DH Guide: Building a Media Centre PC

Zardon

Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson has a new guide for those contemplating building a new media centre pc. It has some helpful advice!

"The media centre bug bit me roughly a year ago or so, I’d had messed about for a while with a Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800SE in the past; however, I’ve never seriously set out to use it for heavy multimedia purposes. When my VCR started to show its age and my mates began moaning about the recordings I was giving them, I began looking into building myself a media centre. I went into the task believing it would be a simple thing to do. I knew my stuff as far as PCs go and I thought it wouldn’t be harder than choosing a TV card and off I went… boy was I wrong."

read here

bananaman

nice overview of Media PC

I recently built one with a A643200, 512mb ram, and an old GF3, I also am using the HDA Mystique sound card as it pumps out DolbyDigital Live which means i casn use an Optical cable to my A/V receiver. I will also recommend the Nebula DigiTV PCI if you want to get a seperate TV card

anyway

good article

GNetX

First of all, great article!

However, I couldn't help noticing the lack of detail into a REALLY GOOD Media Centre Suite for those who don't want to use Windows MCE2005 - it's Media Portal, which is an open-source (free!) application that is really worth a look when building a Media Centre PC. I've just built a Media Centre PC and after testing all of the available suites out there, this is (IMO) the best! You can check it you for yourself at http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net. It works especially well with digital free-to-air services such as FreeView here in the UK (I'm using a Compro Videomate DVB-T200).

swatX

Greart Article however for me personally i would have recommended a AMD Athlon x2 3800+ or for people who are in a budget a P4 2.8ghz Dual core that around 250$ i believe.

wolfran

Very nice review indeed.

I'm new to this htpc thing and just currently set up one.
I will also get a hdtv soon and my questions are:
1. Can htpc do upscaling on DVD source? For example if I set my computer resolution at 720p, does that automatically upscale my dvd source into 720p?
2. What are your recommendation to get the best experience in watching dvd out of a htpc? I read that people are using ffdshow, dscaler, zoomplayer to get the best dvd experience, what's your take on this?
3. How's the picture quality of a htpc compare to a good stand-alone dvd player?


UPDATE: This Media Portal software looks very promising, I'll definitely give it a try once i get my hdtv.

Veridian3

GnetX,

I had a look at the software you suggested a while ago using the Theatre 550P when it was first released. Unfortunately it didnt like the way the 550 processes Audio and Video so i didnt give it a second thought when writing this article. I can see from the page that it does now support the 550 so if i get the chance i'll give it a once over sometime and amend the article if required.

SwatX,
I wouldnt recommend the 2.8ghz intel dual core for this type of system (well not over a 3500+ anyway) the reason for this is heat (its not overly hot but is hotter than an A64 and that the 3500+ is cheaper and in encoding it is about the same as the 2.8DC. As for the 3800+, great chip but i was trying to keep the price down for the basic system as much as possible.

Veridian3

That i dont know, where i live we are just getting ready for the launch of HDTV so i have no experience with it. Hopefully someone else who visits the site can answer that.

puneett

I have p3 1.2GHZ tulatin core , with 512MB ram.
Do u think it will be able to handle the recording of my fav. programms with MCE2005...without any problem....

OR otherwise its only going in scrap!!

Veridian3

If you buy a hardware encoding card it should handle it fine... but dont be expecting to do more than one thing at a time.

K9-Cop

I don't know how it compares in terms of quality, but I use a freeware program called VideoLAN Media Player in order to play DVD's on my computer. Check it out if you're interested: http://www.videolan.org.

ROBSCIX

Maybe you guys can answer this it's not totally off topic. I was getting into the media PC thing. I had installed a demo of a program I liked, I have losted the demo and can't remember the name for the life of me. Ok this program was a sort of front end for a media PC, you could set it to load when you turned on the PC...Videos..Mp3's..Pic's..etc....I think it had theatre or cinema in the name...Please end the madness, it's driving me crazy...

Falstaff

I have seen several trade magazines with guides for building media and gaming PCs but some of the machines on the market offer reasonable performance and prices, almost makes it harder to build your own really, but then OEM parts are often pale facsimiles of the real thing right?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

ok well im interested in changing over to windows MCE2005 and getting a tv wonder elite for my system, thus will be a gaming/media center hybrid system.

in the article it said:
"MCE2005 is basically Windows XP SP2 with a comprehensive media suite built in." is this windows xp HOME OR PRO? because if it is home it is lacking some of the features i need such as the group policy editor, advanced users mgmt etc. is MCE2005 xp home + media center or xp pro + media center

GNetX

@BiGBrOwNPimpsta - Microsoft claims that MCE 2005 is still based on Windows XP Professional Edition. Microsoft has removed the ability for a MCE 2005 computer from joining a domain or to cache network logins, in order to prevent computer companies from selling MCE over Professional to business environments, since it is priced at below Windows XP Professional. All other features of Windows XP Professional edition are retained in MCE 2005.

My source is Wikipedia, but unfortunately I have no first-hand experience with MCE 2005 - my preferred Media Centre software is the open-source Media Portal - see my sig.

Hope this helps.

- GNetX

BiGBrOwNPimpsta

thanks for the info, i think i am going to try all the stuff i need on a computer at work running MCE2005. then i can positively determine i have the stuff i need

brduk

Hi all,

First post here so be gentle with me [img]images/blue_heaven/smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I'm looking at building a media centre (MC) to replace as many of the various "boxes" around my television as possible. I'm hoping to run digital T.V. through the MC with the ability to record and burn programmes to disk, with pre-programming desirable. Other functions will be playing music and connecting to a surround sound system, I also want to watch be able to watch internet T.V. through the system, perhaps through a wireless connection. This will not be a gaming machine.

I've read the Driverheaven guide to media centres which has provided me with some valuable info. However I have some restrains, both on space and cash, so i'm look for some advice from you all.

Firstly, the space i'm trying to utilise is 460mm (wide) x 380mm (deep) x 125mm (high) which would normally accomodated a video recorder. This is pictured below.



I can probably gain a little in height (about 30mm or so) by chiselling out the three risers in lower part of the brickwork, as below



So i'll need either a Desktop or MC specific case, any (cheap) recommendations

I trade in computer components (mainly on ebay) and have a stack of motherboards in stock, so i'm hoping to use one of these to get the ball rolling (and to save money on buying a new one). I have decided on a Micro-ATX Microstar K8MM-ILSR (MS-6741) would this be a suitable board for the project? It has 3 PCI slots, which for the moment I know one will be used for a freeview tuner (UK digital T.V.) another would accomodate a wireless network card and the third would take a sound card (which i'm willing to sacrafice and use the onboard sound if necessary).

So with all that in mind, does anyone have any advice for me?

Thanks in advance.

ROBSCIX

Well I know there are some mobo's designed for this type of project that have TV out built in. etc. I wouldn't skimp out on the sound..thats one of the BEST parts..IF your not goona use it for games then all the better..you don't need hardcore video power. look for sites that deal in this niche...the HTPC you will find tons of stuff, small cases..remotes, tv tuners, dolby digital sound card..etc. IF your gonna do this project I wouldn't skimp out on any part of it you will just be sory later. Don't be in such a rrush to get it finished. Save get a piece, save, get a piece..etc..then you'll have it all built the way you want with all the components you want and it'll kick seriously...

holtzarbeiter

First of all...I'm new to posting threads on forums so I hope I'm doing this ok. If not, oh well!!!!

I have recently built a media pc consisting of an Epox EP-8HDAI PRO Socket 754 Motherboard with an Athlon Sempron 2600 processor. I added 512 mb of RAM with a Chaintech XGI V3 Chipset 128mB Video Card. My TV is a 42" LCD Toshiba which has it's own computer monitor port and this is how I'm connected.

My goal when designing this pc was not for playing games, but to satisfy my love of watching movies. Therefore, I have converted all my own DVDs into AVIs and I also download other AVI movies from the internet.

In trying to keep the price of this pc down I'm using Windows XP Pro and just a Logitech Wireless RF Mouse for scrolling from my TV chair. I only have a keyboard connected for bootup purposes...I rarely ever use it! My main media player is Windows Media Player 10, but I also have Nero, Real Player, and VLC loaded.

Now comes the problem I'm having...When I play any of these AVIs I get this slight stuttering of the video mainly in the fast moving scenes. It's not that noticable, but before I built this pc I did some experimenting with my laptop to see if they would play and I got smooth video throughout all AVIs. My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A25. The processor is a Pentium 2.8 Ghz, with 512 RAM, but only a 32 mB RAM on the Video.

I know something is up and I was just wondering if anyone out there could help me. Have I built too small of a pc to handle these AVIs? I don't feel that I have, but I'm a little lost as to what's causing this problem. Can you help?

Grace

Hello Holtzarbeiter,

This PC which you just built is more than enough to handle movies. Actually a 5 times slower PC can. If the movies are fine when your laptop is playing them, then you have a software problem.

You should try installing a new GPU drivers set and a new video Codec pack (e.g. Gordian).

ROBSCIX

First you don't have to have a keyboard attached you can go into your Bios and change the setting -Halt on errors >change that to none....Then you can leave the keyboard out of it!...I agree you need better software and drivers...try a better player and always use the lates drivers PROVIDING they don't cause more problems...Hope that helps..