Queries relating to HTPC

TheDoc

Hi guys, figured this would be a great place to come broach the subject, and increase my knowledge.

I'm hoping to come into some cash from some second hand sales of stuff over the coming week, and rather then spend it on rubbish, I thought I mgiht spend it on something proper and high end, to replace a niggling issue in my home.

Through the years I've used a number of different hardware options to basically operate as a media centre. Budget and cost has mostly driven these adoptions of technology, but I've tried them all and nothing has worked smoothly.

An original Xbox modified with XBMC was the inital choice and did well, but size and outdated technology made me move on.
I adopted an Appletv2, and with XBMC installed it did great. Again though the technology became dated.

I recently( earlier this year) moved to using a Raspberry Pi with Raspbmc. It's been very hit and miss. Somedays its snappy and brilliant, other days riddled with crashes and failing to load movies or other media content.

At present I'm fiddling around with my PS3 trying to get playstation media centre working, and I thought to myself, why don't I get myself a HTPC.

I have two main sort of boxes I want to tick off with this purchase, and hopefully guys here can help.

a) The main purpose of the hardware. I want something to play my content on my TV, seemlessly and hassle free. I have a NAS that stores all my content and want to use a HTPC to play this content, onto the TV.

I see no issues here, and I guess it will be down to hardware recommedation.

b) I would ideally like to have this HTPC manage my downloading. I currently use a laptop that utilises a number of platforms for me to gain my content that saves then to the NAS. I assume HTPC's are powerful enough that they can manage downloads no hassle? Theraspberry pi for example shat the bed when trying to manage my downloads.

I'm decent enough when it comes to normal PC's, but HTPC's are a new venture for me. I'm familiar with years of use for XBMC, so that might be first port of call to have installed on the HTPC itself.

In terms of budget, probably looking at between €300-400 at a push. It's a big outlay for me, but I'd like to buy somthing to solve the problems I'm having with media centres once and for all.

Would appreciate if anyone could share some knowledge in terms of the things I want to achieve, and then maybe some hardware recommendations.

Thanks,
Doc.

TheDoc

I'd also say separately, that I have

Raspberry Pi
AppleTV2
Playstation 3
Xbox 360

I've just had nothing but frequent problems with them all. If maybe one of those is actually a really good option, and I need to just work at the config or something, please do let me know. Would hate to fork out big bucks and not get anything better then I already have.

The Raspberry pi had a really good start, but it frequently freezes, crashes, fails to load videos, reboots and other nonsense. CAn't say I could expect more from a €30 piece of hardware

Tom Dunne

TheDoc wrote: »

The Raspberry pi had a really good start, but it frequently freezes, crashes, fails to load videos, reboots and other nonsense. CAn't say I could expect more from a €30 piece of hardware

I'm surprised with the Raspberry Pi - is it overheating or anything? I'm running one for the past year or so, with very minimal problems (such as you describe).

Maybe a dedicated PC with the likes of xbmc running on it would suit better?

TheDoc

Tom Dunne wrote: »

I'm surprised with the Raspberry Pi - is it overheating or anything? I'm running one for the past year or so, with very minimal problems (such as you describe).

Maybe a dedicated PC with the likes of xbmc running on it would suit better?

Yup thats the plan, get myself a dedicated PC to run XBMC and also manage my downloads. I used to have an old Pc running by the telly and never gave an ounce of trouble, but with the advent of HD I needed to move on. (The PC had no HDMI capabilities)

The Raspberry PI is operating on it's normal profile, no overclocking. It is slick and functional, but all too frequent when I load up something it hangs and crashes. Frequently reboots itself. Will also get stuck in a big buffer cycle that it never get's out of, and requires a reboot to get going again.

At this point, having gone through so many different options, I'm dedicated to splashing the cash on a HTPC machine. The benefit of having reliability in terms of a media centre, but also amalgamate a few redundant bits of hardware into one( I can get rid of my laptop that operates as a download manager, and Xbox which is entirely redundant now)

Johnboy1951

The R-Pi can be a little frustrating, particularly if you often change what you are watching.
The CPU is just not very capable.

It has worked for me for about a year without much trouble .... and the trouble I had I decided was due to me being impatient or expecting too much of such a low resource device.

As a replacement I suggest you have a look at what is shown here .......

http://www.dabs.ie/category/computing,desktops-and-monitors/11011?q=barebones

Also some interesting items here

http://hly1688.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-222345410/X26_I3L.html

TheDoc

Ah I want to build my own thanks

Fallschirmjager

Doc,

Just a question..is the raspberry pi wired or wireless? Just my opinion but I never got wifi to work well with anything hd. Just my experience. Wired works very well.

As for homebuild

Edit:(Ignore the nuc comments, I see you responded to that, apologies)

I would look at a nuc. They are small and easily hidden. Just be careful of the price, they need extras like memory etc.

So I guess by homebuild how far do you want to go? Do you want to go au natural and get motherboard, memory etc? I did that but getting them small is always an issue, particularly if you want them very quiet.

I see some people here were using those home plugs for a wired network solution. I have no experience of them as I went through the cat6 wiring horror years ago. If you have the patience to cut through your plasterboard and skirting it is worth doing but sweet baby Jesus and the donkey, it's a lot of work.

As for a intel based HTPC, yup, it can handle a lot and you can automate it with couch potato etc. the pi would not IMHO be really good at that. I am using rasbmc on mine and honestly I have very little problems, very stable and that's even playing a 16gb hd file conversion I did. I did have a power issue (the USB cable) and card but that's because they came with the eBay purchase and were cheap crap. I don't turn mine off at all, honestly they use very little power anyways.

If you do go for a real home build, I would use asus motherboards. Over the years I have built a lot of my game and HTPC solutions and never had a dodgy asus board. I know you may get others who have, but every other board maker I chose had issues. That's obviously just my experience, your mileage may differ.

I am also using ubuntu now as the front end. It might be tricky to get the download aspect working on that, and I say that as I have no experience of it, I am sure there are many people here who could help you with that. Ubuntu is free, so you could install it and see what you think, it will run on pretty much any old PC you have lying around. running xbmc is hassle free on it. It also needs very little hw wise in comparison to windows so will help with your budget. Obviously the familiarity of windows is it's advantage.

If you can try to get an ssd drive. They are so fast booting and if you are storing everything on the nas you can go down on the size you will need.

I would also propose something different. Maybe changing the server end might be a cheaper option. Get a good intel config for that, you might not have to be so picky about the case and sound aspect if you can put it somewhere else in the house. That will allow you to pick one of the cheaper front end boxes now available. That might be worth a thought.

As you experienced the ps3 is amazing playing bluray but a fracking joke as a front end, the sony exec who decided that needs a right good kicking IMHO. It's a long time since I looked but the only way of getting box art on the movie was if it was stored locally on the ps3. You can stream to it, it picks up DNLA compliant servers but the interface is poor. Again that's all old info, it might have changed since I looked.

So I would finish with some questions.
The front end, does it have to be small and quiet?
The back end have you enough disk space and did you consider moving all the workload to it instead?
Are you wireless or wired?

Fallschirmjager

This might be of interest to you...and it recent

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/766848/How-to-build-ultimate-XBMC-HTPC-for-less-than

He I using a non windows solution

I have found this crowd helpful in the past

http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-of-my-dreams-for-under-500



I can't find the link now, but on the xbmc forums they used to do recommended builds...might be worth having a browse over there.

TheDoc

Thanks for the reply man, but with such inactivity on this thread I went and spec'd a machine and am waiting on a few second hand sales to go through before pulling the trigger. To summarise a few points however

• I won't be touching Linux. Too many horrendous experiences in the past with setup, has never worked without Stress. Windows has always been flawless for me. Also for the sort of applications I'll use on this, I'll want windows.
  
• Bluray playback isn't a factor. My PS3 is in the front room and plays my blurays fine. But I'm knocking physical media on the head, and have multiple avenues for getting HD movies now through Google movies, Amazon Prime and netflix.
  
• I've ruled out an SSD. I had thought this a must, but after thinking about it, I'm saving myself money. This is a 24/7 box, with most programmes on all the time. So I won't overly benefit from the SSD. So I'm putting that money into a 500GB drive to house on the HTPC. Might stretch to 1TB.
  
• I've a NAS that stores all my media. It has a 1TB drive at the moment, with plenty of room for expansion. Have never had the need for more. I don't horde content once I'm done, so I keep the drive managed well for space.
  
• I'm wired. Wouldn't touch wireless for stuff like this, so everything is via ethernet.
  
• Couchpotato, sickbeard etc. I've been using for years, so thats going onto this HTPC for sure. XBMC is going to be the media playback of choice as I'm a user for a long time now.
  
• I've prefer it to be small form and relatively quiet. Have a coolermaster case picked out that will accept normal size PSU's. So have been able to pick what is regarded as relatively silent parts.
  
• Raspberry Pi was wired and unfortunately just seemed to have loads of issues. Freezing, crashes the works. One week it works fine, the next it's in bits. Not worth the trouble anymore.

TheDoc

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

This might be of interest to you...and it recent

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/766848/How-to-build-ultimate-XBMC-HTPC-for-less-than

He I using a non windows solution

I have found this crowd helpful in the past

http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-of-my-dreams-for-under-500



I can't find the link now, but on the xbmc forums they used to do recommended builds...might be worth having a browse over there.

Actually found that great post on Lifehacker, and pretty much matched his build for mine, apart from the case which is not available.

Comes in at a lowly total of €300 for some pretty hard bang for my buck.

I got a lot more responses over on reddit on /r/buildapc where it got some serious sign off's, with most commenting that would perfectly fit the bill for what I want. Obviously there was calls for me to get more space, so I might bump from a 500GB HDD to a 1TB HDD.

It's all sitting in my amazon cart, ****ing freaked people wont buy my second hand **** so I can buy this

Fallschirmjager

Well glad you got an answer dude..

On the 1 tb. There is a great comment...more is always more...lol

Honestly if you can afford it I would get more.

On the ssd thing, yep if you are 24/7 then not a lot of reason.

If you are the couch potato sickbeard guy...I may try and steal your brain for a while!!!!!!

Hope it all works out for you

TheDoc

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

Well glad you got an answer dude..

On the 1 tb. There is a great comment...more is always more...lol

Honestly if you can afford it I would get more.

On the ssd thing, yep if you are 24/7 then not a lot of reason.

If you are the couch potato sickbeard guy...I may try and steal your brain for a while!!!!!!

Hope it all works out for you

Feel free to hit me up on couchpotato etc. I'm using those things for years, so plenty of work has gone into it!.

What I would say is that anytime I tried getting it working on linux turned out to be more hassle then its worth. It's much simpler and effective on windows for me. I just gave up trying to get them going on linux distros as they have massive issues keeping connections with NAS's, which my setup relies heavily on.

Johnboy1951

I sprung for a NUC which arrived today ... I liked this level of 'home-build' ..... 4GB ram and an SSD and the build is complete

It will double as a media front end and full-on PC.

For the few hours I am using it I am impressed.

It sure beats building one

OK I had to build the HTPC at the time because I wanted to include tuner cards ..... this can now be changed and I will use an old PC as the backend with the tuner cards, placed out of earshot.

TheDoc

What the goose is a NUC

Johnboy1951

TheDoc wrote: »

What the goose is a NUC

See earlier post ..... you had no interest.

TheDoc

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

See earlier post ..... you had no interest.

O yeah the little intel boxes. Reason I'd no interest is I only ever saw barebones machines, that were pretty pricey, considering they didn't have a load of basics.