The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC - The Something Awful Forums

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rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Holy poo poo that LinuxMCE guy was irritating. That system cries out "Demo me to your nerd friends", not "use me on a casual and practical basis". Although I'm with him that XP MCE is probably the most disappointing product Microsoft has released in the last five years. The lack of customization options drives me batty. I'm not an M$ basher at all but drat guys, give me some flexibility. And the limited playback options for "unsupported" codecs like divx and xvid is just lovely and petty. Yeah, I'm way out of bounds using these fringe file formats. :mad:

I'm going to ask the same question here that I've asked at HTPCNews and Green Button and a couple other places. I have a large and well-organized collection of avi movies. Some are on a server, most are archived on DVD. Well-archived, as in they're in a nice binder numbered and categorized. I want an interface that will allow me to browse movies and pick one, and then get told to please insert Disc 57, etc. I've tried Binnerup's My Movies plugin, which does EXACTLY what I want, but I always have a tough time navigating it with a remote for some reason. Could be my mouse or remote drivers but its interface never seems to work the way I want it to. Worse, that goddamn play-progress bar in Window Media Center in the lower left often blocks the poo poo I want to reach. So I want a large-format (viewable from the couch) database of movies that will give me Title, Genre, Director, etc., and a Disc #. I've played with Meedio but am unwilling to embark on the learning curve to get up on the whole module thing. Is that nonetheless my best strategy? Other inspired ideas? I will gladly switch to another frontend if there's one that has a better movie plugin. I don't use TV capture, my HTPC is exclusively for MP3 and video playback, as well as emulator stuff which I use GameEx for (and man that is a sweet app). Thoughts?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2007 08:49

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:33

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

BrutusBeefcake posted:

I guess I am kind of borrowing HVD's question, but I can be a little more specific. I am considering building a HTPC, but ALL I really want/need it to do is to play High Def (at least 720P) x264/avi files over HDMI/DVI with minimum 5.1 sound. I don't need to use it to watch tv, play DVD's, or do anything fancy. Can anyone point me in the least expensive direction? I would prefer it to have a decent sized hard drive, but that is not essential.

EDITED to remove HD confusion.

that's pretty much how I use mine. Not to oversimplify, but with those requirements, your emphasis should perhaps be on the case design and dimensions, and quiet operation. As the above poster said, it's just a PC. Find a vid card that will handle your HD requirements, find a case that won't look like a dumb ole tower sitting next to your TV, and find a nice quiet cooler, and preferably a noiseless PSU if you have the budget.

edit: perhaps the first post should be edited to list some of the better online stores and resources. http://www.htpcnews.com and http://www.thegreenbutton.com are two of the better forums out there, and I've found http://www.pcalchemy.com to have decent prices and reliable service.

rivetz fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 31, 2007

# ¿ Mar 30, 2007 23:40

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Goldmund posted:

Can anyone reccomend a sound card that has good Vista support? My system isn't being used as a full fledged HTPC, but I have component and toslink cables running to my receiver for movie viewing. What I want is a soundcard that can do DD 5.1 via SPDIF, as well as have good 5.1 support via my computer speakers for gaming. The driver situation for my current onboard Audigy is somewhat lacking.

I think that's pretty much the story with most soundcards right now. Turtle Beach has no Vista support but they're working on it. The Razer Barracuda's Vista drivers apparently are being released next week, but that's really a gaming soundcard and may not be the optimal value for movie/music playback (though I have it on my gaming PC and absolutely love it). The Turtle Beach Riviera or maybe the Montego perhaps is your best bet once they get drivers ironed out.

I've never been a big fan of Creative; Turtle Beach has such a good track record of decent, durable, well-supported products, I always recommend them. When I upgraded to the Barracuda I took out my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and realized with a pang that it's easily the oldest peripheral I was still using. About five years on that card, used on maybe four different PCs, and nary a hiccup or hardware conflict or anything. Can't argue with that.

rivetz fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 31, 2007

# ¿ Mar 31, 2007 21:02

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Strict 9 posted:

I'm in the exact same position, and use Mediaportal with the MyDVD's plugin. It took maybe an hour total to setup this portion of it, and it works wonderfully.

I have a section in Mediaportal for all my movies, that is powered by the My DVDs addon. I use my remote to browse through the movies, which can be sorted and viewed by pretty much any field possible (director, year, IMDB rating, genre, etc). When I select a movie, I can click Play and either it starts playing (it will play AVI's or automount DVD's), or am told which disc to insert.

All of this is powered by a 3rd party (free) program, Ant Movie Catalog. This is an excellent program on its own. It was able to bring in a text file of all 300 of my movies, and in about 20 minutes downloaded all the movie information and cover art.

Then all I had to tell the My DVD's plugin was where my Ant Movie Catalog was located, and which field to use for the movie's location (on my hard drive or on CD). I was then able to browse through and play all my movies in Mediaportal. It really all works quite well. If you go this route and have any questions let me know.

I had some issues with this because I archive avis four or five to a disc. I want the My Films plugin to prompt me with a Disc #, not a Film #. If you assign multiple films the same film # it screws with the image files. I got around it by numbering films out of sequence, as in the files on Disc 39 are numbered 391, 392, 393, etc., Disc 40 films are 401, 402, etc. It's not perfect but it's certainly adequate. Just thought I'd share in case anyone else has a similar situation and needs to go this route. Did I miss an easier solution? I'm not good enough at scripting or plugins to modify the original plugin, and other ideas like using a dash or decimal didn't fly since the field only allows numeric entries.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2007 20:55

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

WhatUpShutUp posted:

Here's what I want to do. I have 350 DVDs and I want to move them to a sort of movie server. That's pretty much all I want to use it for.
What's the best options for doing this? Load a basic MCE machine up with 2TB of drives and use DVD Decrypter or similar to rip all the movies?
Is there another decent interface or better way to do this that I'm not aware of?

Not really. I use Fair Use for DVD conversion, which not everyone likes but works fine for me.

I'm waiting for a DVD spindle that includes a drive. Like this, but instead of just searching the disk contents, it rotates to the disc you request and reads the disc. The technology certainly exists, I don't know why it hasn't beed productized. Once they put out one of these I'm all over it. Throw all my archive DVDs with all the avis on em in there, it'll rule.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2007 18:07

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

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.

To say nothing of the fact that in a smaller case like that, heat becomes a factor and thus fan noise becomes a concern for the HTPC. My first HTPC was a Shuttle and I ditched it after two months due to noise, despite using the quietest case fans I could find. Make sure if you do go this route you emphasize quiet performance in the PSU.

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.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2007 00:02

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

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.

Strongly recommend Nero Drivespeed as a great way to keep spinning noise down.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2007 10:31

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Inside Outside posted:

I have a quick question and I think this is probably the most relevant thread to ask. I have a Vizio 32" LCD, and some old HP media center PC hooked up over VGA. I tried using this cable (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102974&cp=&pg=4&sr=1&origkw=phono+rca&kw=phono+rca&parentPage=search) and plugging it into my TV's RCA plugs, but that doesn't seem to work. Is this the right plug or am I doing something wrong?

There is no reason that cable won't work fine, assuming you're running it from your onboard audio or your sound card's Out into a receiver etc.

# ¿ May 7, 2007 07:37

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Absolut_V posted:

I highly suggest this.

Edit: To add something more to this thread.

I am pretty competant building an htpc, but I have something more sophisticated in mind for my next build so I would love some input.

First, I want a case that really fits in with A/V components. I have only ever built into a normal case. I have looked mainly at Silverstone cases and like the designs. Is anyone familiar with any other companies? I am looking for a case with good build quality, and I would likely prefer one that will accept full size cards. My receiver is fairly large, so something along that line would not bother me.

Second, I think I want to go with Vista for my new system. Is anyone familiar with how well VistaMCE handles media. Are there any other programs or seperate plugins that work well with Vista?

Silverstone has an good reputation and I've read the build quality is typically good. Hit htpcnews.com as a start, they have a number of case reviews archived there. I haven't shopped for a case for some time but would think you might save some money by tracking down an older or discontinued model. It's not like the field has been revolutionized in the last couple years or anything.

For what it's worth, I've been pleased as punch with my Arisetec HT400-B. Looks pimp, good ventilation, plenty of room, though installing the CD drive is a serious pain in the rear end if you don't have a good long screwdriver. Probably tough to find however, but I can vouch for Arisetec quality, anyway.

# ¿ May 10, 2007 00:29

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

I am reformatting my HTPC and want to do it right from the ground up. Specs:

AMD X2 4600 2.4 ghz
2 GB RAM
2x eVGA 7950GT in SLI

Question #1: This board has an onboard HDMI output. The 7950GTs output S-video and DVI. I have heard it recommended that with this board you could use the HDMI for home theater and the graphics card output for gaming. Is this possible/recommended? Would I then have two output cables running to the projector and would toggle between projector inputs depending on what I want to do? Also, safe to say that I should be looking at getting CoreAVC to help with HD playback if I go with the HDMI onboard?

Question #2: I have multiple reasons for reformatting; for one thing, I've done a lot of codec and app uninstall/reinstall and without getting too specific, things are getting messy and it just feels like a clean wipe will be easiest. Anyway, one of the reasons I'm wiping is because the PC has problems playing 1080p files. There are no framerate issues or stuttering, nor do I have any audio hitches, but I get mild to moderate tearing where patches of the picture glitch into squares. Is this likely or even definitely an issue with insufficient horses to play the file? When I've had issues on other PCs playing HD content, the tearing has been accompanied with other symptoms like heavy stuttering. I don't see any of that, framerate is smooth as silk, so I'm not sure whether this is due to codec or insufficient processor.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

rivetz fucked around with this message at 10:48 on May 16, 2010

# ¿ May 16, 2010 05:41

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

Medikit posted:

Just use HDMI for everything.

Yeah, but then I'm not taking advantage of the 7950GTs. The projector has only one digital input, so I'm going to run both HDMI and DVI to the same input and toggle input depending on what I'm doing (theater or gaming). I was just curious if anyone had done this before and if there are any concerns or caveats with it.

EDIT: Also re: the other questions, it was a codec issue, as I reinstalled XP and have flawless 1080p playback (without CoreAVC, even). Interesting, as I was curious what the "hierarchy of symptoms" was like; does tearing without stuttering indicate an issue w processing power? How about stuttering without tearing? At any rate, resolved, and I elected not to bother with Windows 7 anyway.

rivetz fucked around with this message at 08:57 on May 18, 2010

# ¿ May 18, 2010 03:19

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

This may be a somewhat unanswerable question, but I don't know that there's a definitive answer and I guess I'm looking for general feedback.I'm swapping stuff around in the movie room and am curious how the various ZBoxes perform from a gaming standpoint? I know a fair amount about GPUs etc from the desktop world but have never focused on gaming on laptops or small form-factor PCs; I'm used to just throwing a big card in there and that's that.

I think a ZBox is just what the doctor ordered for my needs on the media front, but the family does like to game from time to time. Maybe the easiest way to ask this is by referencing certain titles and seeing if anyone knowledgeable on both the Zotac front and the gaming front can provide some perspective:

MAME/SNES/etc.: Sounds like any emulators should run fine?
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (2006)?
Those Lego games (2005-2012)?
Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light (2010)?
Uhhh lemme think: Mini Ninjas, Psychonauts, Trackmania maybe, misc console ports. The point is that I don't need or expect buttery framerates on Skyrim with everything maxed out, I just need to know that mid-to-low-end titles similar to the ones listed above can run smoothly. I assume I'm ok, especially as I don't mind sacrificing eye candy as needed; I'm looking for playability for kids who don't give a poo poo about anti-aliasing. Thoughts/experiences?

# ¿ May 20, 2012 22:04

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

So I just picked up a barebones Zotac ID41 and am having major issues with 720p HD playback. Video stutters every five seconds or so, can tell if it's from buffering or processing/rendering or what. I'm preparing to roll up my sleeves and start troubleshooting things, but thought someone might have thoughts on the cause, which could be one of several things:

Using a wireless network connection, which from reading online sounds like it has been the culprit for some folks on this front.
Only have 2GB of RAM (DDR3 800) in there right now, I'm sure another 2GB wouldn't hurt
Fresh install of Windows 7. My preference is to stay in Windows because that's what I've done w previous HTPCs and where I'm comfortable getting things how I like them, but I'd move to a different OS if other options were exhausted.
Using drivers that came with the box. I'll go grab updated ones from the website but doubt that that's the issue.

So out of this stuff, what's most likely, can anyone guess? Figure I'll tackle them in order, easiest thing to eliminate is the wifi by running a temporary cable, but I figured I'd ask here in case somebody immediately identifies the RAM as an issue, for example.

Thanks.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2013 18:08

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

I'll update if there are any other issues, but it looks like this was just buffering all the way related to wireless performance. My test file was a 6.5GB mkv file; copying it from the server onto the Zotac's hard drive immediately resolved the issue, file played flawlessly. There isn't an attachable antenna on this model, so I'll just go with an external USB, which presumably should fix things permanently.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2013 19:42

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:33

rivetz: Sep 22, 2000; Soiled Meat

A general heads-up to no one in particular: I purchased a Zotac ID41, which is on the low-end of their product line but was dirt-cheap and is more than sufficient for my current needs, but was having a difficult time streaming content of any kind. Turned out to be weak wireless performance, I guess from the internal wireless on the ID41 (I have two access points well within range, each with 4 or 5 bars, no other wireless devices having problems). I ran an Ethernet cable through the basement and the jump in performance was night and day, with ~8GB HD videos that previously wouldn't even load suddenly responding flawlessly.

So if you have any issues with stuttering playback, I advise you not to forget that piece, because the wireless signal looked excellent at a glance and I was much more convinced it was something to do with processor performance.

Fillerbunny posted:

Be ready for disappointment. As of yet, the $99 ATV3 is not jailbreak-able. ATV2 is, but resellers know this and have jacked up the price on the ATV2. I was looking at this same option for similar reasons. When the ATV3 can be jailbroken, I'm all over it. You might be able to snag a 2 from an unsuspecting seller on Craigslist or something.

Yeah, I just unloaded my jailbroken ATV2 for something like $270 on eBay last month, knew it would fetch more than the $99 I paid but was stunned to see it go so high. Great box, but really wanted more flexibility for MP3 playback and had problems with XBMC, so a move to an full HTPC just made more sense.

rivetz fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 17, 2013

# ¿ May 17, 2013 04:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC