New HTPC Build - Spec/Sanity Check

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napierite

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#105103 27-Jun-2012 12:58

Greetings all

With September looming in Hawkes Bay, 'bout time to get backside in gear and build my first real HTPC. What I want is:
- to record DVB-T signal (will want to record 2 channels at once) in full HD or near to it
- to watch the same on the 60" HD plasma attached to HTPC via HDMI
- the odd bit of on-demand when we forget to record
- to watch other pre-recorded video
- to watch DVD's
- software MUST be wife-friendly :)
- has to be put to sleep and wake up for scheduled recordings
- be reasonably quiet as it will be in the lounge
- The odd bit of web browsing
- Transcoding selected recordings for watching on iPhone/Android while away from home
- won't be streaming around the house

I will only be recording whatever is free-to-air. Don't have Sky/Hulu/Netflix etc

You may say just go get a DVR from Harvey's were it not for the transcoding element. There will be recordings I want to save in other formats.

So, how does this sound:
i3 2120
Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H
Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9/4G
Haupauge WinTV HVR2210
2xWD Green Power 2TB 5400RPM in RAID1 (mobo RAID) - assume 5400 drives will handle
HDMI direct off mobo using onboard graphics

Case, power, optical and OS (Win7) will be out of my bits-and-bobs bin.

Software - I was thinking WMC or W7/XBMC. I'd tried Mythbuntu but lack of Linux knowledge quickly stopped that.
Comments/ridicule please :D

Nigel

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#646995 27-Jun-2012 13:37

I would stay away from the WD green drives. Others have had issues with them performance wise. Other then that your proposed hardware looks good. I use WMC and am very happy with it especially in regards to being wife friendly. It does to sleep when not in use wakes up for recordings etc. It is also dead easy to setup these days. Use EPG collector to get your EPG data and install Dvix with FFDShow for video not native to Windows.

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davidcole

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#646996 27-Jun-2012 13:39

napierite: Greetings all

With September looming in Hawkes Bay, 'bout time to get backside in gear and build my first real HTPC. What I want is:
- to record DVB-T signal (will want to record 2 channels at once) in full HD or near to it
- to watch the same on the 60" HD plasma attached to HTPC via HDMI
- the odd bit of on-demand when we forget to record
- to watch other pre-recorded video
- to watch DVD's
- software MUST be wife-friendly :)
- has to be put to sleep and wake up for scheduled recordings
- be reasonably quiet as it will be in the lounge
- The odd bit of web browsing
- Transcoding selected recordings for watching on iPhone/Android while away from home
- won't be streaming around the house

I will only be recording whatever is free-to-air. Don't have Sky/Hulu/Netflix etc

You may say just go get a DVR from Harvey's were it not for the transcoding element. There will be recordings I want to save in other formats.

So, how does this sound:
i3 2120
Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H
Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9/4G
Haupauge WinTV HVR2210
2xWD Green Power 2TB 5400RPM in RAID1 (mobo RAID) - assume 5400 drives will handle
HDMI direct off mobo using onboard graphics

Case, power, optical and OS (Win7) will be out of my bits-and-bobs bin.

Software - I was thinking WMC or W7/XBMC. I'd tried Mythbuntu but lack of Linux knowledge quickly stopped that.
Comments/ridicule please :D

Nigel

I just rebuilt using a Gigabyte GA-A55-D3H (must the the AMD equivalent of yours, with an AMD A6 CPU - which includes an AMD HD6550 video GPU).

Just check yours has the same/similar GPU or nvidia equivalent, else I can't see anything wrong with it.

With Win 7 MCE to transcode you normally have to extract from teh special container (the extention escapes me) and with your tuner you could record two programs at once.

However if you switched to mediportal/npvr (both free, MP is open source, NPVR is closed source but Wellington developed) you dual tuner would be able to record more than 2 programs at once - depending on the combinations being tried, eg it could record all of the TVNZ transponder and all of the MediaWorks transponder - about 8 channels at once.

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Digmarx

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#647128 27-Jun-2012 17:16

I've bought two WD 2 TB green drives in nz and have nothing but praise for them. I've also got 2 WD 1.5 TB external drives that I brought from Thailand which have green drives in them. I would gladly buy more.

napierite

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Wannabe Geek

#647173 27-Jun-2012 18:48

Yeah I've used green drives of a couple of varieties in NetStor RAID arrays with no issues. My question is more whether they have the IO to handle recording 2 (or more according to davidcole) HD streams while playing a third.

Nety

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#647200 27-Jun-2012 19:49

Digmarx: I've bought two WD 2 TB green drives in nz and have nothing but praise for them. I've also got 2 WD 1.5 TB external drives that I brought from Thailand which have green drives in them. I would gladly buy more.

Glad you have not had issues. Just passing on what some others have found. Might be fine however it I was buying drivers I would not get them as I would prefer not to take the risk.

sbiddle

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#647202 27-Jun-2012 19:53

I've been burnt enough by Green drives to never go near them again. Their reputation has been severly tarnished by all the problems they had initially, and you were guaranteed to suffer data loss if you ever attempted to use them in a RAID setup. While they may be OK now, the performance is terrible and you don't need to pay much more to get something better.

Digmarx

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Master Geek
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#647214 27-Jun-2012 20:20

I would agree they're not suited for raid or other high performance requirements. However the OP stated an intended purpose that matches well with their positive qualities: quiet, low power usage, and far cheaper than alternatives. Streaming one or two HD files to/from a green drive should be no problem. The high latency incurred by the lower rpms will have a negligible impact.

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napierite

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Wannabe Geek

#647230 27-Jun-2012 20:38

Many thanks for the opinions. Seems my memory was MIA in my experience with lower RPM drives - they were Seagate barracudas - duh!

As I'll have this solution for a while, I won't regret splashing out on 7200's. The reason for RAID was because I can see us building a library of recordings that would be a pain to lose. Thanks for the clarification digmarx.

Looking at my bits box, I don't have any SATA DVD drives. What brand/model would you's recommend? Computer Lounge have a rather nice Sony slot load for ~$100 that appeals to the Steve Jobs in me.

Cheers and Thanks - pictures will follow

Nigel

davidcole

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#647262 27-Jun-2012 21:24

napierite: Many thanks for the opinions. Seems my memory was MIA in my experience with lower RPM drives - they were Seagate barracudas - duh!

As I'll have this solution for a while, I won't regret splashing out on 7200's. The reason for RAID was because I can see us building a library of recordings that would be a pain to lose. Thanks for the clarification digmarx.

Looking at my bits box, I don't have any SATA DVD drives. What brand/model would you's recommend? Computer Lounge have a rather nice Sony slot load for ~$100 that appeals to the Steve Jobs in me.

Cheers and Thanks - pictures will follow

Nigel

Why not splash out on a bluray drive? it will read dvds as well.

I never personally found the need to raid my recording drive, if I lose them, then so be it. However I also have a home server that contains movies and tv shows that is very protected....so that probably influences my thinking.

napierite

9 posts

Wannabe Geek

#647269 27-Jun-2012 22:17

Why not splash out on a bluray drive?

Educate me please. My simple logic tells me that Bluray is for delivering richer content than could fit on a DL DVD, 3D being a prime example. If I don't have a 3d TV, then do I need Bluray. Are there other goodies I'm not realizing?

I myself don't watch much on DVD, just my son who will watch Rango/Cars/Dolphin Tale/... 15 times in a week.

BTW: done some more research on the Sony slot loader, needs a slimline adapter as well so I'll most likely go with the standard design.

lucky015

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#647328 28-Jun-2012 01:40

napierite: Why not splash out on a bluray drive?

Educate me please. My simple logic tells me that Bluray is for delivering richer content than could fit on a DL DVD, 3D being a prime example. If I don't have a 3d TV, then do I need Bluray. Are there other goodies I'm not realizing?

I myself don't watch much on DVD, just my son who will watch Rango/Cars/Dolphin Tale/... 15 times in a week.

BTW: done some more research on the Sony slot loader, needs a slimline adapter as well so I'll most likely go with the standard design.

Blu-Ray is not just for 3D, It is more specifically for 1080p content, Something that is becoming more and more common and if you are intending on pairing this HTPC with a particularly large screen can make a significant difference over the quality of a standard DVD.

If you or your family rent or buy DVD's regularly then it is definitely worth a look as most new releases are available in Blu-Ray as well and the difference is very noticeable especially with larger screens.

davidcole

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#647351 28-Jun-2012 06:42

Basically what lucky015 said. BluRay is just like dvd, but higher resolution, yes some is 3d (gimmick IMO) but most not, just better quality, MUCH better quality. The pricing is a bit more for the drives, but if I was buying a drive now I'd skip a DVD and give myself a bit more future proofing.

As for your sons DVDs....you'd rip those to your HTPC, no sense getting scratched disks when it could be assessible as a file of your htpc machine.

napierite

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Wannabe Geek

#647387 28-Jun-2012 08:36

Thanks for that guys - mucho appreciated.

A reasonable Bluray is only a bit more than the Sony drive I was contemplating, so I may as well. The wife is behind this project as well

LiteOn, LG, Pioneer . . ?

Nety

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#647521 28-Jun-2012 11:25

I just got the LiteOn iHES212 to replace the aging DH-401S and it seems to do the trick nicely.

julianz

118 posts

Master Geek

#651386 5-Jul-2012 15:46

I'm a few days late to this discussion, but just had to chime in on the WD green drives. I've had 3 of them, in 1, 2 and 3TB sizes. So far 2 of them have failed, both under warranty. The original 1TB is still going strong.

Both the drives that failed were being used an an HTPC as the "recording" drive. Both failed in an identical way - they would spin down a bit more often than you'd expect, they'd take an age to spin up, and sooner or later you'd notice Freeview recordings starting to stutter and lag. By that time the data rate off them was only a few MB/sec.

With the first drive I managed to get all the data off, and with the second one I lost a few files. Not going there again, I've replaced the recording drive with a Seagate.

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