Home theater PC components

Tscjcampbell

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Jan 28, 2014
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Hello,
It's my first time building a PC, and I have a few questions. My intended immediate use will be to upload and store all of my pictures and videos, along with some light web browsing. But in the future I would like to be able to watch and record cable tv, with the use of a internal tv tuner card. This will be a home theater of sorts, with the monitor being my 47" LCD TV in my living room. My question is what motherboard, CPU, and Graphics card would be best. Any help would be awesome!
Thanks Tim
 
When designing the HTPC, you need to define what you want to record and how many tuners. There is basic cable (same as over the air signals, channels 2-99), digital cable (channels 100 - 9999 - may go higher) and true over the air. Digital cable will require a digital tuner (Hauppauge, Ceton and Silicon Dust make them), and will come in 2-4 tuner varieties. External tuners will reduce the amount of internal heat significantly (they run hot!).

As a rule of thumb, you should consider 1 processing core/thread, 2GB RAM and 90GB HDD for operating system. Add 1 processing core/thread and 1.5GB RAM for each HD stream. Most systems 1TB - 2TB of recording space is enough for standard HD TV viewing.

Also, if you go the digital cable route, Windows Media Center is the only way to watch & record all of the channels.

I would suggest AMD CPU/Mobo combo - onboard grahpics would be fine for your application. Here is an example of a build I recommended earlier:

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2J3OL
 
Basic cable, depending upon your cable company, may only be SD channels - I have TWC, and to get any of the HD channels, you have to have a cable box or cable card. Blurry pictures shouldn't be a problem with any tuner using standard cable - although HD gives a tremendous difference in picture quality/clarity.
 

Tscjcampbell

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Jan 28, 2014
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I live in upstate ny, and I also have twc. Currently I have a hd dvr with all the hd channels. But between the box fee, remote fee, and the cable service, I thought I'd be better off adding a tv tuner to my computer I'm going to build any way and just due away with the box and remote all together.
 
I purchased the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun - 3 tuner network tuner (TWC requires a cisco switched digital video adapter which is provided free of charge). Ceton has a 4-tuner version of the tuner as well. With XBox360s setup as extenders, you get their "whole home DVR" experience, for $1.50 (cost of the monthly rental of the cable card).

It does take a bit of work to get the network setup (get an unmanaged network switch for the HTPC and tuner), but once you have it setup - it works great.

My complaints? I can't watch on-demand (Netflix works), pay-per-view requires calling TWC to watch, and their SDV adapter requires a reboot on occasion (less than I had to reboot the cable boxes).

The benefits? I reduced my cable bill by about $60 (two DVRs), I have unlimited recording space (just add a HDD to the computer if you need more), and less headaches with their boxes (constant networking issues with their whole home DVR setup).

Windows Media Center has glitches - but compared to saving $60 per month and not dealing with TWC boxes, I am glad I made the switch.
 

Tscjcampbell

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Jan 28, 2014
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Now for the sake of saving money and only having one piece of equipment. if a got a digital tuner like the one you have, would it work with basic cable? That way I could go with basic cable then upgrade to digital if I want to, and only need to buy one device.
 

bjaminnyc

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Jun 17, 2011
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TWC boxes are absolutely terrible. Although the DVR functionality of a cable company set-top is superior unfortunately. There is a cost benefit once you acquire the necessary hardware but a WMC setup with extenders does significantly increase complexity and a detriment to reliability.

I was fired up for a WMC setup but have ultimately abandoned the full house goal. Microsoft seems to have completely dropped WMC and cable card support development. The extenders flat wont work with Windows 8. Running multiple HTPCs is ideal but does cause DVR complications if your cable company flags your recordings as protected content which I believe TWC does. That means the DVR recordings are only available on the specific HTPC that set the program to record. I have FIOS they don't flag non-premium content. Another issue with the WMC/DVR is loss of buffering if you change the channel, or the inability to buffer multiple channels without recording.

Even with the negatives a cable card tuner is a great addition to any home network. I love having sports or the news on one of my monitors while working. It is unfortunate the WMC Extender landscape never really developed, conceptually it could have been far superior to the cable company's solutions. I still would recommend a digital cable card tuner, but it does come with drawbacks.

Oh ya and MCE Buddy is great for catching up on a show via a tablet or whatever. Removes commercials and transcodes your recordings to .mp4 for portability.
 
Windows 8 - while it is a lot better for navigation with a remote as compared to Windows 7, has big issues with WMC. Windows 7 is fairly stable, but it only buffers the channel you are viewing, so when you switch channels, you can't back up like you can with the cable boxes. It does do a live buffer - default is set to 30 minutes, you can change that to what ever you like....I updated mine to an hour and 5 minutes.

You can use the HDHR-3 with basic cable - however, you still need the cable card to tune the stations and the SDV adapter. In Austin, TX they have a few of the lower tiered stations that will show HD (channels 99 and under).

Make sure they remove DVR charges from your bill - they tried to keep billing me....

 

Tscjcampbell

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After a little more resource I have decided to go with windows 7, and infinitv 4 for the tuner. I have no need extend it across my network, just my living room tv. Plus with that tuner I can record 3 shows and watch a 4th at the same time! Way better than my current cable dvr box.
 

bjaminnyc

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Can't go wrong with those choices and you'll be happy. Although it may be worth reconsidering the HDHomerun Prime. You might not see the immediate need to stream across the network but it sure is nice to be able to watch live TV on a portable device like an iPad or laptop when someone/something else is occupying the main TV. In addition you'll be able to access the tuner on a MAC. It is of course only 3 vs the 4 tuners, but at $99 now it is without question a steal.
 

Tscjcampbell

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Jan 28, 2014
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I liked the idea of the networking ability of the hd home run prime, but I was leaning more to a wired system to try and reduce any lag time or buffering issues. I have a apple airport extreme and it does great at streaming movies and you tube videos, but I don't know how it would handle the load of streaming 3 different live tv broadcasts.
 
The Ceton tuner can be shared in two ways - first, using extenders such as the XBox360 or Ceton Echo or you can utilize Ceton's software to dedicate a tuner to another PC. I did a lot of research between the SiliconDust HDHomerun Prime vs. the Ceton Infinitv4 (looked at the PCI card and USB). Both the Ceton and SiliconDust have their advantages and disadvantages - there isn't the "perfect" solution.

The Ceton has 4 tuners, which is obviously an advantage. Utilizing USB or PCI reduces the bandwidth requirements of your network. The USB has an advantage in that the heat generated by the device is external, and it doesn't consume power from the power supply of the computer. The PCI gives the advantage of a cleaner install - as it is all in the case of the computer.

SiliconDust excels in the fact that any PC can use any tuner at anytime, as long as another device isn't using it. Being networked, it isn't tied to a single computer. They have stated they are coming out with the 4-tuner version....but we are still waiting.

The choice for me came down to a perceived fewer problems (this may be due to more users having the Ceton product), and the ability to share.

Both are excellent products - and my belief is that 99% of the problems out there are related to Windows Media Center and/or the cable company.