How much for a self built HD HTPC?

[Ian Vinten]

Thinking of putting together a HD HTPC for HD encoded files rather than having a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive in there.

How much should I budget for it?

[grimley]

Over 1k for a decent one

Case? what about this one

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15738

about 120 notes

HDMI equipped mobos are out there but a tad expensive & not many stockists have them (i'd budget 150 notes for that)

I'd put at least 2gig ddr2 ram & a mid-end c2d or high end 64x2 AM2 socket chip
another 300 notes blown


I'd get this HD I've read cracking reviews for it :thumbs:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/SpinPointTSeries/HardDiskDrive_SpinPointTSeries_HD501LJ.asp

about 80 notes

you'll probably need vista premium £180 (or £70 oem)

this card looks good if you dont go down the HDMI mobo route
MSI 8600GTS DX10 & HDCP over DVI (http://www.thedvdforums.com/jump2.php?url=http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(33903)a(60823)url(http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126981/rb/27216501509))

finally the TV card

probably this (http://www.thedvdforums.com/jump2.php?url=http://clkuk.tradedoubler.com/click?p(33903)a(60823)url(http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/101065))

:wave:

[Grandmaster]

My recommendation is cheap, absolutely tiny, has tons of storage, can handle 1080p x264 with ease and will get the job done.

http://img485.imageshack.us/img485/6733/untitled1jv1.th.jpg (http://img485.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled1jv1.jpg)

To this you need to add the following:

1. Windows Media Centre Edition 2005 (about £60)
2. CoreAVC codec (about £10 tops from www.corecodec.com)
3. Memory - go to the bargain PC memory thread and get 1gb of DDR2 PC5300
4. Any optical drive you fancy, preferably one of the really short ones

Optional Extras:

1. Shuttle PF17 Toslink cable - digital optical out that'll plug straight into your amp, works with DTS and DD 5.1 output from DVDs and x264 HD files
2. Shuttle PF27 VFD - Replacement front bezel (http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=332106) for that authentic media centre look and includes MCE2005 compatible remote

Shouldn't be more than £600 all-in, probably a fair bit less.

Reasons for my choices:

1. The Vista media centre front-end is badly organised, clunky and looks awful and confusing and bizarrely it needs a really powerful graphics card to move smoothly
2. Shuttles are as small as a toaster and most of the models these days (including this one) are virtually silent
3. If you're running x264 files you don't need HDCP. A Radeon X300SE is totally silent and when run with CoreAVC, any dual core CPU is perfectly adequate even for 1080p playback
4. For HD you need lots of space if you're building up a library - hence the 2x500GB HDDs. If you buy one of those really short DVD drives you can even stick a third HDD behind that
5. For a media centre you only need 2gb of RAM if you're using Vista. For MCE2005, 1GB is more than sufficient. Anything more is overkill.
6. Unless you need HDCP (ie if you're going to stick a Blu-ray drive in at a later date) you absolute do not need a decent graphics card - your HTPC only uses the DirectShow overlay and I find the otherwise crap X300SE to be a brilliant, passively cooled performer.
7. CoreAVC codec can playback any x264 content with no loss of speed on any dual core machine. Saves you spending tons on a graphics card with hardware decoding. CPUs are so cheap that it's pointless going for any other solution.

Have just spent two days upgrading my HTPC with Vista Ultimate only to find that the Media Centre front-end is dire, so I've gone back to MCE2005.

[kiran_mk2]

There is going to be a wave of HDMI-equipped motherboards coming any week now, however I think they all state they will only be able to handle 720p. I guess if you add a fairly beefy cpu it'll get 1080p going ok. I've been looking at doing the same (allbeit using a tiny PC with a large NAS) and I think I'll give it another 6 months and look again - more chance of an HD drive and a true one-chip HD decoder.

[Keiron99]

Have just spent two days upgrading my HTPC with Vista Ultimate only to find that the Media Centre front-end is dire, so I've gone back to MCE2005.

I have to agree. I've never used my PVC as a media centre before, but after having installed Vista thought I'd give it a go. Alas, MC has almost completely put me off. For example, just lok at the way it displays album artwork for music - a complete mess.

Yes - I do struggle with computing - but MC is just awful to set up. Even just closing the damned thing down is a nightmare. Why on earth do some options scroll left to right, and others top to bottom?

I've been looking at Apple TV these last couple of days but that seems to be just as flawed and even less flexible.

For the time being I'll just stick with my PVR and DVD changer. They've never crashed on me either!

[Ian Vinten]

Cheers guys - this all looks awesome.

To be honest what I think i'll do is have the bulk of my storage on the main PC upstairs and then just network access (wired) the files i need.

This will be my second HDMI output device and i've only got on port on my plasma. Are there any video cards or motherboards that can pass through an HDMI signal?

[Tom Whitaker]

Isn't MythTV a nice free front end for this stuff? I think I was recommended that when I asked if I could install XBMC on a PC.

[CHEWY56]

Although I have tinkered around with PC's I thought I would not have the confidence to spend £600 on a self build until I read Grandmaster's post.

Should I spend £900 on the spec below with no hassle or spend £600 on a better spec and find my machine might not work?

(D22) Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6300 Dual Core Processor(1.86GHz,2MB Cache,1066MHz)
(D22) Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
(D22) Microsoft® Media Center Remote + Dual Channel TV Tuner (2A or 2D or 1A1D) with Radio
ASUS - D22
(D22) 1024MB, Dual Channel, DDR2 533MHz Memory - (2x512MB)
(D22) 250GB SATA II 7200rpm NCQ Hard Drive
(D22) Super Format 16x Dual Layer DVD Writer +R/-R/RW/RAM
256MB DDR2 nVIDIA nForce 7600 Series- PCI-Express (D22)
Integrated Intel High Definition Azalia 7.1 Channel
(D22) RF 24GHZ Wireless Keyboard with integrated Touchpad
2 x USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE1394 (4 Pin), 1 x eSATA, 1 X Microphone, 1 x Headphone
4 X USB 2.0, 1 x IEEE1394, 1 x eSATA, RJ45, D/A TV signal, D-sub, S-Video out, DVI, HDMI out
1 x PCI-E x 16, 2 x PCI-E x1, 1 x PCI
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g Wireless LAN (onboard)
13-in-1 Built-in Card Reader (MD,CF-2 type, MS, MS pro, MS duo, MS pro duo, SD, mini SD (Converter)
2 Years World wide warranty (Collection & Return in UK & Ireland)

[DeadKenny]

Any comments on the PureVideo support in nVidia cards? Going by their web site it would appear this is hardware acceleration for HD, including in some models, HDCP. This would surely take a lot of pressure of the CPU.

Is this the case though or is PureVideo just in the driver, though as they specify only certain cards that support it, then hardware acceleration is suggested?

Note that as I understand it (though I've not read into it much), you can buy an XBox 360 HD-DVD drive for use in a HTPC. This is a very cheap way of getting HD-DVD if you aren't counting the cost of the HTPC itself. The drive apparently (again I haven't confirmed this) is available from £99 !.


What about noise? How do the above or most HTPCs fair on noise? I really need something that is virtually silent (or no more noisy than my TiVo which really is just a quiet whir of a hard disc). However I know HD takes a lot of power so beefy cooling is perhaps required.

Other than this, the problem with a self build is I know from experience that trying to match components to provide a rock solid reliable system that performs flawlessly is a nightmare. I always end up with some niggly issue that causes something to be slow, stutter, or more likely crash. Graphics cards seem to always crash on me, with the exception of anything made by Matrox.