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 Post subject: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 10:42 am 
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Heya all,

Was going to post the following at AVS, but there's such a mess there now (the HTPC build guide is now donation only?!) I figured I'd just ask here since the MSS folks are generally more helpful, especially when it comes to hardware.

Moving houses, and getting the new digs ready to accept my EX485 and it's 16TB of data. I've a die hard HTPC user, primarily because I haven't seen any embedded devices come close to MediaBrowser's interface, and ease of pulling metadata when I'm to lazy to do it manually.

My problem is that a few of my HTPCs are Dell Zino's (1st edition), and they just don't have the horsepower for flawless HD. The mains (office, living room) are full fledged PCs, with AMD dual/quad cores, etc, but again, unsightly, more noise than I'd like, and probably using a lot of juice.

Just wondering what the hardware geeks here would suggest. I'm willing to bend, but I'll probably be building 3 new machines, and here's the want list.

1. Power. Building these for the future, so don't want processor power to ever hold me back. Assume I want to be able to decode 1080p with suboptimal codecs, view 1080 youtube/flash/hulu, and handle my HUGE media library without choking. (Yes, I know an SSD would probably help for that last one...)

2. Small/Quiet. Fanless is a big want (no fans = long life!) but not willing to sacrifice it for power. If I can get both, great.

3. HDMI out, good sound. This is pretty much gonna be on any motherboard, and I don't need ALL the mega-crazy DTS9.1/SSRDS/ZOMGAVATARISINTHEROOM sound options, but at least AC3 5.1 goodness, and a solid 1080p output without jumping through hoops.

4. Cheap. Hoping to avoid the monster spec machines. Don't need overkill, but also don't wanna quite be skirting the line.


More than willing to build... but if a stock PC fits the bill, that could work too. The new Zino HD is a possibility there, but the first gen ones were so underpowered, I still have the bad taste in my mouth. I spent weeks tweaking codecs and the like trying to get smooth 1080p mkv playback before I realized I was trying to get blood from a stone.

Thanks in advance guys.

D

(side note, occasionally I'm seeing stuttering on media playback on my MSS. Everything is duplicated, and half my storage is on an external USB. Do I need to do some tweaking, or is that poor old USB interface just going to occasionally jam me up... like when it's trying to re-balance)


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:13 pm 
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I am going through exactly the same thought process as you.
I currently run a bunch of Acer X3200 that I have bumped up to 3ghz procs and 4gb of ram running win7.
They do very well but are large, I would really like to find comparable performance in a smaller package.
They are also a little noisier than I care for, as their CPU fans moan like zombies.

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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:24 pm 
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Everyone will have their own favorite method for this.

It is going to be a matter of personal preference and budget. If a settop product works for you, that's awesome. that will be the smallest footprint and probably the quietest solution you can find.

I have always been curious about settop products but never bit the bullet for one.

My personal solution for me is XBMC. I used it forever on my old gen 1 Xbox and migrated to the windows version when i switched to Hi-Def.

I have an XBMC box on every tv in the house plus a spare with a large drive in it to take to my buddies. I setup my movie database with mysql on my WHS so all boxes share a global database. Now i don't have to re-sync all PC's when I add a movie to my server and i can stop a movie in the living room and pick up in the same spot in the bedroom where i left off.

My main family room XBMC is running on a 2010 aluminum Mac mini running OSX. it does a great job but gets quite warm. I honestly don't like macs, but i needed 1 for work testing. For this purpose, it works well. (some people are jailbreaking the apple TV boxes for this also)

The family room/basement XBMC is on DIY Low Power Silent Asus fanless D512 Atom running XBMCLIVE for OS. so far it is flawless. i have not tested FLASH on it. I assume like all atoms, it will stutter. this box has room for a low profile 16x PCIe video card to solve FLASH issues and go to 3D when I am ready for it.

My bedroom box is an older Acer Revo atom nettop with an ION chipset running Win7. After maxing the ram, this thing will play all the HD i toss at it flawlessly. it is totaly silent and miniature. the downside is, it has issues with with FLASH HD content. they are working on that.

The spare bedroom XBMC is an older shuttle 775 socket with a quadcore 8600? it has the classic silent radiator in it (forgot the trademark name) running Win7. while it is sold as HD with HDMI out, it sucked bad and i tossed an old ATI HD 1250 or something into it that i got out of the spare parts pile at work from a dead Dell. It plays anything... and i could upgrade the vid card to a 3D one if i want. This was replaced by the MAC.

The Spare/portable XBMC is MSI wind netop with an ATI HD card built in (based on the Nettop 100 formfactor to make it small) .. (it had some playback issues till a i added a broadcom HD card to it) again it is an atom so it has FLASH issues. It is running Win7. (I have 4 more of these units. only 1 is running a desktop OS. the rest are Servers including 1 with WHS solely for client backups.)

All the systems are HDMI except the shuttle (DVI plus optical audio) and are silent.

With the exception of the MAC being way overpriced, none of my systems are over $300-$350 in todays market and all do the job for me. While our needs are differant. I dont think you need an I7 in the livingroom, or at least for all of your media clients. as long as it is small(ish) and silent, you should be happy. You might want to look at the Asus atom option with an upgraded vid card (or a zotac) or a 775/i3 system. Right now many shops are giving 775 systems/chips away since they are now 3 generations behind with the sandybridge release. If you are looking to XBMC, try to stay away from ATI, the 2 dont play nice in most cases. especially the linux builds.

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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:56 pm 
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Have you tried the ASROCK ION series of Nettops ??

I have 2, and they stream 1080p from my WHS flawlessly, playing DTS and/or AC3 5.1.

Just a thought as they are a little under £250-£300 at the moment.


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:09 pm 
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I've often thought about exploring the XBMC route, but I'm just too addicted to WMC, especially with media browser. The automation of it all is just too convenient. The added bonus is just being able to pop out to windows to web browse, play angry birds, do file administration, etc....

The i3 choices are starting to look like the way to go. I am going to shy away from anything even remotely atom-related, as they are good in come cases, but I want to be able to watch anything without having to obsess over the codec (i.e. An AC1 encoded mpg will bring an atom to it's knees).

There's a recent guide that Assassin put up on AVS that looks like it might be just what I'm in the market for...

SSD or no SSD is one of the questions in my head now. Seems like overkill for an HTPC, but on the other hand, if a lot of the images are cached locally, that's a huge help.


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:12 pm 
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In 2009 I purchased an ASRock ION 300 nettop, and I couldn't be more pleased. I upgraded to 4 GB ram and Win7. Super quiet, hdmi out, and plays everything I've thrown at it.

ASRock @ Newegg

Here are the specs from the Newegg page:
2GB DDR2 800MHz memory
320GB, 5400 rpm hard drive
DVD Super Multi drive
SuperSpeed USB3.0 HTPC System
NVIDIA 3DTV Play
3D display capability
Next-generation NVIDIA ION Graphics Architecture
Native Full HD 1080p playback
Support HDMI 1.4a

The only con I've got is the blue light on the front is pretty bright. I just haven't taken the time to disable it. Other thant that it's performed flawlessly.

Steve


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 1:20 pm 
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I've heard great things about the ASROCK systems, and it looks like the path of least resistance, but .....
steve053 wrote:
2GB DDR2 800MHz memory
320GB, 5400 rpm hard drive
DVD Super Multi drive
SuperSpeed USB3.0 HTPC System
NVIDIA 3DTV Play
3D display capability
Next-generation NVIDIA ION Graphics Architecture
Native Full HD 1080p playback
Support HDMI 1.4a


$420 for DDR2, 5400 rpm drive, atom processor, and ION 1 graphics... that's just too much of a 2008 machine for my liking. I gotta think I could get into an i3, DDR3, hot graphics, and maybe SSD for about the same price, if not lower.

Still, I like em! Small and quiet. I'm just afraid that throwing the wrong codec at it is going to beat that poor little processor into the ground (I'm notorious for collecting media in a WIDE variety of formats).


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 2:17 pm 
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Moving to the Media Streaming forum.

Damian has a writeup from about a year ago on his i5 build you might find interesting.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/03 ... tx-htpc-2/

He's got some older builds documented in the Guides section as well.

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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 2:29 pm 
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I have a Phenom X4 905e...looks like the 910e is the current chip. It's a 65w chip which makes it a nice htpc solution with great performance too boot. Worth considering if you want to save a few $$$ near the performance end.


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 2:53 pm 
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As i said, with my Atom boxes that are NVidea based. the only issues was flash. even the latest win7 WMC is now optimized for IONs once you run all the updates. They have never dropped a frame. this includes 40gig bluray rips.

one route might be to first shop out a case you like, then go for the porcessor/mobo combo from there. thats one of the worst parts of media boxes. what you wrap it up in.

one nice feature of XBMC is there is a live version that is linux based. so it has more of a settop feel to it.

the only real advantage i see to an ssd over a HDD in a HTPC, is heat and noise. assuming you suspend it, the boot will be pretty fast either way. true the sdd will be a lot faster. but, what 5 seconds over 8 in that case?

another option if youre really geeky, you can boot the HTPC via PXE and have no hdd in it. Just food for thought there. I know XBMC supports that.

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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 3:36 pm 
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JohnM wrote:
the only real advantage i see to an ssd over a HDD in a HTPC, is heat and noise.


Good point John, I should have mentioned....all these PCs will be on 24/7/365 with no suspend....

D


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 Post subject: Re: HTPC Spec?
PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:56 pm 
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Maybe a All-in-One would be the way to go, but the price would be higher. 600 +.
To be quiet and fast = $$$$

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