Vu Duo or HTPC

zarkov

What are the benefits of the Vu Duo over a HTPC?

I'm looking at the VU Duo and I like what I see, but for the same spend I can build a HTPC with SAT & DTT as well. Am I missing something?

byte

Hmm. I would imagine the HTPC would have more CPU power, RAM etc. so might be better suited as a full-on home theatre system.

That said, I love my Vu! But I don't test it much with regards HD video, music sharing, etc. I use a media player for that.

snaps

Well, ive been using a homemade HTPC recently and i find it does everything i ask it! My only downfall is that the DVB-S card is only DVB-S and not S2, so only have a handfull of HD satellite channels.

watty

IDTV with browser, HDD rec, USB playback hbbTV, ethernet etc and newer HD PVRs with ethernet and streaming starting to make MediaPC/HTPC look even more niche than ever they were.

Setboxes and TVs use dedicated high performance DSP chips. PC uses software with reliance of expensive GPU if you want good performance. Also PC best for 60FPS progressive, much harder to get good performance (without specific cards + HDMI) of real 1080i 25fps and real 576i 25fps.

For SCART and/or SDTV the setbox wins hands down.

zarkov

Snaps, Are you running Windows Media Centre or Linux? Which tuner card are you using?

zarkov

Watty, I don't have any of the h/w you mentioned and as far as I can see there is no STB that handles what I'm looking to do - sat, DTT and analogue with pvr and seamless EPG. I know I'm looking for the holy grail but its why I looked at the HTPC option - not sure it does everything either. I tried XP media center when it was launched but wasn't too impressed - I'm assuming that Win 7 (or Linux s/w) is much better. I really don't want to end up with multiple STBs and other stuff all over the place - eventhough I like messing with 'stuff'.

watty

You get more "joy" on Standard XP with 3rd party software, Same with Windows 7.
MS concept of Media Centre is Broken. That's why Philips stopped making their nice Media PCs with SCART and HDMI.

Most important aspects are:
1) Good Choice of GPU/Graphics card and outputs / driver. Min is S-video + HDMI. ALL broadcast here is either 576i 25fps or 1080i 25fps.
2) Enough CPU to handle 20Mbps MPEG4 HD H.264 AVC and AAC and de-interlacing incase the GPU/driver decides it doesn't like some piddling variation of codec standards.
3) Enough Slots for suitable tuner cards. maybe 2 x DVB-S2 cards, maybe dual tuner USB DTT stick, 2 x USB DTT or 2 x DTT cards. Combo DVB cards have a bad track record.
4) separte HDD for OS and Media Recording.
5) DVD or BD burner to archive recordings and be able to play back on DVD/BD players
6) Screen that Really does 1920 x 1080 50fps native, not 60fps. Ideal if it can natively do 576i 25 and 1080i 25 too and graphics card can also, as de-interlacing ALWAYS reduces quality of natively interlaced source (24 fps film played at 25 fps and interlaced can be de-interlaced perfectly. Camera can't. )

32 bit OS rather than 64bit OS.
XP, Ubuntu or Win7
XP has "best" support for devices and tools, Ubuntu 2nd best.

snaps

Like watty says, Im using windows XP (The best operating windows system), with VLC player, AltDVB, various codecs but find that ffdshow is a great free codec for H264 viewing with hardware acceleration.

I got an HDMI 512mb graphics card of ebay for next to nothing which works a treat.

The DVB S card im actually not sure what it is, but they can be got for as little as 25€ now off ebay and online suppliers (Dabs.ie)

I find the extended desktop option is a great thing to have, I can have TV/Video on the projector or tv and internet other apps on another display at the same time.

So versatile.

zarkov

Thanks Watty & Snaps, good info.

Now, one more question - is it worthwhile motorising the new dish or not?

dmm1000

if you want to motorise the dish just be aware that many pc satellite cards have a reputation of not providing a stable voltage to reliably drive a motorized dish - this is where a dedicated receiver would be better in my opinion

carbsy

dmm1000 wrote: »

many pc satellite cards have a reputation of not providing a stable voltage to reliably drive a motorized dish

Really? First I've heard of it.

snaps

carbsy wrote: »

Really? First I've heard of it.

Yes its true, the problem lies in the sat card burning itself out trying to turn a satellite dish motor.

carbsy

snaps wrote: »

Yes its true, the problem lies in the sat card burning itself out trying to turn a satellite dish motor.

I didn't know this. Hmmmm might delay adding one to my collection then!

*EDIT* I presume this doesn't affect the USB models as they come with an external power pack?

snaps

Ive a Kworld DVB S 100, which ive had for about 6 years, that has driven my motor with no problems using prog dvb.

watty

Depends on Motor, weight of dish and even batch of card as to if Motor Drive works.

You can get an external power booster that outputs the 13V or 18V depending on input and passes the 22kHz out and 950MHz to 2100MHz in. Though I've not found someone selling it.

All 4 different models of cards I've tried, drive Moteck SG2100 with Triax 110cm unreliably. Works better on V channels as that's 13V, H Channels are 18V and thus motor takes a lot more power.

slegs

snaps wrote: »

Like watty says, Im using windows XP (The best operating windows system), with VLC player, AltDVB, various codecs but find that ffdshow is a great free codec for H264 viewing with hardware acceleration.

I got an HDMI 512mb graphics card of ebay for next to nothing which works a treat.

The DVB S card im actually not sure what it is, but they can be got for as little as 25€ now off ebay and online suppliers (Dabs.ie)

I find the extended desktop option is a great thing to have, I can have TV/Video on the projector or tv and internet other apps on another display at the same time.

So versatile.

Windows 7 Media Centre is generally recognised as being the best version to date. I would not be recommending to use Windows XP which will be out of support soon.

I have a HTPC running Windows 7 MC 64bit and Dual DVB-S2/Dual DVB-T Blackgold TV card and an Intel DG445ID mobo and Intel Core2Duo processor. No need for a graphics card. Case is an Antec Fusion with LCD and Win MC remote support. I have a silent fanless PSU and quiet heatsink with 120mm fan. It also has a 64GB SSD for the OS and apps and a 1.5TB drive for recordings. I also have an external 4.5TB NAS drive under raid5 for external protected storage for movies/music/pictures collections. I use the My Movies plugin to catalog the movies collections.

Picture quality is excellent in HD (DVb-S2 supported just fine)and as good as anything I have on a set top box. Media Centre is an amazing application for TV viewing and recording and I would highly recommend it. I also use a Linksys extender and an XBox extender that run off the main HTPC over the network in other rooms but these do have limitations (in particular the linksys cant play HD/MPEG4 or VOB files but it was cheap and works well for what it is). The XBox has better support.

Microsoft seem to have finally cracked Media Centre with Windows 7. I would not be looking back to Windows XP if you are planning on using Media Centre.

Wiggy

slegs wrote: »

Picture quality is excellent in HD (DVb-S2 supported just fine)and as good as anything I have on a set top box.

What DVB-S2 channels can you watch in WMC?

slegs

Wiggy wrote: »

What DVB-S2 channels can you watch in WMC?

Not being smart but any that you can receive. There are FTA DVB-S2 channels on other satellites.

I use DVBLink DVBSource in my setup to view FTV channels like Channel 4 HD

kuro_man

I am currently building a HTPC from a worthless old Pentium IV 3mhz using MediaPortal on XP as an experiment. Much cheaper than a vu+ duo.

I bought a dual tuner dvb = €17 (ebay) and an extra 512mb RAM for €10 (total 1gb) and it works fine.

Eventually I will add

• DVB-S2 card with diseqc
• 1tb or larger SATA hard-drive.
• HDMI AGP gpu (ATI hd4650, c. €65) for HD (current one ok for SD)

Major hurdle is h.264 codec support. I am running FFDShow and it works fine on DTT but not stable. TotalMedia is perfect but can't use codec in MediaPortal. Only set it up recently, so more fiddling required.

It is documented to work well even with HD/h.264 material but I will let you know how it goes!

watty

Core AVC not free, but cheap and works.

watty

slegs wrote: »

Windows 7 Media Centre is generally recognised as being the best version to date. I would not be recommending to use Windows XP which will be out of support soon.


Microsoft seem to have finally cracked Media Centre with Windows 7. I would not be looking back to Windows XP if you are planning on using Media Centre.

For Media Centre, yes, use Windows 7, XP's Media Centre is rubbish.

For rolling 3rd party XP is still better

Is 2020 soon?

A Microsoft exec admitted today that about 75% of business computers still run the nine-year-old OS on hardware averaging 4.4 years old, and Computerworld's now reporting Microsoft will extend XP's lifespan through 2020 as a result.

zarkov

Is the DVB-S2 card backward compatible with DVB-S broadcasts?

kuro_man

DVB-S2 will work with DVB-S

snaps

kuro_man wrote: »

I am currently building a HTPC from a worthless old Pentium IV 3mhz using MediaPortal on XP as an experiment. Much cheaper than a vu+ duo.

I bought a dual tuner dvb = €17 (ebay) and an extra 512mb RAM for €10 (total 1gb) and it works fine.

Eventually I will add

• DVB-S2 card with diseqc
• 1tb or larger SATA hard-drive.
• HDMI AGP gpu (ATI hd4650, c. €65) for HD (current one ok for SD)

Major hurdle is h.264 codec support. I am running FFDShow and it works fine on DTT but not stable. TotalMedia is perfect but can't use codec in MediaPortal. Only set it up recently, so more fiddling required.

It is documented to work well even with HD/h.264 material but I will let you know how it goes!

Im struggling big time for H264 hardware acceleration with my HDMI AGP card. nearly given up on it, seems you still need a fast CPU for it, yet HD MKVs play back fine using VLC

watty

totally different codec for HD MKVs
Try Core AVC http://corecodec.com/products/coreavc

See is there a Driver for your gfx card more suited to 576i 25 and 1080i 25 H.264

install free MS Graphedit to find out which codecs are really being used and thus you can disable / enable (May only work on XP, but there might be a newer version in free DX11 SDK)

kuro_man

I am tempted to load windows 7 mce, it has h.264 codecs built it and it will support my IR receiver which I am struggingly to get drivers for on XP. But will it run on a 3ghz/1mb Pentium 4?

I haven't bought the new AGP video card yet; might be a waste if I have to buy a new motherboard/cpu anyway (which would have a decent on-board GPU).

watty

http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/

Win7 runs even on 1.6GHz PIIIs, if they have 2G RAM and DX11 3D Grafix card with at least 256M RAM.

My 8 year old Laptop P4 1.8GHz only misses Vista/Win7 on Graphics support.

My AMD 64 has X1600 ATI card which I think is marginal.

zarkov

I'm getting the urge to go down the home build HTPC route. I've been looking at the available kit and am thinking about an i3 chip on a H55 Asus motherboard using the built in graphics capaibilty of the i3. Blackgold BGT3595 tv card, 2 Gb of mem and a decent size quiet disk. I have a Haupauge Win 500 PVR card that I can use for analogue reception if the DTT in my area is poor. Use Win 7 OS to tie all the tuners together in a seamless EPG.

The rig will be connected to a Plasma over HDMI and to the AMP with optical or coax connection - sound over HDMI is not an issue. I want to use WIN 7 as the OS.

Noise is a big consideration as I tried to do this with XP on a borrowed workstation PC in the past (hence the tv and graphic card) and it was the nearest thing to flying on a Fokker 50.

Now the question I keep asking myself is, am I overdoing the spec/spend? The midrange build of a year ago is now the budget build of this year. Is there is any benefit in going for i3 with H55 mobo when a lower spec might do the job. I have a club 7900GT video card that could be used although it only has DVI out and not HDMI (is there a DVI to HDMI connector?).

carbsy

zarkov wrote: »

I have a club 7900GT video card that could be used although it only has DVI out and not HDMI (is there a DVI to HDMI connector?).

Yes, there is.IIRC the Dreambox DM800HD has a DVI output and comes with a DVI 2 HDMI adaptor.

kuro_man

watty wrote: »

http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/

Win7 runs even on 1.6GHz PIIIs, if they have 2G RAM and DX11 3D Grafix card with at least 256M RAM.

My 8 year old Laptop P4 1.8GHz only misses Vista/Win7 on Graphics support.

My AMD 64 has X1600 ATI card which I think is marginal.

I'll give it go then
The agp 4650 has loads of power, considerably more than the PC and as much RAM, just of matter getting the drivers to off load the work from the CPU.

kuro_man

I think P4/AGP upgrade is going to be problematic: most AGP cards do not support any audio over HDMI - except HIS cards which are hard to get and expensive. So I'd have to buy a 5.1 spdif card as well.
It might be time to bite the bullet and build a new PC. Maybe the P4 can be converted to a headless NAS.