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Television Media Hardware

Building a Quiet Media Room PC 163

Posted by Zonk from the you-have-nothing-else-to-do-today-right dept.
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech just come out with a new Media Center PC build-it project. This one takes advantage of Windows Media Center Edition 2005 Rollup 2 and uses a fanless graphics card, four tuners--two standard TV and two HDTV, the Creative Labs DTS-610, which lets you bypass some DRM, and a good-looking SilverStone LaScala chassis that fits in your media rack. The new system is way more versatile, and maybe more importantly, a lot quieter than any previous media PC DIY boxes. One drawback: We're still waiting for the cable and satellite companies to get it together on CableCard, so the system has to do without."
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Building a Quiet Media Room PC More

Building a Quiet Media Room PC

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  • Poor Thing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:54PM (#14174887)
    [blockquote]...fanless graphics card...[/blockquote]

    It must be so lonely.
    • How could even n00b mods miss the obvious joke here?

      (hint to the n00b who modded it down - click your username at the top left, click on fans, if you have no fans it says you're lonely. The post was obviously a funny and is very topical because it's a pun on a quote from the article. Duh.)

  • Total Cost (Score:3, Informative)

    by Niraj59 ( 935921 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:55PM (#14174892)
    $2,315? Sounds a little steep for me. I'd rather buy a 42-inch plasma TV [bestbuy.com].
    • Well, briefly looking over the part list, it seems that they went all out on this thing. It is nice. I think that you could build one a lot cheaper, by avoiding the dual core, huge amounts of memory, etc.

    • No you don't. Plasma TV's are junk. They go dim after a few years and you can't play games on them because they are susceptible to burn in.

      If you must have a big ass tv you best bet bang for buck is still a rear projection. If you must hang something on the wall the best thing to do is put a 100 bucks into a walmart special and wait for the price of LCD's to come down.

      • No you don't. Plasma TV's are junk. They go dim after a few years and you can't play games on them because they are susceptible to burn in.

        Things have changed. The phosphor half-life of the current generation is 60,000 hours. I think that's 20 years of 8 hours a day operation.

        The current generation is no more succeptible to burn-in than a standard direct-view TV. Still, it's best to turn down the brightness.

        I don't own one, but it doesn't make sense to allow old information to continue to perpetuate.

        I pe
        • Things have changed. The phosphor half-life of the current generation is 60,000 hours. I think that's 20 years of 8 hours a day operation.

          I'll believe this when I see plasma displays that have been in use for ten years or so and still work fine. But I have the suspicion that nobody will even be selling plasma by then.
      • And if you've got a dark/big enough place to put a front projection system in, the time has never been better to do so. For the price of a small plasma, you can get a decent HDTV resolution projector and a screen that will hook right up to a computer no sweat, though I don't know how well a setup like this will work for watching live TV. Maybe it would be best to throw in a tuner box, and let the computer do its business if one desires to watch TV live. I've been seriously thinking about doing this mysel
    • Plasma sucks. Enjoy it's burn in and short life time.

      It's all about the 45inch LCD with TRUE HI-DEF at 1080p (1920 x 1080 resolution) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16850000002 [newegg.com]

  • Nice, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr. Maestro ( 876173 ) * on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:55PM (#14174893)
    Until they add CableCard or some similar feature to Media Center PC's, I think the appeal will be limited. On that subject, I don't see why the cable company would want me to get a cable card when they could just continue charging me to use their digital box.
    Maybe I'll just read a book instead.
    M

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:07PM (#14174940)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • But if they rent you the cards, will the cards be Windows-only or will Mac and Linux and *BSD users have options?

      • Re:Nice, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:22PM (#14174991) Homepage Journal
        "Either that, or they can rent out the CableCards for the same price."

        The cable company is in the business of selling content, not renting boxes. They rent boxes for the sole purpose of selling content (there is no other way to receive all of the digital channels - no standard existed, coupled with the fact that the sources - both movies and television networks - wanted some assurances of DRM). My cable company rents a Motorola 6812 - a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.

        • Re:Nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by woolio ( 927141 ) *

          a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.

          Why do you say that? $18/month = $216/year == $648 over three years... Just how much does just the "tuner" cost??? Keep in mind that if you cancel it, they can still rent it out to someone else...

          All this on top of the ~$50-$70/month for digital cable...

          Well, looks like they cost less than $300:
          http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =5832099588 [ebay.com]

          T

          • Why do you say that? $18/month = $216/year == $648 over three years... Just how much does just the "tuner" cost??? Keep in mind that if you cancel it, they can still rent it out to someone else...

            It's a dual-channel PVR. These things depreciate fairly quickly now - it isn't like the days of lore. In 3 years it will be an obsolete piece of junk, just like the DCT-6408 that they rented out for a year are now (no one wants them - they want a 6412).

            Well, looks like they cost less than $300

            Is that really how you

          • My apartment complex requires all kinds of crap for 18"dishes... (Including something like $500K insurance). and they don't allow them to be mounted. They pretty much made it impossible for residents to have one. (Of about 1000 residents, nobody has one!)

            You might want to challenge them on that. The FCC put in place rules that preempt satellite restrictions. [fcc.gov] From the FCC fact sheet on their ruling:

            The rule (47 C.F.R. Section 1.4000) has been in effect since October 1996, and it prohibits restrictions

    • Any business student will tell you the answer to that. They would want to get rid of the cable box because they are not in the hardware business. They are provide video news and entertainment. Getting rid of all the parts of the business that only support the boxes would be a huge win for them if they could maintain the same control they have over their business. That is the trick of course. Preventing service pirates, providing functionality for their customer base and keeping their business secure ar
      • Right. But as long as they control the boxes, pirates/hacking is a minor issue. If they move to cable cards, watch out. Pirating will be a HUGE issue.
        Let me put it this way. I know lots of people who know lots of ways to get free music and movies and tv shows on their PC's over the internet.
        I know very, very few people who are able to hack in to a digital cable box from BrightHouse and set it to give them all the channels.
        If the industry switches to CableCard, you can bet there will be tons of peo
    • On that subject, I don't see why the cable company would want me to get a cable card when they could just continue charging me to use their digital box.

      Well, they aren't offering it for their benefit, it's to keep you as a customer. Most people looking for cable cards are looking for them for their large plasma screen TV's they have hanging on the wall, not their homebrew PVR ;-) . They don't want a bulky, horizontally-oriented converter messing up their clean TV install job and CableCard lets them keep the

  • GAH! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by badxmaru ( 545902 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @04:59PM (#14174908)
    Why are people posting these lowbrow, "how to make a PC" posts? Aren't there geek forums on hardocp / anandtech / ars where people can parade their own PC creations? I mean what in the world is so educational and mindsharing about this posting?
    It might as well just be
    "build your own Dell system for $200 off in Dell Small Business"

    What's the big idea?
    Isn't there google for these things?
    these posts only further slashdot into the realm of those mainstream wannabe geeks who think that making yet another PC puts them on the alpha stack.
    gives slashdot a bad name! MODERATE THESE OUT IN THE FUTURE PLS.
    • you decide exactly what slashdot should be, and go make that happen-- slashcode is available for free.

      I like a random spattering of weirdass topics.

      I just hate roland pipsqueaks stuff....
      • Fine, just as long as you don't think people should STFU and deal with duplicate articles on /. Ending those would be such a simple fix I can't bring myself to cut Taco and staff any slack for not taking care of those by now. I will say the problem is massively reduced these days.

    • Re:GAH! (Score:2, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Believe it or not, Slashdot is a geek forum too. If you think otherwise, you haven't been paying attention....

  • Just wait until January (Score:1, Informative)

    by melted ( 227442 )
    Apple is supposed to roll out their Media Center Macs with everything you need, sans fifty-button remote. As an added bonus they'll look nice.

  • Home Distributed Media (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:09PM (#14174952) Homepage Journal
    PocketPCs that can run Linux [handhelds.org] go for $100 used. How about a $1300 1.3TB RAID in one room, and a $500 cluster of 5 of those in the media room, with one dedicated to video-out for an extra $500? That sounds like a wicked, silent mediaroom PC that can also do a lot more.
    • But can they run any decent video display? And do they have enough grunt for any sort of media conversion or playing back compressed video?

      The fanless mini-ITX sounds like a better idea to me, even though I haven't got one.

      When I eventually build my media PC I would be tempted to run some distributed processing project on it, but that is bound to result in a lot of extra heat. Really I want something that either uses very little power all the time or can suspend itself when not needed. That may be an issue
      • I got one of those mini-ITX things, and it's worthless for any serious video playback, and forget about recording, unless you use a card with a hardware mpeg encoder.
        The 1ghz one I got could just barely play a dvd size divx at ntsc framerates at 100% cpu usage (30% cpu playing mpeg2, which is supposedly "accellerated" in the chipset).

        I use it as a living room mp3 player with a small LCD touchscreen, but I wouldn't dream of ever using it for video again.

        Currently, I use an xbox with the xbox media center for

  • Thin client with flash card HD + Linux does it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:10PM (#14174957)
    Flash card HD (for example Fujitsu thin client hardware), Linux, MPlayer, MythTV, Matrox video card (no fan). These are the recipients for a complete multi purpose video/audio/media jukebox. No noise, no digital rights management shit, none what so ever - just enjoy.
  • What I found interesting is how they went premiere on everything but the graphics card - one of the most important parts. People complain want at least almost high resolutions on a 17" monitor, so you care to explain to me how this is going to look on a 36" TV screen (probably even bigger). Some "light gaming" with the GeForce 6600 on a screen that large isn't going to cut it, and it's a pretty freakin safe assumption that anymone who builds themself a $2,500 computer is probably a gamer.

    Interesting articl
    • People complain want at least almost high resolutions on a 17" monitor, so you care to explain to me how this is going to look on a 36" TV screen (probably even bigger)

      Most TVs are pretty low resolution, and don't exceed 60Hz, so I don't see the problem here. Actually, most HDTVs have the resolution of a 15" widescreen desktop monitor. Faster game cards would likely have obnoxious noise issues, undesirable as a HTPC.

      and it's a pretty freakin safe assumption that anymone who builds themself a $2,500 comput
      • Well, HDTV's that can only do 720p natively don't have resolution greater than that of a desktop 15" widescreen LCD, it's true. However, most of the HDTV's that *I've* seen are capable of 1080i, and if you can find me any significant number of 15" widescreen desktop LCD's that display 1920x1080, I'll eat 'em. That's 23" territory, there.

        Otherwise, spot on.
        • ummm...
          1080i != 1920x1080
          1080p == 1920x1080

          BIG difference.

          1080i is roughly equal to 540p and, therefore, 720p is far superior to 1080i.

          Which is why most "HD ready" displays don't even do 720p

          • Quoth bobbozzo: "1080i != 1920x1080."

            I humbly beg to differ. Actually, almost everything you wrote was wrong.

            Here's the info you wanted but apparently couldn't Google [google.com] for: The 'p' or 'i' part refers to 'progressive' or 'interlaced', not to a specific resolution. In terms of video bandwidth, you're right - 1080i30 is the same as 540p60. But in terms of pixel resolution, you couldn't be more wrong. Sorry.

            1080i is the shorthand term for a video resolution of 1920H x 1080V, with 60 interlaced 1920Hx540V fiel

  • The geek way (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Nehemia 1GHz Mini ITX
    1GB RAM
    Nvidia Card (any one)
    Gnu/Linux (Debian Sarge)
    Limp 1.2
    gmplayer + glame + libdcss

    Cost - 300
    Setup time 2 hours
    Noise - none (totally silent if you heatsing the card to the case)
    Power use - about 12 Watts

    nb please don't mod this up it only rewards the lazy asses who don't browse for actual content at 0 instead of the hivemind popularity contest
    • The case. Finding a mini-itx case that looks nice for under $150 is a bitch. You probably want some kind of storage too, be it flash or HDD based. Other than that, you list is entirely what I'm attempting to do to extend my Myth system.
    • I read an article where a guy did that with a 600MHz VIA M12000 unit on a 12cm x 12cm Nano-ITX board. He had no HDD, no opticals, and the chip required no HSF. Totally silent and he had a Silvestone case. He used a 512MB USB stick and a CF card to boot and provide storage on the machine. He put Puppy on it and it ran okay, but not great- his opinion was that it was more of a proof-of-concept unit.

      He later put an optical drive and a 3.5" HDD on it and ran Mepis on it. I just wish I could find the URL...
      • I've been looking to do this for a while.

        I have a 1.0 GHz nano-ITX board with VT1625 and CN400 as well as a Silverstone LC08 case.

        Buggers at Via changed the board layout at the last minute and it no longer fits in the case (rotation of the power connector meant that the back panel no longer lines up). Silverstone has no ETA on updated cases.

        Does anyone have a nano-ITX case for the modern nano-ITX boards?

        • Does anyone have a nano-ITX case for the modern nano-ITX boards?

          No; it wasn't worth it to design and tool a whole new case for the only board in existence, which seems to have been mistakenly shipped to you.

          In all seriousness, where did you get your board (and for how much)? I saw mini-itx claim a few are in the wild in Japan. Any luck stateside?
          • I'd have to check the invoice and post back. I vaguely remember getting it from a U.S. distributer that specialised in Car PC computers, of all things. They had two left in stock when I ordered mine (though they claimed to be able to get as many as required to fill demand). It was around US$400. 512 MB of RAM were extra ($80 or so), as were a slimline CDRW/DVDROM drive (around $150).

            As for the LC08 case (around $150), word from Silverstone is that they plan to retool, but don't have an ETA.

            I am half-tem

      • There are smaller board formats than the 120mmx120mm form factor - the trick is to find an industrial automation supplier that will sell it to you. "It's Joe Bloggs from ..." or "I'm a student at ..." and the magic words "cash sale" will usually do the job. You really just have to let them know that if you have a problem you have other avenues to follow to solve it instead of burdening them with newbie hassles. You may even end up with something you had no clue existed with better specs and for a better

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:20PM (#14174984)
    This one takes advantage of Windows Media Center Edition 2005 Rollup 2.

    Someone please define advantage :-\

    • From Wikipedia's 2050 edition...
      "The Microsoft Advantage": in early 21st, century using Microsofts products was considered an advantage by experts and common people. One of the reasons was the allmost absolute market dominance (monopoly) in their business area (software). This dominance was later the reason for a total collaps of the Internet due to massive attacks on Microsofts products made by hackers who used malicious software called viruses, worms and trojans (Trojan Horses).
      --
      I see a bright future
    • When you delete it, you can take advantage of hundreds of MB of disk space?
    • Rollup 2 allows MCE HDTV support as well as digital radio. Not to mention increased stability and many other fixes to bugs that were extremely annoying pre rollup 2.

      I am most definately not a Microsoft fanboy, but I must say that Windows MCE is a better all round product than all the other HTPC software on the market. The major factor for me in settling on MCE was that my wife found it very easy to use. Sure, there are problems now and again, and Microsoft have a long way to go with this product, but my

  • spdif router? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hirschma ( 187820 )
    Anyone use something that can take various spdif inputs (optical, coax), and output a single optical? That's what my HTCP system really needs right now. Something like the Creative thingy mentioned, but with more inputs and some intelligence about what to output.

    jh
    • I saw one at radio shack.

      Now of course it wasnt intelligent about what you can output, simply a thing you turned until it clicked into place. Actually I think it was just an empty box with mirrors inside and not much to insure that the data stream actually gets where it is going without a lot of loss

  • Why such a fancy system? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by julesh ( 229690 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:26PM (#14175012)
    My old AMD 950MHz system is more than happy handling any media you care to throw at it. Its Hauppauge WinTV PVR capture card handles MPG conversion on the hardware, so there's really no need for a fast CPU for that. Being single core, cooling is less of an issue, and it's got a fanless graphics card that was much cheaper than $115. More like $20 (an ATI Rage 3D card with 8Mb). And what's the point of 2Gigs of RAM in a media system?

    The description of "quiet" made me think "fanless", not "just as many fans as my existing system".
    • Try throwing HDTV 1080i with de-interlacing at that computer, it will chug and skip.
    • Slower machines are fine for standard-def, but if you want to decode HD, you absolutely need a processor that's only a year or two old. Most living room HD video equipment runs pretty hot because of the CPU requirements (XBox 360, HD PVRs, etc).

      As far as cost goes, you can certainly get a cheaper HD system [hdbeat.com] than the one presented in the article.

      • Good point. But one question: where are you getting your HD source media from? I've not found anywhere that supplies them, so have concluded that it's something that I don't have an application for yet.
        • The only thing I've tried on my PC is the Apple Quicktime HD trailer for Cars [apple.com], which didn't work very well at all on my 3 year old PC, it displayed like 2fps and acted like it wanted to die.

          On the XBox 360, you can get a bunch of 720p trailers for free too, those seem to work well. (some game trailers available for download here [microsoft.com])

          I guess Windows Media 9 [microsoft.com] also supports HD, and there are some trailers available there too.

          OTA HD tuners are available now. CableCard is starting to become available. And th

    • My old AMD 950MHz system is more than happy handling any media you care to throw at it.

      Only if you don't throw HDTV videos at it... My Athlon system, overclocked almost to 2GHz, can just BARELY play 1080p content with a whole lot of software tricks using mplayer on Linux.

      You can do hardware decoding with a few videocards on Linux, but you have absolutely no options for deinterlacing, inversing telecine, etc. You're also completely out-of-luck if you want to play WMVHD content, HD h.264, etc. So, it's far

  • Silent mini ITX is easy (Score:4, Informative)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:27PM (#14175015)
    Pick up a fanless mini-itx board, get yourself one of the snap-on DC/DC converter kits from mini-box.com, or similar, put it in a nice box and away you go. I've made 3 of these so far and they work great, and are acceptably silent with quiet drive.

    If you want to go to the next level, boot the mini ITX board off compactflash and NFS mount your media off a server in the basement. This is what I did to get around some heat issues. Works like a CHARM.

    Fast enough for a great MythTV box, not sure why this is such a revelation.
  • I was at the local computerparts shop, you know the kind that has lots of all the stuff you want crammed in a closet size shop. I was looking for a fanless gfx card because I wanted to get started with a media PC myself. Anyway, they build their own fanless Microsoft media PCs with dual tuner etc. It looked nice and your choice of harddrive was the factor dertermining the noise leves. Granted it wasn't a high power machine, it was not a gamer PC.
    I have always buyed bleeding edge hardware that needed a lot o
    • Actually, using a decent component cable will give you 1080p resolution, and if you use high quality component cables, it'll probably be better quality then a cheapo HDMI/DVI cable. I've had troubles getting my Pioneer 435 to work with PCs, but best solution is to just use good quality analogue and tweak the settings.
      • HDMI/DVI is digital, component is analog. Component can only be equal, never better than HDMI/DVI. With digital you are not going to have graduated quality, either the bits get sent (100% quality) or they do not get sent (0% quality), assuming no error correction...
      • I don't think my screen will accept 1080p, only 1080i sadly. and it has a slight flicker for some reason, must be the conversion from interlace in the tv, because the 720p is rock solid.
    • Here's some advice [avsforum.com] on getting your computer to output 1366x768 (or check elsewhere in that forum). [google.com]

      Though, if your TV is simply unable to accept that resolution, then you might have to go with a more typical 720p resolution (which might not be so bad, if the bezel on your TV chops the couple of extra pixels off anyway).

      • Excellent, I think I will spend a week reading the forums there before making any further investments in hardware. :D
        I think one of my current problems is scaling of the image right now, I can not get any picture if I send it something close to it's true resolutions but something 1286x689(not the excact numbers), gives me a image where something is cut out and I can use overscan to adjust the viewable area. But I need to play with it a bit more.

        Thanks.

  • Fanless hardware not worth it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by n0dalus ( 807994 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:40PM (#14175065) Journal
    If you have the space, it's way better to just buy $25 worth of shielded extension cables for your monitor, TV, audio, keyboard and mouse; put the computer around the corner or in the next room. I got my VGA cable for $15 (shielded), and two PS/2 cables for $5 each, then made my audio cables for a couple of dollars from good shielded wire and plugs. All 5 metres long. You can probably get this stuff cheaper if you look around.

    The only disadvantage is that you have to walk to the next room to put in a CD, but this is something I don't need to do very often. Compared to the time it takes to burn a CD or even just read a CD's TOC, walking around the corner is well worth the lasting peace and quiet. Why spend hundreds of dollars extra on hardware just to cut down noise?

  • who would have thought .. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .. that you CAN build a fully functional media center for 2500$.

    coming up next: build your own fully functional house for 1,000,000$.

  • Skip MCE -- Go with MythTV (Score:3, Informative)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @05:57PM (#14175126)
    I went through this same process when putting together a system for my MythTV box.

    MythTV allows for your frontent (display system) to be seperate from your backend (receiver cards, storage, transcoding - commercial removal, etc.). So you can make a big, cheap, powerful, loud system to do all the heavy lifting, and make a scaled down front-end as quiet as possible.

    But, if you need to put them all in one box, you should consider power/heat in all components. Here are the main points in mine:

    - Athlon64 CPU. Lower power requirements in general, and Cool 'n Quiet feature to slow down the processor, make it much better than Intels.
    - Large Heat Sink + Fan. A large copper Zalman HSF runs very quiet. In my system, with cool 'n quiet enabled, the fan actually turns off most of the time it's not doing heavy lifting.
    - Good case, designed for quiet operation. The Antec Sonata has a fairly quiet power supply (the newer unit has the single large fan on the underside of the PSU), and a large case fan. The large fans run slower/quieter and still push a lot of air.
    - Quiet HDD. I prefer Seagate Barracuda. This used to be hard to find, but now it seems most HDD manufacturers are making quiet drives with fluid bearings. The Antec case has rubber connectors where the HDD attaches to cut down on vibration noise. If you can use network file storage, using a 2.5" drive will cut down even more on power/noise/heat/vibration and size issues. (Taking it even further, some people use a flash based system, or network boot, to eliminate spinning disks completely).
    - Fanless Video Card. The Nvidia FX5200 can be found fanless from many places. It supports MPEG2 acceleration in Linux (XvMC) and works well with MythTV.

    Throw a Hauppage PVR-500 Dual SD tuner card in there, with a couple HD3000 cards from http://www.pchdtv.com/ [pchdtv.com] and you've got a great MythTV PVR.
    • Everyone at my work is very smart. Three of us decided to build ourselves MythTV boxes. Of the three, only I succeeded, and only because I had a friend who had already succeeded to help me finish the process. As things stood about six months ago, I could not recommend installing MythTV to anyone because they might simply never get it working.

      It doesn't need a "skin" to fix this problem - in fact, I'd have been much happier if I'd been able to configure most of it with a text editor - it needs to rethink
      • Try knoppmyth, a knoppix based distro:
        www.mysettopbox.tv

        Makes the hardware stuff way easy, I had mine working the first time in about 2 hours and now I can setup a system in under a half hour, and I consider myself to be just barely knowledgeable using linux.
  • Computer-Based Media Centers will be common when they have 3 things:

    1) Ease of Purchase. If I can order one online or in a store with everything I need, instead of in 20-30 different parts to install or solder or whatever, Joe Public will jump.
    2) Ease of Use. Can't be much harder to use a TiVo.
    3) Cost. It has to be cheap enough that the average person in a Western country could get it without having to agonize over the decision. So I'd say $800 is the upper limit.

    That means that it'll have to be re
  • The hum from my non-LCD tv annoys the piss out of me, and I should prefer the soothing undertones of cooling fans. Aah, 90mm of ambient goodness.
  • Quiet is all well and good, but if you want a *silent* HTPC, there is only one place to go: http://www.silentpcreview.com/ [silentpcreview.com].

    Full disclosure: I write news stories for SPCR.

  • Where's the Verification? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Saturday December 03, 2005 @06:48PM (#14175286)
    So they go through all the hassel of putting one together, but then when they justify components they use purely subjective reasoning and then later don't even bother to back up their claims

    For example:
    While the CPU is certainly important, a lot of the work in a home theater PC is offloaded to other components to a certain degree. If you're using hardware-based TV cards (whether digital or analog) and an audio card with hardware DSP, then the CPU becomes less of an issue. Still, the processor can get pretty busy just managing system chores when you're trying to capture multiple video streams in DVR mode. So we decided we wanted a dual-core processor.

    Ok, so there's justification for not using a high end processor (offloading most processing to other components), but then they go ahead and drop in a a $330 dual core CPU. I think the only justification to pick this CPU is for the 'geek factor'.

    Lastly, after putting in a design like this why don't they go through and demonstrate that they components they chose were the right ones. How much memory does this thing consume while actually running common operations. What is the CPU usage for these same operations?

    Anybody can create a media PC, but a responsible reviewer should provide the justification for their steps and the proof that what they did was the best (or not the best) decision.

    • Ok, so there's justification for not using a high end processor (offloading most processing to other components), but then they go ahead and drop in a a $330 dual core CPU. I think the only justification to pick this CPU is for the 'geek factor'.

      In this case this is very appropiate. They had two HDTV tuners and two analog tuners. The HDTV tuners consume nearly 20Mbps each, while the analogs go up to 12Mbps. The CPU is doing a ton of work when recording 64Mbps of data to the hard drive - in fact, they
  • Cablecard will happen as soon as the pay-per-show services (i.e. iTunes, the rumoured Google offering) gain more momentum. Tell people that they can get only their favourite shows commercial-free for $2/hour and cable companies will bend over backwards to claw people back. They know it's coming. That's why they're begging us to get their PVRs now - they're taking a gamble on locking us in, and when that fails they'll start slashing prices and adding features until we turn back to the all-you-can-eat model.
  • One drawback: We're still waiting for the cable and satellite companies to get it together on CableCard, so the system has to do without.

    Why would the content providers agree to let homebrew PVR's use CableCard? One of the main reasons people build their own PVR, rather than just buying a TiVo for much less, is to have more control over the device and avoid DRM, which is precisely why digital cable/sattelite feeds are encrypted to begin with.
  • I put together a system using the Zalman TN-500 case. This thing is expensive but it is incredibly well made and would probably survive a small nuke. I needed a quiet PC for my home recording studio but didn't want to sacrifice performance. I've got a 3.2 GHz P4 with an ATI XT800 Pro GPU. I can play the latest FPS games at full speed and I don't hear a thing from the PC except a faint disk drive access at times. I'll probably try to boot from flash and run the drives in another room with a gigabit netw
  • The sound hardware seems totally OTT. I built a media PC and I bought an Intel motherboard with a 7.1 audio chipset with S/PDIF output onboard for about 80ukp. I just plug it into my AV amp, and that's it - sound is a solved problem. What exactly does the sound card in this setup do that will make a difference to a media PC? I mean, all the sound will be 100% digital until it arrives at the amp, so having marvellous SNR or something is pointless anyway.

    Or is it so they can play games with uber sound p

  • ...consider using a Nexus fan. I have several in different systems, and they are absolutely the quietest I've heard (without being wimpy).

    After that, I think those (often colorful) Antec fans with the variable speed switch are rather good and quiet.

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