Blog Discussion Topic - November 3, 2008 - Sumit Chawla - My HTPC experience so far . . . .
This summer I caught the HTPC (Home Theater PC) bug, and I decided to build one for the living room. I have written a few blogs during the course of this project. Now I am almost done! I say almost, because as with the A/V room, this is one of those things that is never fully completed.
My music, home videos, and pictures are all on a NAS (Network), and they are readily available. Currently, I am using a Media Center Extender to gain access to this content from other rooms. The Blu-ray optical drive in conjunction with Arcsoft’s Total Media Theater enables Blu-ray playback on the HTPC.
This system is undoubtedly complex, with software and hardware subsytems from different companies, but this is not a consideration once it is in use. The HTPC is meant, at the very least, to be a replacement for the DVD player and as such I expect it to function just as reliably. This is the only part of the experience that I am not entirely happy with. While some issues have been resolved either via a hardware change of a software update, some remain. These include:
- Sometimes the PC is unable to talk to the NAS, requiring a router reboot.
- Sometimes switching the TV input back to the PC freezes the machine, most likely an HDMI handshake issue; this requires a PC reboot, somewhat of a time consuming process.
- Every so often I am flashed with an update message for the OS or an app. Oftentimes, these updates are ok, but sometimes you get unlucky with a rogue update. A restore from a previous backup or reverting to an earlier system restore point can get you back to the old state if necessary, however, this is still work.
When things don’t work, you do realize the merit of using special purpose devices. The DVD player remains connected in the living room to serve as a backup.
I don’t, however, wish for these reliability issues to overshadow the ease and convenience that come with using the HTPC. When the system works, which is more often than not (my wife disagrees with me on this), it is a delight to use. We have been making playlists, purchasing music online and watching old family pictures that we had not seen in a long time. Music is often accompanied by a slideshow. It has been a good experience and well worth the time investment.
If you use an HTPC, please share your experience.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I have recently delved in to the HTPC realm as well, but at a lesser, or at least much different, level. Late last spring, I acquired an old (original) XBox, which after a little work was in working order. I decided to give XBMC (aka Xbox Media Center) which I had heard & read so much about, a try.
Over all the experience has been fantastic, and my wife (who rolled her eyes every time I was working on it - she thought I wanted it to play games) is very pleased with the end-user experience. Most of the good things Sumit had to say about using an HTPC, I agree with. We really enjoy having access to all our music, and (surprisingly) especially all our old family photos, not to mention almost half my DVD collection. I do not have an NAS (yet) so all the media is stored on my main PC, in another room. So, we have to make sure that it is booted up anytime we want to use XBMC. I don’t recommend this as a solution to most, but it works for us, for the time being.
XBMC is available for all major platforms (Windows, OS/X, Linux) and some minor platforms (original Xbox, and the AppleTV). The software is fantastic, and amazingly fun to use and customize. Running it on the original Xbox has some advantages - the box is small, relatively quiet, and boots up in a matter of seconds (really - less than 15 seconds and you’re ready to go).
There are some shortfalls though, that the Xbox can not fulfill. Primarily, the original Xbox hardware just can’t handle processing HD video. So, that means no Blu-Ray or other HD video streaming from the PC. It does however display the GUI in 720p resolution, and upconverts all DVD’s to 720p resolution (and does a fairly good job at it, too). Also, installation on a typical HTPC (Windows/Linux/OS-X) is easy, but installation on an original Xbox is not. It is quite an involved process.
If you already have a working HTPC, I highly recommend installing XBMC and giving it a spin as your main media interface. It plays virtually every media format out there, and plays them well. One of my favorites is that it will read .ISO files directly. So I just rip my DVD’s in their entirety as .ISO files to the hard drive, and XBMC recognizes them and plays them as if they were actual discs in the dvd tray.
Again, overall both my wife and I really enjoy using XBMC as our media portal. We listen to our music collection more now than ever before, and view our family photos more, and even just watching DVD’s is now new & different. Browsing the media with view modes like coverflow is a lot of fun, and XBMC automatically pulls in media information (cover art, thumbnails, disc reviews/synopses, etc.) There’s also a script which allows you to browse the Apple movie trailer web site, which we do when there’s nothing else on TV.
The software, wiki-style manual, and discussion forum are all available at the XBMC home page here:
http://www.xbmc.org
FYI, XBMC is due for a major stable release (code-named “Atlantis”) any week now.
Did I mention XBMC is 100% open source and FREE?
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Welcome to the wonderful world of the HTPC! I am interested to hear what OS you chose. Do you plan to use the HTPC as a DVR or anything like that? I really think Microsoft has a stellar product in Media Center, and as soon DirecTV makes their USB tuner available, I may very well go with that. There is so much flexibility and functionality with an HTPC, and with wonderful enthusiast communities out there, you can find programs to do just about anything you need/want! Keep us up to date!
November 3rd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I was an early adopter of the HTPC concept and I so I discovered the limitations early. I’m glad to see progress being made and I’m waiting to hear someone say ‘after some work, everything is working great’. My system was built around the HiDTV Pro 2 Tuner card. This card gave me an over the air HD tuner which was great here in Portland which was a test city for HD broadcast. This card is/was really interesting in that it had its own MPEG decoder and component out. So, when used as a tuner, the PC is actually just a glorified power supply for the card, no CPU functions were required. Anything beyond that though and the plan just fell apart. Playback of HD recordings was not on component out, only on S-Video, but worse than that, the machine would (will) crash during playback. Oh well, I plan to still use the card as an OTA tuner when the digital switchover finally occurs. And, I plan to build a new HTPC when the time is right. It’s great fun.
Currently my regular PC is a music server through the magic of Squeezebox. By far the easiest way I’ve heard of to make a music server. I use the Duet’s digital out through a modified BellCanto DAC1, a sweet DAC but not enough to make MP3’s sound good (or, it really points out just how bad MP3’s sound). WAV files from ripped CD’s or recorded vinyl sound great though.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:29 am
I ended up devoting one of my spare pc’s as a home theater pc and I’m greatly satisfied with the results. After adding it to my system, my living room became transformed into the one spot in the house where all the media I have acquired is enjoyed using my best A/V components.
Using Windows Vista as the operating system, the pc is able to stream content with all other pc’s in the house as well as to the Sony Playstation 3. Since I have an 52″LCD as my display, text and websites look razor sharp and I can enjoy surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, or playing PC Video games like Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 10 without ever feeling like the image was lacking clarity. Finally, as I’ve mentioned before in one of my blogs, paying for a Rhapsody subscription makes the HTPC a song server with immediate access to thousands of songs. It’s great for exploring music or just listening to some various tunes with your guests. The one thing I don’t do much of with my HTPC is watch HD video content. I prefer using a Blu-ray player to do that because the delivery is always hitch-free, the video quality is second to none, and I enjoy DolbyTrueHD and dts HD Master Audio.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Seems I have a similar set-up to Adrian. The relatively recent DLNA protocol (an extension of the UPNP standard) simplifies things to enable connectivity that weren’t possible without significant effort even a few years ago. That’s not to say the DLNA experience has been flawless.
The biggest problem to date has been dealing with the mass number of file types. Even within a single standard, the range of encoding schemes for both audio and video are not always consistently supported. Generally speaking though, the experience has been quite positive. Since my computer is connected to the sound system as well, I don’t typically play much music through the PS3, but it works fairly well when asked to. I should note, the vast majority of my library is ripped from CD, and not DRMed. Another problem would be how revealing the setup is of low quality video, but that’s more a function of the source as opposed to an intrinsic problem with the software/hardware. Even DVD rips with no further compression look a bit soft. DIVX/XVID or even “HD” mkv/mp4/h264 files range from looking passable to downright horrible. Compression artifacts and banding become blatantly obvious.
I have a growing digital photo collection, but have yet to find a workable solution for viewing RAW files with the setup. The few hundred jpeq conversions I have look fantastic on the screen.
The setup I have is a DLNA Server (open source Mediatomb) running off my Macintosh which feeds my PS3. Most of my content is stored on a Firewire external drive connected to the Mac. The PS3 outputs over HDMI to my JVC DLA-RS1 with sound being fed to a Yamaha RX-V1400.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I have to say it seem my experience seems to have been less satisfactory than others.
I had used my old PC as a HTPC for a years until I bought a dedicated, high horsepower HTPC machine in early 2007; which unfortunately came with Vista. Maybe it was just too early for Vista to be working properly yet but the issues I encountered trying to get it to perform as advertised (at least my perception of as advertised) were too numerous to list. But I’ll mention a few highlights anyway.
The HTPC itself is my NAS (issues there with RAID setup) for music, pictures and movies for the rest of the house as I found the speed of NAS (usually limited to 100mbit Ethernet) to be too limiting for HD content and/or simultaneous viewing.
HDCP handshaking is a mess requiring a separate program (AnyDVD-HD) to strip out the protection from legitimate disks and content,
Keeping the DVI/HDMI synced with my projector when switching inputs or even having the monitor go into “sleep” mode required an external box (DVIDoctor) to keep sync in place.
Getting the PC to actually send the raw DTS or DD bitstream (or even output proper 5.1 from other codecs) to the receiver instead of down converting to 2.0 or reprocessing was not much fun either unti I moved to Media Player Classic and got much better PQ as a result as well.
Capturing OTA HD required a manual registry edit to make the ATI 650 capture card work with both my dish and my OTA antenna. Etc. etc.
But: that being said the last time I used my actual DVD player was….. I’m not sure. I always use the HTPC now. When setup correctly the image processing options for a HTPC surpass anything available with an upconverting player. And being able to archive my HD broadcast and Satellite TV is priceless. Having a second small LCD monitor setup beside the primary viewing seat is terrific for those “what other movie was actor xyz in” questions during a movie. Plus I can surf while watching movies or the wife’s sitcoms at the same time.
Next step for me: trying to get HD audio out of the PC for high def disks. Or maybe moving to ubuntu / Myth TV on Linux.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I am using Vista Home Premium which comes with Media Center. I currently subscribe to DISH network, and were I able to get a CableCARD equivalent for it, I would definitely use the HTPC in place of the dedicated DVR. I believe that the extenders allow access to this content, so that would be a bonus. There is some programming which is not available on Comcast, my local cable provider, which is why I have not gone down this path.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I never really paid much attention to YouTube before, but I am now starting to search for content there and I am amazed at what all is out there.
I have not used Rhapsody, but that sounds like a neat way to get access to a large music library. Are there any other options out there or is Rhapsody the one to consider if you want to do down this path?
November 5th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I would first like to thank Kieran Coghlan for the tip on Xbmc. I finally got around to building my HTPC two months ago and I love it. Running Vista 32 bit home premium on an Intel dual core quad 9450 with a 4850 HDMI video card has produced spectacular results at 1920 x 1080 p @ 60 hz refresh. I can now cruse the internet on my 110″ JVC HD1 LiCos 1080p projector with nothing but chrystal clear images. I downloaded Xbmc last night and I think it is great, easy to use and makes the HTPC a more useful device and Vista a better HTPC OS. I sampled some of my digital HD FLAC (lossless) tracks. Stereo never sounded better. With my HTPC wirelessly home networked, I now have access to my entire music, photo and video collection. I may never leave my media room again. My wife can now truly see the value of my audio/video addiction as she can easily review all of our family’s collection of photos and videos along with listening to her favorite tunes.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Walt, glad to hear you’re enjoying XBMC. I am continually amazed at how well it works for an open-source freeware project. This software product could easily sell for $50/download and still be a bargain, IMO.
I think the only big drawback of XBMC’s code at this time is that it does not take advantage of hardware acceleration in your graphics card, so most (all?) of the 1080p processing is done by the cpu. Thus you need a fast-ish cpu. I haven’t delved in to this aspect myself, as I’m using the original Xbox for the hardware, which is way too old/slow to process HD video media.
Finally, I can’t think of a media file type or codec that is not supported by XBMC.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:12 am
XBMC does look nice. How is Blu-ray playback enabled through it? I am assuming that you still need a 3rd party solution from the likes of Arcsoft/Cyberlink. Also, is there a good IR solution for it?
A colleague of mine wanted to build a media center and I asked him to consider XBMC. Thanks for pointing this option out.
November 10th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Ever since the advent of Windows Media Center, I have followed the progress of HTPC products. The promise of a single do-it-all component is so inviting! As I gaze at my large bookcase filled with DVDs and Blu-rays, I long for the ability to put all those bits onto a hard drive array for instant access with the remote. Thanks to the intricacies of DRM, we’re not to that point yet but we’re getting there. Perhaps soon, I’ll have a single box with all my media, movies, music and pictures available to stream to any room in the house. I’m glad to see enthusiasts like us riding the bleeding edge. Someday soon, we’ll all enjoy great products as a result. Good luck Sumit!
November 11th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Sumit, I stand corrected! XBMC currently has very limited support for Blu-Ray sourced content.
Apparently if your BRD has an AC-3 sound track, it’s possible, but since XBMC uses FFMPEG (www.ffmpeg.org) to demux file containers and decode the video and/or audio streams within those containers. Since FFMPEG does not yet support any of the HD audio formats like Dolby True-HD or DTS-HD, XBMC can not support them either.
Plus, even with an AC-3 sound track for your BR movie, XBMC doesn’t yet support the menu structure of BRD’s. So, you need to rip the movie file (with AC3 audio) and play just that file.
So XBMC is not ideal for Blu-Ray, yet. But by all accounts this will be the next major feature to be added after the next stable release, so maybe late this year or early next year one might expect some progress on this front.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Kieran,
It will be interesting to see how this support gets built into XBMC given its open source framework.
Is there any Blu-ray playback solution on Linux?
November 14th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Sumit, the current “solution” for BRD on Linux is (I think) very similar to XBMC. i.e. you can rip a title and play the movie file, but not with full menu functionality, etc. But don’t quote me on that, I’m not a Linux expert.
You asked about remote control for XBMC. The software control is fully customizable with a keyboard map text file. So any IR remote you have that can control your HTPC can control XBMC. Using the original Xbox hardware, I use the Xbox dvd remote to control it, which works great, and is a standard RCA dvd remote for universal remote code purposes.
November 16th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Kieran, I think the latest xbmc “Atlantis” 8.10 using FFMPEG (FFDSHOW) rev. 2322 which is now able to decode E-AC3 and Dolby TrueHD audio. You must select ffdshow as AC3 decoder to be able to use that functionality thou. It means now TRUE HTPC using XBMC, support all format. Life has never this sweet.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Robin, thanks for that news. I didn’t know about the Dolby TrueHD support. Although I personally don’t have use for it, it is a great feature.
The other news is that the XBMC team have finally released the next stable version (”Atlantis”)…
http://xbmc.org/blog/2008/11/14/xbmc-atlantis-released/
March 7th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Thanks for the write-up. Very informative. I know it does not have the power or the flexibility of an HTPC like you describe, but being a bit short on time and money I decided to pickup an NMT from http://www.egreatusa.com . It has worked out really well. Plays all my downloaded files and also some tube sites and such. It has a lot of features I have not tried yet, and admittedly some I will probably never try - but it does the trick for an inexpensive HDTV experience.
Maybe someday i will try building one of these big boys . . .