Media PC

po0k

Right, I would like, at the end of this thread, to be able to put together a media box for sitting under/ontop of the TV at home for as cheap as possible.

Purpose:
DVD/DIVX/XVID/SVCD player
MP3/OGG/DVDA Playback (is DVDA playable through software?)
Console Emulation station (SNES, Megadrive, Amiga, MAME etc.)
Possible Capture station in the future

Requirements:

• Be able to playback all Divx/Xvid/DVD/SVCD files/discs perfectly
• Case to be the same width as a standard VCR/Set-top box, low as possible and depth not to exceed ~300mm, so as not to look out of place. This is not a hard and fast rule. If it looks good, it's good enough. Black or silver would be traditional, but would settle for any nice striking design, or would be up for spraying it myself (have done it beofre, am very happy with the results).
• High-quality PAL 50Hz and NTSC 60hz TV-Out via S-Video, decent 2D rendering speed, prehaps some OpenGL acceleration for the emulators that can use it, DVD playback assistance etc.
• High-quality 5.1 channel audio via either SPDIF Out or 3 analogue jacks. Headphone+Mic Jacks replicated on the front for late-night Sreet Fighter2 / Sonic / MarioKart sessions
• Joystick/MIDI port would be nice extra for gamepads, though two front-USB ports would make this largelyredundant
• Firewire jack on front and/or rear would be nice, but I don't forsee it being all that useful as the amchine won't be powerful enough to edit DV and the cam can be hooked to the TV via Scart/Composite in most cases anyway
• 10/100Mbit NIC
  GigE would be nicer
• 1 PCI and/or AGP slot would be nice for future expandability
• Min. of 4 USB2.0 ports (2 front, 2 rear)
• DVDRom 8x drive, quiet, UDMA33 minimum, multiregion, either looks good and matches case colour, or is masked behind a slide-down bezel.
  Low-profile DVDRom+CDRW combo drive would be nicer
• 1x Ext 3.5" Bay
  Don't need a floppy drive on the machine, though the motherboard connector could be helpful but not neccessary. The bay however would be handy for a Multi-card reader later on, or to hold the hdd if needed
• 1x int 3.5" Bay
  1~120Gigs of hdd storage, maybe 160, 7200rpm, but quiet as possible, performance isn't much of an issue.
• HAVE FULL LINUX SUPPORT
• Some way to control basic functions via IR remote (or bluetooth-USB combo solution)
• Quiet as possible (ie fanless)
• Cheap as possible (ie ~€350-400 inc VAT + Del

Price is flexible depending on features, though tops out around €500 inc VAT + Del
I still have the speakers to buy

Shopping list:
www.mini-itx.com
Case: VIA Sereniti S2000 Mini-ITX Case - would definately require painting methinks, but that might just be a bad picture. Won't be opening this box up.
Board: Nehemiah M10000 - 1Ghz, seems to support most of what i require

po0k

Oh yeah, almost forgot, COL_LOKI / Phaxx, move to Home Entertainment if needed

Adeptus Titanicus

Nice project! I'm interested in building somehing similar (got hooked after building the last one). Might start some research myself and see what I can feed back to ya.

Col_Loki

Am actually very interested in this thread as its something im in the middle of researching . Will have to do a little more before i start posting idea's and specs ..... but will grab a few beers and work on it 2nite.

KdjaCL

http://www.iridium-uk.com/avpc/avpc.htm



Key Features:

Intel® Pentium® 4 2.8GHz Processor
Microsoft Windows XP Home
512Mb DDR RAM
80Gb Hard Drive
15” XGA TFT Screen (1024 x 768)
DVD+CDRW Combo Drive
4 in 1 Card Reader
56K Modem & 10/100Mbps LAN
2 x Firewire™ and 4 x USB 2.0 ports
Built-in 6 x Easy Start Buttons for Stand By, PC, CD/MP3, TV, Radio and DVD
2 x Speakers
S/PDIF Output for DVD Content and Stereo Audio
Remote Control
Ability Office
Anti Virus Software
1yr Collect & Return Warranty

Additional Specifications

VT8703A + VT8235 Core Logic
INSYDE Flash EPROM; ACPI1.0b BIOS
512K "On-Die" Cache
8 / 16/ 32Mb Video RAM (SMA)
AC 97 2.1 Audio Compliant Interface.
S3 Savage 8 Video Controller
Keyboard: 19mm pitch/3.0mm stroke. IBM 109 Key Compatible with Numeric Keypad.
Remote: Consumer IR I/F; Support System On/Off/Sleep
Ports: 1 x FIR (IrDA 1.1).SIR, 4 x USB 2.0, 2 x IEEE 1394, 1 x Headphone Jack, 1 x Microphone Jack, 1 x S/PDIF, 1 x RF TV-in, 1 x Video-in, 1 x FM Antenna Cable-in, 1 x Mini PCI (Occupied by TV Card), 1 x LCD Brightness VR, 1 x RJ45 (Internal 10/100Mbps LAN, 1 x RJ11 (Internal 56K Modem).
Dimension: 483(W) x 118(D) x 361.5(H)mm
Weight: Under 10.5Kg





I checked this out and as a set top its not a bad machine, its seriously let down with graphics power so dont think about playing any highend games.

But it looks nice

Kdjac

Adeptus Titanicus

Yeah, a nice little unit for a standalone. What I'd like is something akin to what SyxPac describes, basically a small machine that looks good, can be plugged directly into a TV and 5:1 surround system (minimum ). An FM receiver would be nice, and probably wireless networking (g) to stream movies etc from a main PC (if this one was not directly connected to the net).

So basically a box to replace my aging stereo and able to play other media. Don't play tapes anymore, so a CD player with MP3 capabilities and Radio is fine. Hmmm, maye even a small TFT screen built into the front like the PS1 screen another thread was looking at? OK, getting ahead of myself now...

Oh, and the joys of actually building the thing (priceless )

Adeptus Titanicus

A few cases that caught my attention:

Barebones Entertainment PC 1 (with WiFi only b though)
http://www.case-mod.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=21_38&products_id=742

Barebones Entertainment PC 2
http://www.case-mod.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=641

Slim "Desktop" Case
http://www.case-mod.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=21_38&products_id=114

All found here:
http://www.case-mod.com/store/index.php?cPath=21_38&osCsid=3cda244fed33e51ccd9907fdebb5eaee

I quite like the two barebones mentioned above, although No.2 is a bit... bright? But Nice..

EDIT:

Here's a good article on Home Entertainment PCs. Tasty Lian Li case too!

silverside

I am currently building up a box to do as you suggest. It will be my main rig so am going for a slightly higher spec. Here is what I am going for (I took out the sound card and gfx card from my spec as you can use the onboard).

prices are what i paid from various online stores

Samsung spinpoint 160gb SATA 121
Biostar Ideq 200n silver 222
AMD 2500 XP Barton Mobile 101
512MB 3200 DDR RAM (one piece) 110
Pioneer DV107/A07 8X DVDRW White 104
graphics - onboard geforce4mx
Sound - onboard nforce2 with optical out
total cost 660

you could save a bit by getting 256 ram, a duron, a 120gb ide, and a dvd/cdrw instead of what i have - would probably get you under 550.

the biostar ideq 200n fulfils all your requirements (apart from tv out - possibly). it has loads of ports usb firewire optical etc. It is shoebox size (think shuttle) but nicer looking imo - silver stylish. wireless networking isnt included - you would have to buy an external access point - but i believe they are better from a reception point of view in any case.

if you want to capture tv in the future, the nehemiah may be a bit underpowered. One tv capture card i saw specifically stated that nehemiah werent powerful enough.

silverside

ive seen the msi barebones 'in the flesh' - they look and feel horrible - think cheap 1990's mini system with plastic dials. The biostar and shuttle seem much better - stealth everything - the only sound and light you want to notice is that from your speakers and TV, imo.

silverside

some more links

www.ultim8pc.co.uk

www.mini-itx.com


the 2 above are good for getting ideas from, though not the cheapest to buy from. I am buying most things from overclockers.co.uk

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by silverside
ive seen the msi barebones 'in the flesh' - they look and feel horrible - think cheap 1990's mini system with plastic dials.

That's a pity. I thought the black one looked kinda nice. Thanks for the feedback.

That BioStar you have looks tasty

The top two here have a pretty good spec. Don't leave much room for customising though.

po0k

I'd almost consider leaving out the hard drive completely and doing a PXE boot, for noise considerations, but tbh, when you pop in a DVD or a CD that kinda goes out the window, not to mention requiring a server out in the garage from which to boot off of.

Silverside - I am also considering a flexATX box with a duron at the moment, wouldn't need more than a Ghz and PC2100 Ram would be plenty fast.
above all, this box has to be demure and quiet, whilst still having full functionality as described above.
I'm totally set of miniITX, due mainly to there being only one supplier who's line I feel is a bit limited and pricey.
I don't suppose anyone knows of a good value [read:cheap, but not "pos cheap"] VGA D-Sub to SCART/S-Video converter do they?
Could do away with the need to have dedicated TV-Out and save me a few quid.

Adeptus Titanicus

If you were into it, you could make your own converter cable. Here

po0k

Yeah, I've seen mods like that before but a) they involve fiddling with software/OS settings on the machine and b) rarely have linux support.
This box will be running Linux.

Currently looking at the Plextor PX-116A 5.25" DVD-Rom drive, €47 SKU: 120533
Not too sure about it though, trying to dig up reviews.
There's a multiregion firmware for it, but I need a drive that can read DVD±R/RW flawlessly.
I've decided that a burning option isn't needed as it would just ad to the complications. And besides, this box will be on the network so I can SMB/SFTP stuff across the network if needs be.
The killer feature is that it's available in black

As for the hard drive, looking at Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 8Meg drives in 120Gig (€91) or 160Gig (€118) capacities.
The M10000 has a 48-bit adress for block devices and so has no problem with the 160Gig drives.

I've reconsidered the case, as it's simply proving too damn hard to find one in the shape I'm looking for.

I've also started considering a LVDS display built into the machine, though I may just go for a basic VFD over serial/parallel (there's an internal header for a second serial port on the board, would be very neat work to pop one into a spare 5.25" bay ).

At the moment the spec is as follows:
Mobo: M10000 Nehemiah
Case: Venus Mini-ITX Black
Ram: Generic PC2100 256meg stick*
Hdd: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 8meg 120Gig UDMA100
Optical: Plextor PX-116A Region-free, black
Misc: a couple of cables, set of Logitech Z-640s (5.1). a pair of USB joypads and some sort of IR/wireless remote. A teeny tiny Cherry mini-keyboard and a cheap-ass wireless mouse would also be really sweet add-ons. VNC will do till then.

*might go for 512meg, unsure, only one slot, but requirements aint really that high

po0k

also looking at getting a cherry G84-4100 mini keyboard.

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by SyxPak
Yeah, I've seen mods like that before but a) they involve fiddling with software/OS settings on the machine and b) rarely have linux support.
This box will be running Linux.

Ahh, I forgot you wanted Linux on it. Fair enough. Never tried it out myself. Must give it a go one of these days.

The killer feature is that it's available in black

That's VERY important! Believe me , after spraying my LG DVD writer to match my Alu case I know!

looking at Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 8Meg drives in 120Gig (€91) or 160Gig (€118) capacities.

Yep, good drive. Have one in this rig, although sometimes I think I hear a ticking from it... could be a fan... :dunno:

I've also started considering a LVDS display built into the machine, though I may just go for a basic VFD over serial/parallel (there's an internal header for a second serial port on the board, would be very neat work to pop one into a spare 5.25" bay ).

Do you have any links to any gear like this?

Your specs are lookin' tasty!

po0k

The LVDS is out the window, it'd be more for in-car entertainment (7" TFTs on the dash etc.) from what I can tell.

The VFD might come later.
I'm already running at about €500-550, but that is pretty much everything bought and would be a snap to install.
just worried about the gamepads and remote now.
Spose I could jimmy-rig a serialIR port and use LIRC to itnerfae a generic 2nd hand remove to it for controlling media playback, menu selection etc.

quarryman

Originally posted by SyxPak


At the moment the spec is as follows:
Mobo: M10000 Nehemiah
Case: Venus Mini-ITX Black
Ram: Generic PC2100 256meg stick*
Hdd: Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 8meg 120Gig UDMA100
Optical: Plextor PX-116A Region-free, black
Misc: a couple of cables, set of Logitech Z-640s (5.1). a pair of USB joypads and some sort of IR/wireless remote. A teeny tiny Cherry mini-keyboard and a cheap-ass wireless mouse would also be really sweet add-ons. VNC will do till then.

so what's the price on all of this so far? has me interested. what functions are you planning the remote control will actually perform, since you're using linux?

i'd always considered makinga HTPC but would want the control to be used for almost everything and would hope to away with the key/b and mouse altogether. this is assuming i'd only be using it for music and playing dvds and divxs.

edit: you beat me to it with the price.

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by SyxPak

Spose I could jimmy-rig a serialIR port and use LIRC to itnerfae a generic 2nd hand remove to it for controlling media playback, menu selection etc.

You've probably seen this already, but just in case (amd for anyone who hasn't), here's a simple enough DIY IR receiver. I suppose you can buy these pre-made too?

Col_Loki

Im just after getting an Sapphire AIW Remote control that was on special on komplett (€9) . Its sounds like exactly what you need...... it can even act as a mouse. You can basically control the PC from it . The only thing is im not sure about linux support......

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by COL_LOKI
Im just after getting an Sapphire AIW Remote control that was on special on komplett (€9) .

Is that the BOB one found here? Couldn't find it on Komplett.ie...

Col_Loki

Yea thats the one!! It was way more but its an item there not stocking again AFAIK. Picked it up for €9 which is very sweet as its a lovely controller. Also got a 200cd wallet for €9 and the Tv @nywhere MSI for €39.

All in all i cant wait to get time to play with it!!

Adeptus Titanicus

Lucky sod!

EDIT:
Found it here though. A bit more than what you paid..

Also, some interesting bits and bobs here: http://www.htpcnews.com/

BeatFreak

This seems to fit your requirements, only thing is its about 1000mm high but otherwise teeny as you can see it's exactly the same footprint as the tft, it's almost silent ( I sleep with it in the room and I'm a very light sleeper ) and does everything I ask it to do... within reason

CivilServant

That's great but eh.. what is it? More info needed. Sweet little thing thou.

Adeptus Titanicus

Originally posted by Beat Freak
This seems to fit your requirements, only thing is its about 1000mm high but otherwise teeny

A whole metre high? Massive!

Cute little thing allright. As Civ said, could you post the specs? What's inside?

Thanks!

BeatFreak

Heh, sorry yeah, I was rushed into a game of BFV in the middle of that post and had to cut it short. Its a M10000 Nehemiah, Travla c138 case, 512mb ram, 160 gig Samsung HHD and a few small low rpm fans.

It acts as my firewall, filesharer, and the house server. Over all very happy with it, how couldn't you be it's sooo cute

BeatFreak

Oopsey I ment 100mm of course....

Adeptus Titanicus

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Man, it does a lot of work for a little box. Must do some more reading on this type of thing.

Thanks!

BeatFreak

I just realised that this link hasn't been posted yet http://www.linitx.com/ for all your mini-itx need, I got all my gear from them and I have to say I was very pleased and thier range seems significantly larger than the last time I visited the site... Just noticed some nice passively cooled cases.


/me rethinks my current setup

Gerry

Well, currently in the middle of setting up a freevo myself. Because it isn't a complete distribution, you can tweak it to your hearts content. New features are easy to add. It support just about everything you mention in your first post Syxpak, and the interface is nice. Has built in emulator support, these are detected at install time. I'm using a cobbled together pc to run it, p3 900 with 256mb, 4 gig disk, and a dxr3 for playback and tv out. No case obviously. Dxr3 takes a bit of extra work, but the tvout on it is very high quality. Cpu utilisation is very low also, about 10% max, even on divx/xvid where it has to be transcoded to mpeg first ( dxr3 can only decode mpeg1/2 ). Currently working on getting my remote control receiver working on it, shouldn't be too hard. Will report back when this is done.

po0k

Yeah, freevo was the route I was thinking of going down.
Going to put my current P3 800 either out in the garage or silence it and put it in the study to be on 24/7 as a fileserver.
All I need is DSL out in Moycullen and a mother who's willing to pay the bill (as I won't be there to use it).

RE:Remote uses.
Aside from the basic media/DVD play/stop/next/prev/pause etc. commands, I'd be hoping to use it to navigate around the "desktop", but will have a small tiny Cherry G84-4100 compact keyboard (Snaga) and some sort of pos wireless optical mouse as backup.

moridin

Originally posted by SyxPak
Right, I would like, at the end of this thread, to be able to put together a media box for sitting under/ontop of the TV at home for as cheap as possible.

When you say media box above, I don't necessarily think of a pc system straight away... I've said it before on boards and I'll say it again... a modded x-box makes a wonderful media-hub that sits nicely around the tv area.

Going through your list of requirements...

DVD/DIVX/XVID/SVCD player

Yup... xBox media player and the newer xBox media centre support all of these.

MP3/OGG/DVDA Playback (is DVDA playable through software?)

Same again.

Console Emulation station (SNES, Megadrive, Amiga, MAME etc.)

I think all of these have emulators available for the x-box

Possible Capture station in the future

Not sure, I guess it's possible

Be able to playback all Divx/Xvid/DVD/SVCD files/discs perfectly

Yup, and multi-regions too

Case to be the same width as a standard VCR/Set-top box

Yea, you can even get a nice crystal version

High-quality PAL 50Hz and NTSC 60hz TV-Out via S-Video, decent 2D rendering speed, prehaps some OpenGL acceleration for the emulators that can use it, DVD playback assistance etc.

TV-out via scart and analog cables, not s-video afaik.

High-quality 5.1 channel audio via either SPDIF Out or 3 analogue jacks. Headphone+Mic Jacks replicated on the front for late-night Sreet Fighter2 / Sonic / MarioKart sessions

Yup

Joystick/MIDI port would be nice extra for gamepads, though two front-USB ports would make this largelyredundant

4 joystick/joypad ports, which are actually just fronting for USB connectors.

Firewire jack on front and/or rear would be nice, but I don't forsee it being all that useful as the amchine won't be powerful enough to edit DV and the cam can be hooked to the TV via Scart/Composite in most cases anyway

I don't think it has firewire.

10/100Mbit NIC
GigE would be nicer

Integrated 10/100 NIC, and reads windows shared volumes.

1 PCI and/or AGP slot would be nice for future expandability

Pretty compact inside, so no.

Min. of 4 USB2.0 ports (2 front, 2 rear)

Again, the joypad ports are actually just USB device ports, you can mod your USB devices to work with them afaik.

DVDRom 8x drive, quiet, UDMA33 minimum, multiregion, either looks good and matches case colour, or is masked behind a slide-down bezel.
Low-profile DVDRom+CDRW combo drive would be nicer

Won't write CD's or DVD's but will play them.

[*]1x int 3.5" Bay
1~120Gigs of hdd storage, maybe 160, 7200rpm, but quiet as possible, performance isn't much of an issue.

Replace HDD it comes with with a decent size HDD? no problem.

HAVE FULL LINUX SUPPORT

Yes, you can install linux on it.

Some way to control basic functions via IR remote (or bluetooth-USB combo solution)

Buy a wireless controller.

Quiet as possible (ie fanless)

I don't think you'll get a PC that's quieter.

Cheap as possible (ie ~€350-400 inc VAT + Del

€200 for console, €60-€80 for chip, €100 for HDD.

Might be worth considering

po0k

It would still be ugly as sin and only have 64meg ram.
Tbh, the Venus is a nice enough little case, I'd prefer if it were book-shaped, but it seems to be right up my alley.
I've long considered an XBox, but the neccessity to buy a mod chip and then another hard drive while still having a pretty piss-poor base system justs turns me off it.
Still, I might get one for myself later

po0k

A few options have arisen....

I've got a spare machine lying about doing nothing, should be enough (Xeon733).
Slap a soundcard, seagate, NIC and a DVD drive into her....she already has a 3Dfx Voodoo3 with what looks like S-Video out....
Just need to volt mod the fans (there's at least 3 120s blowing at full tild in her).
Maybe spray the case
Only problem is that she's feckin HUGE and really heavy.
I'm planning on building a new box for myself over the summer, so I should have a P3 800 768meg lying about in a month or two, can take the sound card from that (slightly borked SBLive, but good enough for stereo-out).

Hmmm......this has changed things a bit

All I need is to mount USB ports on the front and I'd nearly settle, would save me about €200-300

Gerry

Good to hear you have a suitable box lined up. One problem though, the tv-out quality on the 3dfx is supposed to be atrocious. From the freevo forums, in descending order of quality (roughly):

Matrox -> Dxr3/Hollywood Plus -> Nvidia/Ati -> 3DFX

Of course, you can just run with the 3dfx, and get a better card later if it gives you trouble.

po0k

I thought ATI had better quality?
Was thinking of a 9200 for later on.
Soundcard would be a fairly basic SBLive 5.1 OEM (~33euros off komplett) matched to a set of Logitech Z640s (analogue 5.1, but good sound out of them imho).
Only problem I can see with this machine (the xeon) is that
a) it's fucking massive. IBM Intellistation Zpro model:6866
b) I don't actually know how powerful a P3 Xeon 733 is compared to a ordinary P3 733
c) it only has 2x 128meg sticks of PC600 RDRAM, and only has another 2 slots. Anyone looking to offload some RIMMS?

po0k

Actually, come to think of it, I could put together a very compact little MP3 machine from the amount of spare parts I have at home....LIRC should take care of the control nicely and it could be pretty much headless.....

Anyone know what the bare-ass spec is for playback of 192kbit mp3s/Oggs? I have various pentium chips in the 75Mhz-120Mhz range.

yellum

Is this guide any good ?

Gerry

Ati probably slightly better quality than nvidia ok. The xeon chip will hopefully have some extra cache, 512kb or 1mb ( or even 2mb if yer really lucky ). I'm not sure it speeds up encoding/decoding very much, but it will probably help the response time of the interface. I think you can play mp3's on any pentium, 486's can play 128kbit with an optimized player.

po0k

Afaik it's only a 256K chip.
Not sure about that.
I personally never understood what makes Xeons any better than standard pentiums.

Gerry

I think that p3 xeons can do glueless 4-way ( and possibly 8-way ) smp.

po0k

so effectively it's a P3 733??
Fair enough.
256megs of ram + some sort of better gfx card will still make it better than an XBox for Divx/DVD playback.

Gerry

More progress, got lirc and me tv remote working with freevo... also got a case for the machine and another 4 gig disk, working much better now. Tomorrow will be throwing the dvd drive in. Still need to sort some problems with dxr3 by tweaking the filters for each filetype.