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The Year of the HTPC
An anonymous reader writes "While home theater PC hardware was once limited to a few specialized companies, those days are long gone and home theater computing is now big business. At this year's CES every hardware company, no matter their size or area of interest, brought a some cool new products too and no one forgot about the burgeoning home theater market. This fervor for home theater PCs was evident all over the show, but it mainly manifested itself in computer cases. This article goes over an extensive list of the products seen there."
Any discussion of home theater PCs needs to start with the open source solution Myth TV It works with open standards - unlike the Media PC from Microsoft that keeps you from doing just about anything with your recorded shows.
Microsoft sure missed the boat on this one - a chipped xbox with Xbox Media Center blows away any HTPC setup I've ever seen. Plays every format, runs happily on your network, simple to use, great interface....
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
Most of those are pretty big. I think I'll stick with my Mac Mini as the controller for my home theater system. It does the job quite well and is quite small even with an external 250 GB HD.
Bradley Holt
Build your own. MediaPortal is great and coming along fast. OpenSource MCE.
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
In spite of the ever impending arrival of computer set-tops, I have yet to see even 10% of my coworkers with a Tivo (and I work with some pretty hardcore software developers). Personally, I find more functionality from an actual PC with MythTV, that I have seen from an actual Tivo, one of those Panasonic PVRs, or the thing Comcast has been pushing on us. How come few of these manufacturers 'get it'?
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I already count 7 remotes. TV, VCR, DVD, AC, Stereo, and a couple others that I don't even know what they're for. I know - I'm not supposed to know what they're for - its a "guy thing" ... right :-(.
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
Hey, don't get me wrong ... it's looking good. However, what about the inside? I mean, when do we get software that actually works as advertised?
Thank goodness for open hardware standards. Now, if only the software industry had some integrity. After all, if cars crashed as much as software, people would walk.
Words to men, as air to birds.
"This fervor for home theater PCs was evident all over the show, but it mainly manifested itself in computer cases."
You're kidding me, right? That's like people buying cars based on how cool looks like, or people buying gaming rigs based upon how their l33t ca53 pwns... oh wait. Never mind.
Seriously, though, I want my home theater PC to be invisible. A remote control and an IR receiver on the wall next to the screen. My wife heartily agrees (I think she's the one who convinced me) -- any electronics need to be in the cabinet or in the wall.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I don't go for all this integrated malarky. I bought an overhead projector, added an LCD panel with video input, connected up my DVD player, and used a white bed sheet (oh yes) stretched out on a wooden frame (knocked together in minutes). There you go, a 6-foot wide screen, with REAL theater feel. And it only cost me £170 in total ($US 260?). Integrated my arse, I like to have hulking great machines for each and every task! I could hook up a games console but being attacked life-size creatures in shoot-em-ups would probably scare the crap out of me!
Watch my YouTube atheist video blog (user NickGisburne2000) for arguments against religion
There's a number of options for frontend and OS. There's obviously MythTV on Linux, Windows Media Center on Windows XP, etc. I'm personally running Meedio on Windows XP.
Before people start talking about how a Tivo and DVD player will do all the same stuff, keep in mind that there's far more applications for a HTPC. There's plugins to check weather, play games (emulation), look at traffic reports, get sports scores and highlights, and much more.
I built my HTPC for around $400 plus hard drives (I'm around 1.5TB, which holds all the TV shows I want and the movies that I own). I just built one for a friend for $1000 which included 600GB of hard drive space and 2 wireless controllers (Logitech Rumblepad 2's work great for controlling the system and playing most emulator games). The really cool part is you can upscale movies if you want. I'd like to see someone get a Tivo (+ lifetime subscription) and DVD player capable of upscaling for $1000, completely ignoring the fact that it can do so many other things.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Anyone know what is going on with MythTV and Digital Cable or HDTV support? If I go myth I would like to know that I can get full res HDTV or to be able to get a "digital cable card" (does one even exist?) No sense in setting up a mythtv box if I don't know if I will be able to transition to these other technologies but companies like Microsoft can or eventually will.
Now that HTPC has finally taken off, one more curve ball is coming: the final HDTV conversion in the US, this coming Dec! There are not that many direct HDTV capture cards out there, and there aren't many homebrew software packages that work with them. Not MythTV, not WinMCE, not any of the others. A year from now we'll have the coolest pices of obsolete hardware on the block.
And while we're at it, who is working on the digital cable capture and the DVB dish problems? Proprietary hardware, encryption and signalling, means we pay the $$$ to see and record what they want us to see.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Wow, all of those cases were huge. My preference has always been to put the minimal possible system connected to my display device, and put all the storage and other backend hardware in a cheap beige-box somewhere else.
With MythTV, this works great. The backend houses the disks & receiver cards, the frontend just does display output, and they talk over the network.
Some people have set up cool mini-itx type systems for the frontend, using either flash storage or network boot, to get the MythTV front end in a small quiet form. A really cool project is MythRoku, which runs the MythTV frontend on the Roku HD Media Player (Linux based, embedded MIPS platform with hardware HD decoder). It's small and silent, and fits in well with home entertainment devices.
My Mac Mini would also make an excellent MythTV frontend.. If Apple would get a fucking clue and enable an API to the MPEG2 acceleration hardware on the GPU. Without that, it doesn't have the horsepower to do HD display/decoding.
So build your HTPC in a normal case and put it in another room. Get a RF remote and run the wires to your TV and receiver through the wall. Since most HTPC software has really good OSD messaging, you really don't need it in the room for any reason.
I'm remodeling my basement right now and will be building a second HTPC to be located in the laundry room behind my home theater. It makes sense since the projector will be back there too. Since I'll insulate that wall, I won't ever hear the HTPC and I won't ever see it.
My current HTPC is in a Coolermaster case. It looks really nice with the rest of my home theater equipment, and I've actually gotten a few compliments just on the case. It was only $100, so it's around the cost of any other well made case.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I just went through this and am still trying to figure this out. I just got an HDTV. See my earlier post, here.
In my previous post, I mentioned that my HTPC was the best looking device attached to my HDTV. I am now amending that to "2nd best" (hard to compete with a 1080i feed of DiscoveryHD).
Nonetheless, I have noticed one major problem that needs to be resolved with HTPC's. The sound card. I've used many many different kinds of sound cards and without exception, ALL of them output stereo ONLY through the SPDIF/Coax. I just bought a Turtle Beach Montego and finally, I have found a card that can produce true 5.1 Dolby Digital on the fly. The rest advertise 5.1 and the like -- but what they mean is 5.1 when you pump the analog signal to their speakers. NOT 5.1 out of the digital-out.
This is not a big deal for DVDs because most soundcards have Dolby digital pass through -- so they pass the 5.1 signal to your A/V receiver and it decodes the signal. However, for MP3's, downloaded movies, or anything else you are play on your HTPC, there is no real 5.1 solution --- unless you go with a Turtle Beach unit (or M-Audio, which I haven't tried). Yes, you can "simulate" but at the core, it's only a stereo feed with most sound cards.
The second thing I have noticed, with respect to HTPC's is this: Why the hell don't the frontend software makers realize that MANY of us store our media (movies, tv, music) on network shares. Why is this a big deal? Because I fire up Windows MCE and I find out that, in order to play a movie from the network, it has to copy the movie to my local library first. You can't just play it over the network. It must first be copied to the local machines. WTF? I see this design a lot and I suspect its because many ppl are trying to run HTPC's over 802.11. Here's some advice: don't. Just suck it up and run the cable. Your life will be much better for it. Trust me. I tried every setup imaginable.
These are just a few annoyances that I've encountered while setting up my HTPC. I don't yet have a capture card/TV card so I haven't gotten to setting up the TV part of this.
The good news is that my setup (finally) works pretty damn well, all things considered. I agree this is the year of the HTPC because I've just been through it.
With my Meedio system, I can do the following:
a) Play XViD, DiVX, SVCD, or any other format directly from a network share
b) Get weather, complete with radar images
c) Play my mp3's -- like a music library w/ jukebox
d) View photos as slideshow over a network share
e) View and play streaming music (Shoutcast)
f) Control the whole system with a remote control -- VERY IMPORTANT!!!
Because they ALL want to lock you into "their format". And will do anything to avoid playing "the other guy's" format. See DiVX and XViD support.
In my mind, anything that CAN'T play DiVX or XViD is already dead on arrival.
Most importantly, they want to lock you into their format so that they can also lock you into their DRM, and eventually force you to watch everything pay-per-view.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In other words, the year of the HTPC will be the year of the car PC.
Rant: It's 2006 already! Why is it that I'm still having to grab a cheap-ass $20 "SD-based player" with minimal/no support for playlists/etc, cut it up into little bits, solder some extension wires to a SecureDigital card slot from Digikey, and spend a weekend or two applying wood or plastic veneer to the front of the resulting contraption in order to get "looks like it was built-in" MP3 support for my car without trying to hide an entire mini-ITX case in there? I should be able to buy a head unit with 1GB of flash onboard, a USB port, and just load the goddamn car straight from my laptop!)
...but next year will be the year of the linux desktop! (no, no, seriously this time)
Seriously, I just got a Harmony 520. I have programmed Pronto remotes before, and if you are really hard core there are some shortcomings to the Harmonies, but for most people they work very well and are pretty painless to set up.
A few advantages:
1. My entire family can use it. Most of those people are very non-technical
2. Activity based with smart state: Have a stupid cable box that doesn't have discreet on and off commands? The remote remembers what it has turned on and off so that when it goes from one activity to another it can switch between multiple inputs and turn on/off only what is necessary. Have 4 inputs that need to be toggled through, it will do it.
3. Supports both Mac and PC out of the box. I wouldn't be surprised if there were Linux people with solutions to get it to work (the programming is done on the web site, the client side is a Java app that takes the file from the website and flashes the remote)
4. A set up activity will control everything in the system necessary for that activity. For example, when watching DVDs most buttons control the DVD player, but you can have the volume buttons control the AV Receiver, and other buttons controlling features on the TV like aspect control, etc.
5. Costs not much more than much less capable "universal" remotes.
I was not a believer in these things for years, but after using one (and the cheapest one available mind you) I'm pretty impressed.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Those cases are huge! They look like a PC/AT, circa 1984. This stuff needs some serious downsizing.
... the time when the mark of a real computer was that you couldn't hook it up to your TV, unlike your Commodore 64?
Are there any alternative in Linux that produce an image of FFDSHOW quality?
"This is not a big deal for DVDs because most soundcards have Dolby digital pass through -- so they pass the 5.1 signal to your A/V receiver and it decodes the signal. However, for MP3's, downloaded movies, or anything else you are play on your HTPC, there is no real 5.1 solution --- unless you go with a Turtle Beach unit (or M-Audio, which I haven't tried). Yes, you can "simulate" but at the core, it's only a stereo feed with most sound cards."
Actually you are not quite correct. Anything with DTS/DD will passthrough on digital for full 5.1. This INCLUDES divx,xvid movies that have properly encoded soundtracks. I watch them all the time. You just need to properly set up your player with the proper SPDIF settings. I use media player classic and allows this setup but it can take a bit of looking around to find all the proper settings.
If they don't have AC-3 soundtracks then they are STEREO and you are simply "simulating" 5.1 in your audio card (dolby surround) and encoding that to AC3. How is that any better, actually it is probably worse since you are re-encoding for no gain, better send it is unadulterated stereo into the reciever and use Dolby Prologic to playback.
Just about the only source where you have the situation of multichannel and no dolby encoding is with multichannel gaming. Most sound solutions don't do this. Either you have to use analog connections or live with stereo over the digital conneciton. My Nforce MB does encode this, but after doing a couple of times I found it never made enough differnce to worry about. Stereo and Dolby Prologic is sufficient for my gaming. I haven't used my Nforce native dolby encoding in years. Everything is passthrough to digital out, either PCM or AC3 without re-encoding.
It would be nice to get 5.1 out for movies...
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I'm actually researching this now. The Apple DVD Player is 5.1 compatible. I don't know if the signal out of the Mac is surround sound compatible though. However, there are a few devices you can get to help with this:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-mai
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/SonicaTheat
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/firewav
The FireWave (the last one) looks like the best bet to me. I might be buying one soon.
Bradley Holt
I have also recently seen an HDTV capture card with CableCard support. (can't find the link). Plug that in and voila -- you have your HD-PVR.
This is at least the second post you have made with this claim. I challenge you to put up or shut up. Find that link. Then read the details on the other end. You will find that it doesn't work the way you think it works. The output of the card is encryped and locked up with DRM and will only play back on the systems the OP specified, i.e. treacherous computing systems.