Fiddlin'

I DL'd and tried out GB-PVR yesterday. I only fiddled with it for about half an hour, and I couldn't get the thing to find any channels. It seems to rely on a pre-existing EPG (in xml form?) to be able to find channels (I'm still struggling with the whole xml tvguide thing)... I think I need to dig a bit deeper.

I also had another go trying to get WEBepg working, but to no avail. I think I'm gonna have to dig a bit deeper on that one too.

Mobo and graphics thoughts...

Been looking around a bit for a mobo/graphics solution, and I reckon I've got it half sorted...

I'm probably gonna go for an NVidia 6200 based card, as they have lots of good features, but more importantly they can be found as a passively cooled unit, which means no noise. Along with all the 6*00 series cards, they have native component outputs (and svideo, and composite), which means I'll have no probs getting a good signal into the TV.

As far as motherboards go, I don't really know where to start. I found this post on the Anandtech forums, which seems like a good place to start.

I don't really need something with a huge amount of features... I'll probably just figure it out when it comes time to purchase.

Edit: Although I just saw this board MSI K8NGM2-FID, which has the built in NV6150, and also seems to have component out. Hmm...

Dagnabbit

I realised something on the weekend that I really should have checked a while ago...

My TV doesn't have s-video input! It does however have RGB component inputs, so I'm going to have to rethink my motherboard/graphics solution.

J

EPG and XMLTV

EPG (electronic program guide) is basically an interactive TV guide, on your computer. It should be integrated with your TV viewing software of choice, and allow you to see and select shows for viewing, or to schedule recording. It all sounds so simple. Your EPG compatible software of choice acquires this programme information from any number of sources (websites), by way of a piece of software called a “grabber”.

Your grabber will connect to a source site, download the EPG information, and export it to an “xmltv” formatted .xml file. (Check here for more info).

Then your TV software should be able to import this .xml file and you should have your EPG!

The big catch is that for some reason, Australian TV companies have decided that this programme information (which is just a collection of facts, and is freely available in print form from many sources) is actually their own intellectual property, and is not to be collected by home EPG solutions (well not for free anyway…). Thusly, many sources have encrypted this information, or change the url of the data frequently, and a few have threatened legal action against grabber software writers. This makes it difficult to get a stable working solution up and running.

MP actually has a built in EPG system that should work automatically based on your location details, but, for some reason it’s not working.

So I got a grabber called “javaxmltvgrabber2”, which is recommended by some people on the Digital Broadcasting Australia forums. I have managed to download and export the .xml, but I’m having difficulties getting MP to import it. Whatever I do, I can’t get MP to show an EPG.

I’m gonna downgrape MP and see if I have a better run.

MediaPortal

I downloaded version 0.2 RC2. This version is still in beta, but I figured it’d be OK…

Once again, I could write about 1000 words here about all the issues I’ve had with this app (or this version of this app), but I’ll just summarise.

I’ve had GUI issues, channel scanning and changing issues, and a couple of crashes. Most of all however, – this is what I’m tackling now – EPG, or Electronic Program Guide issues. I’ll get into this later.

All in all though, I feel that MedaiPortal is a top notch program and that it WANTS to work on my setup, but this version is still beta, so I can’t really expect the world.

Soon I’m going to get the latest stable release (0.1.3?) and give it a go.

I got a card!

So I purchased the Compro DVB-T300, and shoved it in my desktop. I figured it’d be a good idea to sort out software issues before I bought the rest of the box, just to ensure a smooth installation and setup phase when it comes to bringing the HTPC on-line.

Installation was a breeze, although I just clicked OK to everything instead of choosing “advanced” in the setup app, so I ended up with some bundled software (ULead photo something…?) that I didn’t need/want.

Right now I’m just testing the TV capabilities (not DVD etc), so I cranked up the ComproTV software, plugged in a few preferences settings and hit auto scan…

It was at this point that I realised I had absolutely no TV reception in my room at all.

There’s a bit of a story here, but for the reader’s sake, I won’t go into it. To cut a long story short, I ended up purchasing a 10 metre quad shielded coax antenna extension with RF connectors, ran it out the window into the backyard, and stuck a wire coathanger in the end. Voila! Perfect signal.

Auto scan. About 5 minutes later when it had finished the scan, I had a whole list of channels to choose from, and was able to flick through easily. Time shifting worked just by hitting the pause button on the remote, recording worked just as easy. Since then I’ve tested scheduled recording too. It all works. The HD channels are a bit sketchy, but I put it down to my system specs, and all the stuff I’ve got running in the background… or maybe the wire coathanger antenna…

So the tuner card work works perfectly. All of this was done with the Compro software, which is good for a desktop PC, but not so good for a HTPC. Now comes the fun part of trying to get it all working with other software.

The rest...

As far as HardDrive(s), DVD drive, ram, and sound go, It’s pretty straight forward.

I’ll start off with a 250-300G HD. I usually go with Seagate Barracuda’s, but I might see what other brands are a bit quieter...

I’ll probably go with a Liteon DVD read/writer... but I’ll put the new one in my desktop PC, and chuck my old one in the HTPC as I don’t need burning capabilities in the loungeroom... Although, I have to check what the deal is with the case I want and whether it needs a slimline drive…

I’m going to wait and see how the onboard sound is before I think about a soundcard, as we’ve only got it going through a crappy little stereo system anyway.

A gig of ram should do it.

Motherboard etc

While I was at the Computerfair purchasing the tunercard, I thought it best to scope out some of my other components for price etc...

While reading some forum or other, I’d learned of a new wave of mobo’s coming out which are specifically designed for HTPC’s in that they are small form (micro-ATX), are designed to be “quiet and cool”, and best of all, have good graphics card built onto the board.

I was looking at Gigabyte boards (my usual choice anyway) and the current model is called GA-K8N51PVMT-9 and it has a built in nVidia 6150 graphics chip, and svideo output. These boards retail for around $170

I went looking for this board at the fair, but apparently they haven’t made it there yet, so no go on that one. (that’s bad).

They did however have it’s little brother, called GA-K8N51GMF-9, which has an nVidia 6100 onboard, which is fine for my purposes (that’s good!).

Unfortunately this board does not have and Svideo output at all, which is what I need to plug the pc into my TV! So it’s kinda redundant as I’d just have to buy a graphics card anyway (that’s bad).

But they did have another mobo made by “Elitegroup” (RS480-M?) which had onboard graphics (ATI flavour... X200 I think?) AND and svid output and that supports AMD chips, all for around $120 (that’s good!) I’ve never had experience with this make of boards, but apparently they’re not too bad, so I may end up going with this one, but I’ll see what boards come out in the next few weeks...

Tuner Card

This is the first component (and only one so far) that I bought. I went with the Compro DVB-T300 for $129 from the computerfair. It met all of my requirements as far as timeshifting, schedule recording, handheld remote etc were concerned, plus I’d read somewhere that it had no problems working in Australia (friends of mine had had issues with cards not picking up certain channels etc...).

This card is also a low form factor (skinny), which means that if I end up getting a micro-ATX case at some stage down the track, there won’t be any issues with size.

It comes with a remote which works out of the box with the Compro TV and DVD software, which is cool. I have since realised that not all remotes were created equal. Basically there is something called a “MCE remote” which is a remote that conforms to MS’ remote spec’s and will work straight away with MCE. A few other packages support the MCE remote aswell, including MedaiPortal.

My remote is not a MCE remote. However, apparently there is a little piece of software out there (HIP something?) that will help me map my remote buttons to keyboard strokes, which will match up to the fully assignable hotkeys in MP. I’ll tackle that later...

Software

Most tuner cards come with software that will do everything like recording, timeshifting and whatnot, but they’re really not tailored to a TV based system, and are only good if you want to keep your viewing on your PC. Mine is to be an all in one media box solution that can also play dvds, mp3’s, cd’s etc and all of this running through a TV, and with minimal mouse+keyboard intervention.

I did a bit of a google on HTPC software solutions. It’s decided on an XP based system, as I can’t be fucked screwing around with a Linux based MythTV box as my Linux skillz are pretty much zero. It also means that I don’t have to worry about drivers and compatibility and the such.

I decided pretty early on that I didn’t want an XP Media Centre Edition (MCE) box, as I’m not a huge Microsoft fan, and was pretty sure – after no research at all... just a hunch – that I’d end up being pissed off at it because of MS’ obsession with DRM and closed formats or something...

This is when I stumbled across MediaPortal. It’s an XP based open source (and free!) software package that seemes to have all the features of any other HTPC PVR system, free or otherwise. It also has an active community and forums, excellent support, a growing list of plugins etc. So I’ll go with this for now.

In The Beginning

These first few posts may be a bit heavy going, as I had already started the process at the time of creating this Blog.

I started off trying to work out exactly what I wanted in a machine, and I came up with a list of features that I MUST have.
I also wanted to spend about $500. (Not sure whether this is realistic...but I’ll give it a go!)

Physical and asthetics:

No bigger than VCR
Quiet
Minimalistic front panel
Remote

Basic needed Features:

Digital tuner
Time shifting
scheduled recording
All in one software solution
DVD, CD, mp3, and most compressed video formats playback
GAF (Girlfriend acceptance factor)

Features that would be nice:

Networked with other home PC’s
No need for keyboard and mouse
Wireless network?

GAF is a big deal as we are both paying for the box. She wants something that is going to be no more hassle to operate than a vcr on dvd player etc, which is the ultimate purpose of this box anyway.

Components I have to decide on are:

Tuner card
mobo/chip/ram
graphics
HD(s)
DVD drive
sound
case

I wasn’t sure what spec I’d need to run the system as I’ve never really researched on what you need to run something like this, but I assumed that It wouldn’t need to be TOO fast.

My mate had an old p4 1.2(?) ATX board+chip sitting around that he said I could have for free, so I thought I’d start with that and go from there. Soon after looking around at other HTPC specs however, I decided that this wouldn’t do, and also I felt better about building it from all new components anyway for reliability sake. So I’m saying no to the parts, and building from scratch.

At this stage I didn’t really even know the differences between mobo form factors and the such. I’d seen smaller boxes at the local PC market, and I assumed that they were micro-ATX, so I figured that I’d base my decisions on fitting stuff into a micro-ATX sized box. As it turns out, they were actually ATX cases, just small ones! I showed the GF a few of these cases, and she approved the size, which means that I can relax a bit on the internal component restrictions for now.