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Eternal Battle Day 5: Building a High-Definition HTPC July 01, 2005 |
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Summary: People build HTPC's out of spare parts all the time. The problem is that you shouldn't be using spare parts - a high-end HTPC needs much more power than that. We're putting a 7800GTX in our HTPC, and showing off the design issues behind building a high-end HTPC with an off-the-air HD tuner. Even if you're not planning to build an HTPC, this is an important article to read to learn about PC video technology.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 15 ) |
The story so far
We’re at the last event in our first biennial Eternal Battle. We’ve tried to do something that’s never been done before by writing the ultimate system building guide and we’ve taken the traditional video game cliché of having to fight the final enemy several times. You see, when you reach the final enemy boss of the game, you face the battle of all battles. So FiringSquad published back-to-back system building guides on Monday and Tuesday, showing you what goes into an ultimate gaming system and what goes into an ultimate workstation. That’s already two times more ambitious than anything FS has done in the past.
Eternal Battle Day 1: Ultimate Gaming Desktop
Eternal Battle Day 2: The Ultimate Workstation
Eternal Battle Day 3: Stretching Your Dollar
Eternal Battle Day 4: Ultimate Gaming PC vs Ultimate Workstation Benchmarks
But in all videogames, just as you think you’ve defeated the final boss and finished the game, you’ll face the “second form” of the boss in an even more outrageous battle. So, just as everyone was expecting the system building articles to wind down with the benchmarks on Wednesday, we took the systems from the “no-budget” design down into the real-world with “best-bang-for-the-buck products” and explained the conditions when we might in fact have gone with different components and Thursday saw the systems in a super benchmark battle with the Athlon64 X2 4200+ entering the fray.
Videogame tradition has it that after defeating this second form of the final boss, you are you are finally shown the “true form.” Only instead of the difficulty level increasing even higher, you finally get some respite and provide you with an easy battle in which you can deliver a coup de grace and complete the game.
So for day 5, we’re leaving you this weekend with our guide to Building a High-Definition HTPC. A lot of people think about HTPCs as something to do with “spare parts,” but in this article, we’re going to help you see how you can building a high-end HTPC with quality components can result in a device that lets you do things that you normally cannot do. This probably represents the pinnacle of the system building art as the goal must be 100% reliability and 100% transparency. Enjoy, it’s a light article. This one was co-authored with Alexis.
| HDTV | Page:: ( 2 / 15 ) |
In contrast to the other computer systems, a home theater PC must be able to integrate in a modern home entertainment center. At a minimum, this should include an HDTV and a digital surround sound system. To interface with these technologies, the PC will need to output an HD compatible signal for the video and a digital audio signal to your audio processor, so we’ll start with our methods for accomplishing this.
GPU
Whereas the fundamental component of the desktop and workstation was determing the platform, for a HTPC, the video card is what’s critical. The most expensive video card may not be the best choice for a home theater PC. If you have an HDTV with HDMI or DVI inputs, then you need to have DVI outputs on your video card -- that makes sense. Some of the older HDTV displays may not have a DVI input, or may not have enough digital inputs. This is when you need a card that will output to component video in a HD compatible format. Going beyond that, you need a video card that will allow custom resolutions. To determine if your video card will do these deeds, check this list for ATI (http://www.ati.com/products/hdtvadapter/faq.html#2). Among the NVIDIA cards, only the 6600 line seems to ship with component video out adapters – the other GeForce 6 series cards only work with HDTV over DVI. The 7800GTX also has component video out.
Our choice for this assignment is the GeForce 7800 GTX. On the surface, you’d think we chose it because it’s the newest card but in fact we’ve gone with the 7800GTX over any other GPU, not because of bragging rights or even its ability for hardware acceleration of MPEG-2, but because we’re looking for the best hardware PC solution for de-interlacing: PureVideo.
What’s PureVideo?
PureVideo is NVIDIA’s marketing term for the video processing found in NVIDIA GPUs, so it means a lot of things. You actually need both a NVIDIA GPU and the NVIDIA DVD Decoder (also called NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder) which costs about $20. The NVIDIA “DVD” decoder is in fact a full MPEG-2 decoder and can deal with 720p and 1080i MPEG-2 Transport Stream demuxing and decoding. Only with the NVIDIA’s software can you take full advantage of the video features of the NVIDIA GPU.
Most people look at video performance on the PC as being hardware acceleration of the MPEG-2 or H.264 decoding process as the big deal and hardware de-interlacing as the other feature on the checklist. In fact, de-interlacing is actually far more important. You can always throw a faster CPU at the decoding process. A Pentium 4 3.6GHz will decode H.264 in software just fine (with 95% CPU utilization) and so any dual-core CPU will have no trouble giving up one of its cores.
The quality of your de-interlacing is what will affect your picture quality the most. More importantly, you can’t simply throw hardware at the problem. More megahertz doesn’t actually do anything – you have figure out what your algorithms are going to be, and the best image quality comes from the most elegant algorithms.
| De-interlacing explained | Page:: ( 3 / 15 ) |
What’s de-interlacing?
De-interlacing is the process in which interlaced video is converted into a progressive scan format. We really need to dedicate a whole article for this, but the general principle is that de-interlacing is the critical determinant of final video picture quality when dealing with 1080i content. The difference between a $2000 DLP front projector and $15,000 one is largely the video processor that does the de-interlacing.
You probably already know that 1080i HDTV has 1920x1080 pixels of resolution. Since the video is interlaced, of those 1080 rows only 540 lines are recorded at each step in time: first the odd rows and then even rows. The basic problem is that in interlaced video, the two fields are recorded a fraction of a second apart in time. This means that if you simply try to display the two fields on a monitor, you will see an artifact known as feathering.
Because the moving object (the blue damselfish) had moved a significant distance in that 1/60th of a second. On the other hand, the coral in the background were not moving and so they remain sharp. Since feathering artifacts are distracting, the challenge is to finding a way to remove these artifacts. The goal of de-interlacing is to somehow update the entire screen every 1/60th of a second even though only half of the screen is being updated. That is, you’re NOT going from 1920x1080i at 60Hz to 1920x1080p at 30Hz, you are trying to go from 1920x1080i at 60Hz to 1920x1080p at 60Hz. You’re generating twice the data, hence the phrase “line-doubling.” Doing this is no easy feat, and companies like Faroudja have won technical Emmy Awards for their algorithms.
The easiest approach to solving this problem is to ignore half of the fields. Although the video is updated at 60 Hz, only half of the screen (one set of fields) is updated each time. Through “conventional bob” de-interlacing, you alternate between displaying only the odd fields and then only the even fields. Unfortunately, this means that you’re losing all of the detail and resolution in the static elements of the screen. There’s no reason why you couldn’t have shown all of the fields from the coral in the background…
So, with interlaced video, anytime there’s motion in a scene, you’ll lose resolution. That’s just the nature of it. De-interlacers that apply the “conventional bob” algorithm end up losing as much as half of the detail and resolution from the original source. That 720x480i DVD becomes sequential frames of 720x240 and that 1920x1080i HDTV becomes sequential frames of 1920x540p. So, when it comes to different deinterlacing techniques, it all boils down to figuring out how to minimize the amount of pixels you lose.
The HD Challenge
Most manufacturers have figured out clever ways to de-interlace standard definition DVD-quality video. The problem arises with 1080i HDTV content such as what you will see on HDNet, CBS, NBC, PBS, UPN, HBO, Showtime, INHD, Discovery Channel HD, and the WB (Fox, ABC, and ESPN use 720p). Since 1920x1080 represents six times the data, most deinterlacers, including those from Faroudja and the PureVideo in the GeForce 6600 are unable to intelligently deal with 1080i sources. For the majority of de-interlacers, 1080i HDTV is de-interlaced by ignoring one of the fields during each stage of processing. This means that 1920x1080i image is converted to 1920x540p before it goes to 1920x1080p. You can lose half your spatial resolution when considered on a frame by frame basis. This is an industry-wide problem. That ultra-high-end DLP for $5000? When you feed it a 1080i source, it’s likely using one only one-field with 540 vertical lines to convert 1920x1080i into 1920x540 before going to1280x720p. Even most high-end 45” 1920x1080 LCD flat panels will take 1920x1080i down to 1920x540p before going up to 1920x1080p.
| So where does PureVideo on the 7800GTX come in? | Page:: ( 4 / 15 ) |
In standard definition, PureVideo holds its own against “gold standard” products for standard definition interlaced sources such as the Faroudja DCDi and is even superior to DScaler (but not the scaling portion). When it comes to HD content however, HDTVs with Faroudja processing and HTPCs with GeForce 6 series products are virtually identical as they both rely on using only one field at any given time.
The key point is that the 7800GTX has sufficient horsepower to apply those same PureVideo calculations to 1080i HD video. This means that the 7800GTX decodes 1920x1080i at 60 fields per second to 1920x1080p at 60 frames per second while selectively preserving detail in areas that are not in motion.
The Competition
NVIDIA is not the first manufacturer with region-based motion-adaptive HD deinterlacing, but NVIDIA is joining the company of only a select few. You’ll find this technology in Gennum’s VXP that powers a $15,000 Marantz DLP front projector or Christie Digital’s professional grade projectors. The impressive feat is that the 7800GTX actually brings this down to your desktop and the $600 for the 7800GTX suddenly doesn’t look all too expensive. (Of course, VXP does other stuff like diagonal filtering and noise-reduction which NVIDIA does not).
Note that although NVIDIA advertises their PureVideo in the 7800GTX as being a “Spatial-Temporal Per-Pixel Deinterlacing,” but we are electing to use the term “region-based motion-adaptive de-interlacing” because it’s really per-pixel-spatial and region-based-temporal de-interlacing. Although each pixel is evaluated independently, determination of whether there is motion or not happens at a larger scale rather than the individual pixel level. Still, NVIDIA should still be very proud of their achievement – they have a HD deinterlacing solution better than the former gold standard Faroudja, and are in the company of peers such as Gennum.
GeForce 6-class PureVideo is an excellent solution for high-quality DVD playback and whether you’re building an HTPC or a gamer simply interested in high-quality DVD playback, we have no hesitations about recommending a $20 investment in the NVIDIA DVD Decoder.
SIDEBAR: For the gearheads out there, although NVIDIA does not feature the diagonal filtering, they use sort of proprietary field blending (not traditional bob) that produces the appearance of “partial” diagonal filtering, especially with test patterns. For the non-gearheads, diagonal filtering is a way to remove jaggies from de-interlaced video – think anti-aliasing for video.
| De-interlacing (cont’d) | Page:: ( 5 / 15 ) |
There is another
True per-pixel motion-adapative deinterlacing would imply per-pixel spatial and per-pixel temporal de-interlacing. So, not only would each pixel be analyzed but you would also need to determine whether that specific pixel had been in motion (as opposed to that region). This should in theory provide the maximum detail/resolution and such a product exists; it’s called Hollywood Quality Video (HQV) technology from Silicon Optix and Teranex.
HQV uses algorithms from their Teranex division, which produces the $100,000 deinterlacer/scalers used in major TV production (i.e. NBC, CBS, and FOX) and Teranex itself is a commercial spin-off of Lockheed-Martin’s video processing array technology. That is, the Lockheed-Martin tech that was developed to figure out if this a single moving pixel was random noise, or in fact an enemy missile launch! HQV is a per-pixel motion-adaptive HD deinterlacing solution. Like the PureVideo in the 7800GTX, it intelligently converts 1920x1080i to 1920x1080p at 60Hz without having to go through an intermediate equivalent of 1920x540. However, the HQV detects motion at a true per-pixel level, meaning that it doesn’t “throw away” any pixels that can be used to improve image quality. It essentially extracts all of the original picture quality that is achievable with today’s hardware.
So, to summarize most conventional de-interlacers (including “high-end” products found in $5000 TVs) will only show 1.035 megapixels of the 2.07 megapixels found in the original 1920x1080 interlaced source at any given time. NVIDIA and Gennum products show you more, and HQV shows you even more than that. Don’t feel bad about a display only showing 1.035 megapixels though – that’s already 3x better than the best picture DVD could ever hope to display.
For now, it looks like NVIDIA 7800GTX PureVideo represents the best on the PC when it comes to HD, and although $600 can buy you an entire Media Center PC for standard definition, if you want the maximum quality from HDTV, the 7800GTX with the HD PureVideo support is likely the GPU to get. We’re not ready to make the full recommendation until we have more time with the GPU and can verify its performance. Likewise, should NVIDIA trickle down the HD PureVideo technology down to slower performing cards, it may be possible to get the same video performance at a lower price with passive cooling. It’s possible that in the future that graphics manufacturers such as ATI, Intel, or NVIDIA will license HQV’s algorithms for their next-generation GPUs.
We really use every component we talk about, and so yeah, I’ve put in my preorder for an Algolith Dragonfly HQV based de-interlacer in my HT system but it’s not going to be counted toward the system price.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX
http://www.nvidia.com
$600
NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder (Standard version for SPDIF audio out only)
http://www.nvidia.com
$20
Algolith Dragonfly
http://www.algolith.com/index.php?id=dragonfly&L=0
$3500 – not counted toward system price
Running Total: $620
| HDTV tuning | Page:: ( 6 / 15 ) |
The choices for HDTV tuners with MCE2005 drivers include a budget model from AverMedia, the ATI HDTV Wonder which includes a Silver Sensor-clone antenna, and the FusionHDTV 5 which uses a more sensitive hardware tuner than any other PCI-HDTV tuner. The ATI and FusionHDTV5 are the same price at $150, but the AverMedia is under $100. The FusionHDTV5 is likely the best choice, but we went with an ATI HDTV tuner, because we can use hacked drivers.
With Windows MCE2005, a HDTV tuner cannot be installed without a standard analog TV tuner. This would seem OK given that the HDTV Wonder has an analog tuner also, but Microsoft requires Media Center 2005 TV tuners to support hardware MPEG-2 encoding. This choice by Microsoft reflects narrow-minded design choices. While the requirement of MPEG-2 encoding is important for having “low-end” PCs with a slow CPU serve as acceptable digital video recorders, this isn’t the case for a high-end HTPC. Likewise, many HDTV owners including myself watch digital TV exclusively. This is because non-HD shows are broadcast as either digital 480i, or more typically sent as upsampled 720p or 1080i achieved through the Teranex devices at the station itself. The hacked drivers for the ATI HDTV Wonder tricks MCE2005 into thinking that there is an MPEG-2 encoder, allowing you to run the HDTV Wonder as the sole tuner in a system. Since the antenna is worth at least $25, this essentially means that we only need to pay a $25 premium over the AverMedia rather than having to buy an $80 TV tuner card.
The default ATI software is unreliable. It worked well for me initially but stopped recording reliably a few weeks later. On AVSForum, the HDTV Wonder is called the HTDV Blunder. Fortunately, with MCE2005 you do not have to rely on ATI’s software.
ATI HDTV Wonder
http://www.ati.com
$150
Running Total: $770
| Motherboard | Page:: ( 7 / 15 ) |
We did think long and hard and chose the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI. It includes an onboard SB Live 24-bit sound card and has the ability to upgrade to a SLI setup. In addition it has a very competitive 6 SATA II connections with both nVidia and Silicon Image RAID setups, 10 USB 2.0 connections, and 3 Firewire 400 connections. Having two gigabit ports is also a necessity these days, since it enables you to have two independent networks, one to the internet and one to your local intranet. This physical separation of your networks improves speed and security.
The nVidia nForce4 chipset is our current favorite AMD 64bit solution for its speed and stability. The only thing this motherboard is missing is an integrated wireless networking controller. Many times the home theater PC will be placed at a distance from your primary computer and or network connection, and a high speed network connection would have been put to good use.
The Sound Blaster Live 24-bit is actually the same chip as the Audigy LS. That makes it more like an Audigy2 chipset with all the hardware acceleration taken out. In an HTPC environment where audio quality is more important than multiple concurrent streams, the SB Live 24-bit is a good choice. Unfortunately, MSI did not do the best job in integrating the SB Live 24-bit. They’ve chosen to have this component run on the -5V rail. The negative 5V rail was dropped from the ATX spec more than 2 years ago and since 2004, ATX documents don’t even mention -5V. This means that the MSI requires non-ATX-spec PSUs. We’re a bit disappointed – given that modern PSUs will not be able to power the on-board SB Live. The PC Power & Cooling 850? Nope. Silverstone? Nope. Seasonic S12? Nope.
Luckily, we wanted unmolested 44.1 kHz audio, so we had an Envy24HT solution but as an all-in-one HTPC solution, you need to be careful in picking the right motherboard.
The other disappointment was that the MSI heatsink retention system used a glued-down bottom plate and so we weren’t able to use our Zalman CNPS7000. The DFI and Tyan motherboards we used earlier did not have this problem.
Unfortunately, while we were testing the MSI K8N Neo4 Premium SLI, the plastic retention clip for the SLI selector card popped off and went flying. Although our system did not crash and there was enough friction to keep the SLI selector card in place, being conservative about stability, we have some concern about this mechanism especially if you were building a system that needed to be portable since it seems more prone to failure. This had us looking for alternative boards, and the A8N-SLI Premium looks like a good option as it not only has heatpipe cooling for the nForce chip, but it does the SLI switching internally so there are no parts to fail. In addition, the A8N-SLI Premium provides more space between the SLI boards for improved cooling. If you go with the MSI, you’ll want to pay extra attention to the SLI retention clip.
While waiting for the replacement part, we ended up switching back to the DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR for our build.
MSI Neo4 Platinum SLI
http://www.msicomputer.com
$180
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (not to be confused with the A8N-SLI Deluxe)
"http://www.asus.com" target="blank">http://www.asus.com
$200
DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR
http://www.dfi.com
$200
Running Total: $970
| Power and audio | Page:: ( 8 / 15 ) |
Power supply
The same principles in choosing a power supply for a server or workstation, also applies here when building a HTPC. You need something that can handle the load, while also providing stability. Today’s fanless PSUs simply do not have enough power to handle something such as SLI graphics.
We used a Seasonic ST12-500 in our build. This item was sponsored by pcalchemy.com. 500 watts is plenty, even if we go SLI. There is no sleeving of the wires with the ST12-500, but the wires are twisted which provides many of the same advantages. The best feature of the Seasonic is its efficiency. With its 80Plus certification, the Seasonic S12-500 is at least 80% efficient even at 20% load – most PSUs are only 70% efficient at low current draw. At say 50% load, efficiency approaches 90%! This is particularly important because if you leave your HTPC on 24/7.
Antec’s Phantom 500 would also have been an interesting choice – the Phantom runs fanless under low demand but enables the fan under high power draw to maintain stability. We’re not ready to recommend fanless PSUs on anything but water cooled systems for now.
Seasonic S12-500
$130
http://www.seasonic.com
Running Total: $1100
Audio:
Initially it would seem like all you need is either a SPDIF or coaxial digital output, but it is a little more complicated then that. Redbook CD Audio is in 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate, when you capture lossless audio it captures at this sampling rate, or if you play CD’s then they are read at this rate. The problem is that some sound cards only support the more “advanced” 48kHz output, which means that your audio signal must be resampled before getting sent to your receiver. The purists will argue that this will degrade audio quality since it introduces an extra processing step.
When outputting DTS or Dolby Digital signals from a DVD, your receiver will take care of the rest. However, most cards now support 5.1 and 7.1 analog output. Although real-time Dolby Digital encoding is no longer a part of NVIDIA SoundStorm, C-Media does have a chip with Dolby Digital Live support and you can find this at PCAlchemy.com. Unfortunately, there does not exist a soundcard with Dolby Digital Live, and the ability to natively process 44.1 kHz data (needed for music CDs and DTS-music CDs).
We opted to go with a Chaintech AV-710 as our Envy24HT-S solution. This will give us the opportunity to reconfigure the soundcard for a native 44.1 kHz output whenever we’re listening to music – unfortunately, there isn’t a modern low-cost soundcard that will automatically switch between 44.1 kHz PCM and 48kHz AC3/DTS.
Chaintech AV-710
$25
http://www.chaintechusa.com/
Running Total: $1125
| Memory and Storage | Page:: ( 9 / 15 ) |
Memory
Memory needs to be fast and reliable, it doesn’t really matter if you are building a server or HTPC; do you see the recurring theme yet? This system will be tucked away in a cabinet, so we won’t need to spend extra money on any LEDs or displays. Since we aren’t reaching for the most overclockable system, we don’t need the fastest speed ram, but what we can use is the RAM with the fastest timings. Increasing memory timing increases performance without having to “overclock” so your components remain within spec, don’t overheat, or draw excess power.
Even though we said we weren’t going to build an HTPC out of spare parts, we had some Corsair XMS 2-2-2-5 RAM available on hand.
$175 to $270 for Corsair or OCZ 2-2-2-5 memory depending on options.
Running Total: $1395
Storage
You gotta go big with the HTPC storage. Recorded HD video takes up about 8 GB per hour, depending on the bitrate of the source. Don’t tell anybody, but when you record HDTV off the air, it’s truly a digital recording without any quality loss. Essentially, it is as if there’s global WiFi and studios are broadcasting television shows 24/7 in digital, and primetime with more than twice DVD quality -- just pretend you didn’t read that.
SATA is finally getting a faster than PATA drives now that there are more drives with native SATA controllers and the addition of NCQ or Native Command Queuing is also improving speed.
The biggest single drives readily available on the market are 400GB drives. The concern with mega drives is their reliability, given an increased number of platters. We decided to go with the hard drive with the highest platter density, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA drive. It only uses three 133GB platters, which in theory should help with reliability. Higher density platters combined with NCQ may also reduce the noise of a seeking HDD.
In choosing the fastest big drive on the market, the Seagate quickly made it to the top of our list. The only thing that it is missing in SATA II which is available on the Hitachi drives and a 16mb buffer which is available on the Maxtor drives. The Maxtors max out at 320GB, while Hitachi has a 500GB model that has been announced, although I don’t see it being sold yet.
A reasonable alternative would have been to go with two 200GB drives in a striped RAID array, but we went with a single drive approach to maintain enough drive bays in the HTPC for future upgrades.
So, our choice of drive for the HTPC was the Seagate 7200.8 400GB SATA drive. Unfortunately, shipping error caused a PATA to be delivered to us. We recommend the SATA version, although in the interest of having an actual system running, we went ahead and used the PATA drive which is what you’ll see in the pictures.
Seagate 7200.8 400GB
$280 SATA model
$270 PATA model
http://www.seagate.com
Running Total: $1675
| CPU | Page:: ( 10 / 15 ) |
HTPCs do need a decent amount of processing power to watch HD movies or high-bitrate “EQ” rentals from MovieLink. You need to have enough processing power to decode HDTV and better videos along with the digital audio. You need enough power to re-encode your HDTV recordings so that they are more manageable in size. You need enough power to resample your videos to the native resolutions of your monitor.
Our choice for the CPU was the Athlon64 X2 4200. Although this is the slowest of AMD’s dual core Socket 939 CPUs and has only 512 kb of L2 cache per core, the X2 is fast enough to handle anything we can throw at the HTPC. Good alternatives include the Athlon 64 3500 Venice which will be fast, but limit your ability to effortlessly multitask. Just to refresh your memory, the Venice and San Diego cores add SSE3, with the Venice having 512kb vs 1mb L2 cache in the San Diego. This is almost as confusing as Intel’s new numeric numbering scheme, almost.
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AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
$600
http://www.amd.com
Arctic Silver 5 and the Zalman CNPS7000-Alu are once again our cooling choices. Obviously we don’t need to keep adding the cost of Arctic Silver 5 (we’re using the same tube from the last system build!)
$50
Running Total: $2325
| Operating System | Page:: ( 11 / 15 ) |
Linux or other alternative operating systems would in theory be the best for this application because they can be purpose built for this task, maximizing speed and efficiency. Unfortunately the driver support for the many peripherals needed in a HTPC is limited outside of Windows. Moreover, despite Microsoft’s reputation of less-than-ideal ergonomics, Windows MCE2005 really works.
MCE2005 is pricey because it’s sold only with the equivalent of a Windows XP license. I.E. You can only buy it as a full operating system as opposed. If you weren’t ready to jump to MCE2005, you could turn to several third party options including MythTV, SageTV, or SnapStream’s BeyondTV. Of course, you also have ATI’s Multimedia Center with EasyLook or NVIDIA’s nStant Media which comes with the NVIDIA DVD Decoder software (but does not do HD tuning).
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The problem is that despite all these efforts from 3rd party developers, Microsoft’s solution is still the best overall system in terms of pretending it’s not a TV. It acts as a complete layer of abstraction for the end-user and once you’ve set up the dedicated HTPC, you never have to go into the regular Windows user interface. Perhaps more importantly, you can reach the point almost immediately whereas the Linux based approaches, for example, require considerably more effort.
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Menus switch with MacOS X like animations and 3D graphics, and the subscription to the program guide is completely free. The listings are powered by Zap2It and I like the description and information far better than GuideTV. In addition, HD listings are also present. This is done via the Internet as opposed to the over-the-air EPG meaning that additional detail is available. Data for the HD subchannels are not present and you need to manually input them.
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MCE2005 is a true PVR as opposed to a DVR. That is, instead of programming by “time” you can program it by show. Want to record the whole season of a show? You can just set it once, and the MCE2005 is able to take care of the rest. This is important because it can be flexible and for shows that repeat several times, it makes sure it doesn’t record the same thing twice and it can rearrange your recording schedule if there is a conflict and it knows that one of the shows will be repeated. You can also search by movie. Another cool feature in MCE2005 is that it can suspend-to-RAM seamlessly. In this mode, every fan is turned off, but then you have near
instant-on boot-up capability (faster than a set-top-box HD tuner) and MCE2005 is smart enough to wake up on its own to record a show.
It is interesting, of course, to see Microsoft’s split personality on the marketing of this product. While we did discuss the design mistake about not allowing MCE2005 to run with an HDTV tuner only, the other mistake is that Microsoft seems unwilling to fully promote and market this software. Now, you may ask how this can be true when FiringSquad had large MCE2005 advertisements on our webpage as did many other websites and because MCE2005 software can now be purchased by individuals. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft did not provide us with any support for the review of the OS. It’s as if they’re so used to discouraging operating system reviews given a history of disastrous products that they’re applying it to MCE2005. If there’s one comment that captures everything, it’s that Microsoft got it working properly with version 2.0 – they did not need to wait to 3.0 this time.
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
$130
http://www.microsoft.com
Running Total: $2455
| HTPC Chassis | Page:: ( 12 / 15 ) |
An ideal case for a HTPC will be once that will fit in with the other components in your audio/video rack. This often means a 17-19” component width and a streamlined faceplate. The drives shouldn’t all be different colors, it should look it belongs and your entertainment center should feel empty without it. With all those restrictions, the ideal HTPC case should not skimp on expandability, cooling performance, or value.
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Our choice for this system is the X11 chassis from Uneed. Although Uneed might not be a name you recognize, you will immediately recognize their work. They produce the gorgeous case with the integrated touch screen used by VoodooPC in their Aria Media Center. Uneed has focused on the high-end of the OEM HTPC market, and we consider some of their designs the most stylish on the market. A lot of people consider Lian-Li to be the flagship of aluminum chassis design. However, the side panels on our PC-V1200 are just 2 mm; the X11 has 3 mm side panels and an 8 mm front panel.
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The X11 is the non-touchscreen version of the X15e and is a full sized case with support for an external 5.25” and an external 3.5” drive and 3 internal 3.5” drives. With the MSI motherboard, we could therefore run 3 SATA-II HDDs, a SATA optical drive, and still have two remaining ports for external SATA. It integrates a vacuum fluorescent display and an IR port, along with front USB, Firewire, and audio ports. One of the best elements of the X11 is that it’s fairly subdued. True, the silkscreened “X11” text is a little bit big, but it will still blend in well with the rest of the home theater rack. We in particular are big fans of the non-door based DVD-ROM cover but find their design odd – they’ve designed it so that you have to remove the frnt of the drive tray (not the whole bezel) when in fact, it would work just as well pasting it over the existing front.
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A great feature of the X11 is that the VFD is MCE2005 compatible. This is surprisingly not the case for many VFDs on the market. With MCE2005 compatibility, you can get track and movie information using the integrated software without using any secondary drivers. Likewise, the IR receiver is 100% MCE2005 compatible as well. This means that you can use any MCE2005 compatible remote including those such as the Philips Pronto or Logitech Harmony without requiring any additional programming. Of note, the Remote Wonder Plus that comes with the ATI is a very nice design as well. However, the RF-based technology from ATI is very sensitive to ambient noise. Likewise, it’s not 100% MCE2005 compatible and you end up relying on mouse-emulation plus keyboard-emulation for your tasks.
The VFD/IR unit in the X11 also adds one enormously cool feature – remote control powered start-up! Instead of simply being powered off a molex connector, the X11 has the option of connecting itself directly to the 20-pin or 24-pin PSU/motherboard adapter. This is a significant step in making the HTPC function as a true consumer electronics device. Clearly the next step will be to accelerate the boot process and hibernation process. Currently, the X11’s are shipping only with a 20-pin adapter but the 24-pin adapters will be provided at no extra charge when they are available in about 2 weeks.
| The Case in Use | Page:: ( 13 / 15 ) |
I had procrastinated enough where it was impossible to get a new unit shipped out, so I needed to resolder the SMT capacitor myself and all I have is a 40 watt unregulated non-adjustable Hakko soldering iron with a 3mm chisel tip…
I was able to resolder the capacitor successfully. By this point, I thought to myself that that I encountered the failed MSI plastic part and now had to resolder a surface mount capacitor, and had seen the glitch for this system build. If you can learn anything from movies, anytime someone says or thinks that the worst is over (i.e. Apollo 13), something worse will end up happening.
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The actual manufacturing of the X11 ended up being less than ideal. Although the case is made of thick aluminum and there are no sharp edges, their tolerances are clearly looser than those from other manufacturers. When working with cases from Lian-Li, Antec, Chenbro, Chieftec, and SuperMicro, the fit and finish was never an issue. Things fit together cleanly and securely, and things like drive cages are carefully thought out. With the X11, there were several problems.
I began by installing the HDD in the main drive cage and my DVD. In order to do this you essentially have to completely take down the entire chassis. The drive cages are not removable in the same way was they are with SuperMicro or Antec/Chieftec cases. You really do have to unscrew all of the screws that hold up the drive cage. As I progressed to the install the motherboard, I discovered that the motherboard stand-offs weren’t quite aligned perfectly. That is, while they screwed into the motherboard perfectly, there was quite of bit of tension on the ATX rear I/O shield and the inserted PCI and AGP cards had a fair amount of space where the card should screw into the chassis, as much as 2 mm (or even to cause danger motherboard flex should you screw down the cards tightly). Trying to fit the motherboard into the misaligned rear I/O shield and led to the case making me bleed my own blood. J
Since the PSU is located adjacent to the DVD-ROM, spacing is tight, particularly with all those cables lying around. A better design would have been to place the PSU on the opposite side, or having a deeper chassis to give a little bit of extra room. With the motherboard and drives secure, I proceeded to install my GPU – only problem was that the HDD was in the way of where the PCI-Express power connector should be. So it was time to take everything apart again, move the HDD to the slot above the DVD-ROM.
| System Cooling | Page:: ( 14 / 15 ) |
Our Finest Hour
Although putting the X11 together required more time than any system build I can recall – it started off with re-soldering surface mount capacitor and required more repositioning and taking apart than any other case I’ve worked with. Yet by the time I was done, the effort was worth it. I had an HTPC that really looked like a piece of equipment that deserved to be on my rack – and it was a computer I could turn on and off with an IR remote.
As a product, the X11 needs significant work. In its current form, it feels like a pre-production unit. However, the underlying substance is there. I enjoy using the X11 case – it just didn’t enjoy the build process. This case is best left for the experts and clearly the wrong decision for first-time builders. (One of these days, I need to sit down with a company and help spec out an entire system from the engineering standpoint where things can still be changed – it’s too bad I’m not world champion at any video game.)
Uneed X11 HTPC chassis
http://www.iuneed.com/x11.html
$250
VFD/IR upgrade
$70
Running Total: $2775
A comment about PCAlchemy.com
We discovered PCAlchemy.com as they were the only US distributor of the X11 and X15 case besides VoodooPC. They’re a company based out of California that’s focused on the HTPC market alone. Besides carrying the Uneed cases, including the X15e, they have the full line-up from Ahanix and Silverstone, and in the case of Silverstone their prices are as much as 15% cheaper than even Newegg.com! They even have several slot-loading slim optical drives that I didn’t readily find elsewhere.
The thing that most impressed me though is that the company is run by HTPC enthusiasts, so you’ll get really good pre and post-sales support from them. I had a long chat with them regarding the X11. The thing that impressed me the most is that we ended up chatting about HTPCs in general and these guys really knew their stuff. It was clear I was talking to a colleague rather than just someone trying to make a quick buck. So, if you’re thinking about building a HTPC, I strongly recommend them. They’ve got excellent pre-sales and post-sales support and have a good sense of what they’re doing. A rating of 10.00 at ResellerRatings.com over a whole year isn’t bad either. So here’s a shout-out to the guys at PCAlchemy.com.
Remote
As a home theater buff, I had the rest of my equipment handy. I already had my Marantz RC5000 (a first-generation Pronto) remote, which meant that I didn’t need to worry about getting a MCE2005 compatible remote. If you I did not have this though, I would need to allocate about $40.
Running Total: $2815
So we need almost $3k to produce a very high-end HTPC running Windows MCE 2005. This one box will now act as my media server with the ability to record video, audio, and playback DVDs with very high quality – and it’s a full fledged, high performance Windows XP machine. This was our toughest system build and it’s pretty clear that flagship HTPC design reflects the most challenge system designs. You need to build a system that’s visually appealing, has sufficient horsepower to deal with anything you throw at it, and as silent as possible.
| Closing Statement | Page:: ( 15 / 15 ) |
Over the week, we’ve given you a lot of specific recommendations but if you’re just looking for a “Dang-certified” PC, you can just ask your favorite retailer for the Dang PC, or Dang Workstation, or the Dang Theater. J Actually, here are the minimum components we would recommend:
Dang PC 1.0
Dang Workstation 1.0
Dang Theater 1.0
Every component used in the last 5 days reflects the “best in its class” products, but there were a few products that went above and beyond the rest:
FiringSquad’s Editor’s Choice awards
PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 510-SLI PSU
Hitachi T7K250 250 GB SATA-II HDD
Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu cooler
Arctic Silver 5
Bull’s Eye Awards
Pioneer DVR-109 burner
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Silverstone Zeus ST65F PSU
OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU
Lian Li PC-V1200 chassis
Athlon64 X2 4200+
Ok, the real closing statement
This has been our most ambitious project to date. In the past, we’d only offer one system building article at a time, and this year we raised the bar. Using our silly gimmick of adapting a video game cliché, we hopefully were able to keep your interest over 5 days of articles, totaling over 32,000 words. I admit, the gimmick was silly, but every article needs a gimmick.
In two years, we’ll return with the 2007 Eternal Battle. Will it be the battle between work and play? Not necessarily. In 2007, maybe it’ll be something simple like AMD vs Intel or ATI vs NVIDIA, or maybe the debate of the day will be multi-core CPUs vs parallel PPUs, or between XP64 on AMD64 versus MacOS X on intel (and maybe even the PlayStation 3 running Linux?).
We haven’t decided exactly what 2007’s Eternal Battle will be, but we will guarantee you that it’ll be bigger and better and it’ll be a full week of back-to-back articles. For it to bigger and better though, we’ll also need a better gimmick. You know, we could have purchased a car with the amount of cash that reflected the 3 systems we built today. AMD sponsors Ferrari’s Formula 1 team and Intel sponsors Toyota’s F1 team. So if either company wants to donate a car to one of our readers in 2007, we’d be glad to do so.
Well, I doubt that’ll happen – but the gimmick in 2007 is definitely going to mean that some lucky reader is going finish the week with a wide grin and the envy of all his friends…
See you in 2007!