Media Centre PCs
 

Ok-here's the thing!

I have been curious about these so called Media Centre PCs for a while now, & having actually have a play with an Evesham one yesterday, I have to confess to being totally blown away. :Yikes:

I know the concept of pausing live TV is not that new etc, but I was really impressed with the whole idea of 'home network integration' etc.

So.....now I'm thinking of treating myself to one of these bad boys, & also wondering if I could build one myself. :naughty:

Any thoughts/advice/recommendations etc are welcome as always. :)

N.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Looks rather tasty :)

I think it would need to be connected to a gigabit lan to take advantage of it over the network ext....

MSI allso do a range of barebone systems that you can build up for this.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

I was just thinking more about the convenience of it TBH Stu. I wouldn't stream films etc over my wireless network (having said that it was a poor when I had 802.11 B, but now Ihave 802.11 G :naughty: )

What I would do is to transfer stuff from my PC to the Media Centre one, & watch it directly from there.

I wonder how much it would cost to build etc?-prob not cheap enough to justify the aggro I would suspect. :(

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

I have been thinking about this lately.

But how convenient is it? I don't get the logistics of it to be honest, I have seen people who use a barebones system with no monitor, but how do they controll it so to speak?

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

It sits under your TV, like a regular STB, & you control the on screen Windows menu with a remote that is supplied with it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Hava a look at:
http://www.showshifter.com/

and
http://www.mini-itx.com/

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

i may be wrong but as far as i know u cant actually buy wmce on its own it comes with mcpc's ..

unless they changed the rules

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

That is correct.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

If you want to roll your own:

Myth TV

MrSums

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

So what kind of spec would be needed to make this a usable bit of kit, for streaming movies via a network onto TV etc etc

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

how do u propose to build your own? or will it be simply a small (shuttle like) quiet pc to play mp3s and stream dvds/divx movies from ?

i know a few people with mcpc's and they are pretty smart good luck with it all

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Exactly as you describe.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Nice one Neil, I'm going to get shouted at by misses for adding to my credit card bill now since I have seen this thread :D

The OS bit seems to be the downfall since you can't buy XPMC

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

good thinking - did u consider buying a modded xbox? (or modding an xbox u have)

it can do pretty much what u need and play games .

http://www.premodded.com is a good example but there are others.
the xbox can run a special version of MC as well called xbox media center but u may alreayd know all this :) i looked at both routes and went for a xbox with 250 gig hard drive and will install the MC software as soon as it comes out of alpha

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Take a look at:
http://www.videolan.org/

The switch/router is going to be the bottleneck in most home-lans. Mine claims to support only 1000-1500 packets per second. But at least it gives a figure - most don't! That works out at just over 2 megabytes per second tops (assuming max ethernet packet sizes) which is only just fast enough for one video stream.

Having struggled with peeps connection probs for some time (scart - aargh!), I can't help feeling that something like this is the way to go. Imagine if your TV had an embeded web browser with a fixed home address of 192.168.X.X. Then imagine a DHCP server with a jazzed-up 'clients' page at that address. Click on the client of your choice, be it DVD, PVR or whatever, and you would go directly to the control panel of that device. There would be no need for lots of different remote controls (all you would need is a single infra-red mouse), every device would have a similar HTML interface and they would all connect together simply by plugging them into an ethernet switch/router. I believe the technology is ready and capable - we just need a standard and away we go!

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Thanks I'll check out the site now.

I had considerd the xbox option, but I want something a little more stylish to be 100% honest.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

yep - my plan is just to hide the bugger also the remotye control works with the media player so thats pretty niffty ..

only other issue is "sound" as the fan in the xbox may get on ur nerves, but its easy enough to replace with a super quiet one. i think it just uses 60mm fans so any will do not sure will open up me box when i get it monday.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Huh?

How to Buy a Media Center PC

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 is a new Windows XP operating system available only on Media Center personal computers. Because of its special hardware feature requirements, Media Center PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 are available only from Microsoft PC manufacturer partners. For more information about the available Media Center PC configurations, view the Media Center PC Hardware Showcase. To learn more about Media Center PC hardware, see What Are Media Center PCs?

Media Center PCs are now available from the retailers listed below. You can also shop and order directly from the manufacturers listed.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/m...uy/default.asp

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

But the difference in software (between this and XP) is only very slight to be honest, and you would loose very little functionality.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

It's in the menus - MCE can be run in traditional XP mode.

How do you find out what the bandwidth of your router is? Seems a little crazy that it cannot even keep up with the 10 of the 10/100 bandwidth.

Why declare 10/100 if the throughput is only 2Mb?

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

RTFM - well that's what I did in my case ;) Failing that you could try emailing the manufacturer but I doubt you'll get a reply.
I think it's called marketing!

For this application you may well be better off with a hub instead of a switch. These work at wire speeds. If you need to, then you can also plug the 'up' port of the hub into the router.

Alternatively, buy a commercial switch (much more expensive) where the throughput is specified or wait around for a bit. I'm sure it won't be long before AV-enabled domestic switch/routers appear. They'll probably handle multicast packets efficiently too.

Edit There's some here:
http://www.redspan.com/acatalog/Onli...gabit_177.html

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Huh?

thats what Neil said :) or maybe i missed your point :dunce:

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

He said that is correct - I had to look as I was not sure whether they had changed the rules, or what you said was correct. So yes that is what Neil said I was merely clarifying.

I did - Appendix G Specifications - really does not help.
ftp://ftp.linksys.com/international/...v1.1_uk_ug.pdf
but at least I know I can use it in 40deg heat and 85% humidity this summer.

Not a bad price for the Linksys one.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

:rofl:

Don't forget that your 54 mbps wireless is a shared resource. If device A wants to send a packet to device B then A transmits it to the base station (router) and this re-transmits it on to B. Only one station can transmit at a time and, unless it directly involves the router, each packet is transmitted twice. With a wired network you can have 100 mbps in each direction down each cable all at the same time - an enormous increase in bandwidth.

Yes - I was surprised myself!

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

I was looking at the wired bit, can I send at 100Mbs from ether port 1 to ether port 4? I got the impression from your post 15 that would not be the case. To increase the bandwidth of the wireless, I suppose you could put two WAPs on the network?

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

The figure that I quoted above is for the SMC router that I bought perhaps two years ago. I guess that they may well be faster now but, since Linksys are notably quiet about it, I doubt that you will see anything like wire speeds.
I think this is effectively what Atheros have done with their 108Mbps Super G chipset.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

:eek:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=815487 :erm:

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Altis - shifting some large files around last night (outlook.pst), I have a rough answer on the Linksys boxes. The 200Mb Outlook.pst took 10 mins to move from the laptop to desktop wirelessly at 11Mbs. It took 2 minutes to move from desktop to desktop (wired), thus Linksys routers operate at about 50-60Mbs. Not bad really - reasonable to call it 10/100 I guess.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Well I use a shuttle X-PC for my living room.
AMD Duron 1.1Ghz
Shuttle X-PC SN41G2 (Nforce2 Chipset with integrated IGP)
2X128MB PC2700 RAM from Crucial
An old UDMA2 3.2GB hdd
16X slot loading Pioneer DVD-ROM
D-Link DWL-G520 Wireless G Network card
And an ATi RF Remote Wonder to control it all

If you can scrounge up some second hand parts (hdd, cpu, DVD) like I did, you could build the lot for about £200, if you cant scrounge up these parts that will bring your total upto about £300.

All it takes is a little customisation to windows XP (Font sizes etc) and its very usable on a TV.

EDIT: heres a picture if anybodys interested....
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zrbyte/...icture(27).jpg

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

200 megabytes = 1600 megabits
10 minutes = 600 seconds
2 minutes = 120 seconds

So, by my calcs:
wireless transfer rate = 1600 / 600 = 2.6 megabits per second
wired transfer rate = 1600 / 120 = 13.3 megabits per second

I think that's the same sort of speeds as I'm seeing - I'll check tomorrow.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Sounds like some better math than mine. Probably need to add the TCPIP overhead to get the actual data tfr rate, rather than the data transferred rate, but the latter is more useful in real life.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

7 mins = 420 seconds

682 MegaBytes = 5456 megabits

5456 / 420 = 12.99 megabits per second

I used a DivX compressed .avi movie for the test since this is probably the most common file anybody would want to move accross a media PC's connection.

These are the speeds of my wireless network, as you can see it is bareley slower than the wired network in your example and I was having interferrence problems (No functional problem it just slows the transmission) this was probably due to my room feeling like a sauna at the moment :D

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

That would be a 54g network then?

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Yes, sorry forgot to state that.
Though I thought people would have assumed that anyway since I listed my specs in my previous post.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

For reference: the maximum data rate off a video DVD is 10.08 megabits per second.

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

just saw this thread and thought i'd give you some advice.. I have a MCE machine and it is the dogs but has limitations in the PAL \ European circuit that the US with their HDTVs don't have.

For Divx \ MP3s photos etc the best bet is to copy the data onto the machine and then watch it hooked up to the TV rather than trying to stream this. I transferred all my data onto the MCE machine and it worked fine onto the TV..

Not the MCE machine doesn't have a scart connection so you have to convert the scart RGB signal into an s-video signal and feed that into MCE. This downgrades the picture quality and was at a standard i wasn't happy with so gave up with the pvr stuff ( i./e pasuing live TV, setting up schedules etc)

Also not the NTL boxes use IrDR for the remote and the MCE remote uses RC5 which aren't compatable.. You will need to get a convertor from www.redremote.co.uk.

I've built my own system with a MSDN download.. Not sure if this is still available.. i've got 1GB of ram and a Athon Xp 2800+ chip and 200 GB HDD.. with a hauppage 250 TV card and a Geforce FX 5200 graphics card..

mce is XP with the MCE added on... it is great but found in the EU with our TV setup the input of the TV signal was dissappointing..

you can checkout www.thegreenbutton.com and www.xpmce.com for more info..

if you want any more info let me know..

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

Looks like both are working at their maximum throughput (with overhead) then.

54b - 2.6Mbs
54g - 12.99Mbs

2.6*5 (5 times faster) = 13

But if your graphics card is RGB capable you can build a whatever socket it is to SCART cable. This is a limitation of your graphics card, not the scart socket requirement?

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

the TV signal needs to be put into the TV card which so far only take s-video or RF.. never found any that have any better inputs than this.. the graphics card does the output to the TV.. never had a problem with the output and divx, mpeg II and IV was fine but the TV side the signal was downgraded and i wasn't happy with this.. In the US with HDTV they don't have any problems with any downgraded signals..

Re: Media Centre PCs
 

This morning I've been doing lots of backing up from a variety of machines to one server. It has a 1GHz Athlon and a 15Krpm SCSI drive. The server has an Allied Telesyn TX-2700 NIC (AMD chipset) and all the workstations have TX-2500s (Realtek chipset). The network is wired and runs at 100mbps through an SMC Barricade switch/router. The transfer rates were as follows:

1) 1GHz Duron, IDE HDD: 581,804,416 bytes in 93 sec = 50 mbps
2) 233MHz Cyrix, IDE HDD: 421,238,016 bytes in 106 sec = 32 mbps
3) 1GHz Athlon, 15K SCSI HDD: 335,179,136 bytes in 43 sec = 62 mbps
4) 500MHz K6/2, IDE HDD: 717,455,616 bytes in 135 sec = 42 mbps
5) 1GHz Athlon, IDE HDD: 439,887,104 bytes in 58 sec = 61 mbps

(mbps = megabit per second)

Backups were compressed to a single file and then copied over to the server. Timings were taken from pressing control-v 'til the copy box disappeared. There was no other network activity. Unfortunately, the Cyrix was also 'playing' a CD drive cleaner at the time.