Building HTPC - progress so far :)

meelick

Hi all,
I just thought I'd throw together a quick post on my progress so far. I have it hooked up to a 46" Samsung LCD, and the results are excellent. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/. And it's free. Works great with an MCE remote controll.

Software

I'm using Windows XP with Media Portal. MP can be a bit laggy, but once you get used to it, it's a great piece of software. I particularly like the fact that I can set up ftp folders to my Dell Poweredge server in the garage, and pull media from there.

I previously spent an entire weekend trying to get Debian working. The problems started with the 250Gig sata drive and Debian sarge, and I kept getting problem after problem. I eventually gave up when mplayer needed to be upgraded to play matroska files, and the latest source failed to compile. One quick HD format and XP installation later, everything plugged and played easily. Windows has it's bashers, but when it comes to playing media, it has it's advantages.
(sorry, I dont mean to start a flame war, it's just an observation, and I know I should have tried with a distro with better plug-n-play support, but there you have it).

Hardware

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 mobo,
Athlon XP3000+
nVidia 6600GT 128Mb
512MB DDR
250Gb Samsung spinpoint 8mb cache
Microsoft MCE remote control

Cooling/Noise Reduction

I stuck a Zalman cooler http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=306460 on the gfx card

Passive northbridge heatsink, http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=303858, because the bloody stock fan whined too much.

The PSU is only 400W, but seems ok for the moment. https://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=311011 However, the 120mm fan was too noisy, so that had a FanMate added.

In all, there are 3 Fan Mate fan controllers added. 1 for the GPU cooler, 1 for the Stock CPU cooler, and 1 for the 120mm fan in the PSU.

Also, the hard drive was resonating with the case, so once rubber feet were added (to the HD), and it placed on the bottom of the case, hard drive became silent.

So, with the GPU fan at minimum, it runs at 30deg. With the CPU fan at minimum, CPU runs ar under 40deg. PSU at minimum, still gently blowing out cool air after a couple of hours playing 720p versions of "Heroes"

And it's now quieter than my Sky Plus box.

Audio

The mobo has a coaxial digital audio output, so I get full 5.1 to my Sony amp. It took a while playing with the audio settings and XP, and to find the "Use S/PDIF" checkbox in Media Portal. Full 5.1 coming out now from any media that has a 5.1 soundtrack. I didnt bother with any analogue audio outputs.

Video

The 6600GT seems very comfortable with 720P media. 1.1Gig "Heroes" and "Lost" episodes played flawlessly. No slowdown or dropped frames as I had seen with GeexBox (which is brutal for high-def or widescreen playback, having only vesa modes available).

Whats Next

I dont have TV piped into it yet, so decent TV tuner card.
Oh, and a nice Zalman HD135 HTPC case...


Cheers,
Dave.

8T8

Welcome to the club :cool:

Media Portal uses whatever directshow filters are in the system so you can use ffdshow* as your decoder** for pretty much everything that matters and get lots of tweaking options into the bargain.

* Download decoder build.

** Best free decoder.