The HTPC / Windows 7 Chronicles: You Asked, We Answer!

[cangelini]

As far as I can tell, Crom, it's still unencrypted QAM-only. I've also pulled the cable box, though, and gone online content-only with this machine.

 

[tid01217]

If you are going to connect to an external audio receiver, why not use optical audio rather than worry about carrying audio over HDMI?

 

[Ryun]

It's a shame I didn't understand much about that article. I'm not really an A/V guy, but it certainly peeked my interest. Dunno about accuracy but it sounds like you did your research Cangelini. Great read (actually, reads since I just read the last one as well).

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]tid01217[/nom]If you are going to connect to an external audio receiver, why not use optical audio rather than worry about carrying audio over HDMI?[/citation]

The optical connection doesn't support the rights management functionality enabled by HDMI, so while you can do Dolby Digital/DTS over your TOSLINK port, you aren't able to do lossless codecs--and that's why I worry about carrying audio over HDMI =)

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Ryun[/nom]It's a shame I didn't understand much about that article. I'm not really an A/V guy, but it certainly peeked my interest. Dunno about accuracy but it sounds like you did your research Cangelini. Great read (actually, reads since I just read the last one as well).[/citation]

Keep reading about it Ryun, and check out avsforum.com--lots of smart guys over there, too. It's tons of fun once you start getting involved!!

 

[acecombat]

For those (like me) who own a Windows Mobile based device (And hate apples) there is a freeware app available that does the same thing as on the touch demonstrated. The app is called 'GRemote' and looks fairly similar to the one demonstrated on the touch, and also features accelerometer support. That's what I am currently using because of line of sight issues

 

[doomtomb]

$250 for an ipod touch to use as a remote is a little pricey don't you think?

 

[cmarkham]

I can game and watch HDCP Blu-Ray on the same system. The trick is using two-different video cards that you can switch between easily. nVidia's Hybrid SLI is made for this.

I'm using an Asus M3N-HT MB that supports Phenom (AM2+, not AM3) and Hybrid SLI. I use a 9800GTX for gaming and with a click on a tray icon switch to the on-motherboard 8k series chip which supports nVidia's PureVideo decoder. This disables the MSI PCI video card, so the system goes fanless for video playback. The MB has HDMI out, and I use the on-board S/PDIF for optical out to my Sony HT receiver. You can't bridge the audio as processing delays make for "echo" effects running both at the same time. The Vista 64 drivers were pretty rough, but Win7RC is much better, but not perfect. The ADI AD1988B is "8 channel", but not really in the same league as a dedicated sound system. If there is a future upgrade for this system, its there.

There are more egregious faults, but not with the hardware. I'd love to live in Windows Media Center all the time, but there's no easy way to add app shortcuts or even website shortcuts. Why can't I add a Hulu button? I have to wait for M$ and Netflix$ to come to terms to offer a Watch Now within WMC?

The networking stack is a little uneven, still (may be RC). From Win Media Player I can see my NAS media server volumes but I can't get to the same content from within WMC. That's just...dumb.

I'm investigating programmatic access to the Hybrid SLI switchover function. Then I could tie that to launching my Blu-Ray software player and get true one-click from gaming to video and vice-versa. I'll let you know.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]doomtomb[/nom]$250 for an ipod touch to use as a remote is a little pricey don't you think?[/citation]

Not if you're one of the millions of people who already own an iPhone or Touch. You could also say $275 for a Harmony remote is a little pricey ;-)

 

[amdfangirl]

I sooo wish the 880G would come out faster...

mmm... UVD 2...

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]Article[/nom]Shame on such a poorly-implemented rights management system for imposing itself on consumers and then having the gall to fail outright. [/citation]
Probably the best piece of the story in general.

Chris when you get to part 4, can you revisit the audio hardware by trying to dig up alternatives for internal amplifiers? I wouldn't mind using my old am2 board with a real amp as pci express card. I would only require working 5.1 sound for dvd playback, as I don't dabble in blueray anyway.

 

[Guest]

I have the HIS Dual-slot Cooler ATI 4670 card. I used it to replace my previous GF 7600 passive cooled card. Even when playing games, this card is near silent... I might just barely hear it and my case is only 2 feet away on top of my desk. Silence is golden.

Of course the "trick" is having to slot-spaces for this card. But the great thing about this design, especially for a limited HTPC case is that it DOESN'T dump all that GPU heat into the PC case! It blows it out the back.

I went from passive-cooled to dual-slot because while I got 0db with a fanless card, the heat inside the case was a problem. And turning the case fans RPMs up only meant MORE NOISE.

BTW, theres even a fanless 4850 card.

 

[hixbot]

If you are willing to bypass AACS encryption, why all the fuss over PAP? Just use a graphics platform with support for 7.1 LPCM at 24bit 96khz over HDMI, (ION, HD4xxx etc). You can enjoy the full quality HD audio since you made PAP irrelevant. Just rip the blu-ray and make a lossless encode of the audio into FLAC. Too easy.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]hixbot[/nom]If you are willing to bypass AACS encryption, why all the fuss over PAP? Just use a graphics platform with support for 7.1 LPCM at 24bit 96khz over HDMI, (ION, HD4xxx etc). You can enjoy the full quality HD audio since you made PAP irrelevant. Just rip the blu-ray and make a lossless encode of the audio into FLAC. Too easy.[/citation]

You shouldn't have to "break the law" to get this working properly, IMO.

 

[cablecompaniessuck]

The main fact is that all cable companies are aggressively pushing encrypted, digital signal transmissions and phasing out analog transmissions and the customer doesn't have a choice. Given the fact that there are no readily available (shrink-wrapped) DCTs (Digital Cable Tuners) means that HTPCs for streamed/live content from your cable providers will go the way of the passenger pigeon as they turn down their analog transmissions this year. I have been battling Comcast as they keep dropping the analog broadcasts of the various channels above 30. They will provide me with a CableCARD (the Motorola M-CARD, a PCMCIA card that fits into a DCT like an OCUR box), but they won't provide the OCUR box or any other device that would make decrypting the digital signal possible. The "ATI-TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner" appears to be the only device out there ever manufactured for this purpose, but only as an OEM solution and it isn't available through any retailer. At the speed at which the cable companies are moving, they will kill the TV functionality of System 7 Media Center. I am seriously thinking about dumping my cable company because their mantra is screw the customer and raise the rates every couple of months.

 

[p05esto]

My god that looks complicated...think I'll just buy regular parts from Best Buy, lol. I will hook up a pc so I can stream a Winamp playlist to my receiver and hook up the HDTV to the PC so I can watch copied, regular DVD movies compressed with DIVX (torrent movies).

Obviously, all the fancy audio, great video etc will be lost but it sure will be simple. For quality HD on the occassional action movie I love I'll simply buy the disc and play it that way to get the "full" effect. Farting around with all this looks like frustration and the kind of setup no-one in my house would be able to use but me.

Don't flame me, I know the point of the article isn't about easy...it's about "doing it", a mission. I get that completely. Just saying for me this is far to much trouble. Give this a few years and there will be better cards and plug-in PC parts to make this all work as you want. We're close, but just too early and not enough consumer demand.

 

[hixbot]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]You shouldn't have to "break the law" to get this working properly, IMO.[/citation]

I agree completely agree. The DRM circumstances are awful with HTPCs. HDCP and AACS have got to go, they only enrage the paying customers. and for what? It's not stopping people from copying blurays, its only making playback of legitimately bought disks an incredible hassle.

I just noticed you seem to be bypassing AACS in the end anyways. No need for PAP, and Bitstreaming with the Xonar, if you can just decrypt the audio stream, and send full quality LPCM. With Windows 7, I think PAP will never work perfectly.

 

[doctor tony]

Air Mouse is on sale in the iTUNES App Store: $1.99.

 

[Guest]

This is a very interesting article. I built my first HTPC last December. Since that time I have spent a long time figuring out the best way to archive and play DVD's on the system. I tried My Movies 2 for a long time but found that it didn't quite work how I hoped. I originally had everything stored on the drive in VIDEO_TS folders. I recently built a core i7 machine with Windows 7 and decided to transcode the video to x264 using .mkv container. I wanted something that could handle multiple audio streams and subtitles. It required changing some things in the Vista registry and the registry in Windows 7 plus adding some codecs from media player home cinema. It works quite well. There are certainly quirks. Building a HTPC is not without it flaws. This is most frustrating with my family who is not nearly as computer savvy as I am. Overall everyone loves it. We use an air antenna so recording shows is extremely simple. Now with HULU Desktop I can run even that with a remote control. There are very few tasks that require a keyboard and mouse.

One of the best things I have done was upgrade from a Athlon X2 to the Phenom II X3 720 and changing from the 780G's HD3200 to a HD4670 1GB. This has made a huge difference in multitasking capabilities. The system is far more seamless than before. The next upgrade will probably be a Blu-Ray player/ DVD Burner. For right now we haven't made the upgrade to Blu-Ray discs.

I think the biggest thing with deciding to go the HTPC route is needs. There is alot of options. For instance, the newest Blu-ray players have gigabit network ability and could possibly handle streamed contest from a NAS or media server. You could use several different device configurations to do what you want done. I think it comes down to what will you use it for. Also important is if you are planning on archiving you movies on a hard disk is compatibility. Will you leave it in .iso or VIDEO_TS, h.264. You will need to make sure that your equipment with be compatible with the formats you use since there is definitely not an industry standard. If you use a Mac Mini for example your needs will be different that if you use a Windows PC. Linux is highly customizable and their are many different distros for specific uses, but configuring can be a massive headache.

Lastly we have a Canon HF100 camcorder and storing the video on the PC allows me to play home movies on the computer without worrying about tons of disks or playback issues. Overall I am very happy with what I built. It is very convenient and don't have to have a million DVD discs to search through. The following is a list of my system and software.

ANTEC VERIS FUSION BLACK W/IMON LCD
ASUS M3A78-EM
GIGABYTE HD4670 1GB
AMD PHENOM II 720
HAUPPAGE HVR-1600
MEDIA CENTER REMOTE
CRUCIAL BALLISTIX 2X2GB
WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR BLACK 750GB

WINDOWS VISTA SP1 64BIT
CYBERLINK POWERDVD9
CYBERLINK POWERDIRECTOR 7
ANYDVD
MEDIA BROWSER
SALAMI MEDIA ORGANIZER
HANDBRAKE
DVDFAB HD DECRYPTOR

 

[cangelini]

Roundhouse--

Indeed, you can stream over Gigabit and get smooth playback. Thanks for the post and feedback!

 

[Guest]

I can't believe you have a separate remote for the PC! I have a single remote for TV, DVD, HTPC, AV Receiver and Cable Box. Logitech Harmony One. What's even better is that I can press one button for each function, for example "Watch TV", "Play DVD" or "HTPC". When I do that, the remote turns on the correct devices for that activity and sets them to the correct inputs. No need to toggle inputs and settings on 5 remotes anymore. My wife loves it!

BTW all the Harmony Remotes use the same settings, but don't be lured by the sexy Harmony 1000 or 1100. That big touchscreen will impress houseguests but I prefer the One for a simple reason: I can use it in the dark, by feel. It's also way easier to use one-handed, like god intended.

Also a note on PSU: Get a fanless one next time. Silverstone makes the fanless Nightjar series in models up to 450w. That's one less source of sound to annoy you. My HTPC only has four 80mm fans. With fan controllers I run these at 80%, giving me almost all the airflow for without audible fan noise. The top 15-20% of fan speed is where fans really start to be annoying.


"Hi I'm new to HDTV or HDPC I'm using the laptop(HP media DV1125 C2D, ATI 4650) to connect to my SONY 32" LCD TV 100MHz motion flow (32W550 just bough it on 04july09) using HDMI cable 1920x1024 Max Res. but the picture/win desktop look ugly and the front in the windows exploere look
ugly too. Q1) how to SET? the best res? and Q2) should I use HDMI or PC-input (D-Sub 15 pin) to connect? DVD player connected to watch movie look great. HELP... some one?"

I think you mean 1920x1080. Anyway it depends very much on the hardware at both ends. I have tried both 15-pin VGA and HDMI from my HTPC to my LCD TV. VGA looks great and HDMI is horrible, not at all sharp and the brightness and contrast are all over the place, varying across the display. In other words, there is no "correct" answer. You'll simply have to try. HDMI does not, per se, give you perfect picture quality. It can do no more than relay the signal and if the signal is crap or if you TV doesn't "like" the signal your picture will look bad. In fact many home theater professionals work with both component and HDMI, and say that which one has the best picture may be hard to know until you connect it all up.

 

[Guest]

Enjoyed the article, despite not having read the first one.

If you enjoy building/improving your HTPC, then you really owe it to yourself to try mediaportal. i used to use Vista MC. And in all honesty, Mediaportal puts it to shame, especially if you have a collection of encoded media files. I've found it to be more stable as well. Using StreamedMP skin, it looks 100 times better than VMC as well. I've actually found it to be more stable than VMC as well, oddly enough.

integrates very well with TMT3 for blu ray if you have the right plug in.

does take a bit more work to get everything sorted, but i have found it to be fantastic. would love to see you guys try it with a system build in the future. good luck with the perfect htpc, though in an industry where everything changes constantly im not to sure such a thing exists

 

[Guest]

Hi.
thx for article..
as gnicko i also use Mediaportal for playing my media files and i find it very very good in this.
It will be nice if you will try it in your next build...

 

[Guest]

An alternative to Mediaportal is Mediabrowser. Looks amazing. If you also use Media Center Master to fetch metadata, the names project to get all the actor/crew pics and finally Stark Covers to make those covers look shiny and 3d, it blows people's minds.

 

[Guest]

http://www.hisdigital.com/us/product2-430.shtml

Does this passively cooled 4670 fit into your setup? Would probably be the ideal discrete card if it does...