Liteon BD-ROM Drive

So this came yesterday from scan.co.uk, which was unfortunately superficially damaged - a scratch on the front fascia, and there was a rattle coming from the drive when I moved it about.

Anyway, got it home and opened up the HTPC and replaced the existing DVD-RW drive, and found out the way the tray opens on the Liteon BD-ROM drive meant it would not work - the tray fascia was too large for the HTPC case's flip down opening... So I had to pull the drive back out and remove all the fascia on the drive - good it was damaged anyway. This now works, but the front button on the HTPC case does not reach the button for the tray eject. I might have to do something about this or just use the eject button on the remote only.

I tested the drive with a DVD; I have no Blu-ray disc to test the drive as my Amazon order has not come through. Looking forward to testing this out...

While I had the case opened, I took picture of the Zalman heat sink I had put on the GPU - replacing its fan:



This cost me £10 on eBay, so the running total so far is:

• Antec Veris Remote Max HTPC case @ £133
• Pinnacle 7010iX Dual Analog + DTT + Dsat tuner card @ £23
• 2 x 1 Gb PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM @ £20
• Pentium 4 CPU fan @ £15
• SATA DVD rewriter @ £15
  
• HD 2600 Pro GPU @ £23
• Zalman GPU heatsink @ £10
  
• Liteon BD-ROM @ 45
  

Total: £284

MediaPortal 1.0.2 and 1.1.0 Alpha

It looks like I'm going to be busy, not only with my Blu-ray movies, but also with installing the latest MediaPortal version running...

The 1.0.2 version has been out a while, but I had not time to install and use it, and now before I know it, an alpha release of 1.1 is released!

What this spot for updates on MP!

Also I've recently gotten a copy of Vista Ultimate, and would like to test the VMC out, so watch this space for this too!

Blu-ray!

Hello,

I'm back! Sorry about the break, but as I had nothing to report about my HTPC setup... Nothing had changed on the system, and I was using mainly for media playback, and not TV viewing or recording.

But I've decided to purchase a BD-ROM drive for Blu-ray movie playback. I had thought about doing this for a while and making this post asking for opinions to whether it was worth it, finally this convinced me to make the purchase.

The question was asked in the early days of this setup - whether I should include Blu-ray playback facilities or not - stood unanswered. The question in my mind nowadays is whether Blu-ray PQ was better than broadcast HD. There was an answer which convinced me to at least have a try... The Blu-ray experience is better overall than broadcast HD as it has a large pixel resolution and frame-rate, better sound, and if a good quality movie disc is purchase, then a better experience could be had over broadcast HD.

So I have ordered a Liteon HD-401S-06C BD-ROM internal SATA drive for £45 from scan.co.uk, and 3 Blu-ray movies from Amazon 3 for 2 offer: Bladerunner, 2001 and Amadeus. We will see how better the experience with Blu-ray over broadcast HD TV is, when the item arrive.

My spending on this HTPC project so far:

• Antec Veris Remote Max HTPC case @ £133
• Pinnacle 7010iX Dual Analog + DTT + Dsat tuner card @ £23
• 2 x 1 Gb PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM @ £20
• Pentium 4 CPU fan @ £15
• SATA DVD rewriter @ £15
  
• HD 2600 Pro GPU @ £23
• Liteon BD-ROM @ 45
  

Total: £274

A Media PC with MediaPortal

OK, I admit it, I've ignored the Freesat/Freeview part of this project so far, and have been concentrating on the HTPC side. Well, I can't be blamed as my modded XBox (which acted as the media player) was removed from under the TV, and the fact that the two Humax PVRs were left in place, then I was in no hurry to get the Freesat/view side working. I promise to make an effort soon (with getting 4 the Record installed and working.)

In the great thing about MediaPortal working as a Media PC is the plugins that can grab on-line content, such as fan art, and series and movie info/synopsis. The StreamedMP skin installer also installs/upgrades and supports the Moving Pictures and My TV Series plugins, and makes the PC look and feel like a wonderful Media Player, together with the My Trailers plugin, the PC really feels like a HTPC.

The HTPC, combined with my two Humax PVRs (with which I can pull recordings off quite easily), means I can use the PVRs to record a whole series or movies, transfer them onto the HTPC to be watched at anytime that's convenient.

Configure WebEPG in MP

As promised, here's the guide to getting WebEPG in MediaPortal to work - it is on my MediaPortal wiki pages: Setting up WebEPG.

I will expand it more as I go along... especially with SVN versions of MP.

MediaPortal: The re-installing trick

My answer to many MediaPortal configuration problems is, to re-install! This seems to work for me, time and time again. The only problem in doing this is that you lose your 'settings' information... so if you are willing to re-configure MP and its many plug-ins that you have setup, then take my advice and re-install!

A re-install, certainly did the trick for my new GPU and BBC HD problem. Now receiving HD via satellite works a treat! The problem, as I suspected, was the fact that MP would not 'apply' my configuration change of the location of the 'timeshift buffer'. Previously, I had configured MP to buffer onto a USB stick. Later I realised this might not be a good idea for HD processing... so changed it back to the HDD, but had not realised that it was still buffering to the USB stick, until I looked at the back of the case, where the stick was plugged into, to see that is was still merilly flashing away!

A fresh-from-scratch re-install did the trick and now buffering is on the local HDD, and receiption and decoding of BBC HD is perfect. (I still have to try recording at the same time as watching BBC HD to test the new GPU.)

I had an experiment with creating a RAM disk for the location of the timeshift buffer, but I could only create a 32MB RAMdisk! This has to be bigger for the buffer I suspect. I need to find a free piece of software to create at least a 256MB RAM disk...

Another re-install?

To solve several problems with MediaPortal, I decided to upgrade to an SVN version (untested development snapshots). I had been waiting for version 1.0.1 of MediaPortal to be released, but the deadline of 15th March has been postponed with no ETA...

The version I upgraded my MP 1.0.0.0 was this one 02-10-2009 Rev:21688. This version fixed:
(a) the unsupported skin message at MP start-up, and (b) I can ESCape out of the Recorded TV screen. Unfortunately, when I installed this SVN version, I did not perform a complete uninstall of MP. And last night's installation of my new GPU (more below) there were problem not being able to make certain configuration changes that would 'stick'. I think I will have to wipe MP 1.0.0.0 completely off the system, then install the latest SVN version: 03-22-2009 Rev:22029.

I spent a few hours last night installing and configuring my new HiS 2600 HD GPU, to see if I could get BBC HD/ITV HD broadcasts decoding properly on my P4 HTPC within MP. I had varying success, the card certainly produced good enough pictures to watch, but they were not smooth enough. I also had problems with MP crashing out and freezing up after a while of watching BBC HD, but I haven't be able to isolate the problem. I am considering a re-install of XP to get a clean system install to see if this helps... but this does mean investing more time and effort.

A new GPU for BBC HD/ITV HD

Another day, and another dollar to spend! This time, it looks like I need a new GPU to decode BBC HD and ITV HD...

So I posted this question: "Can I get BBC HD with my setup", on the Media Portal forums. The answer turns out to be "yes" but "not watchable"! So after messing around installing various HD codecs, Power DVD 9, MPC, and Core AVC, the last one worked but I get slow/stuttering/juddery picture and sound with BBC HD and ITV HD broadcasts. My machine also gets itself in a twist when tuned into these channels - refusing to change away!

So the conclusion in the thread is that my NVIDIA GeForce 6600LE is not adequate for HD decoding... so I've just spent £23 on the HiS HD 2600 Pro from Scan. We will see how this goes - won't we?

Anyway to recap of my spending on this HTPC project so far:

• Antec Veris Remote Max HTPC case @ £133
• Pinnacle 7010iX Dual Analog + DTT + Dsat tuner card @ £23
• 2 x 1 Gb PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM @ £20
• Pentium 4 CPU fan @ £15
• SATA DVD rewriter @ £15
  
• HD 2600 Pro GPU @ £23

Total: £229

HTPC Software: Moving Pictures: an MP plug-in

Once you have MediaPortal installed, messed about with changing a few skins, only when you've installed the Moving Pictures plug-in does the PC feel like a Media Center box.

This MediaPortal plug-in organises your 'movies' media files, downloading covers, movie info, and fan art to create an 'atmospheric' movie library:


Forum and download available here.

Media Center setup issues

I've been running my Media Center PC as a HTPC for a few weeks now, and here are some issues I have noted:

1. Antec Veris Remote Max case
(a) I found that the case has two jumper connectors that allow the remote to power the box on OR the front power button to. I can not have both connected so that I can do both - it's either or... (b) The case was quite noise in place under the TV, but I did not know whether it was the hard disk(s), CPU fan or case fans. Futher investigation reveal it to be the case fans (of which I only had one on)... so I think I need to replace at least on for a silent fan... (c) The locations of the DVD/CD-ROM drive and the hard disks are so far apart that it made it impossible to connect both and IDE DVD/CD-ROM drive and a hard disk under the same IDE channel. To solve this I purchased a SATA DVD/CD-ROM AND removed the IDE 160Gb CE drive. (d) I have to look at the iMON software and tweak it a bit more. The volume button on the case seems pretty useless at the moment...

2. Pentium 4, 4Gb RAM, GeForce 6600LE GPU, Abit AA8-3rd Eye mobo
Currently, this setup is working fine for a Media Center. I had it recording a programme could do other things without too much problems. But I have not fully stress-tested it, so it might proved not so adequate. My current problem with is this setup is the power consumption - up to 160W at max usage... not to good. My FOXSAT-HDR will consume upto 50W at max usage. See above for the comments on the £130 case, but having seenthe good looking Opera Media Center ATX case for just £35, I wonder if this could be an alternative, if bought with a basic iMON remote and sensor?

3. MediaPortal software
This seems to provide what is required, but the problem seems to be the setup - needed a lot of time and effort to get it working properly and doing what you want. The good things is that it seems to have all the plug-ins you want, and there's a support forum where you can get help. There are some major quirks to get used too or overcome with MediaPortal and its plug-ins... but could be worth it in the end. I am currently trying my MP configuration to work properly with WebEPG, Streamed-MP skin, Moving Pictures plug-in... next will be the TV Series and For the Record plug-ins...