Hi,

I've been meaning to build a nicely kitted out PC dedicated to home entertainment for a while. I've reached the point with my movie collection that I have too many CDs and DVDs lying around that I now want to start storing them on hard disks. Those 160 gig drives are very reasonably priced nowadays so this venture is much more viable now than it was a year ago.

Was wondering if anyone had any experience or suggestions with regards to what video and audio I/O hardware to go for. I casually use my current GeForce card's TV out sometimes, but haven't been overly impressed with it. Does anyone know of better TV out solutions?

I'm guessing SB Live is the way to go when it comes to sound, but I'd love to know of any other options that anyone can recommend.

I thought this board would be perfect for this kind of post All comments appreciated.


Thanks,
Aragon

SB Audigy Platinum or Platinum EX would be my choice for sound. They come with the audigy drive which allows front panel connections of all types for your PC's audio (inluding optical).

As for video, I happen to be partial to ATI, but I'm sure someone else will have an alternative suggestion that's just as good. I have seen a 64MB 8500DV in action, and they are just amazing. When I start upgrading, I'll be looking for the 128MB version.

Edit: On ATI cards, it's important that you don't bother with the LE versions. Those have slower speed GPU's, and aren't worth the money IMO.

I'm told if you can find one cheap they have these cool set-top boxes in France called F@milynet terminals. I have a friend in Sweden who has one and is looking for one for me; They periodically appear there discounted. Of course it all depends what you want to run on it, but it was designed to output to a TV...

As for video, I happen to be partial to ATI, but I'm sure someone else will have an alternative suggestion that's just as good. I have seen a 64MB 8500DV in action, and they are just amazing. When I start upgrading, I'll be looking for the 128MB version.

I use ATI stuff with the XFree86 ATI.2 drivers, which do support TV/S-Video out on many of the devices, and it's great. Most of my friends use Windows and hate the ATI drivers with a passion. I offered to take their cards

I use an Asus A7V133 motherboard with a 1.4GHz athlon, 1GB ram, about 650GB of drive space, and an ATI all-in-wonder 128 for the video capture/playback, under win2k. Also an SBlive for audio. The video card isn't the newest or fastest, but the video quality is excellent both in and out. With a well-done DVD rip in DIVX format, connected to a widescreen TV, it's vastly better than VHS ever was, and generally beats the cable feed I get from teleworst. Not up to the original DVD of course, but pretty damn good all the same.

The biggest problem with the ATI card is that it doesn't support dual-head use, ie the TV out and the monitor out have the same source. This means that the VGA out runs at TV rates when it's outputting SVHS video. Other than that it's fine. Not much good for modern 3D games at high res, but this is after all a video recorder.

Also, the ATI player software that comes with the card seems to be better than more or less everything else I've tried, and vastly better than Mediaplayer. It never seems to crash at all, which is what's wanted in an application like this.

The real problem with the whole setup is the noise. It's all in a YeongYang 0221XB server case, which is an 18-inch cube with many many fans. 7 hard drives, HUGE fan on the processor, chipset fan, PSU fan, and three case fans adds up to a lot of whooshing. I looked into fitting drive silencers, but the amount of heat this thing dissipates precludes most of the normal quieting solutions. I may end up sticking it in the attic and running the video/audio over a 2.4GHz video sender. Or possibly putting my shuttle spacewalker under the TV and streaming everything to that.

pca

Not much good for modern 3D games at high res

What would you recommend for new PC games? I am interested, but I'm no hardcore PC gamer. But if I see a new game that looks good I'll get it as a distraction.

I looked into fitting drive silencers, but the amount of heat this thing dissipates precludes most of the normal quieting solutions.

You might want to look at some NoVibes drive holders.

Hi pca,

What bugs me with my GeForce's TV out is that it only allows me to adjust the image position on the TV out (up, down, etc) with no option to adjust the sizing. The output image doesn't display full screen.. it's annoyingly smaller. Is this not a problem with your ATI?

A dual headed setup would be nice... reading PC fonts on a TV screen has often proved to be guess work for me . Some of Matrox's cards have the feature - can anyone comment on these cards?

I also plan to run Win2k, but after some thought I realised FAT32 filesystems in Win2k can't exceed 32 gig. Instead of using NTFS I think I'll rather use my current BSD box for the storage and just Samba mount to the win2k machine via (hopefully) wireless.

Another advantage of taking this route is that the win2k machine can be assembled with a smaller case, perhaps even a slimline desktop (horizontal) case.


Thanks,
Aragon

Hi DeadFire,

I recommend www.anandtech.com if you're on the market for a purely gaming card. I think the GeForce4 was the best of the lot (excluding MX models) until about a month ago when ATI released their latest range of Radeon cards.


Regards,
Aragon

Video: ATI still rules the roost when it comes to video overlays for DVD playback, and have good TV outs as well. Their driver support is still sucky though . Look into a Radeon. Ok, so it wont have the same level of 3D performance as a modern GeForce card, but 800x600 is the limit for TV use anyway.

Audio: Do you want analog outputs, or will spdif only suffice? If you want analog, then you have to be prepared to spend the necessary $$ on a pro-audio level card - all the consumer cards have shitty analog stages with high noise levels. Look for Delta or MAudio. If you only need spdif, then I'd recommend a cmedia 8738 card over the audigy or SB Live. It can output 44.1KHz natively (All SB cards will resample 44.1KHz to 48KHz), and does an acceptable job with games.

Noise will be your main issue - unless you want to stick your HTPC in another room. Research your CPU and heatsink/fan combo carefully. You don't need the latest CPU for decent DVD/mp3 playback - anything better than a 600MHz P3 will suffice - even with Micro$ofts bloatware OSes.

Check out the HTPC forum at www.avsforum.com. Probably the best resource for this kind of information.

if you're on the market for a purely gaming card

Well, I'm really not. But I just wanted an idea what people use for gaming, as occasionally I get into that. But I'll probably end up sticking with ATI and getting a Radeon. Being able to capture a show or movie to my hard drive is quite appealing.

I'm the co-founder of Primal Computing (a performance and speciality PC startup company) that is planning on constructing a home theater PC with all the trimmings (front-panel LCD display, Audigy sound system, dedicated decoders, etc.) in a rack-mount case that is liquid cooled (hence, noiseless). We're hoping to provide this before year's end, so I'll post here when everything's ready.

In the meantime, we're launching a LAN gaming rig in the very near future based on the Shuttle SS-51 case. In the shameless sense of self-promotion, http://goprimal.com

l8r...

I'm hardly a MS promoter (quite the opposite), but why would you want to use FAT32 over NTFS, anyway?

Edit: In fact, I've got all my music on an OpenBSD machine running Samba, and the performance is just fine. I was just wondering, as NTFS is a much better filesystem.

Don't know about Win2K but I've got a 70GB FAT32 partition on WinME... I really must upgrade the OS on that machine some day.

Mounting filesystems over wireless is okay but it can be rather slow if you're doing stuff with big files.

- Trevor

One reason that made me think for a while before sticking with NFS is that writing to a NTFS partition from Linux/insert-favourite-non-MS-OS is pretty much lethal unless you're careful. Microsoft has released the specification for FAT12/16/32 but they're refusing to release any detailed specs for the newer versions of NTFS.

I've gotten around the problem by using explore2fs to grab files off the Linux partition whilst in XP and using the NTFS driver in read only mode from Linux.

- Trevor

...I've got a 70GB FAT32 partition on WinME

I've tried this also with win2000. Didn't work. For some reason the OS wouln't create a fat32 partition bigger than 30gig. So I went NTFS instead.
The reason I wanted to use fat32 is because the harddrive I was formatting was going to be used as a backup harddisk for all my mp3's. It's just easier if you're able to pop it into any system you like (from win95B and up) and be able to use it. Also I kinda like the idea of being able to reach my data by using a simple bootdisk. (granted, WITH loosing long file names)
Of course, those arguments aren't all that anymore now that practically everybody uses an OS which supports NTFS (2000 or XP)

This article says that Microsoft limited it on purpose to force you to use NTFS Remember that if the other computers don't support 48-bit addressing then it's going to be complicated.

- Trevor

Yeah, I though that was the case. I knew it was possible because I already had a 60gig HD running with only one fat32 partition.
I just couln't be bothered this time to use Fdisk and format to make it work. It would have taken me several hours to complete the process.

So I guess they won. B*stards!

Hi Bitt,

I'd like the data to be easily readable (and writeable) from *nix if need be. I'm not that keen to even use windows for the htpc in the first place, but I think trying to accomplish the same with linux would create difficulties

Thanks tman for that article re win2k and FAT32. I didn't know you could overcome the 32 gig limit by creating the filesystem somewhere else... something I'm going to experiment with closer to the time


Regards,
Aragon

I'm not that keen to even use windows for the htpc in the first place, but I think trying to accomplish the same with linux would create difficulties


Actually, there is a small linux HTPC sub-forum at www.avsforum.com - the consensus is that DVD playback on linux is maturing to the point where it can compete with 'Doze - and we know that mp3/ogg playback is great. Many of the other HTPC-related stuff is actually easier in linux - the ability to use lightweight window managers with minimalistic looks, automation, scripting, creating music/video databases etc. It's only a matter of time. I keep meaning to find time to put linux on my HTPC and start playing around with it...

Yea, I played with some of the new software that's been coming out a few months ago - was impressed. Especially at DivX playback. Definately an option I'll look at.

I need to be able to playback DVD, VCD, SVCD, and DivX movies. TV tuning and recording would be a desirable bonus, but not essential. MP3 not necessary *looks at empeg*


Thanks,
Aragon

I still use my DXR-3 card that came with an old Creative Labs DVD kit. It's got a dolby digital output on it as well as an S-video connection. Both plug straight into the stereo and TV. I get perfect sound, and pretty much perfect (for a non progressive scan DVD player) video output as well. It's ages above ny Geforce TV out and the ATI I had before it (was an old ATI though). It's a simple PCI card. The only drawback is that it needs mpegs, not avi's, which take up a bit more space. But using Gordian Knot, I can rip a movie in about 15 minutes, encoide it in two steps within the next two or three hours, and then watch it at about 95% of the quality of the original DVD disk itself.

However, if I was you, I'd skip all that... buying more PC stuff, farting around with it, and ripping all those damned movies. I'd highly recommend getting one of those 300 or 400 disc CD/DVD changers and just loading it up with everything you have. Throw the cases away or whatever if they bug you sitting out. It would be a few hundred bucks, about the same as a new large drive plus soundcard plus video card. It will be flawless for the job, and only take about 15 minutes total, if that, between unpacking and watching a movie.

Doing it via the PC is fun, but I'd say just get it over with and get a player that can store the discs as well. $399 from Crutchfield: http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/S-Ek5SvNksDmM/ProdView.asp?s=0&c=6&g=54500&I=158DVPX860&o=m&a=0