HTPC setup advice

xtrac

Heya folks,

Am thinking of building a HTPC for myself. Am on NTL Digital, and have read of people getting it to work, so am just in the hardware stage atm. here's the plan so far

DIGN X11 Black case
Antec Phantom 350W PSU
Abit A8X MB
Athlon 64 3200+
Zalmann CPU cooler, (have one of these in my current gamebox, very impressed)
WinTV PVR500 + Remote
2x Samsung Spinpoint 200GB (supposed to be very quiet) (RAID 1)
Corsair 1024MB Xpert 3200XL
BenQ DVD+-RW 16x
I've got some spare extremely silent 80mm fans for the case aswell.

I plan on using Debian/MythTV/IVTV.

I want to be able to record pre-determined shows, pause/rewind/forward live TV, and burn to DVD for posterity sake. Can I control the NTL box with this, or does it have to be the other way around?

Any thoughts on the system? have I missed/overlooked anything? Have I gone overboard? (this is a sickness I do suffer from:D ) (on Komplett this is running about 1560€.

Again, any help/thoughts much appreciated

-Roy

andy1249

In all honesty why are you planning on paying 300 plus for that dign case ??
Maybe Im missing something but it would seem all that unit is giving you is a rather small lcd panel on the front , and its just not worth it , most of your content surfing is gonna be done on your primary display , and thats gonna be your TV right !!
Do yourself a favour and dump that overpriced case for one of the silverstones at around 135 euros , build quality is very similar , nice finish on the case sturdy , etc.
Spend the extra money on a better graphics setup.

xtrac

Thanks for that Andy, exactly what I'm looking for at this stage.

Do you have one working? if so can you answer some of my other questions? i.e. once setup which box/remote controls the setup ? I'm a bit of a noob at HTPC.

And as for the gfx, what tuner card would you recommend ?

Thanks

-Roy

andy1249

The TV tuner card you picked looks OK , but there is no detailed spec in Komplett so I cannot see the remote setup , it will usually be the TV tuner card remote doing all the controls, it should be possible for this remote to control the rest of your Media through your myHTPC software ,
I have this working and it was easy enough to do , I have all my music , all my photo slide shows , and some movies all served up through my tv .

Just in case you dont know , you will need a dedicated graphics card to show the picture on the TV , the TV tuner card just tunes TV and allows you to record it , it doesn't show it back on your TV !! ( Apologies if you already know this , Im assuming you overlooked it as there is no graphics card on your list )

I would recommend getting any Radeon 9600 , this is cheap enough to be affordable and powerful enough to feed out any resolution you may have on your TV . ( note that HDTV can take resolutions up to 1900 by 1080 approx ) , The 9600 will be able to supply this!! You may not have a HDTV but if you do this card will be able to give you an excellent picture , if you dont have a HDTV , well this card makes your box very futureproof.

Also download and use powerstrip software , which allows you to match your graphics output to your TV so that everything is legible , heres a link to a tutorial ,
http://www.audioholics.com/showcase/DIY/powerstriphtpcp1.html

OK thats the Graphics ,
The most important thing about the DVD drive is that its as Quiet as possible , the speed of the drive doesnt matter as a 1 x would do for a HTPC. Having said that most drives these days are 16x and its hard to get anything else.
I went with an NEC 3540A and its fine.

Hope all this helps , good luck with the build .

blorg

andy1249 wrote:

The most important thing about the DVD drive is that its as Quiet as possible , the speed of the drive doesnt matter as a 1 x would do for a HTPC. Having said that most drives these days are 16x and its hard to get anything else.
I went with an NEC 3540A and its fine.

On this point, try to make sure to get a DVD drive that can be speed-limited in software (if you intend actually playing back DVDs directly in the drive.)

xtrac

Thanks guys for your help.

I've ammended my cart with the above recommendations. I dont have a HDTV, still using my trusty 36" sony, still haven't seen anything I like to replace it with.

The next question now is, whether to wait for payday, or just stick it on the CC

Actually the next question is how do I hook this upto my TV/NTL Digibox/cinema amp, and whether I can get rid of my slimp3 once this is running....

And while I'm at it, would it be a big deal to get this to surf the web with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse? ( this is really not an issue as I use my laptop to surf/chat while watching tv) (would be cool is all really)

Thanks again folks

-Roy

andy1249

Soundwise I have mine hooked into a Sony STR790 , you may have two options , depending on the sound outputs from you motherboard , you can get a digital feed from the Spdif / optical output and feed this to your amp, or use a headphone jack to RCA for an analog out. Obviously the digital is better being 5.1 and all !! most motherboards have this these days , if not , a cheap soundcard most certainly will have it !!

Connecting you NTL box should be fairly straightforward , and should be well documented in the manuals for the tuner card.

Connecting to your TV depends on what inputs your TV has , if there is a scart available then use the Gfx cards tv out , you will need an S video to scart lead for this , obviously if your tv has s video use that , alternatively if your tv has a DVI or pc input thats the best way but this is mostly only on LCD or plasma tvs.
Component video is also an option if your TV has it , a 9600 graphics card can supply all of the above so its just a matter of buying the cables to match your tv .

xtrac

Thanks for that Andy, much appreciated,

have 3 scarts on the back of the TV, and 1 s-vid on the front, so should be ok, its fairly well full atm though!

At least I know i'll be future proofed when they bring out a tv bigger than 36" and better quality than my current 36"CRT (Sony). Quality over quantity all day, everyday (at a price of less than 5k!)

Thanks again

-Roy