hi all,
I'm looking at putting together my first htpc and just wondering if anyone has one that could make some recommendations.
I'll be looking at a haswell chip but open to amd if it's the better option. I don't care about gaming on it, just pure media centre. Should I be looking at a micro atx board or a full atx board and any suggestion on case?
Lastly, if I was to go with Intel is it worth looking in an i5 or is an i3 more that enough, I'll be aiming to use the integrated GPU.
you could always look at the android sticks and xbmc, or even the raspberry pi runs pretty well nowadays (i have not used one personally, I keep meaning to find my pi, but keep forgetting)
If all you want is a HTPC, if you need more then fair enough
ragnarus wrote:
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
I've heard about them and I'm sure they would work well but I'm going to be sticking with a windows based machine for the blu ray drive and I like the idea that I can always upgrade the hard ware and software easily.
so with that in mind...any suggestions. I think the big question here is CPU and case, I can work backwards from there but just wondering if the i3 would be just as good as an i5 for this
I have started to look into them, was just hoping someone may have some first hand knowledge. I was an amd fan but they lost me the last couple of years and it's like I'm scared to go back. sounds silly but it's like I need some reassurance that it will do the job. I know the igpu is better so it's the logical choice.
I'll have a further look, any difference with a8 or a10? I want to try to run it with low power so was starting to look at the t model haswells but they are hard to find. I prefer to buy in store due to warranty but luckily my local stores are as cheap as any online store.
Any low power CPU will be enough nowadays. An i3 will be fine.
My HTPC is now going on 4 or 5 years old, with a trusty old E7200 in there, that still runs thing just fine. The motherboard does have a GF9300 on-board, so that offloads the video decoding, but newer CPUs with integrated GPUs all have that in there anyway. So an A6 will be mighty fine too.
As for a case: Silverstone Milo for example? Most brands have nice HTPC cases nowadays; Antec has a few nice ones too. My E7200 I stuck in a P5N9300 back then, a similar barebone may be worth exploring too.
reading up on power consumption and it looks like Intel clearly wins out there. if any new CPU is going to do the job then I might stick with Intel purely from a power/heat point of view.
I've been looking at the Silverstone cases, I'll probably get one of these but they all look the bloody same. some don't appear to have a spot for the DVD/blue ray drive so I just have to cautious of that.
i think HTPCs became kinda obsolete last few years because of recent advancements in smart tv tech. when new tvs can play movies in any format imaginable from any media imaginable, or even streamed over network and internet, what's the point of HTPC? playback quality is slightly better on HTPC, but even that is getting rivaled by latest smart tvs.
HTPCs came from the period when x264 .mkv playback was difficult, but right now even phones can playback 1080p x264 mkv silky smooth
I use a Pi for my living room and a 1st gen Acer Revo for the office (when the main machine is off). Both work great, I would suggest you're going a bit OTT with your choice of hardware, more so if you care about power consumption/noise.
The system should be pretty quiet, I could lower the power consumption (and the price) by going to an i3 4130t which is only 35w, but even then the 4340 is only 52w so it's not a major concern.
The speed of the ram plays a big part with the igpu so I wanted the 1866 speed, everything else I cannot really get rid of except maybe switch the mother board but it was the cheapest (decent) board that supported the ram speed.
Although sometimes I think would an xbox one just do everything I need with money left over for something else. My TV doesn't have a digital guide on it so I really want that and to be able to record. I could just get an xbox, set top box and a PVR (if the xbox doesn't already do that)?
i think HTPCs became kinda obsolete last few years because of recent advancements in smart tv tech. when new tvs can play movies in any format imaginable from any media imaginable, or even streamed over network and internet, what's the point of HTPC? playback quality is slightly better on HTPC, but even that is getting rivaled by latest smart tvs.
HTPCs came from the period when x264 .mkv playback was difficult, but right now even phones can playback 1080p x264 mkv silky smooth
An HTPC or something like a Pi still has one thing Smart TVs don't have. Or well, two things: MediaPortal and XBMC. Better interface than any Smart TV I've seen, proper movie and TV libraries, a whole slew of plugins to use just about any video site you can think of, plugins to automatically download subtitles if you want them and so on. And yes, infinite format support. Once H.265 gets used, you can just get that to play back on an HTPC, with Smart TVs you gotta hope the manufacturer gives a fuck and adds it in
And in this case, DeadByDawn is also putting in a TV card, which means that same HTPC can function as a PVR.
@DeadByDawn: the 4330 also has the 4600 graphics, should be another 20 EUR or dollars you can save. The cooler isn't necessary, the stock one that came with a G620 I used a year ago was literally inaudible and that one has a 65W TDP.
PSU is definitely overboard in terms of wattage; if it's silence you're going for, get Seasonic's X-400. That is entirely fanless.
I also don't think you need that kind of RAM to make it play things back fine. But that's one you should check via reviews.
Storage wise it seems this machine is to function as download box at the same time? I've got a separate machine that does the downloading (CouchPotato, Headphones, Sickbeard and Sab), my HTPC strictly streams. I have it running off an old 30 GB Onyx with no additional storage on its own. Everything via network shares.
i think HTPCs became kinda obsolete last few years because of recent advancements in smart tv tech. when new tvs can play movies in any format imaginable from any media imaginable, or even streamed over network and internet, what's the point of HTPC? playback quality is slightly better on HTPC, but even that is getting rivaled by latest smart tvs.
HTPCs came from the period when x264 .mkv playback was difficult, but right now even phones can playback 1080p x264 mkv silky smooth
An HTPC or something like a Pi still has one thing Smart TVs don't have. Or well, two things: MediaPortal and XBMC. Better interface than any Smart TV I've seen, proper movie and TV libraries, a whole slew of plugins to use just about any video site you can think of, plugins to automatically download subtitles if you want them and so on. And yes, infinite format support. Once H.265 gets used, you can just get that to play back on an HTPC, with Smart TVs you gotta hope the manufacturer gives a fuck and adds it in
And in this case, DeadByDawn is also putting in a TV card, which means that same HTPC can function as a PVR.
i didn't claim that HTPC don't hold any advantages, but at this point spending 1000$ on HTPC, or investing that 1000$ in a better smart TV, i would go with latter option. i just don't think HTPC playback features are better than smart tv playback features by 1000$.
No, they're not, but DeadByDawn has to do it from scratch and he wants some storage in there as well. So that adds to the cost. And no Smart TV has PVR functionality
$99 games console based on android that can show 1080p content...
Quote:
Much more than just gaming.
All that 1080p goodness isn’t just for gaming. OUYA brings all your favorite apps to the big screen, streaming shows, movies, and music directly into the living room. We’ve already partnered with Twitch.tv, Crunchyroll, iheartradio, TuneIn, XBMC, Plex and Flixster and are adding more to our list daily.
NEON Advanced SIMD extensions and VFPv3 floating point unit
GPU: Nvidia GeForce ULP @ 520 MHz (12.48 GFLOPS)
Hardware 1080p MPEG-4 AVC/h.264 40 Mbit/s High-Profile, VC1-AP, and DivX 5/6 video decode
Memory (RAM): 1 GiB DDR3-1600 SDRAM (shared for CPU and GPU)
USB ports: 1 USB 2.0, 1 microUSB
Video output: HDMI 1.4; 1080p or 720p resolution.Stereoscopic 3D support.
Audio output: HDMI (ARC), 5.1 or 2.0 channel
Internal storage: 8 GB eMMC flash memory
Networking and Wireless: 10/100 Ethernet (8P8C), 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth LE 4.0
Power consumption: 4.5 watt (gaming), 1 watt (standby)
Power source: 12 volt DC via Coaxial power connector (OD 5.50 mm, ID 2.50 mm, center positive)
Size: 75×75×82 mm (2.95×2.95×3.23 in)
Weight: 300 g (11 oz)
Operating system: Android 4.1 (Jellybean) with custom Ouya launcher.
If you're going the Ouya route, you'd be better served getting one of the Rockchip 3188 quad "Android HDMI Stick" options instead. Cheaper and more capable.
The problem with Android sticks is that XBMC tends to not run well on them as well as WiFi performance being horrible (I've had one - 1m away from an extender on WiFi-N and it was unable to stream 720p). You need very specific hardware to get XBMC running properly; the team behind XBMC are working on a version for Ouya though, so that would still be the better choice then.
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
The problem with Android sticks is that XBMC tends to not run well on them as well as WiFi performance being horrible (I've had one - 1m away from an extender on WiFi-N and it was unable to stream 720p). You need very specific hardware to get XBMC running properly; the team behind XBMC are working on a version for Ouya though, so that would still be the better choice then.
Except Ouya is Android-based too, so I'm not really following :\
The android sticks are general cheap shit hardware (obviously I dont know what Werelds was using)
Android + XBMc is stil not mature enough in most cases, but the Ouya version is the base that they use first I believe so its the most compatible and stable (again fromw hat I understand, I only ran it on a nexus 7 and it seemed ok)
ragnarus wrote:
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
The XBMC team are adding stuff to make it run well on Tegra 3. For any other Android app, hardware acceleration is not an issue, since on all the proper ROMs that's all exposed via the appropriate APIs. For XBMC that doesn't work, since they aren't doing an Android app really; they're porting to make it run on Android, so they can't take advantage of some of the APIs
I could be wrong here but does xbmc support TV? I'm running win 8 and just paid the 9.99 for windows media centre (it was free with win 7 ).
Ive got a nas that I currently stream from but I'd need storage for recording TV and 3tb is at a good price/storage ratio.
a good smart TV is too pricey for me ATM so I'm going to stick with the htpc route.
I'll have a loom at the 4330 and might drop back on the ram, mb and cooler to save a few dollars.
As for the TV-dongles, from what I've read they seem to have serious issues with their WiFi-N performance/connections as well as being built with cheap stuff.
from what I've seen xbmc has replaced all but the TV functions of wmc. you still need wmc to watch TV.
as for the tv dongle, I'll be using a pcie card plugged directly into my TV antenna cable so there is no WiFi required.
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
When I last used a TV tuner I found MediaPortal to do it much better though. I don't know how far XBMC come since then, since that's been a few years, but MP already did full EPG, worked with CI+/CAM modules and so on.
For that reason, I became accustomed to MP and I still have it on my HTPC in combination with StreamedMP for the skin (and the bundled plugins)
Its got a lot better since it became mainline (last version IIRC) I cant use windows for stuff like that Ijust find it too frustrating.
(in before someone says something, I know its just because I am used to using linux for my HTPC and had I used windows for all these years to doit, I would be saying "I cant use Linux for stuff like that, I just find it to frustrating")
You just get used to what you know and then find it hard to change, well I do anyway
tvheadend has the CAM stuff built in (not used it myself) and vdr has stuff via launchpad like dvbapi that will link with oscam (or you can build it yourself) I suppose there are others.
ragnarus wrote:
I saw things like that in here and in other "woman problems" topics so...... Am I the only one that thinks some authorities needs to be alerted about Saner and him possibly being a rapist and/or kidnapper ?
Saner is not being serious. Unless its the subject of Santa!
End up getting the specs I listed near the start.
My only downfall, the low profile cooler I got has a 90mm fan at the bottom and a 120mm fan on top. You can remove the top fan but I wanted to keep it, it's specifically why I got it instead of the NH-L9i, but it would not fit with the blu ray drive installed so I had to remove it. Wasted $25 on that but it's still bloody quiet .
Cheers.
PS.
Is anyone else as impressed as I am in how fast windows 8 installs? I literally entered the cd key to kick off the install, browsed to this forum and made my post and wait another minute and it at's the personalise screen.
Just use whatever supports DLNA. Xbmc is quite fine although it doesn't offer you transcoding, which Plex or Servio do, for example. I've tested Serviio for some work purposes, with 8+ simultaneously TV's and it worked like a charm literally with an i5 + 840pro + 4 gigs machine set up on linux. Serviio costs 25 bucks afair while Plex is free. Plex requires an installed app while Serviio works out of the box via DLNA input in almost every reasonable smart tv sold today, which is why I personally find it the way to go.
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