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 HTPC V2, Home Theater PC Setup, HOWTO and Guides

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paskal
post Jan 6 2011, 03:47 PM

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QUOTE(xsi @ Jan 6 2011, 12:48 PM)
help help..
i can bitstream HD audio when playing video files in BD folder structure...
But when playing single mkv...the playback stucks...play 1 2 sec..then stop..play again...stuck...

where are all the sifus....this thread like dead already...
*
maybe ........ working?
paskal
post Jan 8 2011, 10:20 PM

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QUOTE(lightastral @ Jan 8 2011, 02:07 PM)
update on my htpc project.

have been very busy for the last few months so have to put aside this aside.

previously i have been tinkering with the onboard GPU (nvidia 9300) + MPC. biggest problem is scaling issues.

so as our sifu paskal recommendation and he's been telling us quite a few times already, i finally drag my feet and bought off an ATI 5450 for rm135. almost bought a 6850..lol. poison poison.

scaling is spot on out of the box. i mean, no issues at all. and the PQ is much much better. wifey said the color is better to her eyes. i was itchy to test TRUEHD passthrough so spend about 2 hours reading it again. finally got it light up but still got issues. mpc using ffdshow isnt doing hardware acceleration..hmmm.

prolly going to test TMT + mediabrowser, again as per our sifu recommendation.

will post some picture afterwards, till then, big thanks to paskal and also stan001 for their write ups.
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i am no sifu. not in this virtual life anyways.
a htpc is kindda hard to put to work, unlike a media player. takes a lot more patience.

QUOTE(Fawkes @ Jan 8 2011, 03:59 PM)
Anyone use that casing before? Will the 80mm fans be too noisy?
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i'm using LC17. the 2 X 80mm rear fans are moved to the front blowing fresh air towards the hdd. will be adding another 2 more fans blowing to another set of hdd.
plenty of ventilation space for an average user, which would probably won't require any additional mods (or fans). the 2 80mm fans are dead silent. more silent than your average ceiling fan.
paskal
post Jan 8 2011, 11:31 PM

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QUOTE(Fawkes @ Jan 8 2011, 10:34 PM)
Ooh, how about the cable management? It can fit ATX motherboard nicely without feeling too cramp up? Is there any chance for the casing to fit a Xigmatek S1283 Red Scorpion? But based on the measurement, the chance is quite slim. I'll have to use back Intel default cooler?
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cable management relies on how you arrange the cables.
yes it'll fit an ATX mainboard without being too cramped.
that xingmatek is using 12cm fans. which could possible block the cover. the lc17 have enough space to clear a normal atx psu. maybe it'll clear the xingmatek. or even if it doesn't clear it, its only by a small margin.
paskal
post Jan 13 2011, 07:11 AM

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QUOTE(daryl.k @ Jan 13 2011, 01:53 AM)
i've pretty much decided on the budget Dell Zino HD (not ideal wish list) with

AMD Athlon II P340 & ATI Radeon HD 4250

i just need someone to help me confirm if this Net top/HTPC can in fact bitstream HD Audio (DTS-MA & Dolby THD) to my AVR. on dell's website, it says "Integrated 2.1 Hi-def analog audio and options up to THX 7.1 digital audio" i hv no idea what this means, especially 'options' 

Zino for me the cheapest option for a HTPC cum PC for net surfing & movie downloading + its got option for 12-months Zero-Interest plan  icon_idea.gif

i'm currently using AC Ryan POHD but its unable to bitstream HD Audio (old 1073DD chipset) and very problematic when wan to play BDMV folder. most of my good movie titles are BD-Ripped.  every time need to go in the stream folder and manually select largest file to play.

i'm considering a new HDX-BD1 but currently out of budget and my priority now is a new PC for downloading files...but if the Zino HD can do what i need then might KIV the BD1 till further notice smile.gif

with the Zino HD, what video software is used to watch BDMV titles? is it a no brainer process? like as simple as connecting the Zino HD to an AVR and it'll be able to play HD titles with HD Audio? or does it require me to go for PhD first?

i think the unit comes with preinstalled Power DVD softwares (trials & OEM)

thanks for reading up! appreciate any feedback!
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4 series radeon can't do bitstreaming, only multichannel lpcm.

why not check out the newer realtek r055 chipset players? only RM200 a piece. they could do bitstream. plays nearly everything under the sun and you can't mess the codec, works out of the box.
paskal
post Jan 13 2011, 08:41 PM

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QUOTE(daryl.k @ Jan 13 2011, 12:40 PM)
my main priority is to buy a new PC...plus the rtd 1055 can't do BD-menu (i think)

its a real value for money player but....
thanks for advise...i did consider asrock, and although the quoted price was lower (330HT at RM870) it is a bare bone unit, meaning without HDD, RAM & OS.  add those in, its become more expensive than Zino..

[ADDED] btw, i check cpu benchmark for both Atom 330 2 Core & Athlon II P340 and it seem the AMD wins over Atom in terms of CPU Passmark (not that i know what that means really) so is the AMD better than Atom??

if i have a wee bit more budget, i wanna get the asrock core 100...solve all problem.

will go back to the budget book see if i can stretch it little bit more...
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well it's expected. the atom is never intended for speed. it's designed for netbook and for low power.
know which is your priority.
paskal
post Feb 7 2011, 07:17 AM

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QUOTE(jchue73 @ Feb 6 2011, 11:47 PM)
Supposedly, the built-in 6310 GPU is capable.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-bra...n-for-miniitx/4

The link above is for the MSI mobo but you get the idea since the Asus runs the same chipset.

p/s: Not possible to run 6GB memory on the board with 2 empty DDR3 slots.
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could always run single 4 gb ram with it and pair it with a 2gb ram
paskal
post Feb 26 2011, 07:35 AM

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QUOTE(sotong168 @ Feb 25 2011, 09:14 PM)
price is a bit stiff at this moment, was quoted ~500 for ASUS E35M1-M PRO, prefer over msi & gigabyte as it is using passive cooling if not mistaken
*
i rather get active cooling as i'll be stucking them inside a poorly ventilated tv cabinet.
paskal
post Mar 18 2011, 07:16 PM

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QUOTE(opjust @ Mar 18 2011, 06:18 PM)
May I know what player (software) u usually use for playing MKV or M2TS untouch bluray rip?
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anything mkv (or any other video for that matter) i relegated to xbmc. mainly because just about anything could be done using the remote.
and for bluray i use an integration of totalmedia theater 3 (for playback) and mediabrowser (for interface).

switching between xbmc and mediabrowser are done using a media centre plugin
paskal
post Mar 18 2011, 09:30 PM

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QUOTE(opjust @ Mar 18 2011, 08:40 PM)
xbmc is really awsome i think because u can control via remote. anyway what player u use to bitstream HD audio?
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mkv with lossless needs to be played media player classic or windows media player or anything else that supports ffdshow codec.
bluray with lossless can be played with totalmedia theater 3 that supports full menu and bitstream.

Added on March 18, 2011, 9:33 pmand not to forget you could configure xbmc to run with the internal dsplayer that supports ffdshow thus allowing hd audio bitstream.

This post has been edited by paskal: Mar 18 2011, 09:33 PM
paskal
post Apr 3 2011, 11:54 PM

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QUOTE(little_orc @ Apr 1 2011, 09:54 PM)
i using it now. ATI 5570 1GB DDR3, sometime feel lagging even running a mkv file with DTS-HD audio:(
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i'm running the lowest ati 5450 with 256mb of ram and never had any problem with mkv with dts-hd. heck i even ran bdmv/bd.iso/bd disc with dts-hdma and never had any problem. even with high bitrate 24/192.

and all my movies are currently being ran with ati edge enhancement and denoise together with audio decoding to lpcm then upconvert to 24/96 before being feeded to the avr. yes, all 6 channels decoded to lpcm, then all 6 channels are upsampled to 24/96.
never had any lagging. but i did configured the system to ran hardware acceleration correctly. maybe you should do the same
paskal
post Apr 5 2011, 07:00 PM

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QUOTE(nakata101 @ Apr 4 2011, 01:38 PM)
I thought ur ATI 5450 is 512MB one ???  hmm.gif
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you're right at that. rechecked and it's indeed with 512mb ram.
if there's one with 256mb of ram i would've bought that instead. too bad the lowest only comes with 512mb biggrin.gif
paskal
post Apr 20 2011, 02:36 PM

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QUOTE(little_orc @ Apr 20 2011, 01:47 PM)
hi 2 sifu, how to check whether it using gc hardware acceleration to depress? When i switch my gc into ATI5750, then it woulnd't lag.
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i'm not a sifu.
but the rule is, if hardware acceleration is working correctly, your cpu usage while playing a movie should hover around 10-15%. most of the time, less. that is if you don't have any unnecessary items running in the background.
paskal
post Apr 20 2011, 03:51 PM

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QUOTE(arremie @ Apr 20 2011, 03:41 PM)
bro u know where is the setting for hardware accelaration for ati card?
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i think only starting with 4 series have hardware acceleration. and in my experience the older series tho have hardware acceleration are kindda temperamental. series 5 should work right out of the box with the latest catalyst drivers installed.

hardware acceleration settings are different from program to program. totalmedia theater have a tickbox inside the settings page. mpc-hc have to be turned on manually somewhere buried in the configuration page. if installed by a codec pack like klite then it's presented during the installation pages.

ffdshow have a variant of it but needs to be selected by a codec tweaker, it's not the default. the newer xbmc have it inside the settings page. mediabrowser/media center in default uses microsoft codec which doesn't support hardware acceleration, needs to be disabled and changed to something like ffdshow. coreavc codec have it inside the configuration page.
paskal
post May 6 2011, 08:12 AM

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QUOTE(xcen @ May 5 2011, 07:48 PM)
I like the freedom of being able to access my media content from my computer's hard drive.

Also, if I use a PC, I understand that I do not need to get an AVR, just a sound card then can plug in some 5.1 speaker setup.. Am I correct?
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it could be done. but albeit with some tricky configuration. you need 2 sound device and config the media player to use the secondary sound device. or set the game to use the other sound device. but you need to mess with each game config. or if you use ffdshow need to config it inside ffdshow.

and you need to lock the display of the media player to a secondary monitor. need to use multi-display manager like ATI HydraVision or the one from nvidia. and maybe lock the game display to the first monitor.

if you're not using an avr, you lose the time alignment functions of the avr, phase correction, level adjustment correction, crossover control and eq function. which all are important for proper audio experience.

QUOTE(ariff_tech @ May 5 2011, 11:53 PM)
It depends, most people used low cost, decent performance HTPC, small casing and only 1 HDD.
A media player also capable to do this with less cost. But it required AVR or Digital AMP to get 5.1 ch (some media player also have analog out but expensive).

With HTPC, you can have more configurable sound option, not just by soundcard driver, but audio codec as well like ffdshow.

Consider about power consumption, low power HTPC is good, but using AVR will defeat the purpose. Just get 5.1 logitech or creative is enough.

Unless you have high end HTPC, with 10x2TB hdd and around 500 HD movie with HD sound, then AVR is a must.
*
avr doesn't suck too much power. my tv uses more electricity than the entire audio setup.
avr is a must if you want the best possible audio quality at home (that is, when watching movie).

and p/s: 20TB of storage will get you more than 500HD movie with HD sound tongue.gif

QUOTE(eteractive @ May 6 2011, 12:42 AM)
Why only high end HTPC should use AVR?

Also what AVR you would recommend? smile.gif
Thanks!
*
the one that sounds the best to your ears.

QUOTE(xcen @ May 6 2011, 01:49 AM)
Now... what should I do if I want my astro decoder to be hooked up to the same speakers? It should be quite tricky, or impossible because the speakers are hooked up to my PC and my Astro is not.
*
astro -> soundcard line in -> speakers
paskal
post May 6 2011, 12:26 PM

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QUOTE(eteractive @ May 6 2011, 12:42 AM)
Why only high end HTPC should use AVR?

Also what AVR you would recommend? smile.gif
Thanks!
*
scratch my previous comment.
buy denon. denon makes the best avr. nothing can even come close to denon.

QUOTE(ariff_tech @ May 6 2011, 12:09 PM)
it is and i agree. What if some one intend to use headphone, do we really need all above option.  cool.gif
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if it's only headphone then i guess ffdshow preprocessing for headphone 5.1 simulation paired with a good DAC/soundcard is the best.

QUOTE
TV or display is a must.
but im comparing between Media Player + AVR vs. HTPC + 5.1 Speaker. wink.gif

my vote is to separate the tv + media player and access the media library through the network. the htpc config might prove too hard to do for some.
media player not costs under RM200.

QUOTE
best audio quality, then it a must, (i also use avr when playing Games) thumbup.gif  thumbup.gif

avr have better audio quality because you need to tune the speaker system to the room.

QUOTE
How you know i only have 8x2tb hdd and got 800 hd movie with hd sound. hmm.gif  hmm.gif
PS: I bought GT430, but still failed to bitstream EAC3 via ffdshow. vmad.gif  vmad.gif

hd sound as in lossless hd audio as in dts-hdma/truhd?
hard to achieve with only 16tb of storage as 1080p mkv with lossless audio easily >17GB each. bdmv easily >25GB each.
paskal
post Aug 18 2011, 10:26 AM

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QUOTE(sKyWiR3pT3lTd @ Aug 17 2011, 06:10 PM)
Bro paskal,

My office is shutting down soon and selling of 3 sets of Audigy 2 ZS Plantinum Pro. Can you advise if i should get one?. I do not have 5.1 or 7.1 speakers to test , only a 2.1 speaker (ATP 3).

Please advise..
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creative soundcards are good for gaming. and a couple of years back, it's only good for gaming. for pure sound quality, them USB DACs that are selling there in garage sales are better sounding.
don't really read around about the newer creative offering tho. but if it's selling for say, RM50 then maybe it's still a good buy. if it sounds crappy can throw it away
paskal
post Aug 19 2011, 07:09 AM

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QUOTE(sKyWiR3pT3lTd @ Aug 18 2011, 01:01 PM)
I haven't had the chance to test it. But according to a colleague who tested it before announcing sale said the sound system works fine and the sound is good.
How true , not sure..need to get my hands on it. Thanks for the response. Shall test it before getting it..
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used to have the previous audigy 2 zs few years back. can't say for the platinum pro, but both the audizy 2 zs and audigy 2 zs platinum have a bad habit of resampling all the digital sound that goes through it to 88.2kHz for processing.
there's just no way around it. the creative DSP inside the card processes any information at 88.2 khz. so there's no way to get bit-perfect playback on creative card. well at least on the consumer audigy offering. their professional EMU series is another matter. EMU cards are used to be said on par with high end CD players costing 10x the price.

but then again, one need a very capable system to hear the difference.
paskal
post Oct 11 2011, 09:53 PM

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QUOTE(peter32 @ Oct 11 2011, 09:47 PM)
Agree.  Remove the filter.  It restricts airflow.
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then the internal heatsink inside the psu will be clogged with dust making the fan run even faster.
i suggest not to remove the filter. it's there for a reason. just clean it if it's clogged but never remove it.
paskal
post Apr 6 2012, 06:51 PM

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QUOTE(peter32 @ Mar 28 2012, 10:40 PM)
Finally the latest XBMC Eden (v.11) has been released. 

Time to do the upgrade and see.  Highly recommended to all HTPC enthusiasts here.

Yet to find out if it can read Bluray disc. 

LINK to XBMC

user posted image
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there's a mod version that could bitstream hd audio natively. can play m2ts, ts and mkv with hd audio passthrough.
too bad still can't play bdmv directory else i would've switched back xbmc. my library is too big to repack everything back to ISO.
paskal
post Jan 7 2014, 11:59 PM

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QUOTE(acegreaser @ Jan 7 2014, 04:53 PM)
Hi guys.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

*
if you don't mind not following the 'latest and greatest' crowd, then the HD5450 is the minimum that will bitstream hd audio from ati.
i used it for a few years and it'll handle tear free bd playback with a little bit of post processing and unconventional deinterlacing. used to be better than the first generation intel hd audio solution.

higher post processing (if you fancy that) and anything more than adaptive deinterlacing routine then you should probably be looking at the HD6XXX which only costs something like RM200 bucks. the HD5450 is only going for RM100-something now.

i've seen and compared the HD5---, HD6---, HD7--- and the current generation R7 in bd & mkv playback (some of it side-by-side).
if media playback is your main criteria, it's probably enough to stick to the lower end HD6 or HD7 series. dump the money for storage. 100% increase in price would only translate to ~5% increase in quality at best. not worth it.

edited:typo

This post has been edited by paskal: Jan 8 2014, 12:01 AM
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