HTPC Creation Experience

Having read topics on creation of HTPC here on Habr, I decided to share my experience. At the stages of purchase, assembly, installation and operation, I shoveled many forums and sites, and perhaps my modest knowledge in this matter will be able to make someone's life easier.

Warning: under the links (there are not many, but they are), transitions to reviews and descriptions of the software and hardware mentioned in the article are hidden. All conversions lead to my blog. Not for the purpose of promotion (there is nothing to promote), but in case someone became interested.

I lived and lived and didn’t know much trouble, but I happened to happen - I bought a 40 "FullHD TV and I wanted to watch good and overseas films on it. And so I decided that I was the smartest, they say they’re buying all the ready-made solutions, but I will assemble it myself and it will be better and cheaper with me (as a result, this premise turned out to be not quite true.)
The requirements for the device were put forward as follows:
  • FullHD Playback
  • Noiselessness
  • Remote Control Capability
  • Audio and video over a single cable
  • Availability of Internet and LAN access without wires
  • Nice appearance
  • Ample internal memory to store heterogeneous media content

Here's the configuration I got de facto:

Motherboard: ASUS AT3N7A-I + Intel Atom 330 (5,120 rubles)
In the motherboard, I bought a low price (at that time), the presence of built-in bluetooth (I don’t seem to need it, but the presence still warms the soul ...), well, HDMI with support for audio transmission. The main drawback of the board was a vile, small fan on the processor heatsink - it is very loud. After 2 weeks of operation, he also started to crack, apparently distorted it ... In general, I did not expect this from Asus, I did not expect such fans in the old days, they put cheap video cards on average, the average life of such a fan was two months.
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RAM: 2 x Hynix DDR2 512Mb, 800MHz, PC2-6400, ECC, Reg (700 r.)

Hard drive: 320.0 Gb HDD Western Digital (WD3200AAKS) Caviar Blue 7200rpm 16Mb SATA-300 (1,430 p.)

Wi-Fi adapter: D-Link DWA-520 PCI 802.11g (975 p.)

Case: CFI CBI- A8989GR MiniITX Black 150W (1 700 p.)
The case, it would seem a little too big, but in fact fits into the rack with the equipment is quite elegant. Of course, the smaller the better, and I had a good choice. But I took this one because it is possible to install a standard 3.5 "screw in it, because there is a compartment for a normal 5.25" DVD / BD-ROM and the power supply is decent (150W, and often in mini- ITX cases use external PSUs on 60-90W) and quiet, which is important. I was also pleased with the ability to install normal (not low profile) expansion cards in it (in my case, this is a wi-fi adapter), that is, in the future it will become more "upgradeable". Oh yes, he is still handsome, but that’s IMHO. I also wanted to put BD-ROM in it, but it turned out that it is still expensive, and not particularly relevant ...
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Keyboard + mouse: A4Tech GL-5630 wireless (GL-5 + G7-630), USB (640 p.
The main selection criterion was the price - 640 p. very inexpensive. Moreover, it was assumed that the use of the keyboard and mouse would be minimized. Still, the main control should be the remote control. The kit turned out to be short-range - the maximum distance of comfortable reception is about 2.5 meters, then “breaks” begin, the mouse cursor moves jerkily, when typing from the keyboard, keystrokes are skipped.
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Remote: Microsoft Remote Control for WinXP MCE (450 rubles)
Although WinXP is written in the name, practice has shown that it works much more closely with Win7. The remote control, by the way, turned out to be programmable - I configured some buttons on it for the TV, that is, now for viewing content from the media center, one remote control is enough. The remote control tends to freeze if you do not exit the programming mode correctly - for resuscitation you have to close the contacts in the battery compartment. Another problem is the lack of the ability (or I just don’t know how) to reassign or disable the "green button" to start Windows Media Center, because random clicks are a little annoying, especially if you use a different media shell. The navigation block of keys, by the way, is backlit.
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That's, in principle, the whole HTPC) The cost was 11,715 rubles, in fact, it cost me cheaper - I did not buy a hard drive, memory and Wi-Fi adapter (something had been lying around for a long time, something on borrowed work ...). I spent 7,910 p. This, of course, is more expensive than a ready-made media center. For example, the Asus O! Play Air HDP-R3, which is somewhat similar in functionality, costs about 5500 p., However, it does not have a built-in hard drive and it is initially limited in many ways, for example, it is not able to work as an SMB server ( installation of moServices, in principle, corrects the situation). With a hard similar volume, it will cost about 8000 r.

I also screwed a 120 GB laptop screw in a non-trivial way, so that in total about 440 GB are available to me. Not a terabyte, of course, as originally planned, but for now, that's enough.

Initially, I wanted to install some kind of media OS such as XBMC Live or Linux MCE on the assembled HTPC, but my insufficient knowledge of linux affected (I could not defeat the mismatching resolution in Linux and on the TV screen, I could not make friends with Windows machines on the network) . In short, I tried them all and settled on Win7 Ultimate. I also installed WinXP on it (normal, not MCE), but she refused to work correctly with the remote control and, due to the lack of built-in support, AHCI worked very slowly - I had to abandon it.
I tried the Media Portal as a media shell ,XBMC , Boxee , and of course WMC . A comparative analysis of the shells is a topic for a separate review, and there are many similar reviews on the Internet. Advantages and disadvantages are enough for all of the above shells. Initially, I settled on WMC - it is beautiful, convenient, and works correctly with the remote control. However, with the release of the fresh XBMC, Dharma switched to it. WMC, for all its merits, just killed me by the fact that you can’t switch audio tracks and subtitles in it. He also does not work in any way with the Internet and without installing codecs does not support mkv playback.

At the moment, when all the bumps are collected by me and all the rakes are trampled - everything works well. And HD-content on Wi-Fi runs around and the Internet has gotten the hang of walking with it in relative comfort. With the purchase of a smartphone on android, I got an additional Wi-Fi control panel - Unified Remote

As a result, I got such a “home network”:
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Note:
Files up to 6- play comfortably on Wi-Fi (b / g) 8 Gb, then the problems begin - it lays down the sound, then the video. That is, BD remuxes will not work through the "air" - either you need to copy them and then watch them, or pull the wires.

In conclusion, I want to note that the independent assembly of HTPC, given the wide selection of ready-made solutions, at the moment seems to me not quite the right solution - it comes out both more expensive and more complicated. It is better to choose a ready-made one that meets your requirements. It is worth thinking about amateur performances only if the requirements are initially very high and / or it is planned to assign some other roles to the media center, for example, a gaming computer or a network media server.

update
I decided to add useful links and recommendations from the comments to the topic. If anyone is against - write, I will delete.

The decision to hang WMC problems resuming from sleep mode using the MCE Standby Tool from Drakmor .

Instruction manualon programming the buttons of the Microsoft MCE Remote from divanikus .

Thanks to fuCtor and gloomy2 for the link to the finished Ubuntu XBMC build called XBMCfreak, which you can get here .

Several ways to defeat the "green button":
1. Option from Drakmor .
2. Option from Zagrebelion .
3. Option from DjOnline .

And also an interesting recommendation from WoZ for "noiselessness" of the CFI CBI-A8989GR case.

update 03.03.2011
Some changes to the network infrastructure were made - active network equipment was replaced:
1. 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Adapter TP-Link TL-WN851N

2. 300Mbps Wireless N Router TP-Link TL-WR941ND

3. And 2 antennas for the 2.4GHz 5dBi Indoor Desktop adapter Omni-directional Antenna TP-Link TL-ANT2405C

Fraud result:

1. The connection speed between the server and HTPC increased to 8-12 MB / s !!!

2. Now playing heavy rips and BDRemux is no problem !!! Everything is lost - no lags / glitches / artifacts have been noticed!

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