My HTPC Building Experience

So I built an HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer).  Here’s a description of why and the issues I encountered.  I’ll be adding pictures at some point soon.

UPDATE: Pictures added to the bottom of the post.

The problem

The problem I was solving was simple: Eastlink’s digital cable/DVR & HDTV package is crap, and expensive.  I was tired of paying $50+/month for channels I rarely watched, HDTV content that my or may not have sound & a DVR that consistently either refused to record items that were scheduled, would erase them, would report it was full when it was not and had HORRIBLE picture quality on standard broadcasts (non-HDTV).

I priced an HTPC (in parts) from NCIX.com and found some wicked deals.  At first, the system was going to cost me about $800 before taxes and shipping, but I pulled that down to less than $600 with some careful and exhaustive searches of their site.  I got a great deal on the Motherboard, CPU & Ram by buying them in a package.  I also saved money on almost every other component by buying items that were on sale, not name brand or not “latest & greatest”, though the motherboard is very new.

I also scavenged parts from my currant PC that I used in this one.  After I was done I ended up spending another $250 on a new video card and hard drive, though these were not required, the on-board video was passable, just not good enough in my opinion (more about that later).  I had an extra hard drive already, but it was SATA1, not SATA2, and it was in use in my current PC.  I stole my current PC’s Hauppage WinPVR-150.

Just as a note, I kept regular cable and just got rid of the DVR, Digital & HD packages, which alone saved us over $50 on our monthly bill.  We still wanted NBC, CBS, ABC, and yes, even Fox (they have “So you think you can Dance”).

The System

The system & parts were as follows:

Again, the Hard Drive & Video card were extra, and were not necessary, I could have done without them.  I had an extra 320GB SATA1 drive I could have used.  The motherboard’s onboard video also would have done fine, except it’s gaming performance would have sucked, and it tended to stutter the video if too much was happening in the background.  Some of this may have been that the drivers for the onboard GeForce 7050 were rather new, and apparently buggy.  Time may have made it more acceptable.

The TV Tuner I took out of my HP media center PC I bought last year to replace my old dead computer.  I never used the card in the media PC so it would have been a waste not to scavenge it.  I also used the nice HP Media Center Remote and receiver that came with my main PC.  I was using the remote with my Xbox 360 anyway as a DVD player remote.

Building the system

The system came in two big boxes, one containing the case, the other containing all the parts.

The first step was to put the motherboard in the case.  The instructions that came with the case kind-of sucked.  I think there were about 3 pages of “useful” instruction total, telling you how to connect the various cables that connected to the front USB/card reader slots, power button, & temperature sensors.

It took about 5 minutes to seat the board properly & another 10+ minutes to get the connectors in place (still not sure I connected them all).

Next, the CPU.  This was VERY easy.  The stock fan came with cooling compound applied (I know, I know… but it works).  The stock cooler fit right in place with no issues.  The case has a special connector that intercepts the CPU’s Cooler’s power connector, this allows you to set the case up to adjust the speed of the CPU’s fan according to how hot the CPU is.  But I think the BIOS does this anyway…

Here’s where I made my first mistake.  The Hard drive enclosure site directly behind the Power supply.  I put the PSU in next, and ended up having to take it back out to seat the Hard Drive.  Rookie mistake.

From there on, the memory, Tuner, Video was pretty easy.

The next issue came with the DVD writer.  When I seated it in and attempted to press the drive open button (after powering the system up) it got stuck against the cases’ drive door.  I had to take it apart and “raise” the rear of the drive by a couple millimeters with a couple of washers.  This worked well.  However, this seems like something many people may run into.  The holes put in place to attach the DVD drive were too high on the enclosure.

After everything was in the case & hooked up, I closed the case, plugged in the power, the keyboard’s RF receiver, network cable and hooked up the Cable & FM inputs.

Last of all I connected my TV to the video card with an HDMI cable using a DVI-HDMI converter.

Setting up Vista & Media Center

I booted up the machine to make sure all the components were being found.  Uh oh.  No SATA Hard drive (the DVD was being found).  I shut everything down & re-opened the case to check that the SATA cable was securely connected.  It was.  I tried again.  It saw it. Huh…

I put in the Vista Install DVD & let the installer run.

Don’t try installing vista using a HDMI connection.  At least it was an issue for me.  Only 1200×720 was shown, while the full 1360×768 was being rendered, so I was not seeing the bottom or far right of the screen (hiding the next buttons in the Vista install & any error messages)

I reconnected the TV using the VGA input instead of the HDMI (Using a DVI-VGA Converter).

Setup now looked great!  I put in my Vista Key & clicked next to setup the Hard drive.   I chose the HD & clicked format.  Done.  Then next.

Error: “Windows cannot find the Hard drive” (or something to that effect).

Crap.  So I ran a Google search for the Motherboard & Hard drive.  I remembered reading about other experiencing similar issues.  I figured a bios update would fix it.  Well, it will, but its a beta bios.  No thanks.  They others got around the issue by disabling to Quick Power on Test when the bios boots.  (Does a fast little test to see things are there instead of a more extensive test of the ram, drives, etc).

I disabled the Quick test, and it worked.. It was very slow to finish booting, but it worked, and I knew a new bios was eventually on the way. 

UPDATE: This appears to be an error specific between this motherboard and model of hard drive.  I’ve been in contact with both Western Digital (horrible support) and Biostar (better, got a personal contact who tried to help).  Biostar blames Western Digital, saying the other models of WD drives they have work fine.  Western Digital seems to have nothing but form replies and 2 week waits between those replies.  There are a number of posts on the net from individuals who are facing the same issue.  The only solutions seem to be either disabling the Quick POST or installing a floppy drive (which causes the post to delay for a second while it looks for a disk in the drive, just long enough to detect the SATA drives properly)

So I went through the Vista install again, and it immediately found the drive. 

For those who have not done a Vista install before, it is usually a dream, pretty much once you enter your key & choose an install point, you wait about 10-15 minutes or so and it’s done.  This time was no different after about 15 minutes, I was sitting on the Vista desktop, ready to setup media center.

Media center was a breeze to setup as well, it asks a few simple questions about where you live and presents you with a list of cable/satellite providers, you choose the right one and it sets up your tuners, program guide, etc.  If your movies/music are in weird places other than the public video/music folder or your personal folders, you can tell it to look wherever you want.

After that, the video was a little choppy, but I realized I had not yet installed the video drivers (it was using the default crappy ones that come with Vista), a quick download and install (and reboot of course) and the video was crystal clear.

FYI: I tried two different cards for video a EVGA GeForce 8600GT and a Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT.  There were issues with both.  The GeForce won out big time however, see the issues section below.  I may upgrade to the GeForce 8600GTS so I get HDCP however.

The Experience

Now that the System is up and running, I thought I’d give a brief description of my experience with it to date (about a week).

TV works wonderful.  The Windows Vista Media Center interface is absolutely wonderful.  Only a few complaints (see below).  The GeForce’s video post-processing does a great job of scaling, removing artifacts, color correction and edge enhancement.  It by far beats out Eastlink’s Motorola DCT 6412 DVR.  The picture is very clear, with little to no compression artifacts, where the DVR had many.  Adding new show to record is much simpler, especially with the wireless keyboard, you simple type what you want and it shows up, it does series recording and has options to start early, end late, etc.

I installed Civilization 4 & the Warlords expansion, they run great.  I also have OneCare running as my virus scanner/Anti spyware, etc.  It works very well in my opinion, some people may not think it is powerful enough, but it also has a much smaller visible footprint & starts up much faster than McAfee/Symantec.

I love being able to browse my email & read the news/Google Reader from my couch.  Rhonda seems to have gotten along with the HTPC well also (She would be the first to tell you she is technology illiterate… especially with computers) and has caught on how to start it up, etc.  Though she is still used to the old remote & has accidentally pressed stop instead of FF/RW/Pause.  There was no stop on the old DVR, and it kills the record buffer on live TV if you press stop, that sucks.

Anyway, here’s a list of problems I’ve found with Vista Media Center:

• Clicking the stop button when watching live TV causes the record buffer to empty.  Would be nice to be able to disable the stop button while viewing live TV.
• The Video Section tiles frames captured from the video streams as a list.  It only displays the title if it cannot read the stream or if you are selecting that video.  a “list” view would be much nicer.
• Likewise for the Audio library, though the artist titles can be viewed here.
• Vista does not recognize DivX, and other non Microsoft video formats until you install a codec pack (like KLite).
• Browsing the Video section is slow to respond if you have a number of DivX/xvid movies.  This may be an issue with the codec I have installed however.

Hopefully many/all of these will be fixed in the upcoming (some day) Service Pack. Until then, it still is vastly superior to the Eastlink DVR.  I have no regrets.

Issues

I ran into a number of issues with my setup.  Some minor, some not.  I’ll detail them below…

eVga GeForce 8600GT (Super-clocked version)

The GeForce ran great, though there is one major issue.  It doesn’t seem to properly support HDMI.  Basically, if you attempt to turn off your monitor while the PC is running.  The monitor will turn right back on.  This only happens over an HDMI connection, and also happened using the motherboard’s onboard HDMI slot (GeForce 7050).  At first I was led to believe it was the TV’s fault.  Granted, my ViewSonic is not a name brand, so I was quick to put the blame there (though in the back of my mind I doubted it).  I chatted with a ViewSonic rep, and they were of little use, telling me that they only supported PC connections through the PC port.  This is garbage, after all it worked with my DVR, and it is really a low-end PC running a custom OS.  She said a tech would get a hold of me 24-48 hours later.  It’s been well past 72 hours, and no word.

Performance other than that is ideal.  The only major concern for me, as the HDMI issue will likely be resolved in the coming weeks with a driver update, is the lack of HDCP.  I thought that this card supported it, as the GTS version does, but should have paid attention to the box.  I may yet still return it and get the GTS version.  This really only an issue if/when content providers incorporate the flag that tells vista to require a secure connection between the card & TV.  From what I understand, cable providers/distributors are reluctant to do this as too many people have HDTVs that do not support HDCP.  This people would be a little upset if they could not view the content correctly.

Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT

The only major hiccup I ran into was when I tried to install Sapphire’s new Radeon HD 2600XT.  The system seemed to accept the card, and the issue I had with NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600GT’s HDMI compatibility did not exist, I was able to turn the TV off without it turning back on, however, the performance of the card was severely lacking, the list of issues was enough for me to return the card:

• The video compression was very poor.  ATI has a feature called “AVIVO” which is supposed to take much of the effort of compressing/decompressing video away from the processor as well as improve the quality of low-def/compressed streams.  Compared to the NVIDIA card, it was poor.  But add to that color dropping, over-compression, faces that turned half-pink, artifacts clearly visible all over the screen.  Also when you paused, interlacing was clearly visible.  I should have taken screen shots, but I didn’t.
• If the system put the monitor to sleep (power-saving feature), it seemed to lose the connection to the TV.  (ie: you had to turn them both off & back on for them to reconnect.) This did not happen with a VGA connection, only over HDMI.
• If the system went to sleep (I think S3 state) then it would lock. Needing to be rebooted.  This happened over HDMI or VGA.
• The system would randomly lock if left running for a long period of time (more then a few hours, with S3/S4 turned off (no sleep or hibernate).
• The gaming performance was crappy to say the least, the GDDR4 ram seemed to do little, the 2 year old Civ 4 stuttered frequently.
• Playback in Media center would stutter & skip after fast-forwarding/rewinding/pausing/skipping.
• It was LOUD compared to the GeForce.  Not good for an HTPC.

This is all pretty bad for a supposedly high-end card that is mean for HTPC usage.  Maybe people using MCE 2005 aren’t having these problems, but I was under the impression that HDMI doesn’t work with 2005, only with Vista.  And I already paid for Vista Home Premium, I’m not paying for MCE 2005.

Next…

I would like to do a couple things to make this system really be all it can be. 

A Second Tuner

For starters, I definitely want to add a second tuner card.  We are used to being able to record 2 things at once and watch TV at the same time.  Right now with the singular card, we can watch an old program while recording another, but in the fall when more shows we watch come on, we will be forced to choose who gets to watch their show. 

I’m looking at AverMedia’s AverTVHD.  It comes in a PCIe x1 variety, which would leave me a PCI slot free, and since the video card is right next to that free slot, I’d also like to keep the space open to let the breath more freely. 

The card also supports decoding ATSC/QAM (over the air HDTV), so should that technology ever come here to Nova Scotia, we could take advantage of it.  As well, it is a “dual tuner” card, with the ability to tune both ATSC and NTSC at the same time. (theoretically, I could record two standard def channels & 1 HD channel while watching another show!)

Potential Cost: about $90.00 or so

Quieter Cooling

The only loudness comes from the CPU’s cooling fan & the two rear case fans.  I’d like to replace the CPU fan for starters, and then try and find to more quite small case fans.

Potential Cost: $70+ (really depends on the parts.. you can find CPU coolers for as little as $30 that are supposed to be pretty quiet… but they can also range to well over $100)

RAID Hard Drives

This is mainly so that if a drive fails, I don’t have to spend a week putting everything back on the computer. It would also provided a bit of a performance increase depending on the drive array I used.

Potential Cost: $120+ per HD (would need (extra) 1 drive for RAID 1, 2 drives for RAID 3 or 5, 3 for RAID 6.. in all likely hood, RAID 1 would do just fine..)

Faster Processor

This can wait for a while, the Dual Core 3600+ is more than enough right now, but when the price on the 6000+ drops to a reasonable $120-$150 or so, it would be silly not to increase the life of the machine.

Potential Cost: $120-$150 (depending on how long I wait & what processor I buy)

In Closing

Well, that was a lot of writing.  Again, I hope to have pictures up soon.  I’ll also post a review at some point of my overall experience with Windows Vista & Media Center.

If anyone has comments, or questions, feel free to leave them here or email me thecatwhisperer _at_ gmail _dot_ com.

Pictures

 
The case, a little hard to see since its black against a black background.

 
Inside the case, as you can see, the power supply fan is a monster, and it is super quiet.  The two rear fans don’t seem to push any real air, so I removed them.  The case is about 2-3 degrees warmer without them.  I’ll keep an eye on that and may have to re-add them or add in new, better fans.

 
Vista’s MCE start screen.  Really easy to navigate, you press up or down on the remote (or keyboard) to switch between sections (like TV + Movies, Sports, Weather, Music, etc…) and left & right to switch between parts of the section (in TV you have recorded tv, live, guide, etc…)

 
The TV Guide in Vista’s MCE.  Much better than Eastlink’s.  Prettier too.  If you are currently watching something it appears in eh background or in the lower left corner.  Wish that was configurable.  That “Categories” tab to the left allows you to immediately filter out shows based on Movies, Sports, News, etc… It only shows the items that match, putting blank space in the rest of the guide.  Neat, but we rarely use it.  That little red dot in “A Model Life” means it is scheduled to be recorded, it it’s 3 red dots it means a series record is set.

 
The menu screen if you are watching something.. again you can navigate by clicking up down, left right.

A Standard definition TV program via analog cable.  The camera didn’t do it much justice, it’s actually more clear than that (and better color.. I prolly could have gotten better results had I found the right setting on the camera.. it tried to warn me).  IF that were an Eastlink DVR picture the text would be slightly pixilated and ugly.

There. I added pictures

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