Building an HTPC

1. I'm considering building an HTPC soon and was hoping some people here may have some advice.

   My requirements are currently:

   • Device must use very little power
   • Device must be quiet (Pref fanless)
   • Device must boot/wake up quickly
   • Device must be capable of acting as a NAS with ~ 2TB of storage

   The above list makes no assumptions about operating system or Media Center software. I'm used to Windows Media Center as I currently use my 360 as an extender however I'd be interested in hearing opinions on XBMC as well. Especially if you have experience with training non-techy family members how to use them.

   The device will also be used as a central media server for all the computers in our house. I considered plunking down for a separate NAS but came to the conclusion that if I'm going to build a PC to stream media from the NAS I may as well save some money and make the PC the media server.

   Blu Ray playback would be desirable but isn't a requirement as I don't yet have any Blu Ray discs and only bought HD-DVD movies because they were going for less than regular DVDs at the time.

   Oh and the device will be outputting to a 32" Sony Bravia KDL32W5500U so full 1080p is a must.

   
   

   #

   RobHale
   

   Reputation:21

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

2. I recommend an Atom CPU with the NVidia Ion GPU. I built an Atom-based server last year. I swapped a chipset fan for a slower, quieter fan and upgraded the stock case fans. My server is quiet and does everything I want.

   As for software, stick with what you know.

   
   

   #

   killroy1971
   

   Reputation:7

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

3. I was just looking at the Zotac boards the come with the Atom N330 and Ion chipset and it looks ideal for purpose and cheap.

   Sadly I'd quite like to get one of these as the case: Origen AE - M10 which are decidedly not cheap.

   They are very swish however. I like the aesthetic of just having a power button and a slot for DVD's and that's pretty much it.

   
   

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   RobHale
   

   Reputation:21

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

4. The upside to building your own is definitely the optical drive. You can start with a slot loading DVD burner and later upgrade to a Blue-Ray drive. Having the optical drive also eliminates another box (the DVD player) from the media cabinet.

   If somebody made a solid inexpensive enclosure that would be nice. That Origen AE - M10 is a bit pricey for me.

   
   

   #

   Phynaeusclaw
   

   Reputation:5

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

5. I may have found an even nicer case Nexus Psile

   One of those with a Zotac board and a 1TB HDD would work and be relatively cost effective.

   
   

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   RobHale
   

   Reputation:21

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

6. Well my investigations have led me to a spec that I think will result in a decent HTPC build

   Zotac ION-ITX-A Wi-Fi Dual Core 1.6GHz Atom N330 Mini-ITX DC Motherboard	£175.00
   Nexus Psile Case & DVD Writer - Black Aluminum with Black Cover			£163.00
   SATA Optical Adapter and Molex Splitter Cable					£ 18.00
   2x2GB DDR2 800 PC6400 SDRAM for JNC62K and Socket LGA775 Boards			£ 92.00
   1TB Samsung HD103UJ 3.5" SATA HDD						£  0.00
   Logitech diNovo Mini Wireless Keyboard						£ 84.00
   Total (without Shipping) 							£532.00

   The HDD is free because it's already sitting in my gaming PC and doing duty as a media drive anyway.

   I intend to try out XBMC Live but I have a suspicion that I'll end up going with Windows 7 64-bit booting into WMC in the end.

   
   

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   RobHale
   

   Reputation:21

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

7. I suspect that once you try out XBMC (especially the latest stable build with the new skin), you'll find that WMC is severely lacking.

   If you are in America though, it seems that the new version of Boxee might actually be the way to go. Its additional services for TV streaming and social media seem quite impressive.

   
   

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   alexward1981
   

   Reputation:101

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

8. I have been trying out XBMC on my gaming PC but had some difficulty setting it up to read my movie library (I use DVD Shrink to rip my movies to HDD then catalogue them with MyMovies).

   Currently I'm lucky if XBMC picks up my DVD collection at all and it doesn't seem to be doing a great job at allowig me to sort through them by genre. It certainly has a steeper learning curve than WMC in that respect.

   
   

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   RobHale
   

   Reputation:21

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

9. Yeah I agree with that... Unfortunately one place XBMC can be a pain is that it needs to have quite strict naming conventions for the scrapers (the software which cataloges your files into libraries) to find your files.

   I recommend 2 applications to help with this.

   The Renamer - It is quite good at working out which files are which are renaming them to something more media centre friendly (its not perfect but for the most part it should work) The site makes it seem like its just for TV shows but there is a movie mode as well. I've never used the movie part however because of:

   Ember Media Manager is brilliant, its got its own scraper and its a bit better at getting your movies scraped en masse if they are not prefectly named.

   
   

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   alexward1981
   

   Reputation:101

   Posted 7 months ago

   
   

10. That's some excellent software there. Especially The Renamer. Been looking for something like that for ages with no luck.

    
    

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    RobHale
    

    Reputation:21

    Posted 7 months ago

    
    

11. Its really great, I was so impressed when I found it... I'd been using one previously which was terrible... it would move files to random locations and name them badly or go crazy and start renaming files which were not even videos. Then I found this one and its more-or-less perfect.

    
    

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    alexward1981
    

    Reputation:101

    Posted 7 months ago