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Build a Homemade Media Center PC
DigitalDame2 writes "PC Magazine's Loyd Case explains how to build a Media Center PC of your own, how to choose the parts for a custom project, and tips for the Motherboard." I imagine you guys might have some other opinions on what parts and tools to use for the task...
From the MS site:
w tobuy/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/ho
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is only available pre-installed on computers sold by PC manufacturers. You can purchase a PC with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 pre-installed at retail consumer electronic stores, direct from PC manufacturers, or through online consumer electronics Web sites.
This setup is very over priced, personally I would of not done the 400gb drive, and just raid like 2 250gbs together would be cheaper, also sounds like they just went to a random site and picked out stuff not on sale, if you go to www.slickdeals.net you can find alot of cheap stuff.
Dude, I bet you can't find an "old" laptop with "a few ghz" worth of CPU power, a gig of RAM, and a 128MB worth of video RAM for less than $200. Tack on a $150 (!!) tuner card (that is PCMCIA or USB 2.0, not PCI) and at least $50 worth of wireless accessories and you're definitely over your two-hundred-dollar mark.
Sorry.
Go buy a TiVo.
Rob
$2276 is for a dual HDTV tuner setup. The case is so that it looks pretty and doesn't sound like a jet engine. The $300+ cpu gets them a dual core cpu (see below).
I'll agree on the RAM, although if the computer is used solely for a media center PC, 2GB of memory isn't that helpful. And I'll also agree on the hard drive, having just purchased a $200 400GB hard drive myself for my media box.
Honestly, given the proper motherboard, onboard sound with digital outputs going to the DAC in my stereo, and I see no need for a $100 sound card.
Just try to decode an HDTV signal on a $150 CPU. It can be done, but not if the PC is doing anything else. They went dual core, I would bet, so that they can decode an HDTV signal while simultaneously recording 2 HDTV signals and a regular signal, all while doing pretty much anything else without skipping a beat.
It's not perfect, but it is fairly reasonable. It does feel like they picked the components of their advertisers, though.
--Be human.
I can help with alternatives in the Windows world. I've never used MythTV. In Windows there is:
GB-PVR - FREE, easy to install, includes media functions like photos/music/other vides/etc.., works well with current tuners, easy to install plug-ings but not open-source, not very pretty (if the wife-acceptance factor matters), the PVR software I currently use
SageTV - kind of expensive, the included media functions kind of suck, can easily install plugins (but I totally fucked up my trial install while installing one plugin), was unstable when I tried it, slows down sometimes due to resource usage, I guess
MeedioTV - haven't tried this since last August but at the time it was borderline terrible, resource-hog, crashed a lot, wouldn't stop recording when I exited live TV (causing my hard drive to quickly fill up)...these problems may not exist anymore; it does look nice, though
BeyondTV - expensive if you want media functions, works great with plug-ins, a little slow sometimes, intelligently selects recordings, high WAF
MediaPortal - I've never tried it, but it's also free and I think open-source, from what I hear it's somewhat of a resource hog, I can't say much more
Windows MCE - never tried it, never will.
Go grab KnoppMyth (http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html) and burn it to a CD. Try it out yourself and see!
The "benefit" is essentially having a powerful TiVo-like device running your television.
My "television" is currently a $1,000 16x9 projector and a 72" screen connected to my computer running MCE. The computer cost less than $1000 to build with four-tuner (including 2 HiDef) support.
There's little in the way of music on my MCE box - a half a dozen albums I stuck in and let it rip one afternoon of housecleaning. I still stick my DVDs in one at a time when I watch them - as I've got a thousand (yeah...) and even transcoding them down and storing them on something would be a mammoth undertaking.
Totally. I have to post about MythTV, I am a big fan.
I chose the KnoppMyth distro, which installs quite easily, but blows away your hard disk, and sets itself up neatly. I did try the RedHat RPM version (dag?), but I found it much easier to use the knoppix than the RPM version, due to things like remote control setups, and the like -- they're all there for you with KnoppMyth.
I'm using an old 850Mhz Pentium 3 I think. I've had the Intel mainboard for a while, and it kept (incorrectly) reporting disk errors with Windows, and bluescreening -- an old mainboard.
I used to use old ATI tuners, without the hardware MPEG. You'll need a pretty hardcore machine to read the data, compress it, and then write it to disk. I picked up a PVR-150, which has a hardware MPEG encoder. I paid $99 for it at COMPUSA, which is too much. Grab the card with two tuners from an online voodoo hut.
We don't have any big cable package -- just the cable TV that comes with the Comcast Internet. It is $10 cheaper if we have the cable, presumably because they want you to buy the $40 upgrade. Anyway, we have only like 12 channels of slightly useful stuff. But, with MythTV, we can make sure we get to watch Futurama, ST:TNG, and the other geeky shows we like to watch.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
When you have added dual digital tuners and dolby digital surround sound (with appropriate choice of connectors for each), at least 200 GB disk, IR for remote, etc. It is not so mini and elegant anymore. And without something approaching this it is not a true mediacenter IMHO. Not to mention that 1.42 GHz G4 (!) is really puny and so is the graphics card an graphics memory (32 MB).
Is not to get a real PC. :-(. If someone figured out how to stick a TV card on this thing I'm pretty sure they'll make to software for it but it's not the case.
I've been planing for almost a year to build myself a media pc. Compared different possibilities, looked around for the software I could use.
And in the end I've settled of a modded XBOX. Best choice for the price!
It does everything I want with the fantastic XBOX Media Center software plus some other homebrew software (XMAME and stuff) and a couple of nice Python scripts.
The only technical requirement it to know how to user FTP.
On the downside, it's doesnt do PVR at all
So if you can live without the PVR facilities, this baby should do all you music listening, movie playing, picture browsing and classic gaming on your TV.
You can put the money saved of a PC to buy a dedicated PVR which can be programmed form the XBOX. There are scripts the show the TV program and can control some PVRs.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
Agreed. I'm currently playing with a media box I put together for a lot less than 2200. Of course, my demand for bells and whistles is fairly low. I personally prefer a small, quiet, media box, so I use the Antec Aria case. It doesnt have a lot of room, but it can hold a reasonable motherboard (MSI something... cant remember right now), TV card, and a DVD drive. I also have to disagree with the article where it talks about using a keyboard instead of the remote. Personally, when I'm using my media box I really just wish I could not think and use 1 button, not a keyboard worth. Oh well, someday I'll have the voice controlled media box done =). For now, with MythTV and Lirc it does pretty much anything I need.
<shameless type="shill">
And if you want to buy a premade Lirc (or WinLirc) homebrew transceiver, or assemble it yourself, I might have what you need.
</shameless>
How does your graphics card decode WMV9 and H.264 video? Many videocards have MPEG-2 decoding, but that won't handle anything but OTA HDTV streams. Blu-ray, HD-DVD, HD DirecTV broadcasts (presumably ripped from a DVR), anything downloaded from the Internet, will likely almost never be MPEG-2, cutting you off from most HD videos.
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