I'm Lost!!

Inconspicuous

Lads,

I would really appreciate your help on this. When it comes to computers I'm pretty experienced and have a lot of software experience. When it comes to selecting the right hardware to do the job, I seem to always spend ages looking at different solutions and getting lost. Hopefully a fresh pair of eyes might help.

I'm looking to get rid of UPC and think I've a month to do it (they recently changed terms of contract and I have 30 days to accept blah blah) The house has a Sat dish already up and I recently put up an aerial to get RTE2 HD for the GAA We have a media player (2TB of space) hooked up to the tv for watching downloaded content.

I've convinced the wife to change our viewing habits and to look at alternatives to UPC. Her only stipulation is that she can pause live tv or record some show being broadcast whenever she is not watching downloaded content.

I'm very much anti-Windows as the amount of trouble I have with machines in work just drives me nuts. So this system will be linux based. Because of the live tv element I'm looking at MythTV or XMBC with MythTV plugin.

Eventually I hope to have a backend machine somewhere in the house with all the capture cards and to stream the content to multiple frontends, but for the moment, money is tight so I can't afford this. So I'm hoping to build a quiet machine to put in the living room for the moment.

I need help selecting a motherboard. Obviously I'm looking for a mb that will be completely compatible with linux. But there's also a couple of unique features I'm looking for:

1) HDMI output. I want to keep it simple to connect to the tv.
2) Support for multiple tuner cards. Initially I will get something like the TeVii S480 Dual DVB-S2 card for satellite inputs. I'm also looking for a dual DVB-T card to handle saorview (open to suggestions as I haven't selected one yet). So I need a board with 2 or more pcie slots. If it has more that's better as it will alow me to add more cards in the future.
3) Capable of handling HD TV and playback
4) 2 gigabit ethernet ports. I plan on having a small hard-disk in this machine for the OS and saving any content to our media player as it can also be used as a NAS. The reason I'm looking for 2 ports is that I have a Netgear router that is not DD-Wrt compatible yet. The router interferes with a VPN I use so I plan on running a firewall and vpn service on this machine connected directly to my UPC modem and then connect the netgear router to the other port to allow internet access to the rest of my network. I know in an ideal world I should have a dedicated machine to do this, but money is tight, so I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone.

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!!!

Thanks

Carter P Fly

If you want to run HD video via onboard HDMi you want to be looking at INtel i3/i5/i7 boards that have integrated GPU.

You wont find many boards with dual Gigabit nics.

Id suggest storing the data locally and transferring it rather then trying to write directly across the network.

Id use the onboard gig network internally and a 100base cheap pcie x1 or pci network card (even a usb one) for your internet/vpn connection.

Unless you are very linux savvy setting up a stable and Wife friendly HTPC is a gargantuan task.

Inconspicuous

Thanks for the reply Carter. While I'm no linux expert, I've a fair amount of experience with linux and know how frustrating it can be to set things up. I managed to set up mythTV on a test machine a few years ago and got it working pretty well when I first started using linux, so I'm confident enough about getting it working again.

I kinda figured I would be pushing it to find a board with dual nics so I guess I should just bite the bullet and buy a cheap router that I can just flash with dd-wrt.

Regarding the suggestion to store data locally, you're probably right on this too, I was just hoping to shave off a few quid by using the media player. I figured that once I have the htpc up and running I will probably end up using the media player less and less so was looking at alternative uses for it. I had considered flashing it with linux to use as a myth front end, but it doesn't look like this is probable. I might just take the hard disks out of it and using them in the new machine instead.

Carter P Fly

Most media players with a network link can play media from a share so you can either "backup" the media to the player or Just play it directly over the gig link from linux box.

I have no idea why you need DD-wrt on your router BTW, Never heard of anyone saying they needed it before in HTPC forums. Can you let me know what it's for out of curiosity?

Inconspicuous

So the media player itself has a 2TB hard disk in it and is currently attached to the network and the TV. On the network it just appears as a NAS and obviously when viewed through the tv it has it's own firmware etc.

In the MythTV setup you specify where you want it to store recorded material, buffering etc. I was hoping to use the media player for this to shave a little off the cost of building the HTPC and also because I reckon the 2TB disk would just go to waste otherwise. But if you think recording over the network is not the best idea, I'll just place the drive directly into the HTPC.

I'm looking for DD-WRT because I'm having trouble with my VPN and my router. I've narrowed it down to the router causing problems and unfortunately Netgear's interface doesn't give me the customisation that I'm looking for that should hopefully solve it. DD-WRT seems to be the solution but unfortunately the router I have isn't supported yet. I think I may just get a cheap router in the mean time or figure something else out.

Thanks again for your help

Antigrav

Have a look at the cost of setting up front/back ends again.

The HP Proliant MicroServer is very popular as a back end. see this thread. I think there is still a cashback from HP that puts this under €200!

I use an HP Proliant backend and totally silent Atom/ION/SSD front end.

XMBC integration with MythTV is a bit broken since Myth 0.24 awaiting development of the PVR plugin.

I have been building my HTPC/Media Server for three months and it is still not wife friendly :rolleyes: I hate LIRC :mad: Think they broke a lot of its features in Ubuntu 11.04, so watch out for this.

Inconspicuous

That HP Proliant MicroServer looks interesting and I'm sorely tempted. What sort of setup do you have Antigrav? Did you manage to get multiple tuner cards into the backend and if so how does it cope with it? How many front ends are you running?

Antigrav

Inconspicuous wrote: »

What sort of setup do you have Antigrav? Did you manage to get multiple tuner cards into the backend and if so how does it cope with it? How many front ends are you running?

I actually bought the HP Proliant ML110 G6 as the CPU can be upgraded to i3/i5 and I wasn't worried about space/noise as I have it in a comms cupboard upstairs

I have the TBS-6981 Dual DVD-S2 card (although this link shows an earlier model, they ship the 6981 )
and Hauppauge NOVA T USB DVB-T Tuner to pick up Soarview.

I'm running Mythbuntu 11.04 on the backend and have two 2TB drives in RAID-1 that also act as a NAS to Windows PCs on the LAN using Samba and share via NFS to a Linux HTPC.

The HTPC is an ASUS AT310NT-I Mini-ITX mobo in the M350 fanless case, with 10Gb Intel SSD running Ubuntu 11.04

I run MythTV Frontend and XBMC on the HTPC and play most of my HD content from ripped BD/CD movies on the NAS. There's a gigabit network around the house.

I've been trying to get another MythTV frontend to work on a Windows (Vista) PC in the Kitchen, but the video is not synching properly

Audio in the TV room is a 7:1 Samsung AV/Receiver feeding into Jamo front and centre speakers and Mission back with Yamaha sub-woofer. Audio is via S/PDIF optical off the HTPC and work well for video off MKVs or TV.

All this has taken a fair amount of fiddling to set up, and as I mentioned above, I still can't get the remote I want to use configured under LIRC, so am still messing with my Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse, although they work really well, but not wife friendly :rolleyes:

We are talking guts of 800 Euro for all this, but I've got totally silent HTPC, versatile Media Server/NAS and hours of fun and games :D

Inconspicuous

Sorry,

Have been away from a computer for the past while. That's some setup you have there Antigrav. Hopefully someday I'll be able to replicate something similar.

In the meantime, I'm afraid that money is a little tight, so buying a separate frontend and backend is out for the moment. I had a look at the offer from HP but it seems to only apply to a mini-server now which doesn't look like it'll have much room in it for adding in pci cards in the future.

I'm thinking of the following system to tide me over for the moment:

ASUS AT5IONT-I, for the mother board
TBS Dual DVB-S2 Tuner (same as you linked to )
WinTV-Nova-T usb stick (I have a Hauppage dual DVB-s DVB-t pci card somewhere, but it won't fit the board. When I get a dedicated backend someday I'll be able to make use of it again)
Samsung EcoGreen 2TB drive (15eur more than 1TB drive. Can't argue with it)
4GB-Kit Corsair RAM (Although you can buy 2 of the 2GB sticks for slightly cheaper than this packaged deal. Might be overkill anyway, not sure....)
JCP Mini-ITX case & power supply

Plan on using linux OS MythTV or XBMC, haven't decided yet. The old Hauppage card came with an infrared sensor and remote so should be sorted there too.

Free shipping from Amazon and €30 EUR from Hardwareversand, brings the total to approx €420 (give or take a few eur for currency exchange).

I'd really appreciate your comments on this, particularly on the board and psu choices. Do you think they will be enough?

Carter P Fly

an atom board on its own will really struggle decoding HD channels. You'd be wanting n additional GPU.

Both tuners have ubuntu support so you should be on with Mythtv and XBMC. I have a card thats not supported and its given me hell so Ive ditched myth tv again.

Inconspicuous

Thanks Carter. I picked those two tuners specifically because they had linux support. I know how frustrating it can be to get no supported hardware to work with linux.

Thats a pity about that mother board. I was hoping it would be up to the task. It has an integrated Nividia next generation ION GPU. While the spec claims to be capable of SD & HD decoding this may not always be true. What sort of spec in a gpu do you think would be needed? Or is there even another board you'd recommend since I wouldn't really be able to get a graphics card and pci-e tuner into this setup?

Antigrav

Carter P Fly wrote: »

an atom board on its own will really struggle decoding HD channels. You'd be wanting n additional GPU.

Both tuners have ubuntu support so you should be on with Mythtv and XBMC. I have a card thats not supported and its given me hell so Ive ditched myth tv again.

I have the lower spec ASUS ATOM/ION board and it copes OK with HD decoding. The VDPAU drivers are supported in MythTV and XBMC (and VLC) so most players can offload decoding to the GPU. Just watch you save the 'PowerMizer' settings as root to persist full acceleration.

You can build the drivers for the TBS card by following these instructions

There's an alternative to MythTV on Linux called tvheadend that is supported by new code in XBMC, it seems to be getting more action than the MythTV support, so may be worth a look. Haven't tried it myself, but it wouldn't be hard to beat MythTV at setup time.

Inconspicuous

Thanks antigrav. I'll probably go with this setup so and see how I get on. I had been looking at tvheadend and it def looks like a simpler alternative to the MythTV setup. The only problem for me at the moment is the wife factor. She loves being able to pause live tv to answer the phone, get some tea, do some girly stuff or just to turn around and ask me some loaded question to see how I'll react :pac:

It seems that for the moment using tvheadend through XBMC doesn't allow you to pause live tv (and i think doesn't allow setting up of recordings). So for the moment I'll have to leave it. I'll be def keeping an eye on it for the future though!

im...LOST

you called?

Carter P Fly

Antigrav wrote: »

I have the lower spec ASUS ATOM/ION board and it copes OK with HD decoding. The VDPAU drivers are supported in MythTV and XBMC (and VLC) so most players can offload decoding to the GPU. Just watch you save the 'PowerMizer' settings as root to persist full acceleration.

thats good to know, windows based HTPC's are probably not as good at this as their linux counterparts.

Alun

Carter P Fly wrote: »

thats good to know, windows based HTPC's are probably not as good at this as their linux counterparts.

Windows MCE also makes use of GPU assisted decoding through DXVA assuming a reasonably up to date video driver. Works just fine on my AMD E350 setup.

subway

Before you write off windows, look into dvblink and 7mc
It does all you want out of the box with a very short and easy set up.

WAF can be very important with these things and, IMO, 7mc is a great looking media centre, is incredibly user friendly and also more relaible for tv.
I've been using media centre for around 6 years now and, honestly, other thank lack of add on software, find it's unbeatable, but only if your adding tv into the mix.

Carter P Fly

Alun wrote: »

Windows MCE also makes use of GPU assisted decoding through DXVA assuming a reasonably up to date video driver. Works just fine on my AMD E350 setup.

My htpc maxed out the CPU on all HD channels but it has an older chip, a dual core pentium D 3gig htz. A 35 euro HD 5040 card sorted it.

Mad Benny

Carter P Fly wrote: »

.. Wife friendly HTPC is a gargantuan task.

This is the Holy Grail

subway

But It doesn't have to be a gargantuan task
My folks use xbmc with ease and we have gotten by with windows for years.