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Home Entertainment PC Mod
Hughesey writes "With PC's beginning to enter the Home Entertainment scene, OC-Melbourne have come up with the perfect way to integrate a PC into your Home Theater setup. The OC-Melbourne HEPC. Quote From the Article: 'So now we have a PC that is capable of replacing many separate devices (such as a DVD player, and consoles), but lets admit it, that big beige case probably looks far worse than the hardware its replacing. Some people have gotten around this by using specialised cases such as those from Shuttle, or fancy aluminium cases such as those from LianLi. These cases, however, still don't integrate seamlessly into modern home theater systems, as they still maintain their "PC" look. Enter the OC-Melbourne HEPC...'"
Check it out
that big beige case probably looks far worse than the hardware its replacing...
No problems for me, i never close my case anyway...
A couple years back when Intel had the guys in the anti-static suits doing their advertising I remember catching some pictures of some really awesome cases at some Intel show in Japan. There were a couple round ones in colors like bright orange and pink. Overall they were really great, but of course they were never mass produced. I'd love to get my hands on one, it at least pictures.
Am I the only one that remembers these?
sig.
The box can be hidden. It's the poor integration of various bits of software that is the problem with integrating into a home theatre system.
Having to pull out a keyboard to do certain things, poor flexibility in IR remotes for PCs (and their integration to software), having to reboot Windows when it gets grumpy, and so forth, are the reasons why it's painful to get a PC as a regular part of your home theatre. The box color or size is trivial as compared to those issues.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
How do we ditch the fan?
Even the quiet fan on a PS2 is clearly audible in quiet points of a DVD or CD. No audiophile will tolerate this sort of interference
I wouldn't mind having one of these next to my TV.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
There's something about these 'Home Entertainment' systems that is deeply disturbing. They sit in a corner of your living space like a modern shrine, exciting in their adherents the same passivity and receptiveness as the old places of worship.
The worshipper sits before them slackjawed, Pringles are the Body of Christ and Sunny Delight their communion wine. The worshipper becomes the holy consumer, contributing nothing but willing to pay, and pay again for his 'entertainment' to any creature that can make them forget themselves for a while longer.
There is a strange social aspect to these systems, too. The size of your television is important to men. Self-loathing eats away like a cancer at the man who cannot afford a television at least as large as his friends; why, he is not only willing but eager to go into debt to avoid this Terrible Shame. And the man who buys his first DVD player knows he is someone.
Yes, someone who will be paying inflated prices for 'entertainment' on DVD from now on. For just like the Old Religions, there is a coinslot built into the edifice.
It doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to build it into your life day by day.
(Sure, the images load fast--it's the unnecessary shtml that's /.ed...when will they learn?)
This sort of integration is a good thing, though it really needs to be done commercially (not as a case mod hack.) At some point in the future I hope to see ubiqutous computing--people should just be able to do what they want without having to sit in front of "the computer" like a supplicant in a shrine. That sort of approach changes the design of computers out of necessity--a distinct keyboard and monitor just don't make any sense in that environment. And human nature being what it is, people are going to want machines that blend into their homes, not stick out like ugly distractions the way they do now.
How about letting someone know when they are going to make the slashdot site. They could make websites without the encumbersome banner ads, obligatory BIG images on every page. Then just maybe, I, with my T1 could actually see there page. Very unfortunate as I am truly interested in this piece.
...which has actually been done before. I have also seen PC's crammed into old CD Player cases. While a fairly nifty hack it is by no means what a home entertainment PC system should look like.
/. headlines becoming more and more full of hyperbole?
This is what a PC disguised as a cruddy VCR looks like.
Is it just me or are
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
Here's a great resource for those wanting to buy or to build a Home Theater PC, complete with sleek, black cases for the do-it-yourselfers and some ultra-quiet pre-fab models:
http://www.digitalconnection.com/
Friends help you move... Real friends help you move bodies...
at
http://davedina.apestaart.org
we're trying to make a linux-box that seamlessly integrates every bit of software needed for a multimedia box.
Development has been slowing down lately. But we HAVE a working model in our living room.
So give us a bit incentive to keep working on this project: subscribe to our sourceforge mailing-list and give us your comments/ideas.
Thanks!
I keep an old PC hidden behind the couch, wired to my stereo. It's running Andromeda, which manages and serves MP3 collection. I remote control it via my laptop over Wi-Fi. It's pretty neat, actually...
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
My laptop, along with 802.11 setup, makes a decent entertainment system in EVERY room in the house (and the garden, although I do have problems with sunlight [when I don't have problems with rain :-) ] ).
It's handy (obviously), attractive (small black thing with sexy flat panel display), and does most things pretty well (Radeon is OK for 3D games, and there's an inbuilt DVD and CD-RW.)
Plus, it has SVGA out for those occasions where you do want to use the big TV - and when you are doing that, the Clie solves the problem of multiple remote controls. I am lacking a wireless keyboard and mouse, because the range on most of them is only a couple of metres which isn't quite enough in a big Victorian house.
Integration of all the software is of course a nightmare, under both of the installed operating systems.
Zack
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
There are heads of HTPC cases out there, if you look hard enough. All the shuttle cases still look like PCs, just PCs with plastic "chrome" on them. I managed to hunt down a case that came in Gold and more or less matches my Marantz 6200 AV Amp (a beast of a machine). Sure it costs a heap and has to be imported from Korea but check out the pictures...
p c_board&y_number=65 p c_board&y_number=70&nnew=2 p c_board&y_number=79&nnew=2
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.e-capsule.co.kr/shop/read.cgi?board=ht
http://www.moddin.net/review.asp?ReviewID=45
I found it via the "Home Theater Computers" forum at:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/
Take the hint - look to Korea for cool cases.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
I finally broke down and built a TV machine last summer.. I mainly used it to play Divx movies--both ones I ripped from my DVDs myself and ones I downloaded from Morpheus.
Remote Control:
- I bought an IRman and got it working with Winamp's VidAmp..
- At first, I kept no mouse or keyboard on the box. I opted instead to use the remote,
Case:TweakUI-configured auto-login, and VNC (from my laptop already wired-up in the living room.
This eliminated any inherent case rattle.
to try to keep the AthlonXP 1700+ and three Maxtor drives (one 30GB and two 80GB) cool.
What have I learned?
hard-earned movies in the event of failure.
What will I do differently next time?
nasty, tricked-out, noisy system to handle all of the grunt-work in another room.
On-Screen Display menus and things.. One of the bottom lines of my experience is that Windows/FAT32
*kills* drives.
have one DVB card in the
STB to add pause-live-TV functionality. For the setup and recording of other scheduled TV programs and movies, the "big box" in the other room that will have somewhere in the
neighborhood of 4 or 5 DVB cards. This is fine for Digital Cable.. If I had a dish, it would
likely be very different.
I really didn't do all *that* bad.. I had ripped somewhere around 60 of the DVDs myself.
I've really got to say this--AVI-archived DVDs beats the friggin bug juice out of any multi-DVD player.
Here are some more related links..
LinuxDVB
VDR
Currently, computers cannot, and will not, simply fit in with home entertainment setups. There are several reasons why:
1. Inconvenient input devices. Though wireless keyboards and mice (and integrated wireless keyboard/trackball) are all very well, what you're after most of the time is simply a remote control. There was a device made by Animax called the Multimedia Magic, which was perfect for the job - it even allowed you to control the mouse and type addresses into IE - but it doesn't have W2K drivers at the moment, and it relies on an external IR receiver. Perhaps some universal IR input device standard should be made, so that you can have an IR input port on the front of your PC, and use any input device you wish with it. Difficult to set up, I know, but it's an idea.
2. Appearance - whilst there are many nice PC cases around at the moment, getting one small enough that looks nice is difficult. That said, the Dell Optiplex GX150 is a sleek little thing - I can't get on with its laptop-style drives though. Also, it's not configured for home entertainment.
3. Graphics systems - some PCs don't come with TV-out, which is pretty much a necessity, unless you want to buy a very big monitor and shove a standalone TV tuner in.
4. Noise - covered by previous posters, getting a silent PC is nigh on impossible. It would be possible in theory, but you'd need some hefty heatsinks sticking out of the back, which could compromise the appearance.
5. Squeezing it all in the box - for a decent HEPC, you'll be wanting 5.1 sound output, a decent graphics card with S-Video out, a reasonable processor, large hard drive to store your (il)legal MP3s and DivXs, DVD reader, decent processor, etc etc etc... the Shuttle SS51 looks good for this, but again, it's only one system and it's not ideal. It does look quiet though...
6. Not many people want one - whilst I feel I am making a circular argument here, there must be little demand for HEPCs because there aren't any ideal devices.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
My plan is to build an entirely new computer for use in my entertainment center. With a big hard drive and a DVD, it can store all of my music and most of my movies. There are IR receivers that can hook up to the serial port so I can use a remote. The hard part here will be writing the software for everything.
Dyolf Knip
God damn, those ads really happened?!? I thought they were just a side effect of the drugs me and all my dotcom buddies were doing at my apartment.
Man, I miss the 90's!
The old IBM Ispiratis were classic examples of VCR Computers. They were sleek, black, had a dvd, and one Christmas they were selling (w/o a monitor) for $499CAN.
:-)
They don't sell Ispiratis anymore, but their netvistas still have the potential (with a few case mods) to be sleek, black, cool little VCR computers for your home entertainment system.
(Or if you cold find an Ispirati case and install a better board and memory in it, it would work as well.)
~ kjrose
Run Linux, *BSD, or some other traditional server OS on there. Storage should be RAID5 with huge/cheap ATA drives, and just assume they're going to fail, so make sure you monitor the RAID's status and replace drives as necessary. (Maxtor is ok, because they're cheap. Remember: you're already resigned to occasional drive failure. If you buy quality drives because you can't stand the thought of a drive going out, then you've already lost. Look at it merely in terms of yearly equipment cost, where time and dataloss cost should be about zero if you do things right.) Speed isn't a major factor: you're mostly going to be doing sequential reads, requested at less than one megabyte per second. Hard disks are almost overkill, but that's where the price/size winner is today. What you need is capacity and redundancy. ATA combined with RAID5, delivers.
(I wish someone made cheap/huge ATA drives that spun at only 3600 RPM, or even slower. I want big energy-efficient and cool-running drives for my server, and I'm willing to trade transfer speed for it.)
Then multimedia stuff can be done on a separate machine which doesn't have its own storage, and instead, relies on the network. Lighter and more RT-ish OSes such as QNX, BeOS, etc. should theoretically work a lot better, but I'm starting to think Linux is good enough, provided you have a fast CPU (or two ;-). And multimedia is something where openness is very important. You don't want to be using closed codecs or have your playback application(s) not be tweakable, or have to be limited by someone else's imagination of how you're going to be doing things. I think that at the highest levels, the app should be in a high-level scripting language (e.g. Python) so that it's easy to diddle with. Python+PyOgg(and related libraries)+lcdproc+libirman has turned out to be a major winner for my music playback; I hope to use a similar approach for video, someday.
IMHO, this is premature unless you're keeping the DVD's encoding instead of transcoding. I don't think today's super-compressed video codecs (e.g. DiVX) are good enough, yet. At least not for action and special-effects movies; if it has Jet Li or a spaceship in it, I don't want to watch a DiVX. But you're right: movies need to get onto always-accessible media, not removable media. I want to be picking an entry from a menu, not physically juggling/finding shiney disks. Like CDs have become, DVDs should be for distribution, not playback.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There's nothing like blurting out religious metaphors about home theater enthusiasts to score a little karma! You know our geek community is getting bad when there are sociology majors trolling in our forums.
You're a very poetic troll indeed, but a troll is a troll and it's unfortunate you weren't moderated as such.
People just want to replicate the movie experience at home, nothing more, nothing less. It's a money pit, a dubious one at that, but what hobby isn't?
Cheers.
I am looking into the home pc entertainment and i saw this card that came out for sigma designs. http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard.htm
:)
It is a great card with component out 5.1, able to display a full screen movie while browsing internet on your computer with a separate monitor. Includes a remote control as well and supports a dedicated processor for divx movies as well as the decoder for most popular dvds.
Works great and my case is a all black case to match my black entertainment system, and going to install a clear panel with a blue neon light
So, I bought one of these and it's sitting in pieces on top of my current 'puter. But after move-in, it will have a tremendous job ahead of it:
It will serve as one of these HEPC or whatever you call it. It has S-video out, decent sound (my standalone DVD player will take care of good sound requirements), and best of all, it has 2 fans... nothing else. No hard drive, no floppy, no cd-rom. Nothing.
That said, it is quite obvious that it will be functioning as a diskless client, booting off a server. This server will provide everything via NFS (yes, I'm behind a firewall, so don't bother trying to hack). Hopefully, in time I will produce some software that is basically an OSD similar to that of the TV guide with Time Warner's digital cable. That way, there is no need to move a pseudo-mouse with the numbers on the remote. The last step of the project will be to create a CD-archiver that mechanically loads/unloads CDs remotely. mmmm, laziness
Call your senator! I did
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Can't see if this has already been posted, but I found this at Trendetronics. It has that home theatre piece of equipment look that most people desire for HTPCs, but it only accepts MicroATX. (Doh!)
Thats a nice anecdote, but I prefer actual statistics. When I was last shopping for HDD, the Maxtor 7200rmp disk had a better mean time between failures than either the WD or IBM drives.
Since I have not had any trouble with my Maxtor drives, I think that the guy is probably correct in supposing that the deaths were heat related.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"Beginning to enter the Home Entertainment scene"?!?
Some PCs, such as the Commodore Amiga CDTV have been integrated seamlessly into modern home theater systems for over a decade now.
The CDTV was expressly designed to not look like an intimidating computer; rather it was supposed to look like a friendly, familiar stereo or home video component. It didn't help much; CDTV was an expensive failure for Commodore, much like the similar Philips CDi system.
"5. Almost no matter what, a TV PC is going to be too loud to enjoy having in the living room. "
:)
:( Personally the best results I got was a Thermaltake Volcano7 with the 80cm fan replaced with a fan from www.quietpc.com. Of course this does not compare with the virtually-FANLESS operation of my new PentiumIV 2.26Ghz! That heatsink is big enough that with the fan removed and a nice 90cm quiet fan (Zalman fan less than 20db) mounted above it is enough! Only one case intake fan is required to keep the system temp average 30deg, and at most 48deg celcius.
:( )..
;)
There is so much that can be done here, I can see you have put a little effort into reducing noise, (duct-tape case joints, etc) but you made some fatal mistakes.. I have just completed my quiet pc project, and i'll tell you it went from 6 months ago unbearable to silent today! Now I cannot hear the sound of my pc over the static from the dodgy speakers when idle.
Quick tips:
Firstly get rid of that Athlon! Sorry it is a lost hope, I went through so many differnt fans and heatsinks before I realised my Athlon1.33 was a dead end. Thermaltake are very good fans but even the 'quite' ones will vary in noise, ie when it heats up it goes from 'quiet' 22db to jet engine 43db!
Next the harddisk, get rid of them, go for a Seagate Barracuda IV, these things run almost silent and very cool. Only use one HD in the system aswell. With the DVD-ROM, I highly recommend SONY, next to replacing the CPU my best move was junking a Pioneer 16x (noisy bastard!) with a SONY 16x DVD, that thing is the quietest DVD/CD I have heard in many years!
Lastly the powersupply again many quiet alternatives are available, www.quietpc.com is a good place, Just Cooler make a very quiet PSU which I love (sorry no link
It is so possible to make a quite pc, you would quickly learn this like I did when I started working on some Dell and Compaq corporate desktop's Optiplex's, etc.. Those things run silent, like all pc's should be!