vga inputs. It seems like the only way to do it is to shell out the 100 bucks for a box that converts it. I thought there would be a cable or something that you can use to convert.
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Apr 12, 2007 21:11
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mazachan posted:Does anyone know of an easy way to convert a vga output to s-video or component output? I have a pc that only has a vga output and my tv is a little bit old, it doesn't have dvi or vga inputs. It seems like the only way to do it is to shell out the 100 bucks for a box that converts it. I thought there would be a cable or something that you can use to convert. You can just get a video card that supports component out. Leadtek has a cheap 6200 that has it.
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Apr 12, 2007 22:02
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ShaneB posted:You can just get a video card that supports component out. Leadtek has a cheap 6200 that has it. Can't. I got an ultra small form desktop with a built in video card.
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Apr 12, 2007 22:21
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mazachan posted:Can't. I got an ultra small form desktop with a built in video card. It's one of those extra tiny cards with the half-height adapter, if that makes a difference. At least I think it is.
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Apr 12, 2007 22:25
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hmmm.. so is getting a new video card the easiest way to do it then?
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Apr 13, 2007 00:45
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I have a silly question: I want to watch OTA HD on a really old spare computer I have. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it will be able to handle OTA HDTV. The specs are: Athlon T-bird 1400 512 meg whatever ram they had back in those days Geforce 4 MX440 Should I just be able to throw in a HDTV tuner card in there and be able to watch some HDTV ? Just how much computing power does it take to display HDTV anyway ?
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Apr 13, 2007 03:37
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Vladimir Putin posted:I have a silly question: My Pentium 4 1.8/512/Radeon 9800 chokes on most downloaded HD content, and I haven't tried streaming.
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Apr 13, 2007 04:15
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Vladimir Putin posted:Should I just be able to throw in a HDTV tuner card in there and be able to watch some HDTV ? Just how much computing power does it take to display HDTV anyway ? I'd also like to see a kind of 'bare bones' example of a simple HD capable PC. My 2.4ghz P4 stutters pretty badly trying to display HD content and I'm looking to put together a cheap box to do it for when I get an HDTV this summer. Right now I've been leaning to the hacked Apple TV because of the price but if I could integrate OTA HD, Media Center and DVR features that'd be something worth paying for.
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Apr 13, 2007 05:21
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Vladimir Putin posted:I want to watch OTA HD on a really old spare computer I have. The thing is, I'm not sure whether it will be able to handle OTA HDTV. The specs are: It would be pretty dicey - more than likely no. The ATI HDTV tuner, for example, lists as its minimum requirements: # Pentium 4 or Athlon operating at 1.3GHz or greater # 256MB of system memory # Graphics card with 64MB or greater of frame buffer and Microsoft DirectX 9.0 support Personally, I wouldn't bother trying to make it work - it'll be a massive headache. Kepp posted:I'd also like to see a kind of 'bare bones' example of a simple HD capable PC. My 2.4ghz P4 stutters pretty badly trying to display HD content and I'm looking to put together a cheap box to do it for when I get an HDTV this summer. Right now I've been leaning to the hacked Apple TV because of the price but if I could integrate OTA HD, Media Center and DVR features that'd be something worth paying for. It depends. If you're talking about a PC that can play HD-DVD/Blu-Ray stuff, the top end is just now getting to the point where it can handle 1080p content. Common consensus right now is you want a Core 2 Duo 6300/6400, probably overclocked a bit (since it's so easy to do), combined with a Geforce 7600 level card to handle everything. Crackbone fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Apr 17, 2007 |
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Apr 17, 2007 18:47
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atothesquiz posted:
With Hauppauge Remotes, there is an irremote.ini file in your Windows Root folder that can be edited to allow their remotes to work with pretty much any application.
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Apr 18, 2007 00:23
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I guess this is the thread for this question. I want to watch TV on my computer, specifically nhl center ice games. I'm fairly certain it is my cable box that makes accessing these channels possible, because you have to pay to watch them. I have an extra Cable box, that has DVI/Component/S-Video/Coax output. Is it possible to buy a TV card that would simply let me watch the video outputted from the Cable Box in Windows? I'm fine with using the cable box to change channels and recording tv etc is not a big deal to me. I just want to be able to watch TV inside some sort of media player in windows. HDTV would be nice but it not a dealbreaker. Any thoughts and comments on if this is possible and/or the best way to go about it would be appreciated.
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Apr 19, 2007 04:53
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Any TV Tuner with Composite/S-Video input will allow you to watch TV on your PC. Granted, that is if your cable box outputs in either standard (it probably does.) HDTV is lovely because there aren't any TV Tuners that support component or HDMI because of HDCP issues (someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
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Apr 19, 2007 05:12
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Is there no way to run XBMC on a PC? I'm going to be setting up an HTPC once I get my new television because my understanding is that Xbox doesn't have the power to run 720p+ videos. I love the interface of XBMC and I don't want to spend time fighting some other piece of software. I've tried a couple of other media library programs and really not liked any of them, but I'd rather not shell out $500 for one of those upgraded Xboxes.
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Apr 19, 2007 21:21
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RationalAppeal posted:Is there no way to run XBMC on a PC? I'm going to be setting up an HTPC once I get my new television because my understanding is that Xbox doesn't have the power to run 720p+ videos. I love the interface of XBMC and I don't want to spend time fighting some other piece of software. I've tried a couple of other media library programs and really not liked any of them, but I'd rather not shell out $500 for one of those upgraded Xboxes. It would be so nice if there was some sort of XBMC emulator or something for the PC. I used XBMC for a few years, but wanted something that could start displaying HD content. Windows Media Center for XP and Vista is all right, but it's just not as usable, intuitive, or customizable as I found XBMC to be.
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Apr 20, 2007 17:57
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Bender posted:It would be so nice if there was some sort of XBMC emulator or something for the PC. I used XBMC for a few years, but wanted something that could start displaying HD content. Windows Media Center for XP and Vista is all right, but it's just not as usable, intuitive, or customizable as I found XBMC to be. MediaPortal is essentially the same thing IMO. Even has some of the same skins.
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Apr 20, 2007 19:09
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I'm thinking about putting together the beginnings of an HTPC sometime soon and am looking to save some money. My main concern is displaying 720p content without any lag. I'm not going to be using it for gaming of any type. Displaying ripped DVDs and HD content and acting as media server are the only things its going to have to do until I figure out whether or not I want it to be a PVR as well. Room for expansion is important. I'm looking at purchasing the following: Foxconn TLM436-CN300C-01 Black/Silver Steel MicroATX Mini Tower ASUS M2A-VM HDMI Socket AM2 AMD 690G uATX AMD Motherboard CORSAIR XMS2 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400 AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Brisbane 1.9GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADO3600DDBOX I know very little about modern processors but from what I've read I think it should do what I want. Does anyone have any experience with the processor and/or onboard video?
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Apr 23, 2007 04:41
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Kepp posted:I'm thinking about putting together the beginnings of an HTPC sometime soon and am looking to save some money. My main concern is displaying 720p content without any lag. I'm not going to be using it for gaming of any type. Displaying ripped DVDs and HD content and acting as media server are the only things its going to have to do until I figure out whether or not I want it to be a PVR as well. Room for expansion is important. I'm looking at purchasing the following: Long story short, right now HD content is dicey. For 720p, your processor should be able to handle it. The onboard video card might be a concern though. Keep in mind, you have to allocate memory from your system RAM to the onboard card on that board. 256M seems to be the sweet spot from other people's reports. So you're already down to 744 system memory. Nvidia has just released the 8500/8600GT cards though, which apparently offload the entire HD decoding process to the card. They are only 100 bucks, and testing is showing it can even handle the most intensive 1080p files with no problem. It does require a combination of a DVD software that supports the process (Newest PowerDVD for example) and Vista (or XP SP2 after July). You might want to grab one of those to be prepared for the future. And, if you are concerned about expansion, you shouldn't be looking to get a MicroATX board. It's only got 2 PCI slots - add a tuner and you're down to 1. The processor is fine if you just want 720p decoding (or get one of the new 8500s). The only thing I might recommend is moving up to one of the new 65w cores. It's about a 10 dollar difference on newegg, but it runs cooler, which is good for overclocking or for keeping your system quieter.
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Apr 23, 2007 16:09
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Kind of to go along with what warning posted above, I am interested in possibly rolling my own HTPC box with DVR capabilities. When you have a digital cable box, how do you get around the box and tuning the channels? Do you just split the signal before the cable box and let the TV tuner in the PC handle it or is there something else involved?
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Apr 23, 2007 21:46
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Wiggly posted:Kind of to go along with what warning posted above, I am interested in possibly rolling my own HTPC box with DVR capabilities. When you have a digital cable box, how do you get around the box and tuning the channels? Do you just split the signal before the cable box and let the TV tuner in the PC handle it or is there something else involved? What I'm planning to do is split the signal and let the HTPC handle/record the < 99 channels that are still analog. I don't think I'll invest in OTA ATSC HD recording until I move to an area that gets a signal (duh). There's an alternative that involves the IR Blaster product to control the STB from the HTPC (it's a serial-controlled IR led that snakes up to your STB and is taped to the IR receiver) but I am not really well educated on that sort of setup.
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Apr 24, 2007 16:38
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Crackbone posted:And, if you are concerned about expansion, you shouldn't be looking to get a MicroATX board. It's only got 2 PCI slots - add a tuner and you're down to 1. On an only marginally related note, I have an virtually new in box Antec Phantom 500W PSU I'll let go cheap; if anyone's interested email me at rivetz@gmail.com or AIM me at rivetz. Mods please remove this if it's inappropriate for this forum, but I don't want to sell it desperately enough to put it in SA-Mart and I figure folks in a specialty thread like this might be interested.
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Apr 25, 2007 00:02
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Does anyone have a quiet/silent DVD-R they suggest? I need to be able to burn 16x and also DL, but I offload a lot of media onto discs and watch it again, so silent spinning would be ideal.
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Apr 25, 2007 06:24
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NO_CARRIER posted:Does anyone have a quiet/silent DVD-R they suggest? I need to be able to burn 16x and also DL, but I offload a lot of media onto discs and watch it again, so silent spinning would be ideal.
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Apr 25, 2007 10:31
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Kepp posted:ASUS M2A-VM HDMI Socket AM2 AMD 690G uATX AMD Motherboard What should you consider when looking at motherboards? I'm thinking I want the sound handled by the motherboard which means an S/PDIF out on the motherboard but I'm not sure if chipsets are a factor or what.
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Apr 25, 2007 20:25
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V-Men posted:What should you consider when looking at motherboards? Any motherboard from the past few years will have acceptable onboard sound. The big trick is getting it to be properly handled by Windows/your receiver. Long story short, it can be a real pain to get unprocessed 5.1 output from a SPDIF connection to a receiver for every application. I eventually ended up letting the chip/dvd software do the decoding and running 5.1 sound out through the analog ports to my receiver.
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Apr 25, 2007 21:30
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Crackbone posted:Any motherboard from the past few years will have acceptable onboard sound. The big trick is getting it to be properly handled by Windows/your receiver. I think my other consideration is a quiet motherboard. edit: Is there a noticeable difference going out from analog ports as opposed to a coaxial? Odoyle posted:Agreed with the above poster. And your build goals are essentially how I started out with my target HTPC, but I ended up wanting to add PVR functionality and stuff. Is a 3 GHz processor really necessary? I thought the huge processing power was necessary just because a lot of the processing for the HD codecs used to be done by the processor. Newer video cards were supposed to take the load of processing h.264 codecs. Or am I completely off-base? V-Men fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Apr 26, 2007 |
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Apr 25, 2007 23:52
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V-Men posted:I think my other consideration is a quiet motherboard. For sound quality of optical vs. analog, I'm not a big sound nut. As long as I can get 5.1 reliably, I'm satisfied. I didn't hear any differences, but I'm not an audiophile in the least. Honestly, you may have better luck getting output through spdif than I did - it certainly wouldn't hurt to try. Just a heads-up that different applications are maddingly different about how they want to output sound channels. For "quietness", quite a few motherboards run on passive cooling (heatsinks only) nowadays. A good way to check is find a motherboard you like on newegg, and check their pictures of the boards. As for what processor you need... the requirement now isn't a big deal. The 8500/8600 series cards I mentioned earlier are confirmed to eat x264 processing for lunch. There are tests showing those cards let you process 1080p x264 video on a Semperon 2800 without maxing the processor. My personal preference is still the Athlon x2 series, mainly because of the price/performance sweet spot. You can get an x2 3800 for 65 bucks from Frys right now, which will more than handle windows and give you some headroom for growth.
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Apr 26, 2007 13:40
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Being the impulse shopper I am, I just bought the SiliconDust HDHomeRun, a dual HD OTA/QAM tuner network device. My plan is to replace my aging TiVo with some sort of DVR device, though I haven't figured out the specifics yet. Since I don't have an HDTV right now, I suspect that my watching of HD content will be limited to streaming things to my iMac. I also have an older Hauppage TV tuner car which will allow me to use my cable box via its composite input. Not ideal, but I'm mainly using the cable box for paid content like NHL games. So my question is thus: Is MythTV (or any other software, I haven't made any decisions yet) smart enough to know combine all the channels available on all three inputs into one master TV listing, while being smart enough to know that if I want to watch a paid TV source like NHL Centre Ice that it MUST use the Hauppage card to tune that channel? Ideally the Hauppage card would be set up ONLY to record the paid tiers since I don't want to use that source for something the HD tuners can pick up, and I don't want to get myself into a pickle where I want to record an NHL game and I find that the cable box is recording Mad Money or something that the other tuners could be taking care of.
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Apr 26, 2007 16:56
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