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

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wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

After fighting all day with W7MCE and MKV files I'm now looking at new software options for my HTPC. I really don't care what it is as long as it meets these three simple qualifications:

Plays all common television/movie formats
Supports hardware decode acceleration on an ATI 4670
Supports the Windows MCE remote receiver

I'm at a loss. MCE obviously supports the remote and has hardware decoding on all DXVA capable cards, but it's a bitch with MKV and OGM containers, and unfortunately most of my high-definition content has been encoded to one of those (usually MKV). XBMC plays everything and supports the MCE remote excellently under Linux, but its hardware decoding is limited to nVidia cards. Boxee now has DXVA acceleration and should play everything XBMC does, but it does not support the remote.

e: for reference, the MCE problem that started this is it refusing to play any MKVs at all, even though I have the codecs installed and they play fine in WMP and MPC.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2009 02:21

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 01:15

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Crackbone posted:

How are you fighting W7MCE and MKV files? It's not that hard.

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/mkvs-for-minimalists-on-windows-7.html

If you've already installed a bunch of codec packs you may already have borked the rendering engine though - try a restore or reinstall.

I have seen that post and actually used the .reg as one of my tests since as far as I could tell my codecs were installed properly.

A few minutes after my post, I managed to find the real problem. I'm on a 64 bit install of W7, but CCCP is apparently 32 bit only. I thought I had MPC-HC x64 installed, but it was in fact the 32 bit version, and WMP was launching in 32 bit mode as well. MCE however was launching as 64 bit, so the 32 bit MKV splitter didn't do anything useful for it.

I dug around and found a 64 bit copy of Haali's splitter and now the MKVs will play, but they still won't thumbnail. This machine's been acting up though, so it'll probably get closeted and replaced by a dual core Ion machine + XBMC on Linux in the near future, solving all of my problems and shrinking a full power-hungry tower to a nettop.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2009 19:53

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

I'm looking for recommendations on the simplest way to get a S/PDIF signal *in* to my HTPC with minimal latency. I want to be able to use my USB headphones with the rest of the home theater rather than just the HTPC and this seems like the simplest way.

My plan is to hook the receiver's digital output to the HTPC and configure it as an audio passthrough to the headphones from there.

If anyone's tried anything like this or has any better ideas I'd be interested to hear about it, I can't find much of anything online.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2014 15:17

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Don Lapre posted:

Are you sure your receiver even has a digital output?

Yes, it has both coax and optical outputs.

Hob_Gadling posted:

Unless you know for a fact that your receiver converts HDMI signals (you're using HDMI, right?) to optical, it probably won't. Most likely scenario: you get optical out only from sources that use optical or coax.

Not 100% on this one, but worst case all of my other source devices can output S/PDIF so I could rewire things to make that work if it doesn't convert from HDMI. My cheap lovely Dynex bedroom TV happily converts HDMI audio to optical so I assume a nice Marantz receiver will do it too.

quote:

If that is the case, best course of action is to buy a new pair of headphones. Converters are expensive and simple 3,5mm to USB cables simply don't work.

If they were wired that would be the obvious choice, to just plug right in to the 1/4" jack on the front of the receiver, but wireless is a lot more expensive and I like the headphones I have so buying an analog set that's equal or better would certainly cost more than a USB sound device with a digital input.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2014 04:32

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Apologies if this has been discussed recently but I went back about five pages and didn't see it.

At the moment it's uncertain whether Windows Media Center will be continued in Windows 10. So far there's no sign of it, but we're not even in beta yet so I don't think it's fair to jump to any conclusions. As far as I'm aware though it's the only PC program that supports copy protected content from CableCard tuners.

Am I correct on this, and if so is there any other potential option on the horizon or all owners of CC tuners just have to use Windows 7/8 until they lose support? I have never met a cable company DVR that didn't suck and TiVo is only good in comparison, plus paying yet another monthly fee annoys me.

I really want to pick up a HDHR Prime and get my cable back, but I can't find any info about how the copy flags are set around here and don't want to commit to it if I won't be able to both keep my computers up-to-date and watch all my channels.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2015 01:33

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Tunga posted:

Edit: Worth sticking the Windows 10 Preview on it?

Definitely skip Windows 10 for now on anything you want to just work reliably. I run it on my laptop and it's great most of the time but can be interesting sometimes. It mostly works, but the update before last literally prevented launching non-Metro programs from the start menu. They knew this before releasing it, it was one of the top items in the release notes, but they released it anyways. It was easy enough to work around (taskbar pinned apps still worked, so I actually didn't have any problem at all), but it's a perfect example of the way they're doing things during the "Preview Program" phase.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 00:05

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Windows Media Center is officially dead.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/rip-windows-media-center/

I guess here's hoping the HDHomerun DVR works out.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 04:52

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Definitely don't put a server on WiFi. Don't put anything stationary on WiFi, really. If it can be wired it should be wired, wireless is for portable devices and a last resort for something that simply can't be wired.

Wireless device manufactures are hilarious with their performance claims. "AC3200" devices claim 3.2gbit/sec capacity, but that's spread across three different channels which can not be used for a single data transfer. In the real world the fastest actual transfer speeds you can get are in the 700mbit/sec range and even that's in ideal conditions where there's only one device communicating with the access point per channel. Any other devices on the network will also be taking their turns and cutting your usable bandwidth down significantly.

Plus you don't want your server to be able to be taken down by the neighbor's microwave, do you?

Gigabit ethernet on the other hand can deliver pretty much full line rate. I get 900-950 megabits per second to/from my home server at all times, no matter what anyone else on the network is doing (unless they're also accessing the server and thus sharing it's single gigabit link to the switch, and on that note I really need to get around to setting up bonding...).

---

On an entirely different topic, are any of you aware of a configuration option or plugin for Kodi which would make the "Recently Added" view act like a TiVo where it groups together multiple entries from the same show? I've had a few times where I inadvertently missed an episode of something because enough new stuff had come in that the last unwatched episode fell off the list. The "In progress" show view is kind of close, but not really what I'm looking for.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 18:10

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

^ A Fire TV Stick is a really cheap way to put Kodi on pretty much anything with a HDMI input. It's a bit slow in the UI sometimes but I haven't found anything in my collection that it won't play.

It doesn't support external storage though so you need a network share of some kind (which can just be a share from your normal computer) or you're limited to it's 4 (?) GB of onboard storage. Most of the "Android Console" type devices like the full Fire TV, Google TV, and such can handle USB drives though.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 20:08

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Knyteguy posted:

Hm alright I'd like to write some guides up on these too then.

Fortunately they're just skinned Android devices, so the only tricky part is sideloading the APK. No rooting or anything required.

quote:

For my build I did consider Roku as well which I think has Kodi support?

Not as far as I'm aware, to my knowledge Kodi only supports Win/Mac/Linux and Android/iOS. All the other platforms (AppleTV, Raspberry Pi) are variants of those.

quote:

As far as a network share with a Fire TV stick: would that Blu Ray quality content without loss? Originally I was using a wireless HDMI, but there was definitely some compression being done.

It'll play the media as it exists on the storage device, no additional compression. I don't have any issues watching my Blu-Ray rips that are around 12-18GB each, whatever bitrate that ends up being. I am using its 5GHz WiFi though so it's only sharing the access point with my cell phone, everything else in the house is 2.4GHz.

quote:

One of the things an HTPC has that I would find incredibly useful compared to a tablet is an RSYNC option. There may be an app, but I haven't see a promising one yet. I would love it if I could have it pull media from my server without having to do it over FTP manually, or connecting the external HDD to my main PC or something to transfer files over. How do you sync media on an HTPC generally? Do you download directly onto it?

I have a homebuilt file server which runs the old SAB/Sickbeard/CouchPotato combination to manage my TV and movies. It exposes a file share that all my Kodi clients access, and I've set up Kodi to store its database in a MySQL instance running on the server so the libraries are all automatically the same. No syncing required, but it's certainly not the easiest. Supposedly modern builds of Kodi can sync the library via UPnP so you just need to set one up as the master and have any other clients look at that, but what I have going works for me so I haven't messed with it.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 21:23

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Call Me Charlie posted:

I don't know which versions have it but, with the one I have, you can access Kodi's upnp through the 'Roku Media Player' app. Only downside is navigation isn't the best and files with DTS require a receiver to pass the audio through.

Ah yea, I was talking about where you can actually run Kodi. Its UPnP server should be able to work with basically any UPnP client. Xbox 360/One, PS3/4, TVs, all kinds of things.

I know the Xbox client is a bit stupid about standards and often stops working with open source servers without any obvious reason, but that's Microsoft.

# ¿ May 9, 2015 23:44

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Knyteguy posted:

Now if I wonder if I could get away with powering a Blu Ray drive with one of these setups... I'd love to free up some clutter on my media stand.

Kodi should happily see and use an external drive on anything with a USB port and it will play Blurays, but the DRM is the "fun" part. Kodi 14 does not support encrypted discs at all, but version 15 (now in beta) can use VLC's libaacs to decrypt discs for which you have a key. Getting the key files is up to the user, so it's still not anywhere close to as friendly as the DVD support.

Low-effort playback of commercial Blurays is likely to be basically limited to appliances and Windows machines running commercial playback software for a while.

Beaglebone Black is generally a stronger platform than the original RPi, but unfortunately it can't do 1080p for some reason so it's not an ideal HTPC device. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work for anything up to it's 1280x1024 limit though.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 04:56

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

SIR FAT JONY IVES posted:

I hate hate hate consumer electronics. So I have an Onkyo reciever, a decent Samsung TV, a Samsung BD Player, Chromecast, and an HTPC. I also have an RF remote. The only problem is the universal remote doesn't have IR, so when I push the button for HTPC, it can't turn on the TV. All the media gear is in a rack in my basement, with an RF to IR blaster. The receiver and all that turn on, but the TV doesn't. So I configure HDMI-CEC (which is called different things on all the different brands). But since the HTPC doesn't support it, if I attempt to do anything it will just keep switching to the BD Player or Chromecast. If I set the receiver to the right HTPC input, it will change after a few seconds back to the player. It's so frustrating. Also, each device has a bunch of CEC settings that are vague and not descriptive. The manuals are also vague and descriptive. I tried every combination, but each one fails in it's own weird way.

CEC for your PC: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/104/usb-hdmi-cec-adapter

Designed to work with Kodi, but the library is open source so other things work with it too. A bit expensive though.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2015 03:12

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

teagone posted:

If Steam In-Home streaming ever becomes possible via the Steam Android app, then an Android TV streamer is the only box I'll ever need.

If you have an nVidia card check out Limelight. Open source receiver for GeForce Experience streams, works on anything.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2015 01:43

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Glass of Milk posted:

Is there an easy way to program a Harmony remote to use the WMC codes for fast forward or skip forward? Mine is not able to self-program using the cheap-o MCE remote I have. Everything else works pretty well- it would be nice to be able to use one remote for everything.

I just tell mine that my XBMC setup with a MCE receiver is a Windows MCE device. Nothing else special, everything works as expected.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 06:13

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

owl_pellet posted:

1. Ability to wake the PC from sleep from the TV

This sounds like you're using the TV's UPnP client to stream over the network, correct? If so waking the PC will require support from the TV to send a wake-on-LAN "magic packet". If that's not an option with your TV you'll need to find something else to stream to. Anything that runs Kodi should work, there's an option in its settings to send WoL packets to any servers it tries to access.

If you have the PC directly attached to the TV through HDMI then look at the Pulse-Eight device mentioned earlier.

quote:

2. The software to autorun on startup and persist in the background

This shouldn't be a problem for anything, install it as a service and enjoy.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 17:14

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Thermopyle posted:

Whats the best value or just plain best for remotes nowadays?

I'm redoing my living room setup for the first time in like 5 years and the Harmony (used with a generic Windows Media Center IR adapter) I've been using has a busted USB port so I can't reprogram it.

I've got a Windows HTPC running XBMC and Steam big picture mode.

I'm interested in this as well, my Harmony 880 is showing its age (approaching 10 years now) but even as limiting as it's stupid wizard-based software is I haven't found anything close to as capable without stepping in to crazy 4-5 digit price tag automation systems. Some of the URC units look nice but all the good ones are "pro installer only" models and gently caress everything about that.

A display is a must-have for lesser-used features, but touch screens on a remote are stupid because they're not good to use without looking at the thing.

Sheikh Djibouti posted:

E: Not sure about HTPC interoperability, though.

Interop shouldn't be an issue for any universal remotes and common receivers. IIRC the LIRC type receivers can work with basically anything, where the Windows MCE receivers are fairly popular on their own and also share codes with the Xbox 360 so almost any universal remote should work with them.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Aug 18, 2015

# ¿ Aug 17, 2015 23:57

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Cornjob posted:

I have a URC MX980 and MX950 id sell for dirt cheap

The MX-980 checks all my important boxes from a hardware standpoint, but the fact that the software is not officially available to the end user is a killer. I'm a tinkering type and I'm not an idiot, I refuse to pay someone to program my remote control. I'm sure it's possible to get ahold of the programming software through unofficial channels, but I don't want to be stuck searching for random tutorials on home theater forums as my only source of documentation either.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2015 16:29

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Not all sound cards support real-time 5.1 encoding. In those cases you'll only get stereo from games and real-time sound effects but will get DD or DTS from prerecorded movies where it's just dumping the bitstream out the digital port.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2015 17:12

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

tuyop posted:

On this new build, with a 2.05ghz quad core, kodi is maxing out my processor on 1080p playback. Is this expected, or what? I thought a Raspberry Pi could manage 1080p.

Edit: enabled DXVA and disabled windows defender and 1080p playback is hovering around 70%, which is fine I guess.

Either the file you're playing is some retarded format that isn't decodable in hardware or something is really messed up in your Kodi install or GPU drivers preventing hardware decoding from working properly.

Right now I'm hovering between 1-2% CPU usage while playing a 35 megabit per second 1080p copy of Force Awakens.

No modern system should have really any CPU usage while playing 1080p content.

# ¿ May 13, 2016 16:16

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Kodi apparently has Amazon in some of the latest builds as well, though I'm not sure if that works on the Android port or is just for Win/Lin and maybe Mac.

edit: Apparently if your build has "inputstream.mpd" it'll work after installing Widevine and an appropriate plugin.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 21:33 on May 16, 2016

# ¿ May 16, 2016 21:26

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Thermopyle posted:

Source?

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=269814

quote:

Amazon Prime / inputstream.mpd
These builds include the inputstream.mpd addon, which is enabled by default.

With inputstream.mpd it is possible to view Amazon Prime content. To do so, you will need to install the libwidevinecdm.so library:
code:
curl -Ls http://nmacleod.com/public/libreelec/getwidevine.sh -o /tmp/getwidevine.sh && sh /tmp/getwidevine.sh
Available Amazon Prime addons (valid Amazon Prime account required):

https://github.com/liberty-developer/plu...me_instant
https://github.com/phil65/plugin.video.amazon65

I'm not sure if this is something that's planned to be in the official release of Kodi 17, but Milhouse is one of the official Kodi team members and he claims he doesn't want to do anything in his builds which would make someone depend on them once official builds are available for a given version, so I'd assume at least LibreELEC if not standard Kodi will be including it.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 14:47

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Thermopyle posted:

That's pretty interesting, thanks.

If I'm not mistaken Widevine is how Netflix is supported in Chrome on Linux as well, so it seems reasonable to think that this might allow for native Netflix support at some point.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 15:43

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Medullah posted:

Is there ANY alternative out there to watching DRM channels like HBO through a HDHomeRun other than Windows Media Center? I can't upgrade my main PC to Windows 10 because I use WMC + Xbox 360 as my cable box. Kodi with HDHomeRun add on works for non-DRM channels, but I've had no luck getting anything to pick up HBO.

AFAIK the HDHomerun Android app (possibly only the beta version) supports DRM content as well. If you have an Android device hooked to your TV it's worth a shot.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 17:44

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Anything digital (DVB-T, ATSC) you're just pulling a bitstream off the air and decoding it. If you're not seeing any macroblocking or similar MPEG artifacts, it's just lovely encoding at the source (or potentially re-encoding at the transmit site). There's not really much for the receiver to get wrong.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 22:04

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

I've been using MySQL for years. Last I checked the permissions setup on the wiki basically made it wide open to the kodi user, so I made it a bit more secure for my own setup but otherwise there's nothing special going on.

Here's what's in my advancedsettings.xml:

code:

  <videodatabase>
      <type>mysql</type>
      <host>titan</host>
      <port>3306</port>
      <user>kodi</user>
      <pass>kodi</pass>
      <name>kodi_video</name>
  </videodatabase>
  <musicdatabase>
      <type>mysql</type>
      <host>titan</host>
      <port>3306</port>
      <user>kodi</user>
      <pass>kodi</pass>
      <name>kodi_music</name>
  </musicdatabase>

Obviously Titan is the MySQL host (and in this case also the file server, though this is not in any way necessary).

I just paste that XML in to the file on every system I install Kodi on. It's currently working across two LibreELEC RPis, a Windows 10 machine, a Ubuntu 16.04 machine, and a Fire TV Stick with the DB hosted on Ubuntu 14.04.

and here's my permissions in MySQL:

code:

mysql> show grants for 'kodi';
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for kodi@%                                                                                   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'kodi'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*2249595D6A53B38A77AA4AB2091D9B1A71F88735' |
| GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `kodi`.* TO 'kodi'@'%'                                                      |
| GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `kodi\_%`.* TO 'kodi'@'%'                                                   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
3 rows in set (0.01 sec)

wolrah fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jul 16, 2016

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 01:53

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

toplitzin posted:

Edit 3:

Pastebin of kodi hang: http://pastebin.com/CFFyjHW7

Do a show grants like I did, as well as show databases.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 03:21

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

toplitzin posted:

Odd seeing PW, as i didn't setup any uder besides root with one.

Hm, that all looks right. Permissions are wide open, which is fine as long as you're not doing anything else with that SQL instance or exposing it to the internet, so that can't be a problem. Looks like it created the music database but not the video one.

Did you have a local SQLite database populated before switching to MariaDB? It's been a long time so I don't recall if it tries to import existing local databases when populating a new network database.

To check if that might be happening run "SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST" a few times while launching Kodi and when it's "hung" and see if it shows any activity that looks relevant. If you see what looks like things happening, just sit back and wait on it for a while.

Here's an example of what mine shows while running a scan for new content on the video database:

code:

mysql> show full processlist;
+------+------+--------------------------+---------------+---------+------+-------+-----------------------+
| Id   | User | Host                     | db            | Command | Time | State | Info                  |
+------+------+--------------------------+---------------+---------+------+-------+-----------------------+
| 9881 | root | localhost                | NULL          | Query   |    0 | NULL  | show full processlist |
| 9882 | kodi | MmmPi.aperture.lan:60094 | kodi_video106 | Sleep   |   12 |       | NULL                  |
| 9884 | kodi | MmmPi.aperture.lan:60098 | kodi_video106 | Sleep   |    0 |       | NULL                  |
+------+------+--------------------------+---------------+---------+------+-------+-----------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

If it doesn't show any activity, at that point I'd fire up a packet sniffer on the SQL server end to see what's actually going on over the wire.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 20:45

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

The mymusic56 database is the only Kodi-created one there, and yeah you can delete that and it'll just get recreated empty the next time Kodi launches.

Just for curiosity, what version of MariaDB are you using? It seems like there are known issues with certain 10.1.x versions that interfere with Kodi.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2016 22:01

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Supposedly you can use UPnP between Kodi instances and all the library stuff works as expected. Couldn't hurt to try that. I have no idea why it's not working for you, it's clearly talking to the SQL server and has sufficient permissions.

If you want to keep fighting it add <loglevel>2</loglevel> to your advancedsettings.xml and let's see if the debug log tells us anything more interesting.

edit: Also, how long are you letting it sit when you've decided it hung? If my SQL server is down (say after a power outage when my Kodi boxes boot much faster than the server) they hang for about five minutes before failing through and acting like there's no database. Does this happen or not?

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 00:24

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

KingKapalone posted:

What do people use for a remote? I have a Harmony 880 that I controlled everything with including Kodi on my HTPC running Windows. I haven't reconfigured it after switching my HTPC to an Intel NUC running ubuntu desktop and Kodi. I feel like I'm not going to know how to get that working again.

Harmony 880 here as well, it's beat as hell after 10 years and the battery's only good for a few days anymore but I haven't found anything better. Definitely contemplating the 700 on sale if I can get it without having to fight crowds of idiots.

Everything higher end Logitech makes has a touch screen, and touch is terrible for remotes. Everything lower end uses normal batteries and screw that. All the other programmable universal remotes on the market are either much crappier than a Harmony or are only officially intended for professional integration where consumers aren't supposed to be programming their remotes themselves.

Aeka 2.0 posted:

I need help with proper sorting.

I'm using sabnzb, emby, couch potato, and sonar. Which apps should do the file and folder sorting. I always end up with estranged files. I'll have to check how I have it set up.

My setup is nzbget downloads to Unsorted/TV, Unsorted/Movies, etc. but doesn't do any further sorting/renaming beyond basic categories. Sonarr and Couch Potato take it from there. Anything else is downloaded so rarely that I just handle it manually, usually with Bulk Rename Utility.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 16:07

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

As far as I'm aware only PowerDVD is still under active development, and it does not currently support 4K Blu-Ray. They received certification in December so its likely that there will be support in an upcoming version soon, but that's not now.

If you insist on playing spinning media in a PC and want to be ready to support 4K you'll need it to be running Windows 10 and have one of the following GPU families:

Intel Kaby Lake (7000 series)
AMD Polaris (RX 460-480)
nVidia GM206 (950, certain 960) or Pascal (10xx)

You'll also need a drive capable of reading triple-layer BDXLs, but that's pretty easy on a new build.

As far as I've heard playing legit blurays on a PC has always been a pile of pain and 4K makes everything more strict.

I'd run a standalone, or if you have any interest in one an Xbox One S isn't much more expensive than the dedicated 4K bluray players and then you get a game console along with it. Why Sony skipped supporting 4K bluray on PS4 Pro I'll never figure out. They let their competition scoop them on their own drat format.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2017 04:49

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

TheScott2K posted:

Please show your work.

A Pi3 pulls between 1 and 5 watts in normal use, closer to 1.5ish idling at the Kodi main screen with the WiFi enabled. A bit more while playing video, but most HTPCs are sitting idle most of the day. Let's call it 2 watts average throughout a given day.

My desktop pulls around 80 watts at idle and doesn't really change when playing video. It's not the most power efficient computer in the world, but it's firmly below 100 watts while doing HTPC things so it's not terrible either.

A Pi3 with power supply and SD card is $45-70 depending on where you're sourcing parts and if you buy a kit versus putting it together yourself. Let's call it $50 for the sake of simple numbers.

My "rate to compare" that doesn't include all the distribution related charges, taxes, etc. on electricity is 5.3 cents per kWh. If you just take my bill and divide it by usage I'm at 11.9 cents per kWh. If we go with the low number that's 943 kWh to payoff, for the high number it's 422 kWh. The difference between the two is 78 watts, so 78 watt hours per hour. That's one kWh every 12.8 hours, meaning either 225 or 503 days to payoff depending on which number you're working from.

If your PC comparison is a more efficient build optimized for HTPC use the math of course will be different, but somewhere in the 1-2 year range to payoff something as cheap as a Pi3 in a 24/7 use seems entirely reasonable.

It's a lot harder to justify PC upgrades themselves based on power usage anymore since the power consumption of similar performance class hardware hasn't changed all that much, but when comparing a PC versus a cheap appliance box it still works.

edit: For the record I started this post agreeing with you and intending to show the math on why it didn't work, but the math had different plans.

wolrah fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jan 26, 2017

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 17:13

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Wait, you people don't turn your HTPC off when you're done watching for the day?
Well, then my objection falls flat, of course the payoff would be faster in that case.
But really, if you want reduce your electricity bill, why wouldn't you just go hit that switch before you go to bed, rather than invest even a modest amount like $45 on new equipment?

Initially like some of the other people who've responded my HTPC was also my file server and OTA tuner. It needed to be on to automatically download new content when it's released, to record anything it gets locally, and to allow me to access the files from my desktop without having to go to the living room and turn something on.

These days I have a dedicated file server and HDHomerun network tuners so it basically comes down to I want my HTPC to behave like any other piece of equipment. I press the right button on my remote and it shows up on my screen. So far I haven't found a reliable way to make my HTPCs power on or even wake from sleep by remote control. Kodi will happily power off or go to sleep by remote, but not back on. The remote receiver I use (Microsoft WMC remote) supports wake from sleep and that worked on my old Celeron HTPC, but it wakes for every signal it receives rather than a specific power.

I'm willing to deal with power consumption for convenience sake, but I still try to minimize it.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2017 19:01

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Ixian posted:

The only reason the cards took off at all (and are still available from most franchises) is because the Cable cartel itself discovered that using the cards - in their own set top boxes - was cheaper to both have manufactured and to support.

That's right - the overwhelming majority of CableCards made were (and are) consumed by the very set top boxes they were intended to replace.

What are you talking about? The cable companies were forced to do that by the integration ban, which went in to effect in 2007 (two years later than it was supposed to because delays were granted).

The cable industry actively fought against every part of CableCard.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 02:11

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

Theoretically the new ras pi 3 would work for 4K, but practically it's lovely. I'm just looking for a project really.

The Pi3 definitely does not do 4K. The new Pi-compatible thing Asus has coming does, but not the real thing.

My Pi3s crash hard if you try to play 4K content on them.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 18:12

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

Ixian posted:

The update on the Shield that turned it on behind the scenes resulted in tons of hilarity. In my case it actually kept my PJ from turning off when I shut down my Harmony/Shield activity because it would get two conflicting commands from IR and CEC. Drove me nuts until I found it.

You're more confident than I for enabling CEC on your projector. Every time my power goes out, when it comes back my Chromecast, Fire Stick, and Raspberry Pi have a race to see which one can turn on my bedroom TV first. I definitely don't want that happening on my projector, especially when there's a storm and the power may go on and off repeatedly.

Input switching automatically is nice, but I don't like it having power control and unfortunately most devices don't really have any options aside from on/off.

A CEC firewall of sorts might be a cool feature for a receiver or high-end HDMI switch. Change the network topology from a bus to a selective bridge.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 17:34

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

KingKapalone posted:

My ubuntu Intel NUC HTPC was on and running, I logged in to the GUI and it left the GUI and showed some left to right text which was frozen so I rebooted. It booted up and said I needed to run fsck manually so I did that. Now it hangs during boot. Here are two of the screens after booting where it froze. Nothing really jumps out at me. Any ideas?

http://imgur.com/a/PDGez

You're getting read fails on the hard drive. Hope you've got backups.

# ¿ May 12, 2017 18:49

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

KingKapalone posted:

Yeah I figured it was the drive. Just had a NAS drive die recently too. No backup of this though. All it has on it is ubuntu, plex, sab, sonarr, and couchpotato. I'll just have to reconfigure them which is annoying, but no loss of data. Have a recommended backup solution for an ubuntu server so I wouldn't have to setup those programs again next time?

I don't actually have a backup solution on my HTPC. It doesn't contain anything really important and it's not really hard to re-setup the basic apps so I don't bother. If it completely goes up in flames it'll probably take me an afternoon to go from zero to all back to normal as far as configs go and the loss of media is more of a minor inconvenience than anything. Unless I was actively watching backlog content I probably wouldn't even notice.

A good start would be to just back up all of /etc/ and /home/, plus whatever media you consider worth backing up.

# ¿ May 12, 2017 21:10

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 01:15

wolrah: May 8, 2006; what?

KingKapalone posted:

Is there any reason to get a Steam Link if I have a Windows HTPC? I guess maybe the other controller support? The official page for it says PS3/4 controllers are in the unofficial support list, but I'm seeing on the top google wiki page when looking for controllers that they work just fine.

PS3/4 controllers work fine on PCs too. I wouldn't see any obvious reason to choose a Steam Link unless your HTPC gets shut down and takes a meaningful amount of time to boot.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 02:48

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

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