Media PC

dabhal

anyone had any experience with media PCs?
Are they any good?
Are they worth the money?
Anyone any Ideas on building your own?

Kali

Theres usually a good lot of discussion on Media PCs and HTPCs at:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=46

the HW Tweaking forum here might have a few ideas too.

dabhal

cheers , great link

40coats

I built a box and run Media Center 2005 and love it. Only thing it doesn't do that I'd like is PVR stuff as NTL don't have a guide setup for it. I can still record stuff by date and time obviously and pause live tv, but I like the idea of telling it to scan for particular shows and record them all.

spartacus93

Hi 40Coats,

Would you mind telling me what capture card you use with your NTL setup. I hope to build a similar system soon. And also how does it connect to your computer.

Thanks

Graham

Media Centre 2005 absolutely rocks, ours has been going about 2 weeks now.

I use a hauppage PVR350 but I understand there are a few cheaper MCE compatible cards available from hauppage.

Like 40Coats said there's no official EPG (electronic program guide) for Ireland yet, and microsoft won't even hint at a date. Forunately there is a way to grab data in XML format from the radio times website in the UK which you can then import into MCE, it's a bit convoluted to setup, but once you have it working it should all be fairly automatic. It's been working fine here for the last week.

You can buy MCE from ebay (or I could put you in touch with the ebay seller who supplied mine) just make sure you also buy the MCE remote control.

I can't reccommend MCE highly enough, everyone who visits us is completely blown away by it.

Just shout if you need any help.

40coats

@spartacus93 - I use a Hauppage PVR250, picture quality is excellent. I only have NTL analogue so it just connects to a standard bnc on the card.

@Graham - Do you have a link to instructions for the epg hack. I think I saw something about it on the thegreenbutton.com forums(very good resource by the way) but last time I checked it was still being worked on. Have you tried the My Movies add on which has simliar functionality to DVD Profiler and when you select Watch from the menu it mounts the movie to a Daemon drive and plays. Very cool if you rip your movies to your hard drive. You can get it here:
http://www.binnerup.dk/mce/

dabhal

Gramham and 40 coats
any chance you could list your specs and give it a bit of an idea of what you can and cant do with it at the moment?

Dabhal

Graham

Intel Celeron 2.8
1024MB Ram
Shuttle SFF Case
Hapuuape WinTV PVR350
37GB 10,000 RPM SATA HDD
300GB 7,200 RPM SATA HDD
DVD +/-R DVD Writer
802.11G USB Wireless Network Adapter
Windows Media Centre 2005
Windows Media Centre 2005 Remote Control
30" Thomson LCD Display
Yamaha Surround Sound

Can:
Watch/Pause/Rewind Live TV
Record TV (including scheduled recordings and record all episodes of this series)
Play DVD's
Play CD's
Play MP3's
Burn DVD's (video based DVD's created from recorded TV may require re-encoding to play on a normal DVD player)
Burn CD's
Create/Watch Photo Albums
Play streaming media (audio/video)
Play internet radio
Schedule recordings from any PC in the house via a web interface (still deciding whether to set this up for access from any internet connection).

Can't:
Make coffee (although there's a few very neat power adapters that may eventually let me turn on the kettle via the MCE remote control,hmmmmm).
Record from TV into plain MPEG format (requires an extra step to move from the microsoft specific encoding).

40Coats,
I've used the hack from the greenbutton to get our EPG working:

Webguide 2 How-To

Let's do SmartGuide on MCE2005

Thanks for the heads-up on the other hacks, although I must admit I don't have many DVD's to rip, yet.

pwd

Ordered one of these on Sunday:

http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/tv_tuner/overview.asp?pronameid=93&lineid=6&act=1

and arranged to sell my telly when it's here.

40coats

Grabbed these from Komplett
118126 Upgrade Kit AMD 64 3200+, Motherboard, 512mb, CPU Fan
123408 Thermaltake Venus Silent Boost CPU-Cooler Socket 754/940
302975 Sapphire Radeon 9600PRO Advantage 128MB AGP, ATI9600PRO, DVI-I, TV-Out, Full-Ret
301673 Lite On DVD recorder SOHW-832-01C IDE Retail Dual Layer
124273 Western Digital Caviar 160GB S-ATA 8MB cache 7200RPM - 2 of these
Case from pchealth.ie - Overture/DT Quiet Media case 380W ATX Black
Hauppage PVR250 and media center remote from somwhere I can't remember.
All in just over €1000 at the time.

Thanks Graham, I'll give it a go at the weekend.

Graham

Lovely looking card pwd, I wonder if it's MCE compatible?

Looks like your putting together a lovely system there 40Coats is the PVR250 a 2nd tuner card for your MCE setup? I'm trying to work out how to cram another one into my system.

You just made me realise I forgot about my graphics card in my earlier post, it too is a Sapphire Radeon, don't think its a 9600 like yours though. Could be a 9200, I remember the first card I tried didn't work at all but thinking back now that could be because I forgot to install the mpeg software decoders :-S

I'm thinking of getting a new case for the whole lot too, I've seen some lovely ones here:

http://www.quietpc.com/uk/htpc.php#ht400[url][/url]

dabhal

Graham wrote:

Can't:
Make coffee (although there's a few very neat power adapters that may eventually let me turn on the kettle via the MCE remote control,hmmmmm).

Damn

pwd

http://oem.microsoft.com/downloads/MCEReadinessCenter/MCE_Approved_Components_for_MOSB.xls

MCE hardware compatibility list. Not compatible with MCE alright

40coats

Graham wrote:

is the PVR250 a 2nd tuner card for your MCE setup? I'm trying to work out how to cram another one into my system.

Just the one tuner at the moment but I'm getting another 250 for €30 from a guy I work with. I've no shortage of expansion slots so it's not a problem. He's upgrading his to a PVR500 which is a dual tuner. (we get deals in work on this range of tuners btw)

spartacus93

Does anybody know what the situation is if you have a Digital TV service (NTL Digital)? To the same tuners work or do any?

Thanks, Great info here!

Graham

Just found a link to this, why oh why is all the really great stuff only available in Japan.

Super Mega Sony Media Centre

40Coats
I'd be interested to hear how your friend gets on with the PVR500, I've heard there's a few issues using it with MCE.

My only options for a 2nd tuner at the moment are a 2 tuner card or a graphics card with a tuner onboard (would have to be a very slim one).

Spartacus
I'll answer the NTL digital question as soon as NTL do something to boost our signal. Installer arrived a week ago to install our digital box only to find our signal strength was too low. No panic though, they're fixing it last week >:-|

Same tuners should work, you just take the output from the STB (set top box) straight into your tuner card. MCE remotes include 2 magic infra red eyes for changing the channel on the STB. There's also a couple of digital TV cards that may negate the need for an STB although I've no idea if this would work with m/any of the European digital stations.

Graham

Quick screen shots if anyones interested:

Grabbed from TV tonight









Last pic is an MP3 album bought from eircoms music store, album artwork appears automagically from the net, the rest comes from the MP3 tags

40coats

Hi Graham,
I tried to set this up last night but not having much look. I've grabbed the xml data from the radio times web site and all looks well in smartguide (all channels are in correct order in 3.10 below) but once it goes into media center it gets screwd up, channel numbers, order and frequencies. Can you take a look at the steps below and tell me if you did anything different? Also what code do you use for the TuningSpaceCountryCode in the smartguide.exe.config - I was getting nowhere using 353, so now use 44.

1. Install required prerequisites:

· Install IIS

1. Start “Control Panel” -> “Add Remove Programs” –> “Add Remove Windows Componetns”.

2. Select “Internet Informations Services (IIS)”, and click “Details”.

3. Select “Common Files”, “Internet Informations Services Snap-In” and “World Wide Web Services”.

· Install .NET Framework 1.1 (I guess this is installed by default in MCE 2005 OS). Otherwise use Windows Update for this.

2. Install and configure WebGuide

· Download WebGuide2 from http://www.showtell.com/mce_webguide/2/.

· Install WebGuide using default settings.

· Optional: Update xmltv. You can get xmltv separately from SourceForge (see www.xmltv.org). Replace the filse in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\XML_TV with the downloaded files.

· Configure the WebGuide using the “MCE WebGuide 2 Configuration” program.

1. Selected your country and click configure to select which channels you want guide data for.

2. Click “Download Data”.

3. Click “Create Schedule”.

4. Go to the Channels tab, and arrange the order of you channels. Click “Save Channels”. Notice: If you run step 1 or 2 again these changes will be lost.

· Replace the WebGuide2.dll, with the one Reinhard has posted here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=27&messageid=72332#bm72654
Delete or remove the old one (don’t rename it).

· Change security so recoding works

1. Control Panel -> Administration Tools -> Component Service.

2. Expand Component Services -> Computes.

3. Right click My Computers and select Properties.

4. Under Com Security, under "Lanuns and Activations Permissions" click "Edit defaults".

5. Click Add.

6. In the Select Users or Groups write "ASPNET" (not "ASP.NET") and click "Check Names" and click "OK".

7. Give the new "ASP.NET Machine Account (mycomputer\ASPNET)" the following to permissions: "Local Launch" and "Local Activation" and click "OK" until you are back.

3. Install and configure SmartGuide:

1. Download SmartGuide. Look for the latest version in this thread.

2. Copy the contents from the binaries dir into the Windows\eHome directory + create shortcut to smartguide.exe.
(Alternatively, you can copy all *.dll files from the eHome directory to the SmartGuide directory).

3. Double click the C:\WINDOWS\eHome\ MCE2005_EPG_Enable.reg.

4. Run CasPol.exe -s off . It shold be in C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322.

5. Kill all eh* processes using Task Manager.

6. Delete everything under C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\eHome\ (incl. prefs subfolders). Warning: This will delete anything configured in MCE including Secheduled Recordings, Channels Setup etc.

7. Edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Tuning Spaces\#\MinChannel to 1 using regedit.exe (where # is number of the tv setup you use (1 is for "Local Analog Cable", 2 is for "Local Analog Antenna"... I changed all of them to be sure). This will make channel 1 available as preset channel.

8. Delete every key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune using regedit.exe. This will clear all existing channels, and only use the one which will be configured using SmartGuide (we will not use MCE 2005's new scan feature).

9. Edit c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe.config file using notepad:

· WebGuide2DSN. Make sure this points to you WebGuide2 Access database. Default should be OK.

· TuningSpaceCountryCode. Set this to you own country code (the same as international phone number prefix. E.g. 49 for germany, 45 for Denmark etc). In MCE 2005 it is not necessary to change the Regional Setting to German :-)


· TuningSpaceSignal change this if you need to.

· It should not be necessary to change anything else.

10. Start “c:\windows\ehome\smartguide.exe /i”.

· First click Channel Editor and click "Load" to load all the channels configuration from WebGuide. Fill in all the frequencies for each of your channels (my cable company has a list of frequencies on Text TV on the Info/Mosaic channel). The format for e.g. 725,25 is 725250000.
I use the exact same number for "number", "virtual channel" and "preset". That is... I use the defaults that I configured when setting up WebGuide.
Click Save (this will create a c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg file and also add an extra table "channel_extra" to the WebGuide's Guide.mdb. This table contains your frequencies, so you might want to back this file up when reinstalling WebGuide). Close the channel Editor.

· Click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"

· Click "2. LoadGuide from XML"... this should produce a "Congratulations. It worked...". This will create a brand new MCE EPG Storage file that only contains your custom channels and no extra channels which you don't use.

· Close SmartGuide.

11. Double click the c:\windows\ehome\output\frequencies.reg to import you own customized frequencies settings. I have to do this every time I used SmartGuide (se later for how to configure this in a Bach job)

12. Start MCE and confirm that you can watch TV and have Guide data and all the right channels in the right order (same order as in the WebGuide).

13. From now on it is only necessary to start SmartGuide and click "1. WebGuide2MCE!"and then "2. LoadGuide from XML", or you could setup the batch job in the next step.

4. Setup batch job for importing

· Add the following two lines to the (the /f imports frequencies.reg everytime) “C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\WebGuide2\MCE_Wizard\ download_guide.bat”:
cd C:\WINDOWS\ehome\
C:\WINDOWS\ehome\smartguide.exe /f

Graham

I had exactly the same problem the first time I tried the above process. After many hours of tweaking, I deleted everything and did the entire process again.

The second time everything worked OK but the channels were ina whacky order with incorrect EPG's assigned. This is easy enough to fix in MCE though, you can change channel orders and assign EPG's to channels easily enough.

I'll check when I get home this evening for the TuningSpaceCountryCode, I tried both but can't remember which one worked in the end.

I'll post again this evening when I've checked it all out.

40coats

Thanks Graham, much appreciated.

Graham

40Coats

Are you seeing any EPG guide date in MCE?

40coats

I'm not sure but I think I've figured it out. I'm going to start from scratch again, pretty sure after looking through the registry that the 353 or 44 choice is what was causing me the problems. I'll let you know how I get on.

Graham

Excellent news. Hope you manage to get it working, it makes a huge difference.

40coats

All sorted and it's bloody great, kudos for the heads up. I was using 44 in the smartguide config file but my local was telling media center to look for a 353 key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune

Only problem I have now is I don't have a frequency for Channel4. If you're using analog NTL can you have a quick look and let me know what the frequency is. The one on the NTL site doesn't work. I'm in no hurry though, reception is usualy unwatchable on that channel lately anyway.

garethmc

40coats.... You got the guide working? Excellent, will have to try this now. So your happy enough with the MC EPG integration.

40coats

It's great assuming it all works. I haven't done a scheduled record yet but it looks like it all works, certainly the program info and alternate show times are working (the Simpsons are on 59 times in the next 10 days accross all channels, frightening!). I'll talk to you tomorrow Gareth.

Graham

I've had no problems so far, scheduled record hasn't missed a program yet.

Just about coming up to 1st EPG update though, have a funny feeling it'll reset all the channel order and EPG->Channel matching data.

secret_squirrel

Just a quick/possibly silly question?

Are your Hauppauge tv tuners the normal retail/oem versions or the MCE editions? Or can you just use the Hauppauge MCE drivers with the normal versions?

And is there much advantage in getting the 250/350 over the bottom of the range 150?

Graham

I've just got the normal 350 version and from what I can tell the only advantage is I get extra software and a Hauppauge remote control that I wont be using.

Nietzschean

Graham/40Coats , hazard a guess at the cost for ur base shuttle pc systems(HW + SW)? just the general ball park before i think about looking at specifics...


On another note has anyone used one of these media centre desktop extenders? the linksys one looks v sweet, wouldn't mind just throwing that windows media centre stuff on one of me pc's n then having a small set-top box on the tv to use it...........

Graham

I reckon I spent about €1500 altogether, but thats with fairly whizzy hard disks n memory.

40coats

Mine was €1200 ish. Extenders are pretty cool, hopefully the xbox one will be released here, much cheaper alternative assuming you already have an xbox of course.

Graham

We've just upgraded our NTL to NTL digital and so ends the Showguide hack to get the EPG working.

I've tried everything I can think of but I just cant get the Showguide -> MCE export to work at all. So close......

If anyone's had any success getting this working any hints would be appreciated.

ro2

I built a MCE PC about a month ago and it cost just over €1k. You can get all the bits from overclockers.co.uk. They sell the MCE remote too, it comes with a USB receiver and works as soon as you install MCE 2005.

I used an Antec Aria Micro case and like it says on the site the case is quiet, however as soon as you stick in a 3Ghz processor it gets noisy. The case needs more vents in it so you'll need to stick a few holes in it or else it sounds like a hoover after about 30 minutes.

At the moment I have it plugged into a TV using s-video. I tried it first with an ATI 9600 and the TV had wavy lines going through the picture. I swapped it for an Nvidia Geforce 4 and used the mce drivers and it's working perfectly.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxpmce_66.93.html

One other thing to note if you buy a wireless mouse or keyboard then go for a bluetooth version, the range on the standard wireless keyboards is only a couple of feet.

Here's the motherboard I used - fits perfectly inside that case:

Asus P4P800-VM "i865G" Micro ATX (Socket 478) Motherboard (MB-034-AS)

secret_squirrel

Just finished putting my MCE 2005 pc together thanks mainly to the posts in this thread. Cheers guys. Even have the Guide working with chorus analogue.

Now all I gotta do is find somewhere with the MCE remote in stock. Any suggestions??? My ATI remote wonder doesnt work to badly tho.

Also if anyone has any htpc cases to recommend for a full ATX mobo feel free.

Graham

I got mine from a UK company advertising on eBay. If you have any problems finding one there, PM me and I'll send you their email address.

Red Alert

There's a system called MythTV which runs on linux and supports ALL the Hauppage cards. Might be a tad cheaper, and the screens are fully configurable.

secret_squirrel

Its grand ta the remotes are back on ebay now - they must have been on Xmas break.

I checked out most of the other PVR/Media Center proggies out there before settling on MCE 2005 - it has the best combination of features and a damn fine UI. Great to see microsoft getting things right for a change. Only ways to improve it for me would be to be a little less restrictive on the hardware and to expand the Guide to cover ireland.

Graham

Yeah, the software itself is fantastic, just wish I could get the EPG working again.

secret_squirrel

thats strange I followed the instructions in this thread and it worked perfectly first time. My region code was 353 if it helps.

Incidentally if anyone is reading this is going to build a MCE pc I would recommend using an Nvidia GFX card, since you can tweak them to support Widescreen TV resolutions. (1024x576)

statto

I have been experimenting with a Wintv-PVR-500 card and SageTv. However, the quality of the picture on my TV (28 inch widescreen) is very poor. I am using an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card and P4 3 GHz cpu. I had planned on building a media PC using MCE 2005 however the poor quality, even on DVD play back has made me think twice. I am now thinking about a DVD recorder with a hard disk. Have you guys any tips (hardware or software) to improve the quality before I abandon my Media pc project.

Ciaran500

Where you will really benfit from a Media PC is with a TV with either a DVI or VGA input. Using them into a normal TV via S-video will give you dissapointing result (from what I've seen).

secret_squirrel

I tend to disagree...the picture quality with DVD playback from my elcheapo GeForce 5200 through the S-Video socket to the SVHS Scart socket on my TV is almost as good as the RGB over Scart from my pricey DVD player. The only badness I noticed was a slight judder on fast moving scenes. But thats 99% likely to be due to the fact that Im using a software DVD player - and its not likely to ever match a £450 DVD player with RGB output.

Granted my tv picture is crappen****e but thats my crappy analog cable.

A couple of suggestions - get a good metal ended svideo-scart cable. Mines a chunky IXOS one.
What DVD player software are you using?? NVidia or WinDVD 6 are considered the best for quality - Im using Nvidia. If you are using the ATI dvd software - its generally considered to offer crap picture quality.
Both NV_DVD and WinDVD 6 are available as Trialware.

Graham

I have MCE 2005 connected to a 30" LCD via VGA connector and the quality is excellent. When I use the s-video output of my TV card however, it's like watching TV through a goldfish bowl.

DVI is an order of magnitude better again, just can't seem to get it to play with the TV/MCE combo

40coats

I use VGA to a projector with powerstrip giving me 1:1 pixel matching and the picture is excellent. Personally I wouldn't have gone down the PC root if my display was a crt tv.

statto

Thanks for the advice secret_squirrel - I am using PowerDVD 5 as it came with the ATI card. I'll get a decent S-Video to scart cable and try again. Would a different GFX card be better? I want the quality of the stand-alone DVD player with the functionality the Hauppauge twin tuner card and SageTV. I want my cake and eat it to.... LOL. Is it possible to get an evaluation copy of MCE 2005 to test it out?

secret_squirrel

statto wrote:

I want my cake and eat it to.... LOL. Is it possible to get an evaluation copy of MCE 2005 to test it out?

Evaluation copies of microsoft software - you must be joking.

If you are thinking of getting or have the Hauppauge PVR500 twin tuner card its been reported to have serious driver issues with Win MCE.

Definately try the trial versions of WinDVD6 and NV_DVD.

You have a pretty decent video card there - Im not sure I would get rid of it for the sake of the tv screen display. Unless you can swap it for a similarly specced Nvidia card. (Geforce 5900???)

A lot of people seem to have sucess improving their displays using powerstrip - but I havent tried it.

TBH you can get €40 DVD players with progressive scan now - you've never gonna get a pc display that comes close to that. (Assumes you have a tv with prog scan of course)

Do like me - start saving for that LCD/Plasma screen with VGA, DVI and HD inputs

Cavman

i'm a newbie about mce pc's i just know the basic,
what parts do you need to build one for ntl digital?
is it hard to set up for ntl digital when built?

all help would be great
cheers guys

Graham

Hi Cavman,

building the mce pc itself wasn't difficult at all. You need a PC with a compatible video card, TV Tuner, MCE remote control and of course Windows Media Centre 2005.

Getting an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for NTL Digital is prooving a little trickier. Microsoft don't yet provide an EPG for Ireland, so you're left to try and cobble your own together. I managed to get this working for NTL analog but am struggling a little with NTL Digital.

I haven't worked on the EPG for a couple of weeks now but I do plan to have another go later this week, I'll let you know if I manage to get it working.

statto

secret_squirrel wrote:

Do like me - start saving for that LCD/Plasma screen with VGA, DVI and HD inputs

Thanks for the advice - I think I will put my media PC on hold till I get an LCD screen (if and when the ever come down in price!). The last few days I have been reading the AVS forum and boy is it complicated most of the the stuff when over my head. Time to go back to college and do a course in AV engerrning!!. All I have to do now is find a DVD recorder with a hard disk that plays Divx and has a working EPG !!!!!

Cheers

By the whay, Grahmam, what display are you using?