Media Center Update

A lot has changed since my last post on my media center. At that time, I had the media center up and running, and then it unexpectedly crashed on me. After much troubleshooting (the worst part about DIY projects) I realized it was most likely (note I never officially figured it out) that the video card I was using was PCI Express 2.0, and my mobo was an older one, that likely didn't support 2.0 on the Express slot.

Although that sucked, I was okay, because I wasn't quite ready to make the transition to HDMI in my living room. So, I yanked the vid card, put the media center in my office, and used my XBox 360 as a media extender to play my recorded shows from the office.

Did it work? Yeah. Was it the best solution? No way. I found the XBox to be somewhat slow and at times unresponsive. In addition, it required another remote (because I didn't want to take the time to program my Remote Commander for a temporary solution).

Anyway, I soon found a great deal at Buy.com for a 3-to-1 HDMI switch (only $12 with free shipping), and then picked up some HDMI cables, and I realized it was time to move the HTPC into the living room. But it was an unsightly thing in its' mid-tower case. Until my brother offered his "old" media case because he'd purchased a bigger and better one. The downside to this was it only accepts half-height cards, meaning my TV tuner wouldn't fit.

After thinking about this, I ended up being okay with getting rid of the card. I'm quickly becoming an HD snob anyway, and unless I wanted to upgrade my HTPC to Vista and run the TV Pack hack to get QAM on my tuner, I wasn't going to get OTA HD on my tuner anyway, and the new case looked great compared to the old one.

So I made the switch - and still couldn't use my HDMI card. Thankfully, I got an older Radeon X300 low-profile card with DVI out, which will work until I either upgrade my mobo or my video card.

Add to that using Handbrake to rip my DVD's, coupled with AnyDvd to strip the encoding, I've now got all my DVD's stored on my HTPC.

I also was looking for a good, easy to use visual piece to navigate the media when my brother recommended XBMC which is pretty, easy to use and develop on, and best of all, is free.

The last thing that I haven't done yet is to install VNC or Synergy to allow me to control the media center from my laptop. Once that's done, it will be fully functional. I'll post a pic of what the computer looks like sometime here soon.

The HTPC Project

For that last little while, I'd been tossing around the idea of building an HTPC (Home Theater PC). The reasons for building one were fairly simple:

• Eventually, if built correctly, it can take the place of my $13/month DVR from Comcast
• Expandability (I'll expound)
• It's a geek project

So, being the cheapskate I am, I watched auctions, and waited. And waited. Finally, I found a great auction on eBay for a barebone ASUS PC. The guy had listed it by it's specific model number, which makes it hard to search for. I ended up winning this computer (brand new case, motherboard, and PSU) for $35 after shipping.

Once I got that, I added these components:

• Hauppauge HVR-1600 TV Tuner
• Hitachi 500GB SATA HD for media (I have a 120GB SATA drive for the OS and programs)
  
• AMD BE-2400 2.3Ghz X2 45W Processor
• ASUS HD3450 HDMI Video Card
• 2GB PQi PC2-4200 RAM
• and an old 16x DVD-RW I had lying around

So, it's a pretty good setup, for not a lot of $$$.

The next decision was what OS to use. From various Microsoft trials and things I'd done, I had 64-bit and 32-bit Vista Ultimate, as well as XP Media Center Edition 2005. Add to that the tons of flavors of free OS's out there specifically for this purchase (MythTV, SageTV, etc).

Due to my relative inexperience with Linux (I'm learning it as we speak), as well as my desire to do more than simple TV Capture with this box (you can see that my specs dwarf the MythTV requirements) ruled out Linux and all his relatives.

Then, because I didn't want (or need) the overhead of Vista on this machine, I decided to stick with XP MCE.

Once that was setup, it was pretty simple to set the Media Center portion up. A lot of pointing and clicking and letting Windows do it's thing finding the channels based on my zip code and so forth.

In addition, I decided to not hook the PC straight into my TV via HDMI. This was partly decided by the fact that the video card was bad and needed to be RMA'd (thank heavens Newegg has the world's best customer service...I highly recommend them for all computer needs), partly decided because I didn't feel the need to shell out the cash for an HDMI switcher and more cables, and mostly decided by the fact that I already have an XBox 360 that can serve as a MCE extender, eliminating the need to fiddle with an IR and blaster, as well as allowing me to keep the HTPC in my office.

I also am using the HTPC as a media streaming device. Orb, a free piece of software, allows me to stream my media to anywhere, as long as I have the internet, with ease. Install it, tell it where to find my media and what I want to share. Then, set up usernames and passwords for anyone I want to have access to it.
Then, simply browse to http://mycast.orb.com/, enter the username and password, and decide if I want to look at pictures, listen to my music, or watch shows (if the tuner is supported). This is especially cool for me, as I'm about to start traveling more for work, and really don't want to have to dump all 60GB+ of my music onto my laptop. The downside? If your upload speeds suck...so does your streaming experience.

So, as I've been playing, I've found things I like, and things I don't. I still haven't found a good way to stream non-Windows standard video types (such as xVids or non-standard AVI's) to the 360.

I like the media remote for the 360. It's got most everything you need and works really well.

So, for those out there are already using it, what toys or programs are you using, and what do you like about it?