Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 362

It's otherwise perfect

I couldn't let such a silly broken link ruin such amazing guides.

The new guides are well done BTW...

Very nice job as always.

I was checking it out. Pretty cool stuff.

I have never used sickbeard before.

Looks pretty cool.

Guys I have 2 Questions

1. I setup my Harmony remote and its wroking great. however, I find that its pretty slow to pull the PC out of sleep mode and my wife is getting frustrated mashing the buttons to get it to fire up the PC. When setting up the remote are you having it put the PC into sleep mode or not? I have a feeling when she hits the power on button it may be actually putting it to sleep and then she hits buttons until she gets it to stay on

2. When playing different .ISO's back to back its not very seemless. In fact many times the first ISO opens fine and watch the movie. Then when you go to watch a new move/iso it will not mount and fire up. Any thoughts on how to improve this?

I run 2 Xbox 360 Extenders off of my i3-2100 HTPC. I just upgraded from 4 to 12 total GB RAM (sale) and am on a wired gigabit LAN. Live TV and Recorder TV is instantaneous on the extenders. Media Browser has about a .2 to .5 second delay.

Prices dropping?
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Brilliant!

In the "Control Panel --> Power Options --> Change Plan Settings --> Change Advanced Power Settings --> Power buttons and lids --> Sleep button action" I set it to Do Nothing.

This still allows my remote to wake my computer, but the remote does not put the computer to sleep. I was having the same problems as you, but this seemed to fix it. I also set my computer to go to sleep after 20 minutes.

Sorry, I can't answer your second question.

I enjoyed writing the guide. I've been using Sick Beard consistently for about 2 or 3 months, and I absolutely love it. I've cut the cord on cable completely. For most shows, they're snatched by Sick Beard almost instantly after airing.

Thanks for all of the good info Assassin. I have just built 2 HTPC's. Question: If I have the Ceton PCIe in my main HTPC, I won't be able to view recorded shows on the 2nd HTPC? Would it make any difference if I buy the USB versioin?

Haha, no big deal. Did you resolve your issue earlier?

I was considering it, but didn't know if a slow 6,000 RPM disk speed and 20ms access time would be fast enough to send Video_TS files from my server. Do you know if that disk would be fast enough?

Thanks I will give that a try!!

You can now assign specific tuners in the PCIe Ceton InfiniTV to other PC's on your network. That way if you record something on that PC and it has DRM you can still watch it on that TV, but not the PC the Ceton actually resides in. You can "unhook" them too, if you decide later you want all 4 tuners back on the HTPC.

Of course I avoid all this by buying 2 Xbox 360's on Craigslist for $100. Xbox act as an 'extenders' so you can watch anything with DRM since it is just an extention of the HTPC. I am on a gigabit LAN network, absolutely no lag watching Live TV or recorded TV on the Xbox's.

I was looking at my motherboard manual tonight at the included items, and it doesn't list standoffs. Are they required or recommended and if so where and what type do I pick up?

Hi Assassin et al,

I am looking to build an HTPC over the next month or so with the below requirements:

Receive 2 separate satellite feeds - 1 free, 1 subscribed
Be able to record 3 channels, watch 1
Be able to watch these recordings from any other media centre / extender
Be as quiet and small as possible

I have a NAS, that I could install Windows Home Server on (if it would be useful to), with a few terabytes of space free to store the recordings, and make them accessible from around the house.

Do you think I can incorporate this into your mini-ITX core i3 system, or do I need to up to look at a larger system?

Thanks,


Bob

Once you get this up, it works great. Think of Ron Popeil, of infomercial fame, and just "set it, and forget it"

So, my HTPC is almost complete. I purchased/built in Nov/Dec 11. It was working great. SSD boot drive fast and flawless. Dozens of hours of ripping DVDs complete. Over 300 DVDs total ripped to the single 2.0 TB HD. And then, the unthinking.....

Windows would not boot. Stuck at the CLASSPNP.sys. Gah! What is this? Disconnect the data drive. Windows boots fine. Plug the 2 TB drive back in. Windows locks up. Disconnect, it boots. Connect the 2 TB via USB. "Windows must format the drive before it will work." Really? A three month old drive failed? Western Digital? A hundred hours of ripping DVDs wasted?

Sad. Just sad.

Ideas?

-Pak

I have noticed some cases have standoffs built in.