Building a Low-Power Home Theater PC System

[pschmid]

Heat and noise are the enemies of quiet home theater enjoyment, but good component selection addresses these concerns. As we walk through our own Home Theater build we'll consider what changes might have improved the final product.

 

[mcgruff]

.com.com

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

where were the benchmarks????

 

[killerliz]

For RAM, if you are trying to use integrated videos, go for the DDR2 800. The integrated graphics uses the System RAM for its memory, and thus high peformance memory like those DDR2 800 and above will ensure the integrated graphics will gain from the extra peformance from the high peformance RAM, making gaming in systems like the ASUS M2NPV-VM a little more bearable.

And trying to play those HD 1040i in this system will require the X2 processor, with the Purevideo decoder so that the CPU will not be overloaded.

I am going to build my 3rd HTPC using the same MB but using a X2 3800+ processor with DDR2 800 RAM. I am going to use a custom casing i made myself and the height of the chassis is at around 6.5cm. The choice of the heatsink used for my HTPC will be very limited, and i will try to manage the heat output like what i did in my previous HTPC: Sucking air from the heatsink and funnel it outside of the case. Ventilation holes only on the bottom of the casing to allow cool air to be drawn in to the casing, and at the top to allow hot air to escape.

Will be thinking of using this CoolerMaster Vortex Dream(ACC-U72) due to its design and its low height. I will change the fan itself to a smaller one and fan orientation such that the fan will suck air from the heatsink out. Or maybe use those 1U heatsink designed for servers. C how it goes

 

[ben_the_man]

Great Article!
I don't want to sound like an idiot, but my grandfather is a huge A/V aficionado, and I want to build him a HTPC for his birthday. I have built about 25 computers in my life, 1 with a completely custom built case, so I'm not new to technology... but I honestly don't really know what an HTPC is. It sounds great, something to manage an entire house worth of entertainment, but I was wondering if I could get some clarification as to the exact functionality/benefits of an HTPC compared with standard A/V equipment (ie he already owns a $6500 Harmon Kardon receiver, can a computer handle sound better?).

Why do people use them, how can they even be useful without an HDMI out, what kind of software is essential (ie to decode HD signals and manage files etc).

Thank You
Ben

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

You can get HDMI out video cards... but tvs will do 1080 using the standard RGB cables. I do not believe a computers sound card will come close to matching the quality of a very nice reciever for analog signals. If you were to get a sound card with digital out, you could hook the HTPC to the reciever and get beter sound that way.

 

[dyceskynes]

I take the audio out from my optical on my motherboard and go straight into my receiver, sounds great. The HTPC to me is a great place to store DVDs and Music.

 

[krazyIvan]

My biggest complaint on HTPC's is the one spot they are still weak on: Software!
You can get the hardware to make a blig-blig setup but even Microsoft hasn’t perfected a good HTPC OS, yet.
Also, a TV Tuner card is useless if you HAVE to use a Satellite/Cable box for your channels, and unfortunately most services that provide HD channels (other then “over the air”) require you to.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

ATI's theater card I believe comes with a cable card slot, so you COULD use the HTPC for digital cable.

 

[tleavit]

Good stuff! More more more!!!! You guys have been instrumental in helping me get mine up.


My current HTPC is as all a work under progress but here it is:

AMD 3500+
Asus A8N-SLI
2 X Western Digital Raptor 78 gig drives in raid stripping
Asus GF7600 Passive cooling
2 gig Kingston Hyper X PC3200
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum (front face addition)
Windows XP 64Bit edition (waiting for Vista)
No TV card yet (already have a HD-DVR with Comcast)
Logitech Bluetooth keyboard/mouse set
Connected by cat6e gigabit
Lain Lei Alum PC case


Sony 60" XSBR TV
Onkio 7.1 channel THX system with Polk RTI Satellites
Sony digital camcorder



*** Cool stuff I have done recently

*80 gigs of MP3's that I play through ITUNES

*In the last 3 days, ripped and watched 20 of my home videos flawlessly. Each one creates a 15ish gig avi. Store them on my home NAS.

*Play World or Warcraft



*** Planned changes

* Home theater case
* 2 X 500 gig drives for storage.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

You are missing a very important aspect of what makes up the perfect HTPC.

 

[tleavit]

You are missing a very important aspect of what makes up the perfect HTPC.

Recording TV? I primarily watch HDTV now thorugh Comcast so its not really an option for me yet from what I have read.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

ATI's theater card I believe comes with a cable card slot, so you COULD use the HTPC for digital cable.

 

[tleavit]

ATI's theater card I believe comes with a cable card slot, so you COULD use the HTPC for digital cable.

thats interesting to hear because My TV does have a card slot and at one point I tried to get it for the TV (and was avaliable) but opted to go for the box with hd-tv recording. Im gonna check that out.

 

[PaulSiu]

Many motherboard these days have digital out or at least a digital out headers, so you can pipe the digital signal to a receiver.

No one seems to carry the AMD EE SFF processor though, so you can't really built one using them .

Paul

 

[krazyIvan]

Unfortunately, many of the satellite/cable providers are going away from the card slot service due to the high bandwidth needed for HD and force you to use a set-top box. I read an article about it recently and don’t remember the exact reason for the move away from card slots but I think it had to do with the bandwidth issues (MPEG4?). The article indicated the displeasure from people with new TV’s that are slot equipped, but one cable company rep just shrugged his shoulders and said “It’s not going to change, deal with it”.

Edit: Now that I think about it, it had something to do with "On-demand Broadband" where the provider only transmits the actual channel you need rather then the whole spectrum of channels you need in analog.
You can’t do On-Demand with card-slot alone.

 

[tleavit]

Makes sence to me, Comcast didnt seem like they wanted me to have the card.

 

[PaulSiu]

The article indicated the displeasure from people with new TV’s that are slot equipped, but one cable company rep just shrugged his shoulders and said “It’s not going to change, deal with it”.

This is the issue I always have with cable. In the past, they were always a monopoly in a local area and so always had bad customer service. With broadband content knocking on their door, they better wise up.

Paul

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

The card comes with the HD comcast package... you pay for either. If they dont give it to you, tell them you will close your account today.

 

[Jhouserok]

So has AMD released a new CPU, cause the pictures of the processor they took were of an Athlon X2 3800+ :?:

 

[SciPunk]

Great Article!
I don't want to sound like an idiot, but my grandfather is a huge A/V aficionado, and I want to build him a HTPC for his birthday. I have built about 25 computers in my life, 1 with a completely custom built case, so I'm not new to technology... but I honestly don't really know what an HTPC is. It sounds great, something to manage an entire house worth of entertainment, but I was wondering if I could get some clarification as to the exact functionality/benefits of an HTPC compared with standard A/V equipment (ie he already owns a $6500 Harmon Kardon receiver, can a computer handle sound better?).

Why do people use them, how can they even be useful without an HDMI out, what kind of software is essential (ie to decode HD signals and manage files etc).

Thank You
Ben

Good questions. In my opinion, the HTPC is still a work in progress. Look at some of the builds at the bottom of this list to get an idea of what people mean by HTPC....

http://www.extremetech.com/category2/0,1695,644478,00.asp

Think about a PC w/ a big hard drive, tv tuner, and windows media edition... conected to your home theater TV and sound system.

Primarily an HTPC should play music from your hard drive or from a cd through your home stereo; Play DVDs on a large screen w/ excelent sound; play video from your hard drive w/ excelent sound; watch and record video from Cable, Satalite, or over the air (onto your hard drive); and perhaps allow gaming on your big screen.

Many people argue that their PC does a better job scaling DVDs than a DVD player, especially if you buy and install the software that allows your graphics card to accelerate the co/dec process.

Here are some issue tha I have run into while researching this tehcnology:

1) Compatibility w/ HD is questionable.
How do you connect your computer to your HD Display? If you are really talking about a Home Theater, then you are not talking about a 32" LCD display w/ a DVI connection. You are talking about a 50"-64" Plasma, DLP, or projector which probably has HDMI (not DVI) and may or may not have VGA input.

If it has VGA input, that is commonly how you connect your HTPC. This will allow you to scale up to at least 720p. This is OK for DVDs, but it's still all smoke an mirrors. You still can't get a real high def image off a DVD.

You can also go the route of connecting the "DVI out" from your video card to the "HDMI in" on your Home Theater Display. But this brings another possible incompatibility issue... HDCP... the dreaded copy protection inplemented by "the industry" to prevent copying or even multiple viewing (i.e one source, two screens) of HD content. Some HDTVs will specifically state that you CAN NOT use the DVI output from your PC (this is burried in their manuals, not splashed on the top of their advertisement, of course). If you want to go this route, you should look at the newer cards that have HDCP compliance on the DVI. It still might not work, but at least that will give you a fighting chance.

As mentioned above, HDMI video cards are begining to appear, althought I haven't seen one yet.

2) Then there are the TV tuners. There are some awesome TV tuners... well they would have been awesome if they came out three years ago. I'm talking about a card where you can screw in two coax cables and watch/recored from two simultaneous analog signals... but who uses anolog anymore?? And will these cards actually put an HD signal on your screen? This is not always clear. Here's are some examples:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2761&p=1
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2778

3) Blue-Ray vs. HD-DVD:
The jury is still out on which of these technologies is the way to go. They are both super expensive, both for the players and the movies. And they are HDCP protected, so you better tripple check that you can buy a High Deff DVD player for your HTPC and have it play on your specific setup.

4) Compressed audio:
If your music library is a bunch of MP3s you shared from Morpheus in the early part of this decade, do you really want to hear that hollow sound through your nice home audio system and your high end speakers?

The goal is to have all your media at your fingertips so you can click on your favorite TV show, a great movie, or your favorite music... and have an enjoyable expirience and high quality results.

I don't know if the technology is really there yet, at least at consumer prices. But it's close... very very close.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

[4)" Compressed audio:
If your music library is a bunch of MP3s you shared from Morpheus in the early part of this decade, do you really want to hear that hollow sound through your nice home audio system and your high end speakers?

I dont know what receiver / soundcard your using... but my XiFi does a great job at making those tinny MP3's sound good.


And my Yamaha receiver does a MUCH better job. If I could have it my way, all music would be analog, like an old vinyl record.

 

[tleavit]

[4)" Compressed audio:
If your music library is a bunch of MP3s you shared from Morpheus in the early part of this decade, do you really want to hear that hollow sound through your nice home audio system and your high end speakers?

I dont know what receiver / soundcard your using... but my XiFi does a great job at making those tinny MP3's sound good.


And my Yamaha receiver does a MUCH better job. If I could have it my way, all music would be analog, like an old vinyl record.

Most of my MP3's are in the 190K to 320K range ripped and they sound perfect. But then again, a "low" end system to an audio-enthusiast starts at $50000 and they claim they can tell the difference in sound.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

They cant... its been doubleblind tested soo many times. I will keep my $5000 Bang and Olufsen speakes.... Let the people with a great imagination pay 100k for a pair of speakers.

 

[jaguarskx]

Many motherboard these days have digital out or at least a digital out headers, so you can pipe the digital signal to a receiver.

No one seems to carry the AMD EE SFF processor though, so you can't really built one using them .

Paul

If power consumption is your primary concern then read my posts in the following link:

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/Intel-AMD-HTPC-ftopict204972.html