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Looking for a new HTPC setup
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Loading ...I love my HTPC, which I build over 5 years ago. Much to my surprise it is still very capable of playing full HD and to some extend even 3D movies. But alas it is time to start thinking about a new smaller setup. Right now I have the Antec Fusion case with a mATX board in it. Which served well over the years.
Unfortunately the design of the mATX in combination with my ATX does not allow me to use the SATA ports properly (they are sorta sticking out to the side and into the case). So the hunt is on again for a new HTPC setup. Well not everything has to be brand new, I have a working digital tuner card as well as a relatively new graphics card for hardware acceleration. So this was my current setup, which I loved:
- Antec Fusion V2 case
- Gigabyte MA69GM-S2H motherboard, a bit old but working (could use replacing maybe?)
- AMD Athlon XP2 6000+
- Asus EAH5750 Formula
- 6 GB Dual channel DDR3 memory
- Harmony Remote
- SATA 160 GB Samsung HD
- FloppyDTV digital tuner card
- LG Blu-Ray player
So I’m not looking for anything fancy any more. I will be moving at least the FloppyDTV an LG Blu-ray player over to the new case. And preferably the graphics card unless I can find an onboard one with equal performance and HD decoding skills. So what are my new requirements:
- The case has to be smaller then my current one (I like the Fusion but it is to big for my likings)
- The system has to be as quite as possible (so minimal fans or big fans moving at low speed)
- It has to have an IR port to receive the Harmony signal
I’m sorta already stuck, and I’m only looking for a new case so far. Am I the only one looking for a small case for a HTPC that is at least a bit stylish, that does not need to have a display.
MediaPortal 1.0 a serious improvement
In a recent post I did I talked a little about how to install your HTPC (Home theater PC). Well so far I have been using MediaPortal 0.2 for watching TV and listening music. Though this is not completely true, I initialy started using Microsoft Media Center.
But because the channel changing is very poor and the digital TV support made me cry 
I decided to try out Media Portal. The change only brought me good fortune. I could finally change channels they way I liked. Being able to see which show was running. And even better have a good TV Guide.
I do have to admit that the first version I used had a few problems:
- Setting up the channels was hell. It took me over 2 hours to build a full channel list. Mainly because there was no dvb file for my region, so I had to create one manually. And once I completed a scan it only found 10 channels. So I had to rescan over and over and over and……
- The damn thing kept crashing if I left it on over night in TV mode, real bummer since I don’t turn of the HTPC.
- Media Portal seems to be unable to record anything if the program is closed, but if left open it crashes.
Luckely for me a new version was released not that long ago. Hoping some problems might disapear I downloaded and installed. Not wanting to do the pain in the ass scanning again I first saved the channel list to an XML file.
It all installed nicely, not much fuss and pretty quick. But when I tried to import the channel list I got really f**ked. The new version did not want to import the channel list. I was really worried that the scanning would take forever again. I was in for a big surprise when I found that I could start a channel scan and at the same time organise them the way I wanted. All within 10 minutes, so a big improvement.
Another big surprise was that the recording happened dispite Media portal being closed. And even better even if I didn’t close it the program no longer crashed after being open for the whole night.
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HTPC up and running
After my first message about building a HTPC it’s gotten a bit quiet about the project. Well no more, I recentely finnished building and installing the HTPC. And it’s working like a charm, for the most part that is.
In the last message I described which hardware I picked for the HTPC. More in detail I gave details about the CPU, motherboard and casing I choose. Well let me say that I made the right choices. The cpu holds enoug power to do basically any job. The casing is as silent as hell and the motherboard has got everything you could ever need on board. (Not much in gaming but I didn’t choose it for that)
