Media Center V+ replacement

[ShadowTD]

This has been a long standing idea that I've finally got in gear over. I very rarely watch subscription channels but really like BBC HD. I decided to build a Windows 7 TV Server and watch it through my Xbox. Popped out yesterday and lashed £250 on:

Pentium D E5200 (basically a c2duo with slightly less cache)
Gigabyte GeForce 7100/630 MicroATX motherboard
XFX GeForce 9600GT
2GB Kingston RAM
Qube case

I'm using an old Sony DVD-RW and 80gb PATA HDD I had lying around for the time being. Tuners are a Hauppauge WinTV DVB Stick and a Nova HD-S2. I'll be adding another DVB Stick at some point.

Thoughts:

• God these 775 coolers are horrible to install. There's a nasty bow in the board that looks horrible, but I swear I'm doing it right!
• Damn. No 6-pin power connector for the graphics card. Running with on board for the time being which is fine apart from HD content.
• I did want a board with a 9300 but there were non in. I was persuaded by the seller that the motherboard would work with GeForce Boost/Hybrid SLA and the 9600 would run through the on-board HDMI connector. I can't try this yet, but there's no mention in the MB manual and I think he might have been wrong.
• The system's a lot quieter than I thought it would be.
• My word the GUI for Media Center on Win7 is sexy.
• I need to sit here and manually 'merge' the DVB-S and DVB-T channels using the 10-foot interface for MCE. This will Take Some Time.
• Not sure if the PATA hard drive is a bottleneck. MCE seems to become rather unresponsive when things are recording.

OK, there's no premium content, but the usability is excellent and oh the shinyness!

I'll post up again as I progress, or if anyone has any questions.

[ShadowTD]

Update:

Adaptor cable for the graphics card arrived last night. Experience index scores went up from 3.6 to 5.9! BBC HD is now glass-smooth, and the MCE UI is also a bit slicker with no sign of tearing. Exhaust temp only appears to have gone up by about 2°.

[MickW]

Originally Posted by ShadowTD

Thoughts:

• My word the GUI for Media Center on Win7 is sexy.

That is until you see MediaPortal... and the StreamedMP skin + Moving Pictures plugin and you may turn to the *dark* side lol!

Good to hear another person going down the HTPC route, just remember it's addictive!

Keep us updated on your progress and post some pics of your setup.

I need to write up my setup and post it online...

[jamiefrost]

Haven't looked at that skin for Mediaportal, but functioality wise it's far better than Windows Media Centre

JJ

your big mistake was not buying an ATI gfx card as these have their own HD Audio chip

I built mine recently

AMD 7750 dual core cpu
2 gig ram
ATI 3850 gfx
2 hdds

[ShadowTD]

Yeah, I started with the plan of getting a Geforce 9300 motherboard, but non were available. I stuck with Nvidia just in case I ever wanted to put MythTV on there, as the Nvidia Linux drivers are quite a bit better than ATI. I'm not too fussed about running an optical cable as well and it works fine with 5.1.

Media Center is pretty much the only option at the moment. This machine lives in the loft and will only be used to watch live stuff on BBC HD fairly occasionally. The main point is the two 360's in the living room and the bedroom (potential for a 3rd in the dining room) so all the recorded content is centralised.

As soon as Sage or GB-PVR offer extenders I can get for £130 I'll be all over them like a rash. I know the Xbox is a little noisy but I've learned to live with it.

[ShadowTD]

Update:

I've pretty much sorted power saving now. I've set it up to only wake on a magic packet which the Xbox sends no problem to wake the machine from sleep, and it wakes up a few minutes before recordings start, does the business and shuts down. If I want to RDP in from my Macbook Pro, I've got a little WOL utility that disturbs its slumber.

I've had a few DVB-T recordings fail but I think this is to do with the drivers. I'll have a new HDD in a fortnight so I'll do a complete rebuild, put the latest drivers on there and install the second stick which was only £16 from Amazon.

It takes longer to boot than V+ but it seems to be worth it. I'm finding loads more movies to watch using the Movies function in the MCE interface.

[ShadowTD]

Update:


Failed DVB-T recordings may have been resolved with new drivers for both the stick and the motherboard. Seems faster on channel changes as well. Rapidly running out of space on the 80gb that's in there at the moment - roll on my new 1TB disk.

[ShadowTD]

I've been running with this machine for a month now. I've still not purchased a bigger drive, or added the second DVB-T tuner or rebuilt it. But I fire it up most days to watch downloaded content that the Xbox can't handle on its own. As an experiment, I left it on watch Virgin 1 the other day, and then nicked off upstairs leaving the wife to drive it. No problems were reported and I didn't get cat food in my sammidges the next day, so I think we're on to a winner.