The PFM HT PC (home theatre)

[Rico]

Hey

I thought I’d start a thread on HTPC’s – that is, Home Theatre PC’s. Although not particularly flat earth, I thought I’d take the PFM approach – building an entertaining unit at minimal cost/great value for money, out of the PC’s that many of you have lying around. Avoids devoting hifi funding so your family/flatties can enjoy movies. This is spawned by the continuing dominance of DVD, my aging DVD player, and the availability of DIVX encoded movies. While I always prefer to watch a DVD over divx, and am happy to own or rent DVD’s, sampling via DIVX can be an easy option to help with your purchase/rent decision. Many file-sharing programs exist to assist… and any of you network gamers will have experienced the torrent of software whizzing around you. So rather than beating them, I thought I’d join with my old box-a-bolts, and build up a dedicated HT box, to see if the claims of the PC-nutters were correct – that they can look better than a DVD player.

In my case, this old box-a-bolts is an old Evesham PII-400 [Intel BX-chipset motherboard. 256MB RAM, and about a 13 gig harddrive and DVD Drive. SB Live! Value soundcard]. OS will be win2K to start with, and linux and XP alternatives will be considered in “Version 2.0”

Issues to cover:

1. THE BOX:
· Heat. Will this be a problem?
· Noise – will this be intrusive within a lounge area? (naturally related to heat above)

2. PICTURE
· Video card demands – how important is a good video card?
· Picture connections – Svideo out (video card) to SCART cabling.
· adequate on a decent 29”(or bigger) TV?
· Widescreen – how to cope with a 16x9 widescreen TV?

3. SOUND QUALITY –
· what is it that governs sound quality output – soundcard types
· Integrated moboard sound – does it work?
· Output to your PFM environment (in this case, line out to either a stereo amp, or an HT Receiver (cover both ProLogic and 5.1 varieties)

4. PLAYBACK
· DIVX Playback – how to overcome codec differences with the mainstream movie players (eg Windows Media Player, Winamp)
· DVD Playback – overcoming region coding.
· DVD drive hardware

5. EASE OF USE
· Cordless Keyboards
· Desktops on your TV.
· Remote controls?
· Display on both monitor and TV simultaneously

6. DECOR
· Nice rack! Blending it in with your environment (vinyl dyes, painting etc)
· Monitor or save space with straight TV out only?
· Micro-ATX forma factor cases

SO my point of embarkation is the PII 400. I have much to do, patching it up, and sorting out the soundcard etc etc. It’s currently 128MB – I’ll throw in that spare 128MB Dimm I have around. I have a spare video card or three, so will be able to trial Rage 8MB AGP, TNT 16MB (with Blorb active cooling), and a GeForce4 MX440 (64MB) with TV out. Don’t expect fast progress, it’s very much of a “spare time” project. Any input from those with experience would be appreciated.

Perhaps this will generate an FAQ.

Over to you guys! I’ll keep ya’ll posted here.

Rico

 

[Mike Sae]

I can address some of the noise issues.
I've mentioned them a few times,
www.silentpcreview.com is a great resource for the noise end of things. The webmaster used to be a Naim/Linn dealer, so I think he's a trustworthy source for what might sound "good".
He's made a number of posts on his forum on how to get decent sound out of a HTPC, nevermind getting the damn thing quiet.

There's tons of good cases out there and you should be able to find one that suits. 2 that spring to mind are the Shuttle and MSI which come in dainty sizes yet have excellent motherboards, the caveat being they're a bit harder to silence due to their proprietary cooling methods.

As long as you're not building an ubergamingnerdbox, you've got lots of flexibility. A few things I've picked up:
-Seagate HDD are consistently the quietest and don't emit high pitched whine.
-Have the least amount of fans possible. Select videocards and mobos with passive cooling.
-Zalman and Seasonic make whisper quiet PSUs.
-With a PII400, you're not likely to have fan noise issues, but new CPUs have crazy loud fans; there's a lot on the aftermarket that can fix this.
-Lining the case with Dynamat et al. isn't effective.

 

[RichardH]

I run an HCPC for my projector. The ATI Radeon cards are the ones of choice - you don't need the latest and greatest - a 7000 will be fine - probably less than £30 - they are also available with SVideo out (though I use the VGA straight to the projector for rather splendid picture quality).

I'd say your processor is a bit slow for the job, to be honest - I think you ought to be looking at 800Mhz or so.

Soundcard - I went for the on board decoding route - i.e. the HCPC decodes rather than outputs to an external processor. I use an MAudio Delta 410, which is a semi pro card with 8 analogue channel outputs, for which some nice HCPC drivers have been developed. You get to set speaker distances, you can redirect the centre speaker channel to left and right if (like me) you have no centre, etc.
They now do a card called the Revolution 7.1 - same drivers can be used, and around £70 I believe. Of course you hen need to amplify the signal.
I run my front channels into the main hifi (32.5/250), and have built a 4 channel power amp for surround channels (I've gone for "normal" surrounds plus the rears - partially because the "cinema room" is large and the seating is spread out. Pain about running the fronts into the main hifi is that you have to twiddle the volume to the right place, and the outputs on the MAudio are at a level that expect a "straight" power amp, rather than line level, so I have to turn the volume up high - a pain if someone forgets and slaps some music on afterwards.

Noise. I use a Zalman Flower cooler on the processor (Athlon 1600 in my case). I messed with quiet case fans, but found that a bog standard 12v fan run at 5v is just as good, and shifts enough air. I've added a switch on the front of the box so I can switch the case fans back to 12v if things get a bit hot in there (say if the PC was being used for gaming).

Ease of use I would forget about cordless keyboards - unless you paint the required keys with glow in the dark paint, it's very hard to see to control things - unless your whole family are perfect touch typists, of course! I bought one, and gave up. I use a USB keyboard with built in hub, and plug a USB mouse into that. I have a 3m USB extension cable, so I can sit down and twiddle things comfortably. For actual control, I use a remote plus a device called an IRMan - this is an IR receiver that plugs into a serial port, and then some (evil looking) software called Girder, which learns the signals coming in, so you can assign macros to the signals. I have my remote controlling volume, stop, play, ff, etc, plus the cursor up and down, plus shutdown etc. Reasonably OK to use. Watch out for the ATI All In Wonder graphics cards, actually - some come with a remote control and receiver, so you can kill several birds with one stone here.


There are some nice cases around these days - no need to spray, etc - I'm afraid my PC is an Antec beige tower - bought because the PSU is good quality and quiet, plus the case is a delight to work on. Nice to have front USB ports if you can, though your existing motherboard may not have the connections to support this.

I also built my own projector screen and projector mount (using old plumbing parts). Take a look at my website for more - afraid the HCPC build section is as yet not written up, but it might keep you amused for a few nanoseconds.

Richard

 

[Rico]

Thanks for the starters, guys.

No, I have another machine used for "uber-gaming", although it is getting a little long in the tooth no (ABit KT7A/768MB SDRAM@133MHZ/GF4 Ti4200 128MB (Leadtek A180)/Videologic Sonic Fury soundcard(aka Turtle Beach monte Carlo)/7200RPM seagate 40GB/Athlon 1.2GHz @ 1.33GHz. 0900-0200 the other day, 60-player BF1942 LAN party... but I digress.

This HTPC project is designed from the outset to be a "bitser" - I realise the PII-400 might be a little low on HP, am wondering if I can get a decent perf boost with a better card etc, and I'll be in deep shit from the other half if I spend any real money on it. Once I have a low-cost low HP benchmark we should be able to easily see what works and what don't.

True PFM stylee - free home cinema. Yep, if I was building from scratch I would use a shuttle or that sexy thing that Mike posted up (reviewed recently in Atmoic magazine www.atomicmpc.com
Richard, I'd love to read your page on HCPC - get to it! I hadn't though of decoding on-board the PC and feeding descrete to the receiver - nice idea!

best

Rico

 

[RegH]

I have been fancying this one from Stands Unique for a while now:-

Have a look at Strata for details.

It is built from good thick aluminium sheet and is the same width as most kit. Not sure about the price though.

Reg

 

[Richard Nichola]

..are selling (at least in the UK) a SLIX box with an Audigy 2 sound card bundled for £230 inc VAT. You need to provide keyboard, mouse, processor, memory, hard disk and DVD drive.

This isn't bad value when you consider that the Audigy is £80 on its own.

Unfortunately the box only has the one PCI slot, so you can't add a DTT tuner, unless you get a USB version.

Micro Direct is a cheap source for the shuttle size cases and motherboads.