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TheDingo posted:The Ion looks interesting, but details on it and real world tests (outside of trade shows) are slim. The Atom is weak, so I wouldn't get my hopes up of it running popular media players flawlessly.
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Apr 13, 2009 20:29
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I think that engadget build is a bit over the top for what most people want. Of course, their big spiel is about Blu-Ray playback, which I have no need for, so that'll affect the budget a lot. My E5200 decodes 1080P movies encoded with high-profile h.264 options just fine, so I don't see the need for a higher power, hotter CPU. TV cards often include hardware-based encoding, so your CPU should barely be affected while recording video, too. I'd recommend going up to 2x2GB of RAM, especially if the machine is supposed to do something along with video playback. RAM is so cheap it's a no-brainer to put in a bit more than you think you'll need. wheezy360 posted:Outdated HTPC rig noydb posted:First of all, I know I don't need a quad core processor, but what attracted me was the 65 watts. All the other processors I could find for that board are 95 watts. Is that a huge difference as far as heat is concerned?
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Jul 22, 2009 21:22
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For most setups, you shouldn't need to consider anything more than a receiver, the HTPC, speakers, and the display. Of course, this is the HTPC thread so the HTPC is the big concern. Blu-Ray has digital content protection going on that'll force you to use HDCP (unless you output to component / s-video / composite) meaning you'll need HDMI or HDCP-supporting DVI output along with something like PowerDVD or AnyDVD. The setup is enough of a headache (and not terribly elegant) for me that I'd opt for a separate Blu-Ray player or PS3 instead of putting it on my PC. Recording cable is a bit of a thorny issue because some people want to try recording TV without cable boxes and that's a bit of a mess thanks to how the telecomm / cable industry works. It's possible that you should consider looking at cablecard PCs, but these get surprisingly expensive to where you just might want to pay the monthly fee to the cable company for a DVR (note: I'm sure they're making it more cost-effective to rent the DVR to protect revenue). I'd just go with a Tivo and pay the fees. Also, make sure your network can sustain the throughput to watch movies if that's part of your setup. A lot of people's 802.11g networks will choke playing even 720P - mine does and I can't make it any better  You may want to consider a separate sound card if you find the sound to have some interference or noise, but many people won't notice them on most onboard sound cards these days. If you haven't guessed yet, the complexity of an HTPC is enough for a lot of people that they give up and go buy a pre-built box with a $900+ markup at a store. I can't really blame them though because this stuff wasn't ever meant to be easy for anyone. If you want to make this a hobby though and the DIY attitude is what you live by, just hit up Google and grab a jug of coffee. I'm only interested in all this because I'm fine with it as a hobby, but if I didn't want to spend hours on this crap, I'd just shell out $2500+ for an out of box solution.
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Jul 23, 2009 15:49
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Zombie Dictator posted:- How likely am I to be able to stream 1080p content via 802.11g? Streaming and recording HDTV is a very, very convoluted topic because of all the digital content protection happening by the cable companies and the steps they've taken to prevent people from pirating shows on, say, premium TV channels. The gist I've gotten is you're better off using TiVo and broadcasting video from there through a central media server... or pay a good chunk of cash for a cable card PC (cable card means you have to buy the ENTIRE machine - not just the card that works with the cable company). Personally, I just download shows onto my file server instead of watching it live on my TV with my DVR. Kinda sad if you think about it because cable companies could make some money setting up these things without forcing every TV to have a cable box. quote:Could this box act as a media server streaming content, or is it too old? quote:- I'm going to need some device to connect via HDMI to the TVs to catch the content and stream it. What devices are recommended? quote:- Another thing I'm considering is getting an OTA antenna and hooking that up to a tuner in the PC. I'd obviously be able to watch TV on the computer itself, but what about streaming TV and guide data out?
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Jul 30, 2009 17:22
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Also, a lot of onboard NICs are pretty crappy. Most wired home networking throughput underperformance is probably easily remedied by better hardware without needing to upgrade to gigabit everything. Now, if you also transfer lots of files around the place while multiple 1080P movies are playing, you'll run out of bandwidth real fast.Zombie Dictator posted:1) Can Windows use the Time Capsule HDD as a mapped network drive using NFS? Just want to verify that I can use it in a non-OS X environment. quote:2) Will I be able to stream 1080P content from the Time Capsule while backing up to it? It says it is a "server-grade HDD", but doesn't specific the RPM or anything else for that matter. quote:3) Is the USB port expandable, I.E could I plug in a USB hub and use 2 external HDDs and a printer? quote:4) Are there other router/NAS devices instead of the Time Capsule that I can have my Time Machine back up to over the wifi network? quote:6) What are some good ways to auto-check for new content? A friend of mine recommended sabnzbd to auto-check an RSS feed and download accordingly. quote:7) What media tanks are recommended? The Popcorn Hour seems nice, but for 2 of them that's $600+. I know it is hugely expandable, but all I need is 1080p content playback via HDMI of any codec I can throw at it. I'd like to do Netflix streaming, Hulu, etc as well, but it isn't as important.
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Jul 31, 2009 16:03
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Regnevelc posted:* Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor E2220 (1MB L2 cache, 2.40GHz, 800MHz FSB) kri kri posted:Might want to wait for the new Dell
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Aug 15, 2009 09:31
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Well I just got the ASRock 330 and the Aspire Revo isn't that big of a deal to me. The hard drive on the ASRock is twice as big, which does kinda help for longevity and it has a DVD drive for playing CDs and DVDs (possibly Blu-Ray later when slim drives are reasonably cheap!). I dunno, I think I'd rather have a slightly bigger, simpler box that has those rather than the wireless built-in with a possibly questionable wireless reception profile. The Windows 7 license is nice I suppose, but I don't really run Windows on anything. BTW, the ASRock 330 has been pretty freakin' awesome so far. Loaded up XBMC Live, shoved the Aeon skin on there, and it's not noticeably slower than my box that runs on a E5200 with a GF9400. I feel kinda stupid I didn't buy one when they came out.
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Nov 1, 2009 04:52
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I have a Thecus N4100Pro that's a temporary NAS until I settle on the hardware specifics of my long-term solution. I'm in the process of building a 4U 10TB rackmount NAS running OpenSolaris with a couple RAIDZ file systems with hotspares that'll sit in the garage. I'd suggest a Linux fileserver or even unRAID for a NAS keeping in mind that you won't be able to stream HD over wifi probably even with 802.11n just because of wireless signal degradation and inconsistency in most areas.
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Mar 9, 2010 19:49
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The feature is live in XBMC and has been merged into the main branch. It's going through tons of fixes right now and the whole thing is completely unstable for the time being. Expect it to make it out in about 2-3 months I'd say.
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Mar 22, 2010 23:59
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vanilla slimfast posted:Which, the PVR unification?
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Mar 23, 2010 21:45
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Plex seems to be a lot better at scraping now than XBMC partly because they've rewritten the media database from the ground up. I'm hoping it makes it back to the XBMC mainline because the library is surprisingly one of the biggest weaknesses of XBMC at present.KKKLIP ART posted:Did that and it seemed worse. XBMC and me aren't getting along :v I wanted a nice easy system an idiot can use and its been thing after thing. Also tried both on 9.11 and the latest build on SVN
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Apr 1, 2010 23:56
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Also, GPU acceleration software currently typically sucks at a lot of denoising, interpolation, deinterlacing, etc. so any post-processing really has to go through the CPU in the end. I got tired of dealing with VDPAU and GPU acceleration limitations in general and just stuck my E5200 into my HTPC. The motherboard happens to have a 9400M anyway, so I can compare and contrast pretty well. XBMC has absolutely zero stutters and poor image quality now for me regardless of whether I'm using software decoding or VDPAU. I'd say an E5200 is plenty sufficient for everything you'd want to do with an HTPC barring intensive games and simultaneous video encoding / playing back 1080P+ video. Even the power savings advantage of an i5 is miniscule because you're paying an extra $140+ for a CPU that'll save you maybe about $25 / yr over an E5200 assuming 24/7 idle, so it'll take 6+ years to break even on the upfront cost. If you're ditching your PC for your HTPC like I am, then an i5 is probably a good idea though.
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Jun 22, 2010 18:47
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Just FYI, I had an ASRock Ion 330 that would stutter on everything using VDPAU if kept on for a while that would get better and it was related to overheating almost certainly. I keep my HTPC in a closed off TV stand and there's barely any air circulation. With the same exact software configuration, I used to run it outside the stand and I never had a stuttering problem. In fact, even the micro-ATX system I built gets audible as the PSU fan kicks up from the sheer amount of heat build-up in there, so I suspend the machine when I'm not using it and run most of my software on the 24/7 NAS. The Revo doesn't seem to have overheating problems like the ASRock though.... or everyone that gets a Revo doesn't shove it into a confined space like I do. You guys that are saying SSDs are overkill for HTPCs haven't had to deal with the heat / space issues of building in mini-ITX cases, have you? SSDs offer a couple key features important for HTPCs systems: 1. Barely any heat output over time in a confined case, making thermal characteristics easier to handle and thus less need for fans. 2. Smaller, allowing for greater airflow in a case that has not much more room than a Mac Mini Also, for those of us with really large (40k+ songs and 1500+ movies with posters and everything, for example) libraries, an SSD can improve load times and improve the appliance-like feeling desirable for HTPCs. A small SSD costing maybe $80 can make a huge difference.
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Sep 6, 2010 21:10
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The other option is to muck with the XBMC SQL database.
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Dec 8, 2010 22:43
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A number of nVidia GPUs meant for the HTPC market aren't capable of DXVA / VDPAU accelerated filtering like anti-aliasing and noise reduction, especially at 1080P. Then there's issues of whether various audio codecs will get even passthrough support. I've always been a little pensive about what HDMI's unification of video and audio would mean for the audio and video card standards folks and on the HD technology push end, it seems to have just made things more complicated than anything else.
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Feb 9, 2011 23:13
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Captain Apollo posted:Is there a more expensive ready made computer that COULD run a game or two? The trade-off with a more powerful GPU and CPU setup is that of more power drawn (even during idle), which translates into more heat, more heat requires more cooling capacity, which in turn typically requires fans, heatsinks, and / or (the most common case) a bigger case, excluding the fact that most gaming capable graphics cards wouldn't fit into a small mini ITX case to begin with.
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Mar 21, 2011 15:30
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A single pane of glass interface is the holy grail that doesn't exist for lots and lots of reasons so far, most of which are not due to technical reasons but business ones. XBMC plug-ins for Hulu and Netflix have historically broken very often, and the XBMC library model currently doesn't support a very dynamic content indexing system like those two services (movies can be pulled from Netflix' Instant Watch readily, for example). I think you guys are underestimating the risks of any business, and the people you'd be stepping on to do this would be Big Content - you know, the folks that are twisting the arms of a $200 billion+ company like Apple? The content providers want to have control of your media experience to a high degree for reasons ranging from piracy concerns to advertising / revenue sharing / channel sales contracts. These companies also compete with each other and tend to draw lines in the sand and fling mud at each other about as often as Middle Eastern countries / provinces (see: Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD war), and in the business world this sort of thing is very common. It all reminds me a lot like stupid reality TV shows with contestants forming alliances and other political bullshit, actually. What this means is that whoever puts all of these services into a single commercial package will piss one or all of these companies off, and they'll be sued into oblivion. The way I see it, until the Big Content industry changes their attitude almost 180, this isn't a billion dollar plus market, it's a negative billion dollar plus market (after the lawsuits are over).
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Mar 25, 2011 16:22
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Just built myself a Zacate based HTPC in a mini-ITX form factor and I've gotta say it's pretty swell if your needs run a tad above the capabilities of an Ion build (not to mention DDR2 RAM is kind of silly to buy given how cheap DDR3 is now). The extra CPU over the Atom is enough overhead that you can run a few other programs without running into occasional hiccups, and it'll playback 720P hidef via CPU well enough to be watchable. It wound up being somewhere between a full-fledged LGA775 + GF9300 setup and an Ion which is a tad below the sweetspot to me, but it'll definitely do for my needs. The one thing I regret is that I overestimated the power I'd be using since I had planned on an LGA775 setup (canned due to a bad Zotac board - their QA sucks, you're gambling buying a board from them) at about 60w and now I'm getting less power efficiency by using a 150w PSU instead of the cheaper 65w.
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Apr 3, 2011 16:51
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Only reason to go beyond Ion (Atom + nVidia 9300m GPU) is if you're doing other things with the HTPC besides just playing back media over a network with a simple XBMC skin, which is what Ion machines are designed to do. I'm ditching my E350 setup for an HP Microserver to turn my NAS (with 11 drives in it) off more often, better run XBMC skins, I have a massive media collection and use wall views often (the E350 takes a while to scroll with and my AppleTV is almost unusable), and also I'm trying to run sabnzbd, Couchpotato, Sickbeard all on the same box. It's kinda nice to have everything all in one box though again.
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Oct 13, 2011 16:49
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I should note that some people have some tolerance for slightly sluggish responsiveness better than others, and unfortunately my wife has the patience of a 2 year old overall and if she sees any lag she'll assume something's going wrong and start panicking. On the same hardware and software setups, I've seen other people go "oh wow, that's smooth" (I had an Ion setup for a while and moved to a Core2Duo when that just didn't cut it - all just for playback).Hamburglar posted:After reading your post I began considering an HP Microserver, but I'm a bit confused (I'm an idiot with networking but did get XBMC in every room pulling videos from one main computer). How is a Microserver better than just using a PC I have laying around already? A lot of them look really small so I can't imagine how people are fitting a ton of hard drives in there. 1. Minimal noise 2. Minimal heat (related to 1) 3. Minimal space 4. Maximum compatibility with software that meets your media needs 5. (Optional) TV / cable box input capability If the Microserver had been released like 5 years ago, it wouldn't be as attractive because there was no GPU acceleration widely available then, and everything would need to be software decoded. Nowadays, if you have a modern AMD or nVidia card in any price bracket, you can decode 1080P h.264 base profile like it's an Xvid from 2002.
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Oct 15, 2011 04:14
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Hamburglar posted:I just meant what's the difference between having a server store all your media from somewhere in your basement or having a computer you built yourself do it. 1. Smaller footprint than your PC probably 2. Lower power usage (these use about 45w or so with 4 drives in them when your desktop PC probably uses at least 80w at idle) 3. Not being dependent upon that one PC running when you need access to its files More information on the topic in the SH/SC NAS thread
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Oct 17, 2011 03:41
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If you're concerned about noise, you can't do much better than fanless systems (or ones with external PSUs like with Pico PSUs), but aside from ones by A Tech Fabrication there's none that I can think of that aren't stupidly expensive or completely terrible at cooling. This job can be made substantially easier by selecting lower TDP parts and all, but nothing's going to keep an HTPC near ambient temps when you're doing a software decode of say Hi10 h.264 streams. A lot of people building HTPCs amortize costs by cannibalizing existing parts, so it makes sense to put barebones kits out on the market. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more people with Apple TVs than those with full-blown custom HTPCs like what most of us in the thread have built.
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Aug 14, 2012 02:38
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TraderStav posted:Really the only solution is to get a new lady that can hang.
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Sep 13, 2012 02:38
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MrDorf posted:The trick here is that this is going into one of those luxury buses/mobile homes. A friend of mine rents a few of these things long term to film/TV productions, touring shows/musicians, and high end vacationers, and he wants to add a high capacity media storage "server". He wants it as clean and small as possible so it can be embedded into an in-wall stack, so attached external storage is out. Part of the idea is that he wants them to be able to store and play raw camera files from their shoots on this thing, so disk bandwidth and storage space need to be a little higher than your normal HTPC. On top of all that, this thing will likely be in use while the vehicle is in motion, so drives WILL fail more often than usual, so they need to be easily field replaceable. SilverStone has several cases that almost fit the bill, but the way they bury the internal drives is a big concern here. The advantage that 2.5" drives have over 3.5" drives in your situation is mostly that laptop hard drives are built to withstand shock by design more often than desktop and server drives (in theory anyway). You can pack 4 2.5" drives into the space of one 5.25" bay but you'd be only at 1 parity or basically need to do RAID1+0 and get only half the volume capacity.
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Dec 31, 2012 22:55
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I think I spent about 2 years casually ripping and encoding 450+ DVDs and 700+ CDs and won't ever get that time back I think I'd rather just pay a small fee at a point for a digital copy instead of spending that time myself now. Granted, my time is a lot more limited than back then and so forth, it's really monotonous work that's surprisingly error-prone. For those of us willing to try slightly crazy ideas for our computers, Streacom has a fanless case that is like an inside-out yet-to-be-released Mac Pro. Most of Streacom's stuff is just plain not available in the US it looks like, but we get to be jealous of those Europeans when it comes to tech stuff for once. A lot of the innovative case designs that make it to market seem to be coming out of European shops rather than the US or Taiwan.
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Oct 21, 2013 16:41
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I just bought a Mac Mini (refurb) to use as an HTPC after spending years going across different pre-packaged solutions, building my own, and always having something terrible or annoying about each of the things. I waited a whole 6 months for the Apple event to release a new Mini and was thoroughly disappointed, but I can't wait any more basically now that I ditched every other box I have that could fill the function. I'm just too sick and tired of dealing with all this bullcrap and have the money to mostly fix it for me.Don Lapre posted:There is really no reason to use a mac mini as an HTPC. Its too powerful and expensive for just watching videos, and doesn't play games well enough to justify its price. The limited RAM and CPU on these various devices can adversely affect the responsiveness of the UI. This is shown by the problems running certain nicer looking skins on the Apple TV 2. I had an Apple TV 2 and sold it because it just wouldn't do the job in the end. The fragmentation of content sites and so forth today mostly due to competing technologies to placate the content producers via DRM platforms and forced differentiation (you can't put Netflix videos next to your own media next to Vimeo, Vudu, etc. in anything on the market, even XBMC) means that the squabble over control of the living room will not be coming to an end anytime in the near future either. Even if Apple has totally figured it out, there will be backlash by the rest of the industry against Apple and that'll just be more headaches in the end. Furthermore, there is almost zero doubt that it'll still be fundamentally a frontend to iTunes as the content store king and will be beholden to that as a first class citizen, and the same goes for anything that involves Google, Microsoft, or Amazon. So basically, until hell freezes over, I'm expecting that a computer will always be the Content Device To Rule Them All and for an HTPC that isn't obtrusive, capable, and truly hassle free with no janky add-ons, the widest possible platform for watching content, there is nothing that'll beat a Mac Mini at this point. The Achilles Heel of a Mac Mini is the cable card issue though, no question. Live TV is being blocked pretty hard and every cable provider wants you to use their DVR as the HTPC n years down the road, but we know how well that's going to work for most of us attempting cord cutting. The irony of all these digital living room attempts for me is that I've wound up paying for everything and wasting tremendous amounts of time and money in the process. At one point I had a Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, DVR, FIOS account with 350+ channels and a 10TB NAS supporting a custom HTPC running XBMC. For really impatient, tech-hating people like my wife that refuse to learn how to watch media on a TV besides that single pane of glass view model of channels that's existed since the dawn of TVs and demand zero hiccups with the digital media compared to just popping a disc into a player, you cannot build or buy anything aside from perhaps a Kaleidescape system that would be that actual holy grail. I don't doubt some people's grandmas and 4 year olds have a better grasp on dealing with tech than my wife, but I've found that she's surprisingly representative of the demands most consumers have upon their media experience aside from the fetishization of physical media. Lastly, Mac Minis will hold their value far better than that random HTPC you put together with a slick looking Lian Li case. Even if Apple puts out some Apple TeeVee, I can sell it for maybe 15% off what I paid or repurpose for something else - you really can't repurpose a special purpose media device that's not supported anymore (see: Boxee Boxes - I had one of those too). As a comedy option, perhaps an XBox One could do the job for you if it becomes sufficiently moddable?
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Nov 1, 2013 16:58
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I don't think those Zotac boxes really cut it either. I had a box the generation prior to this one which still exhibited some lag and wasn't able to play back a whole lot, and the AMD E-350 box I had was a bit better but still a mini ITX box that won't be as power efficient and compact as a Mac Mini. I'll concede that class of box is probably sufficient for a most people compared to a Mac Mini or Intel NUC, but the lack of GPU acceleration for a lot of stuff still is an issue - I've run into it frequently enough that I'd rather just pay a few hundred more to never even think about it and face the wrath of the wife when something stutters like it's 1996 with RealPlayer on my 28k modem. My points comes can be distilled down to: 1. Not everything can be GPU-accelerated 2. Even if GPU-accelerated, you may have obscure issues that ruin the experience / viability of your media center. 3. The only One Box that can do everything including something like video recording / PVR features will have to be able to both playback HD video and transcode it in realtime. 4. Software used to support your experience is probably more critical than the hardware anyway. In theory, a Mac Mini can run everything that a PC can run while a PC can't use every piece of OS X software 5. Just buying a box that'll last several years for most media cases for the foreseeable future will save you the most in the long run. I'm not quite saying "it hasn't worked for me, so it shouldn't work for anyone else" but small, annoying things do exist that can add up to becoming unpleasant and nobody should expect to have equal parity with an actually commercially supported UX by the industries involved. I didn't think that I needed to go all the way up to a Mac Mini for years with various machines that kept disappointing in one nagging way or another but that has proven clearly false. Given my wife literally has OCD though, I cannot count the WAF factor as primary for my reasons for recommendation.
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Nov 1, 2013 21:00
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There's an awful lot of people on Craigslist trying to sell old TVs and computers for not that far off from what they bought it for. I doubt that they're getting what they're asking for, but one thing I've noticed with a number of discount stores like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc. is that they'll sell a number of items for actually higher prices than at non-discount places, and I know that those items still sell. It's not like it costs you anything to post it on Craigslist and advertise it as a media center PC.
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Nov 7, 2013 20:51
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Be aware that a lot of Dells don't take ATX PSUs, especially the smaller machines. I think a lot of them take some TFX form factor PSU. Granted, you can probably grab them off of Ebay just entering your model number in, but sometimes people gouge you just for the Dell compatibility recognition when there may be a perfectly reasonable alternative.
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Nov 27, 2013 20:13
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Plex has a FreeNAS / FreeBSD port available. The primary issue still hurting it from being viable for a lot of people is that soft subtitle writes are completely broken at the moment. I do not advise using an HP Microserver N*L for a general purpose Plex server to transcode to a bunch of clients around the house. However, the Gen 8 can do the job fine, and you can just run XBMC or Plex local to the box itself and tack on a fair GPU for hardware accelerated decoding. I ran that setup with only USB IR and sleep hiccups for my primary XBMC box for a couple years. Richard M Nixon posted:The only upside to a NAS is the small form factor, noise, power, and you can hot swap drives, none of which really justify the cost IMO. And of course, there's the whole Wife Acceptability Factor that has probably cost me thousands to deal with because media PCs and the software interfaces and ecosystems are terrible for people that really, really, really suck badly with technology UX made after 1990 (DVDs and Blu-Rays have the same UX workflow as a VCR, don't count).
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Dec 2, 2013 18:13
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The G2020T Pentium at 2.5 GHz is overall faster than a Core2Duo E5200 and the clocking they have it at can suffice. I used to transcode in realtime with some BS like mediatomb on a E5200 for 1080P to play on an Ion 2 client 4 years ago, so the G202T should do it handily. If you had nothing else running besides the transcoder running it'd handle it fine without a problem barring some anomalies like that Planet Earth clip. With both hardware and software improvements, I'm pretty sure most non-prebuilt NASes could tackle realtime transcoding at 1080P. The Plex transcoder barely does anything to the i3 4130 NAS I run on FreeNAS, so Benchmarks (it's rough but even a ballpark number says it all): http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+E5200+%40+2.50GHz&id=1097 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?id=1838 http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+G1610+%40+2.60GHz Basically, Intel's low-end CPUs trash their mid-end CPUs from 4 years ago and for half the TDP, so even if software didn't improve at all, all the Microserver Gen 8 CPUs should be able to handle 1080P transcoding and serving some files sans heavy dedupe and decompression.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:24
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aerique posted:You have solved the WAF? Would you mind giving some suggestions on what interfaces do work? Is it Plex? (I have no experience with it.) I could deal with it via alcohol or by buying a Kaleidescape system ($50k+) and a house to put it all in, but even a Kaleidescape doesn't do Internet content at all nor live TV. Plex is helpful for streaming crap to mobile devices around the house with consistent media description across devices and for transcoding stuff for offline use, but it can be finicky and may stutter on certain codecs with obscure codecs (I have a lot of videos that can't be found anymore even online), which immediately fails the WAF test because unless technology is superior in every way, the Old Way must be better by definition (somewhat agreeable point). It doesn't handle cable TV use cases at all though and then comes the need to switch channels a bunch (because as much as TV is dying, it's still watched a crapton). But it has really anemic social features and you still have to go to a Youtube channel or Vimeo channel or whatever and is another thing to break and make you look like an idiot instead of a vendor. If the FiOS box acts up and lags like crazy, wife blames Verizon, not me. In this respect, I've learned to test the hell out of anything before even putting it in the living room to see and you'll need to check your network for stability, and it basically becomes a part-time job of QAing and evaluating solutions. But WAF has a lot of variables including SO's tolerance for inconsistent UX (mine has almost none), quality acceptance, content latency demands (wife demands to watch shows as they air still), and content source demands (live TV is still preferred because you get immediate feedback). My wife is a particularly tough user because she literally has OCD on top of a pretty serious technology phobia that's mostly only solvable through paid solutions, so I've got the worst of cord-cutting, Red Box use, Netflix, Amazon, and paying for cable TV with tons of channels. The only thing I haven't messed with so far are Cablecards and Tivos, which might be next on the list because the Verizon FiOS DVR is really pissing me off with ads and menu interruptions constantly. You see, the holy grail of UX in HTPC software is a single pane of glass that lets everyone have access to all the content you both subscribe to and own, and anybody that tries to do that is stopped by competitors or through lawsuits basically. Microsoft is technically closest with WMC but developers don't write crap for WMC and is an extra cost on top of running a Windows PC. It is not just a hard technical problem but a high-level business one with multi-billion dollar stakeholders that don't want to become the next newspaper industry. Stuff like MythTV and XBMC can bridge it from one direction, but the content providers need to provide some muscle on their end to make it happen (see: Silverlight dependencies, DRM demands, Time Warner v. NBC BS, etc.). I dunno about anyone else but I've spent enough time on this crap I might as well start some company doing it and I spend more time building solutions than enjoying the content. I think it's possible but XBMC and Plex are not going to do it in the long term given their technically focused direction.
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Dec 3, 2013 14:44
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Which version of XBMC are you running and is it for a specific video or two or all of them? I remember seeing an awful lot of HD Audio bugs from XBMC in patch notes and stayed away. Downmixing everything to DTS or AC3 seems a bit drastic but may be the correct option for your XBMC setup.
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Dec 24, 2013 17:45
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Bunk Rogers posted:I've just built a relatively high-end desktop. It connects, through HDMI, to my Denon receiver and then, through HDMI, to my older Panasonic plasma.
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Dec 31, 2013 17:18
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The seeking response time is a function of a few factors that also include latency to the storage as well as how long it takes the transcoder to spit out a number of frames first. Is Plex running on the same machine as what actually has storage (not sure if you have a NAS going)? Plex also has an alternative possibility of not having any transcoding lag if you're using DirectPlay, which can happen if the client reports to the server that no transcoding needs to happen. You should be safe for a couple 1080P streams on almost every LGA socket CPU Intel is still manufacturing.
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Dec 31, 2013 17:54
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:Yeah thanks guys. I was trying to avoid the "tiny PC" route because I always have such weird issues. I should probably just buy an Apple TV2 (for only a 140% markup! I think the XBMC instance on my Apple TV 2 just died easily with the sheer amount of media I had in its DB (I think the SQlite DBs got up to like 150MB) combined with the really small flash storage available on there.
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Dec 31, 2013 21:00
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Configuring your PC to switch displays via some IR remote as the event emitter should be possible with something like EventGhost, but now you'd have a fun time configuring EventGhost and hoping you can get a way to switch display output from within Windows with some command line program. Depending upon what video card you have and third party software you have around, you may not be able to get it to switch displays easily or have a switching problem that makes it ugly (my usual example is that some video cards when hooked to receivers or TVs that are off will stop trying to connect via HDMI forever until rebooted). In the end, you are likely best served just running some form of higher-bandwidth network between floors whether it's cat6, powerline ethernet, or a wi-fi network. I can't see what the point of $150 in an ethernet USB extender is when you could at that point just run cat6 there for much cheaper (unless punching holes in walls / floors).
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Jan 14, 2014 17:39
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Plex with playing back to a non-computer device means one of two configurations: * Semi-powerful NAS running Plex Media Server, something like a higher-end Synology can do it * Semi-powerful PC running Plex Media Server to do the transcoding For Plex ghetto configurations, you can use most old laptops and run it off of there as both the client and server hooked up to external drives with your media on it. MMD3 posted:Oh, there will be cat 6 between the office and den, well to a router in the basement then to the den. Steam Boxes are coming around the corner if it's of any help, and newer SteamOS versions should be able to do something like what NVIDIA Shield does by streaming games from your PC out to a client device. For sanity, I'd recommend building a dedicated machine instead of trying to give more functions to an already multipurpose machine. It's certainly a waste to run so much stuff just to watch movies and play a game for only so many hours / week, but I think of it as less risk of you screwing up a movie in the middle when your PC randomly restarted and other unforeseen BS that comes with running PCs (or Macs).
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Jan 14, 2014 21:06
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LLJKSiLk posted:By the time I build the $200-ish NUC and spend $300+ on a NAS, I may as well just build an all-in-one I guess unless I can dick with the Mediasmart.
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Jan 15, 2014 00:46
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shymog posted:5) Have "Change display refresh rate" and "sync playback to display" enabled.
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Jan 17, 2014 01:17
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