I finally got my HTPC up and running and most of my stuff moved to it. So now I am onto finding the must have software to run on it. I already have XBMC (and I have a boxee box), but I am looking more for some sweet windows MCE hacks. Let me know what you are running. Russ
I tried WMC7 and XBMC on mine, but was never really happy. I use it as my primary PC at home, and didn't like not being able to surf while watching something. I still use it as an HTPC from time to time, but the bulk of my viewing is from my 4TB Xtreamer Pro. It was the only device at the time that would take two 3.5" HDDs. It works well most of the time, but it's buggy - they're supposed to be releasing new firmware that's supposed to clean up some of the issues. When I was using WMC7, I was using 3rd party apps to get my ISOs into the library, then mount and play them as dvds. I was using a 3rd party scraper as well. http://mikinho.com/wmc/mount-image/ http://mikinho.com/yammm/ and SlySoft AnyDVD HD for decoding/ripping. http://www.slysoft.com/en/
I don't have my HTPC set up yet, but it's going to be either linux or a mac mini. Planning stage is taking way too long...
AVSForum was a big help when I was building mine... http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26
We've been running one for nearly 5 years. You will try all these different media front-ends and what not, but what I've found works best is to put all your files into organized shared folders on a server and just stream them. Boxee, XBMC and a few other front ends work great, till that one time when you have a video file it wont play, or wont play correctly. I never could get any of those front ends, or WMC, to utilize my HD tuner card properly. Another issue you always run into is TV show file name syntax problems. Boxee suffered from this significantly. I spent nearly 18 hours going through and bulk renaming TV episodes to the correct show/season/episode format and never actually finished the job. And it would still sometimes not display them correctly if at all. TVDB is your friend for this. We also use ours for games. So, switching Boxee on and off to play games on Steam kinda sucked. In the end, we found it far more convenient to have one of our servers dedicated to home media and file storage, with an easy link to a listing of the shares on the desktop of all our computers on the network. Want to play a game, fire it up in Steam. Done with game, want to watch a show, browse to the TV share, pick your show, pick the season, pick the episode. It is no more or less work than browsing to a specific episode in Boxee. Thinkgeek sells a media remote for HTPCs that is like 40 bucks, has a trackball built into it. On our bedroom htpc, we use that with the onscreen keyboard if text entry is needed. Never had an issue doing minor browsing or searching for TV shows or movies on the server. For the livingroom HTPC, we have a coffee table with a top that raises up and extends out, we have a full keyboard and a Razer wireless gaming mouse (can run wired as well). That is what has worked for us so far. We have literally tried everything. You will spend a bunch of time and effort trying a bunch of different front ends, and you may like one or two of them...until they fail you. Luckily, none of the options is a full on operating system, so going back to the windows interface way of doing things isn't all that hard. If you don't give a damn about gaming, you could try some of the linux stuff. Or the mac mini. But again, my biggest issue with aftermarket front ends was that there were a few times that, no matter how many codecs I downloaded, my files either wouldn't play, or wouldn't display correctly on the screen. Which brings me to another point. Get VLC player, and get the CCCP codec pack as well. We have yet to have an issue. And both myself and Aegis agree that the sound seems to come out more crisp than it does through WMP.
Yea, my setup is strictly htpc, I still have my main tower if I want to do any gaming. Since I already have a boxee box, I already renamed everything to fit TVDB and IMDB name formatting and almost everything gets auto tagged on my boxee box. I am just working out the controls side of things then it will be on to getting some front end or 2 working. I have used XBMC before and had pretty good luck with it, and I have been using boxee for a few years (I was part of the private alpha/beta), but I always get tired of the network permissions BS that just suddenly stops working. Now Everything is in one box and I can push it from local right to the tv. Current setup Intel q6600 cpu (2.66 quad core) 4gb of 800mhz ram 250gb system drive 4tb of storage (4 2tb wd blacks in raid 10 on a adaptec raid card) some ati hdmi video card everything is located in the basement under the stairs in my mini server room and then I run the hdmi cable through the wall to the TV upstairs. I might get another cablecard and run a pci cardcard into the system and record everything, but I need to get some other little things taken care of first. Thanks for the ideas so far. Russ
Ok, so I got everything up and running and XBMC working pretty good for local content. I did stumble on a nice HD cablecard tuner box. So the next adventure will be turning my box into a dvr. Anyone running dvr software?? Russ
Well I'm running 3 htpc, mostley xbmc 1- Apple TV 1 with Broadsoft ChrystalHD card, runnin crystalbuntu xbmc 2- Foxconn mini pc. Atom 330, nvidia Ion, 2gb ram. running Ubuntu with xbmc. this may go to win 7 so I can get wake from usb to work. 3- built box htpc/file server -i3 with onboard video. -4gb ram -5tb (and growing) storage -Hauppauge 2250 tv tuner - christmas gift to self - Asus Nvidia 430, want the hardware decoding. HTPC side - this box primarily boots into Windows Media center with a launcher for xbmc. I primary use windows media for Live TV, then move to XBMC for movies. This is until PVR is added to xbmc. Also provides a Media Portal tv backend so I can use my laptop as a tv. For background processes I have couch potato, Sickbeard, Sabnzbd @wrx1 what hdtuner did you end up getting. the hauppauge is nice, but only can grab analog channels.
I picked up a centon infinitytv 4 cablecard unit. It will record/broadcast up to 4 channels at once. For only a extra $1 a month for the cablecard, it will be well worth it. Then I can get rid of their generic de-scrambler boxes and actually be able to watch all my channels on all my tv's. I just need to pick up a cablecard and get everything set up. Russ
I've been trying to connect my roommates xbox360 to my media pc through WMC w/ media browser. Everything works fine on my computer but they wont play on the Xbox, error message comes up saying improper video format. So I did some internet searching and found that the xbox's will not play .vob files and I need to convert them to .mpg or .mp4's. So what is a good program to convert them? Currently I have DVDShrink to rip from the dvd to the Media PC, is there a better program I could be using here to save myself some time and hassle? WMC connection from Xbox to PC is set up. Xbox location has been set up in Mediabrowser share settings. PC - custom build. 3.5ghz Phenom II x4, 8 gig ram, win7 x64
Haha, wow, I kinda forgot about this thread. I will have to get some of my setup pics added to this thread. Anyways, I always used handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) to do all my video encoding and format changes. Russ
I like that program!! Love that you can queue them and not have to do one at a time. Thanks for the help.
This is more or less the way I went... I setup a computer to use for gaming/movies and ran into issues with software, so I just said screw it and stream everything from a central location. This also allows access to content on the laptop or Nexus 7, even some access on the Plasma TV upstairs. I know, Russ, this didn't help you.
Ok, couple of updates from my side. Since the city determined that I couldn't run my system built into the back side of the stairwell, I just determined that I am actually going to dump everything into a server rack and case(s). So far, my basica setup is still the same, I just added some more ram. Current setup Intel q6600 cpu (2.66 quad core) 8gb of 800mhz ram 250gb system drive 4tb of storage (4 2tb wd blacks in raid 10 on a adaptec raid card) some ati hdmi video card Intel raid expander card I am already running a 4TB raid 10 share for all of my current media, but as my collection is growing I can add drives to any of the open spots in the server case and just create a new raid or run it as JOBD. Now That I also have a RaspberyyPi, I am running that as a remote XBMC location to pull from my main server. Next step is to actually get the XBMC PVR and CEC portions set up and running. Ideally with my tuner box, I should be able to push live TV from my main box out to my RaspberryPi or whatever I choose. Russ
I have 3 apple tv 2 throughout my house running xbmc. Very efficient and I even replaced one of my big htpcs with one. There is a program called "the renamer" that you drag and drop your files to, and it automatically cleans up the file name and moves it to where you want it to. Once set up it saves a ton of time. Pair that with " media companion" which gets tv and episode info and stores it all on the server where the files reside. As for a remote, I had a Lenovo n5901 which is awesome and can be had for cheap if shopping around. Mini handheld keyboard with trackball.
One night per week I lose my desktop PC and the HTPC to Aegis and 6MTizzle's Left4Dead2 marathons. It might be time to build another HTPC and get another LED television.
Built a new i5 with sh*t tons of memory and storage on a NAS. Just got done running Ethernet from one end of my house to the other. Got two GIG switches and ready to stream. I chose Plex and will be putting all my DVDs on the NAS. Putting my Roku to use with Plex channel. Will be using android App to control it. Adding another Roku soon.
So what are you doing for your backend. I currently have media portal running as my backend and its been a bit flaky at times. I just havent taken much time to trouble shoot. 1 thought I was having, is using a usb tuner card with a raspPi having it run TV Headend or Myth tv. --And now for my new addition while its no a HTPC, it was time for an upgrade. Picked up an Epson 8350, and put together a new screen. Lights On Lights Off
