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Building a Quiet Media Room PC

Posted by Zonk on from the you-have-nothing-else-to-do-today-right dept.

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech just come out with a new Media Center PC build-it project. This one takes advantage of Windows Media Center Edition 2005 Rollup 2 and uses a fanless graphics card, four tuners--two standard TV and two HDTV, the Creative Labs DTS-610, which lets you bypass some DRM, and a good-looking SilverStone LaScala chassis that fits in your media rack. The new system is way more versatile, and maybe more importantly, a lot quieter than any previous media PC DIY boxes. One drawback: We're still waiting for the cable and satellite companies to get it together on CableCard, so the system has to do without."

12 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. I predict... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    2 insightful posts before this becomes windows vs linux

  2. GAH! by badxmaru · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why are people posting these lowbrow, "how to make a PC" posts? Aren't there geek forums on hardocp / anandtech / ars where people can parade their own PC creations? I mean what in the world is so educational and mindsharing about this posting?
    It might as well just be
    "build your own Dell system for $200 off in Dell Small Business"

    What's the big idea?
    Isn't there google for these things?
    these posts only further slashdot into the realm of those mainstream wannabe geeks who think that making yet another PC puts them on the alpha stack.
    gives slashdot a bad name! MODERATE THESE OUT IN THE FUTURE PLS.

    1. Re:GAH! by it_ain't_my_fault · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree there are too much articles about building a PC on /. I think most of us already know how to build one but it's interesting to see the what hardware somebody used for his PVR, Media Center or whatever... But please this is /. I know from the statistics most of you come from windows but it's a place with a reputation of linux ethusiasts, so come on show original setups for mythTV that doesn't involve a PVR-150/250/350... instead and I'm sure a lot of us would complain less.

  3. Re:Nice, but... by DrEldarion · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see why the cable company would want me to get a cable card when they could just continue charging me to use their digital box.

    Well, as more and more people want that, they can use it as a bonus against their competitors. "Yeah, WE allow you to use our service with your computer, but the sattelite companies don't!". They still make their money on the service.

    Either that, or they can rent out the CableCards for the same price.

  4. Re:Nice, but... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Either that, or they can rent out the CableCards for the same price."

    The cable company is in the business of selling content, not renting boxes. They rent boxes for the sole purpose of selling content (there is no other way to receive all of the digital channels - no standard existed, coupled with the fact that the sources - both movies and television networks - wanted some assurances of DRM). My cable company rents a Motorola 6812 - a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.

  5. Why such a fancy system? by julesh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My old AMD 950MHz system is more than happy handling any media you care to throw at it. Its Hauppauge WinTV PVR capture card handles MPG conversion on the hardware, so there's really no need for a fast CPU for that. Being single core, cooling is less of an issue, and it's got a fanless graphics card that was much cheaper than $115. More like $20 (an ATI Rage 3D card with 8Mb). And what's the point of 2Gigs of RAM in a media system?

    The description of "quiet" made me think "fanless", not "just as many fans as my existing system".

  6. Fanless hardware not worth it by n0dalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you have the space, it's way better to just buy $25 worth of shielded extension cables for your monitor, TV, audio, keyboard and mouse; put the computer around the corner or in the next room. I got my VGA cable for $15 (shielded), and two PS/2 cables for $5 each, then made my audio cables for a couple of dollars from good shielded wire and plugs. All 5 metres long. You can probably get this stuff cheaper if you look around.

    The only disadvantage is that you have to walk to the next room to put in a CD, but this is something I don't need to do very often. Compared to the time it takes to burn a CD or even just read a CD's TOC, walking around the corner is well worth the lasting peace and quiet. Why spend hundreds of dollars extra on hardware just to cut down noise?

    1. Re:Fanless hardware not worth it by cli_rules! · · Score: 2, Insightful
      External CD/DVD drive via USB2?

      That plus a custom IR remote might just about do it.

  7. Computer-Based PVR to the mass market by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Computer-Based Media Centers will be common when they have 3 things:

    1) Ease of Purchase. If I can order one online or in a store with everything I need, instead of in 20-30 different parts to install or solder or whatever, Joe Public will jump.
    2) Ease of Use. Can't be much harder to use a TiVo.
    3) Cost. It has to be cheap enough that the average person in a Western country could get it without having to agonize over the decision. So I'd say $800 is the upper limit.

    That means that it'll have to be relatively limited in what it can do. Maybe it can go light on software or something.

  8. Where's the Verification? by HockeyPuck · · Score: 2, Insightful
    So they go through all the hassel of putting one together, but then when they justify components they use purely subjective reasoning and then later don't even bother to back up their claims

    For example:
    While the CPU is certainly important, a lot of the work in a home theater PC is offloaded to other components to a certain degree. If you're using hardware-based TV cards (whether digital or analog) and an audio card with hardware DSP, then the CPU becomes less of an issue. Still, the processor can get pretty busy just managing system chores when you're trying to capture multiple video streams in DVR mode. So we decided we wanted a dual-core processor.

    Ok, so there's justification for not using a high end processor (offloading most processing to other components), but then they go ahead and drop in a a $330 dual core CPU. I think the only justification to pick this CPU is for the 'geek factor'.

    Lastly, after putting in a design like this why don't they go through and demonstrate that they components they chose were the right ones. How much memory does this thing consume while actually running common operations. What is the CPU usage for these same operations?

    Anybody can create a media PC, but a responsible reviewer should provide the justification for their steps and the proof that what they did was the best (or not the best) decision.

    1. Re:Where's the Verification? by stienman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ok, so there's justification for not using a high end processor (offloading most processing to other components), but then they go ahead and drop in a a $330 dual core CPU. I think the only justification to pick this CPU is for the 'geek factor'.

      In this case this is very appropiate. They had two HDTV tuners and two analog tuners. The HDTV tuners consume nearly 20Mbps each, while the analogs go up to 12Mbps. The CPU is doing a ton of work when recording 64Mbps of data to the hard drive - in fact, they indicated that the system really wasn't reacting well to other user actions while it was recording from all four tuners at once. It is likely that they couldn't have recorded from two and watched another at once.

      The dual core was a good choice, despite the lack of qualification. There are other system bottlenecks, and I suspect that they would have a better system if they went with a single core and spent the additional money on a striped raid and huge cache, extremely low latency hard drives to improve HD throughput. In a system like this you want to be able to write 64Mbps to the HD (not sequentially) and read 20Mbps simultaneously.

      -Adam

  9. Re:Nice, but... by woolio · · Score: 2, Insightful
    a dual-HDTV "tuner", very capable box for like $18 a month - I doubt that comes close to covering the depreciation on the box month over month.


    Why do you say that? $18/month = $216/year == $648 over three years... Just how much does just the "tuner" cost??? Keep in mind that if you cancel it, they can still rent it out to someone else...

    All this on top of the ~$50-$70/month for digital cable...

    Well, looks like they cost less than $300:
    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =5832099588

    The Cable company is in the business of making money And considering that it has a monopoly on wired cable TV, it shouldn't be that difficult.

    My apartment complex requires all kinds of crap for 18"dishes... (Including something like $500K insurance). and they don't allow them to be mounted. They pretty much made it impossible for residents to have one. (Of about 1000 residents, nobody has one!)

    Do you really think that "AOL/Time Warner" (the local cable company) didn't have ANYTHING to do with this?!?!??!?!?!?!?