Software: MediaPortal

As you know, after putting Mythbuntu to one side (because it couldn't install drivers for my Realtek NIC), I am using MediaPortal to test the P4 PC setup. So far this media software has performed very well with regards to detecting my devices (and especially the Pinnacle 7010iX TV tuner).

Have a read of this post on the MediaPortal forums, of one guy's experience with VMC and MediaPortal. Again MediaPortal wins on the grounds that the devices simply, are detected and work...

Software

Which HTPC or Media Center software? Candidates are:

• MythTV: website here
  
• MCE: website here
  
• VMC: website here
  
• MediaPortal: website here
  
• LinuxMCE: website here
  
• DVBViever: website here
  
• GB-PVR: website here
  
• Sage TV: website here
  

Can you suggest any other? Am I going to use just free software, or pay Micro$oft, et al? Which application will support my hardware? Which is best?

Take Three Cases

So my current P4 PC is in a crappy tower case and to get it looking like a HTPC, I need a good looking media case. This would help the PC perform better too ;)

So I have 3 options (jzee, of DS, has provided links to the reviews):

1. Cheap Aplus case @ £50: Aplus Black Media Center Case (no review but specs & pics)
2. Popular Antec Max case @ £130: Antec Fusion MAX VERIS Black Case (review here)
3. Premium Silverstone case @ £140: Silverstone LC16B-MR Black Case (review here)

Which one shall I get?

No thanks for the memory!

Well after much faffing about because of memory problems, I've managed to install MediaPortal and got some Freeview channels going...

As you can recall, I am just trying to get my old P4 PC setup for a quick and dirty test... I went out and stupidly bought a 2Gb memory upgrade from eBay which caused all the trouble. Read this post (and thread) I made on the computer section of the DS forums to see what I had to cope with!

So after downloading MemTest, and running it with one stick at a time in place, it identified that one of the 2Gb was faulty! This has taught me a lesson not to get RAM second hand off eBay, for sure! Well, I suppose the good thing is that 1Gb was OK and with that added to my existing 1Gb, the PC was in a better shape to run MediaPortal.

Another piece of good news was that I found my NVIDIA GeForce 6600LE GPU had not decided to give up the ghost on me after all - the faulty memory must have screwed up its function - as at one stage it died on me, and I thought it had gone for good!

So tonight, I managed to get the memory, GPU and a re-installed MediaPortal to work with the Pinnacle 7010iX tuner card, but only with Freeview channels. I could not get my newly cabled satellite feed to work (I could not perform a scan - no channels detected) and I suspect that the feed is borked (as it sits on the end of a DiSEqC switch). I will have to try the card on my currently working Freesat feeds tomorrow...

Pinnacle 7010iX card

Well, it's arrived, a second hand one off eBay for £23, installed into my old P4 PC with drivers downloaded from the Pinnacle site for 32-bit Windows XP. This bit seem to go well - the PC shows the device under the hardware section.

Another piece of good news is that, after messing around with match DIMM slots for my memory stick, the fresh install of XP seems to now show 3Gb of RAM.

I shall now have a go at getting a few TV channels (start with Freeview, as I need to cable the sat feed). Now what software shall I use to do this? Maybe Pinnacle's own that I got with the USB TV tuner...

Update: Well, I'm not having much luck with my old P4 PC at the moment! So after installing the Pinnacle TVCEnter software (v3.4A) and it didn't work - complains that it could not see a tuner... I attempted to update XP using Windows Update. Well during the process, the update kept rebooting my PC. After the third reboot, it didn't recover - complaining of a missing NTLDR file! Arrrrgggghhhh!!!! Does anyone know what is causing this?

I am now making a recovery install! :(

Software: Mythbuntu

So, my 2Gb of RAM came today, and installed it on my old P4 PC, which already had 1Gb. Now I have 2.75Gb - where did the 250MB of RAM disappear to? The wonders of PCs and Windows!

Anyway I'm downloading Mythbuntu from here, and trying it out. I will try MediaPort, etc. later. I might be forced to us Vista Media Center (which now only comes as part of Vista Home Premium or Ultimate version) and eBuyer have a special on Vista Ultimate and a 1TB HDD for £140 (bargain!) But I think I will stick to free Media Center software for my HTPC.

BTW, I have a Pinnacle PCTV 60e (USB Freeview receiver) that I could try to get working while waiting for the 7010ix to arrive...

Update: I haven't been able to get on an have a look at Mythbuntu yet. I got one spare 40Gb disk drive which I had problems with - turns out to be a broken drive - I couldn't even install XP on it. Then When I managed to get Mythbuntu installed, it failed to recognise my network card. So I ave up on that and proceed with the XP install.

I had various problems with my old P4 PC, and now my GPU (the GeForce 6600) has died for some reason! So now I'm using a Radeon 7000 PCI card in the old P4, which I know is probably not up for anything... Well, one good news: the Pinnacle 7010ix quad card has arrived...

GPU & Mobo reviews

While I'm waiting for my first bits to arrive, I've found some interesting reads:

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 4000 series group test
Mobos: Integrated graphics shoot-out

Ordered some hardware

Well, yesterday I ordered some hardware... I have decided to approach this project in stages, in case it goes all pear shaped!

I have my old PC and some spare HDDs to play about with, so I will use this as a base. My PC is a Pentium 4 @ 3.2GHz. It has just 1Gb of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 6600LE graphics card.

I know the old PC is not going to be suitable for the HTPC purpose, but it will give me a bit of a start... Anyway this is what I've ordered:

1. 20M of co-ax cable (to run a Freesat feed into my 'office' where I have a play; I have a Freeview feed already there) @ £9
2. Pinnacle 7010ix quad tuner card (got it 'used' off eBay) @ £21
3. 2Gb of DDR2-533 (to put some more RAM into the old PC) @ £13

Running total: £43

Revised hardware

Tuner: Pinnacle 7010iX PCTV Dual Satellite TV Tuner ~ £33

Running Total 0: £33
(Put it in currently available PC, try out with OS/Media software.)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H AMD 780G ~ £80
CPU: AMD Athlon 4850e - 45W - AM2 - 2.5GHz X2 ~ £50
RAM: OCZ 4GB PC2-6400 Reaper HPC (2x2GB) ~ £46

Running Total 1: £209
(Put them in old PC case, fit small HDD and receiver card, install OS/Media software.)

Antec Fusion Remote Media Center Case - Black ~ £132
PC Power & Cooling SILENCER 470 ~ £43

Running Total 2: £384
(Build Media Center PC with all above component, set up remote control, add wireless keyboard/mouse?)

Disk: Seagate Pipeline HD ST3320310CS x 2 ~ £102

Running Total 3: £486
(Do I have available HDDs kicking around - from HDR or 9200T? Pay £102 for 1TB WD instead?)

Blu-ray: LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Disc Rewriter & HD DVD ROM ~ £143

Running Total 4: £629
(Think about media burning and playing of HD material off disc - do I need this?)

Other builds hardware specs

22 June 2008 - From HTPC Build:
- Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard
- AMD Athlon64 X2 4450e
- 2×1Gb DDR2-800
- Samsung Spinpoint 500Gb
- LG GGC-H20L
- EV Shiny Piano Black case
- 400W PSU
- WinTV Nova-S2 HD PCI

4 August 2008 - Salazar on Hexus
- Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H AMD 780G (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ 2.80GHz
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
- OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)
- LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive
- 500W PSU and ThermalTake M9 VI1000BWS midtower case from previous system

12 Dec 2008 - bushbrother on AVForums:
- Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G Socket AM2+ onboard VGA
- OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz/PC2-6400 DUAL CHANNEL
- LG Electronics Blu-Ray & HD-DVD-Rom Combo 16x DVDRW Black SATA
- Antec EarthWatts 380W 80%+ Efficiency PSU - 80mm Fan 4x SATA PCI-E
- Antec Fusion Remote Veris Silver MATX Media Center Case - No PSU
- KeySonic 2.4Ghz Wireless Compact Keyboard with Integrated TouchPad
- Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache*
- Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium - Licence and media - 1 PC
- AMD Athlon X2 5050e Socket AM2 45W Energy Efficient
- Pinnacle 7010ix Dual DVB-S Dual DVB-T PCIe Card (Freesat + Freeview)

Hardware breakdown

Motherboard: The Gigabyte GA-EG43M-S2H G43 has on board graphics; the Intel G43 chipset has the Intel GMA X4500 graphics processor supporting HD, DX10 and the board has HDMI out. This looks suitable for satellite HD decoding and connecting to an HDTV, methinks.

CPU: The motherboard support LGA775 socket, so it can support an Intel Core 2 Duo, and this E7300 2.66GHz will prove fast enough to record 4 programmes simultaneously, and burn a DVD, etc... (Might have to purchase a big but quiet cooling fan for this CPU.)

RAM: 2 lots of 2GB of memory is more than enough and cheap at £40...

Disk: Best to use dedicated PVR HDDs in this machine. Two of these 320Gb for 'buffering' and later and some slower - but 'greener' 1TB WD10EADS drives for normal 'archiving' and media storage...

Case: The Antec Micro Fusion Remote 350 is good looking enough to sit under the TV next to other CE boxes, but it only has a 350W power supply, which might prove inadequate, when more tuners are added. Might need to consider an uglier case but more powerful supply... Update: it's been pointed out to me that the case only takes 1/2 height cards (see link for case details). This might cause an issue with what tuner, graphics, expansion cards we can get...

Tuner: The Pinnacle 7010iX PCTV Dual Satellite TV Tuner is a quad tuner (two DVB-S and two DVB-T) suitable for Freesat and Freeview decoding, and is cheap on eBay at the moment. But it is not DVB-S2, so if this is purchased, another tuner card might be needed for S2 decoding...

Remote: Who knows if the Cyberlink Infrared Media Centre Remote Control is any good and suitable for this purpose, but it is cheap!

DVD/Blu-ray: Yeah, need one of these! £20 or £75, or both. Might need to burn to disc, and playback of HD from Blu-ray might be nice :)

Hardware

A brief look at various PC component sites, Aria.co.uk, Insight.co.uk, eBay.co.uk. They seem to have these for me:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EG43M-S2H G43 Socket 775 @ £86.19
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz (Retail 775) £97.69
RAM: 2Gb Samsung Original DDR2 800 (PC2-6400) SDRAM x 2 @ £38.98
Disk: Seagate Pipeline HD ST3320310CS x 2 @ £96.58
Case: Antec Micro Fusion Remote 350 @ £120.69
Tuner: Pinnacle 7010iX PCTV Dual Satellite TV Tuner @ £29.99
Remote: Cyberlink Infrared Media Centre Remote Control @ £5.74

Total: £475.86

Over budget already! What can I reduce the cost of... the case..?
Do I need to add a Blu-ray drive? Do I need a DVB-S2 card?

Cost / Budget

Well, my initial budget is £400. I am sure I won't be able to keep to budget at all, as I am starting from scratch - having no base PC I can use...

Considering the PVR - the Dreambox DM8000 HD - is £600, I think my realistic budget will be somewhere around this mark... but maybe I can cut some corners, somewhere - utilise the many spare HDDs I have lying around ;)

Where to start...

Right, to build a HTPC we need to look into 5 things:

1. Cost: How much am I willing to spend on this project?
2. Hardware: What specification of CPU/GFX/HDD will it need?
3. Software: MythTV, Media Portal, GB-PVR, etc. - which is best?
4. Receivers: Which DTT and DSAT tuner cards (supported by 3)?
5. Other: Remote? Blu-ray? HDMI? etc., etc.

A good day to...

1. Decide to build a hybrid Freesat/Freeview HTPC...
2. Start a blog to document the task...
3. Learn something along the way...