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What's the Point of Building a Home Theater PC?
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has written Building a Basic HTPC. They discuss why Building a HTPC only makes sense if it can do something better than any other commercially available solution, as well as why HTPC should integrate act like a component not a computer. They also go into upsampling of DVDs to HDTV."
Building a HTPC only makes sense if it can do something better than any other commercially available solution...
Two words: Half Life.
The point, Taco, is price. Why should I pay $2000 when I can have it for $200 in parts. Plus, there are plenty to people who get more enjoyment out of building something themselves.
If you have the computer experience, why not build a Home Theater PC? It's fun to do (if that sort of thing is fun to you), and it *can* cost less than a commercial model with the same features, especially if you equip a lot of features into the system. Besides, if the PC can also serve as a PVR or other cool functions, then it's a doubly-good deal.
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Building a Basic HTPC
February 03, 2004
Summary: You've read about building no-budget Dual Opteron workstations, and RAID-less storage servers and even air filters at FiringSquad. Today we'll be looking at Building a Basic Home Theater PC. If you're thinking Small Form Factor ATX, you haven't learned anything from our previous articles. This HTPC is designed for two purposes only: high-definition upsampling of DVD video and personal video recording. If you ever wondered how DVD's can look better when brought to HDTV resolutions even though the source is the same, read inside.
IntroductionPage:: ( 1 / 10 )
The HTPC or "Home Theater PC" is a popular but often nebulous concept. Everyone would agree that a fundamental component is that the pc be connected to a television but what the HTPC is used for is something to debate. Some people use a HTPC to play games on the big screen, while others see it as a way to enjoy high-quality DVD, others see it as a music/video/image jukebox, and still others see it as a way to get a low-cost HDTV by using a desktop monitor rather than TV.
The problem with having a HTPC doing multiple tasks is that it becomes more difficult to integrate the software and yet your wallet gets thinner and thinner. Instead of starting off with a full-fledged HTPC, we're going to start with a very introductory approach to the HTPC and then through follow-up articles, add more features.
For this introductory HTPC article, we have two very specific tasks: DVD upsampled to HDTV resolutions, and a personal TV recorder. Since we're "lazy," our HTPC needs to perform like a real piece of home theater equipment as much as possible. The system should integrate itself seamlessly, and shouldn't force the user to think about it as a computer. The HTPC also has to have an advantage over a similar dedicated component ** there's no point in reinventing the wheel unless you can make it faster, smaller, and cheaper.
Why these two tasks?
We've designed this system as an ideal starting point for anyone with a "HDTV ready" television.
Having a PC-based TIVO is ideal for a number of reasons. The most important factor is cost. Both TIVO and ReplayTV charge a subscription fee and ridiculous premiums for larger hard drives. With a PC, you can add and replace IDE hard drives on a whim and also enjoy free TV listings. In addition, it is possible to enjoy higher quality video through a PC-based system through improved video scaling than would otherwise be possible with a standard unit.
Finally, ATI and other third-party software applications have media server applications that will allow their multimedia products to stream video to client systems on your desktop, and NVIDIA is expected to add this capability to its Personal Cinema line in the near future.
The upsampled DVD is the more important feature in our HTPC today. Even if cost is no object, the HTPC approach to DVD can offer better picture quality than any stand-alone unit. DVDs are recorded with 480 lines of resolution, however it turns out that upsampling the video to a 720p or 1080i resolution for HDTV and HDTV-ready televisions will offer the best quality.
It's a real phenomenon
One of the most often confused concepts is the idea that upsampling DVDs to HDTV resolutions will make DVDs look as good as HDTV. It doesn't seem as if this is possible -- the data is not present to begin with. The real answer is that while an upsampled DVD isn't as good as true HDTV, it will look better than a straight 480 progressive lines of resolution. Here's why**
HDTV-ready CRT
Like a CRT PC monitor, an HDTV-ready CRT can sync at multiple resolutions. The catch is that the electron beam is not designed to change in size depending on the resolution (it changes but not by design). Suppose you have a 19" monitor running at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200. While reading this webpage, look at the white background. Get as close to the screen as you can to study the white. Now, change your monito
Porn.
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I do it for the challenges.
Things like:
"Build a HTPC into a VCR, and keep the original funcionality of the VCR"
"Build a HTPC in my receiver, and make sure everything works" (Side note: That one was only sort of successful - had to remove the amp and use an external one, to much EMI)
I do it because I like having choices, I do it because I like to be able to stream show X to TV Y or burn it to DVD.
I do it because I'm a geek and a tinkerer, and it's in my nature.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
1) Play DVDs. More advanced features than standalone players, such as bookmarking (that allows you to skip that pesky 'forced' content), multiregion playback etc.
2) Play games on a big TV with decent 5.1 sound.
3) Play MP3s from a central server through your stereo.
4) Used by people with high end projectors to deinterlace video signals.
5) Confirm your geekiness.
I got the idea into my head a while back that my PC would do everything. I'd have every piece of electronic and entertainment equipment in one box. I would be able to watch DVDs, TV, play CDs and MP3s, fake Tivo, Fax machine, answering machine all from my PC. All controlled via remote and piped to my TV.
It would be incredible.
Then I realized that I already had all of that stuff and it all worked perfectly. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
D
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Why build your own PC?
Why build your own car?
Why build your own house?
Why do any of the above when you can just purchase the finished product outright which might be better than what you could build? Because we can.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Posters here seem to have demonstrated pretty clearly that even that's not close to cost-effective, unless you have almost all parts already and don't care about much of Tivo's functionality.
You do this stuff for fun, not to save money.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
All the other functions of a HTPC aside, the PowerMac G3 I'm using does one thing I can't replicate with a one-box solution: it records HDTV over FireWire. A DVHS deck would cost me way more than the $100 + $75 FireWire/USB card I paid for the G3. Even then, the DVHS deck uses tape opposed to random access hard drive.
It's not exactly a TiVo, but it time-shifts HDTV just fine. Since there is so little HD content anyway, I have no need for an HD TiVo anyway.
this is my sig
I'm sure given more time I could think of a few more, but that covers the majors. It wasn't any cheaper than a standalone unit for some of these functions, and it isn't quite as easy to deal with, but it was fun to build and tweak on. Plus it has the added benefit of being upgradeable.
One thing that this article doesn't seem to touch on is noise. When I first built mine the noise was intolerable. I ended up having to replace the PS, CPU fan and case fans with quiet models, and lining the case with Dynamat to cut the noise down to where it didn't bother me.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
This will only to appeal to a small segment of the population, but I speak from experience with anime (this could apply to any foreign works, though). There are times DVDs are released without subtitles in a language you can read or dialogue in a language you can understand. There are people out there (fans) who will go through the trouble of created timed subtitle scripts. So, if you have a PC and a region-compatible or region-free DVD player, you can enjoy this new video (which you payed for) with working subtitles!
This becomes more interesting when you learn that a lot of entertainment goes through a localization process when they are being brought over to foreign markets. One prime example is how virtually every Hong Kong movie must have gangster rap in it... >_< So, sometimes people want to watch the original version.
That's one advantage I can think of for HTPC.
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
It was little more then 50 years ago that people could easily build their own cars.
There's also a very strong community of personal aircraft builders. (I know one, it impresses the hell out of me that he's building this thing and intends to fly it.)
I enjoy building my own PCs because I can pick and choose to my taste.
Where do people think innovation comes from? Big corporations paying for new designs? The majority comes from people PLAYING with ideas and creating new things!
Last year I found myself with an old AMD 800mhz PC, missing just the monitor (total value probably $100). I also have lots of divx movies. Converting the movies to MPEG, splitting them, and burning them to CDs so that I could watch them in my DVD player was a pain. Watching them on a computer was even worse. So, I hooked up my PC to the TV, put the PC on my wireless network, and now I have a "HTPC". Total cost to me -- $40 for a wireless network card.
Now I'm in the process of installing MythTV on that PC (total cost $200 for a encoder/decoder card), and I'll have an awesome PVR without having to pay any monthly fees.
There's no reason that your wallet needs to get thinner and thinner. If you are interested in a PVR (ie. Tivo), then you actually save piles of money by not having to pay the monthly Tivo fee.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
So i've been running an htpc for a bit, and i love it.
In fact, even my wife loves it.. which is a feat
I used it for mp3 playback, streaming mp3's, dvd upsampling and playback and television watching. I use a 100 hour directtivo for pvr stuff.
It's an athlon 1800+, 512 megs of ram, radeon 9000, guillemot soundcard with hacked drivers running optical out to the receiver
It's in an antec sonata, and is using zalman cooling stuff for everything.. the vidcard has no fan.. That machine is quieter than the tivo.
It's all running vga straight back to an infocus x1 projector showing on a 92" vutec silverstar screen
I control it all with a gyration ultra mouse/kbd combo
Software wise, i use zoomplayer with the cinemaster video codecs going through ffdshow for dvd playback and dscaler for tv watching. It's all running xp professional because i'm not particluarly linux savvy.
That setup has replaced my television completely. dscaler does a wonderful job of managing the tv signal, and zoomplayer is just phenomenal.
When we did LOTR:TT extended cut, i ripped both discs to the hard drive, added in trailers on the front end, psa's from the 60's, and spliced in a 10 minute dancing candy intermission in the middle.
Just hit play, and it goes magically.
The only complaint i have is the lack of useful hdtv cards. You can receive ota signals, with minimal pvr support, but that's it. Nobody supports signal over cable lines, or anything fancy.
I assume i'll need some sort of gray market hardware in the future to do that..
Oh yeah.. the total cost of all of this was less than a decent lcd hdtv set.. and you get a whole lot more..
If you can't convince you're wife/significant other with the raw windows/linux interface, look at some of the frontends. I used myhtpc (myhtpc.net) for a bit, and it was first rate..
I abandoned it since my wife is savvy enough to figure it out herself..
For more info, go to avsforum.com and read their htpc forums.. or linux htpc forums as you desire..
Highly recommended.
Finally, I settled on buying a computer to do all of this. I had quite a few of the parts I needed; the only thing I was missing was an OTA tuner card, the DVD software, and the sound card. I already had decided on Windows XP (which I will explain below), so I was set.
The DVD software I went with was called TheaterTek and the benefits it had over a standard player are numerous:
- Ability to resize any move to any resolution including 1080i
- Ability to expand the movie to get rid of the black bars around the edge (i.e. anamorphic widescreen)
- Ability to save these changes for each individual movie
- Using Windows to further enhance the output using various filters (i.e. fdshow filters)
The output from this setup was incredible. Watching DVDs at 1080i with the image cleaned up is so much better than 480p. I highly recommend it.The other problem was getting the actual HD content from the main networks. Locally in Omaha, NE ABC, CBS, and NBC have been broadcasting in HD for a while, so an OTA tuner was the way to go. A stand alone box was going for $600 locally, and I had found a card that does it for $200, the MyHD OTA Tuner Card. The picture quality is incredible and the performance was great on my 850 Duron. It gave me everything the set top box would have done and also Tivo like functionality out of the box, something that still isn't available for HD yet.
As I mentioned before, I went with Windows XP as everything mentioned above is only available for that platform. Also, due to the mature video drivers on Win32 vs. Linux for the ATI card I went with, I was able to tweak more aspects of the output to the HD monitor through a program called Powerstrip. I tried DVD playback on Linux (mplayer), but it had no where near the functionality of the Theatertek software. Also, I did look into the pcHDTV card available, but it isn't nearly has mature as it should be for a commercial HD tuner card (the only user fiendly app I have found, MythTV, has very limited integration with the pcHDTV card. That is changing quickly, though).
All in all, I highly recommend making a HTPC if you have the time. Plus, you don't need that Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition crap to make it work, just plain old XP will do you fine.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
The number one reason for me to build my own Linux-based PVR is privacy.
Did you know that Tivo tracks not only what shows you watch, but exaclty what parts of shows you replay or skip over?
Now, I know it's *supposed* to be anonymous. And I do believe them when they say they aren't selling the data *at the moment*.
I also know they have systems in place to anonymize the data.
But can you (or Tivo) guarentee that they will *never* be bought out be someone less ethical?
Can you guarentee that Tivo won't get a new CEO who decides selling your viewing habits to direct mail advertisers is more lucrative? (Imagine if Darl McBride went to Tivo instead of SCO).
That's my biggest reason for me to put together my own PVR.
Of course, there's also flexibility. I get to decide exactly what capabilities I want, not the marketing department of a profit-motivated company.