Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 512

How can a dvd burner work for over 8 years no problem but this will be my 3rd/4th br drive that has died on me. Each I used probably for less than 9months.

Also awaiting your initial impression of the Intel NUC, I'm really interested in buying one. Right now I'm using a laptop for media duties and it has an intel 2330 which should be similar in cpu performance to the i3 3217u. Would be nice to replace the laptop with something much smaller, quieter, and similar/better performance.

Give the poor guy a break.. He's got a house to wire here.

I just set up an xbox as an extender and am running into some really poor quality mkv playback issues. There is no studdering or audio drops but the picture quality looks like it was a tenth generation vhs copy. Running the media center network diagnostics my connection can't get any better. The live tv stream is the same on the xbox as it is at the htpc. Some googling has led me to a couple of options. Either installing PS3 media server to serve the files to the xbox, install Divx plus and ac3filter full, or convert my entire media collection to m2ts.

On my htpc I use MPC-HC as an external player along with lav filters to play my mkv files. If I install the above divx and ac3filters to get better quality on the xbox extender will that much up how the htpc currenly handles playing the files with mpc-hc and Lav?

Oh, so the echo isn't the only extender with this issue contrary to what some say in the echo thread?

To answer your question, the file splitting is done on the host HTPC using whatever splitters you have there and then the content streamed to the extender for playback using the WMC player on the extender. This is a limitation of the extender protocol set out by MS. Ceton is working an android solution to get around this but still provide Live/Recorded TV Playback of copy once protected content on the extender. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Thanks for the reply. I'm going to try going the ps3 media server route before fooling around with the divx plus install. The machine has been rock solid and I really don't want to screw it up.

Haven't had any issues playing mkv's on my Xbox extender. My HTPC has Shark007 codecs, it is an i-2300 on a Z68 board. Have had it setup great for almost a year now. I watch movies on the HTPC in the living room, the kids watch movies on 1 Xbox extender in the playroom and the wife watches movies on the other Xbox extender in the bedroom. Mostly mkv's, sometimes avi or mpg. No problems with quality.

Check this out for more info: http://shark007.net/forum/Thread-Step-By-Step-Media-Browser-Xbox-360-Extender-MKV-Question-RESOLVED
and
http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/7787/mkv-playback-corrupted-when-using-xbox-360-as-an-extender
Edited by Wilky13 - 2/28/13 at 6:30pm

If you read the first post it talks about not working with bit rates over 15Mbps and not containing HD audio. I can play such files on my echo except those containing dts. The problem is that almost my entire library exceeds these parameters.

If you read the first post it talks about not working with bit rates over 15Mbps and not containining HD audio. I can play such files on my echo except those containing dts. The problem is that almost my entire library exceeds these parameters.

I'll have to give it a go. I installed ps3 media server last night. With that the picture was spot on but the videos would stop unexpectedly. In reasearching it a bit this morning it seems I missed a few settings which was causing the xbox to crash and spit out an error code. I'm going to get it working, but it's really not ideal in that even though you can play the file there's little metadata support. basic folder level stuff.

If i can get shark007 working that would be ideal. My wife needs the media browser interface or else the whole things becomes to geeky for her.

Wilky the shark007 solution worked perfectly. Thanks!

You're welcome. It should work for all your DVD rips. As Sammy2 pointed out, though, a lot of Bluray rips may be over the recommended bit rates for the Xbox.

Hello everyone, I've been absent from the board for many months after a very active period in early 2012, and I hope this finds all of you well.

I did an i5 build in Feb 2012 and all in all am quite pleased with it. In the long run I opted out of much of the fancy stuff, but did have MB, Buddy etc. running (may go back to The Guides and do some tweaking).

I have now retired my original HTPC (Dell XPS/Vista 32 purchased in 2008) - damn thing has basically died, it works fine for 20-40 minuets (normal computing, no HTPC) then hangs, I've wasted a few hours googling/troubleshooting, but, I just don't think it is worth the time as all the low hanging fruit has been eliminated... I've always had problems with the AMD graphics card... the CPU cooler has been making an hideous noise for quite some time and I've harvested the keyboard/mouse and monitor for my wife's new mac mini (great little $600 machine for her).

Anyway, I'm thinking of harvesting the XPS case and the drives and building the kids a new machine as they are currently without a 'play machine'. I also have a 13 year old Gateway from which I may harvest some cables etc. But, I'd be buying a mobo/cpu/8GB of stix and probably an SSD and an OS.... Wondering if I'm not better off going to one of the OEM sites and just buying one off the shelf - (I can't stand the pre-installed software).

The XPS casing is huge, full blown ATX. Can I put an mATX in that box?

Should I even attempt to harvest the power supply?

I'm in the very early stages (probably wouldn't order/go to Micro Center before April) so jury is totally out on the hardware.... would like the option of 'converting' to HTPC if so inclined (probably an i3 Sandy build, perhaps i5). Don't have a display (13 year old 1:1 Gateway).... So think a basic, but 1080p w/o graphics card (hence the Sandy i3) - but I've been away long enough that any suggestions are not only welcome but....

As always, any insight is greatly appreciated.

Here is the build I did last year (I had a 500GB drive and subsequently purchased a WD 3TB and popped it in - and added a $20 Harmony 200 for the BR extender set up):

Micro Center
CPU i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz 180
Mobo ASRock Z68 PRO3-M 104
SSD Crucial m4 2.5" 64GB SATA III 80
Mem Kingston HyperX (2 x 4GB) @1600 35
Keyboard Mouse Logitech Wireless Combo MK260 30
CPU/MboBundle discount -40
Micro Center Total (all in) 420.12


Amazon
Case SilverStone GD04B 98
Tuner Ceton InfiniIV 208 (how often are there better deals on these, or, the HD HomeRun?)

Remote Media Center MCE PC Remote 14
Optical Asus 24xDVD±RW 23
Order Total w/tax 39
AMZN Total (all in) 345

NewEgg
PS PC Power & Cooling Silencer MK II 70
Cables 2xSATA III Cables 8 (bought these too short, pulled a SATAIII off mobo)
OS Win 7 x 64 Home SP1 100
NewEgg Total (all in) 178

Total Total 943.12

MIR + Promo 50

G1610 for $35 or G2020 for $50 @ Microcenter are both great for a basic HTPC and basic PC. My understanding of a kids PC usage (as described by coworkers current Kid's PCs) is more than adequately met by either of those. They'll handle 1080p no problem as well

Generally don't need 8GB, but I bought 2x4GB of DDR3-1600 Patriot Viper for $20 so for those type of prices why not

The highly recommended MK III is made by Seasonic, but the older MK II is made by Sirtec I've used worse, probably still quieter than Raidmax

Curious if anyone has experienced any glitches during playback with XBMC 12 - Frodo?

I recently reinstalled my programs and started with XBMC Frodo from scratch, following Assassin's setup guide. I notice when I playback my .mkv files that there is a horizontal line that appears at certain parts of video processing. For example, during Dark Shadows, in the very beginning when it is showing the studio logos, during the motion of the logos there are horizontal lines that show up on the screen. So the picture looks distorted in that part of the screen where the lines appear.

So it's a "glitch" in the video, but playback is smooth and isn't slow or choppy in anyway. Just the horizontal lines that appear and distort the image at times. I tested the same file in WMC and it plays fine with no hoirzontal lines. I also uninstalled XBMC Frodo and reinstalled XMBC Eden to run a similar test, and the picture looks fine in Eden.

Curious if anyone else has experienced this issue? Looks like even though Frodo is no longer a beta release, but is a stable product, I'll have to stick with Eden unless there is a fix for it.

I already had this off. I followed your guide to a T and set it up exactly as you detail in your guide.

The video isn't slow or choppy, and outside of the horizontal lines that appear during certain parts of playback, I haven't noticed any other issues with playback quality.

Yeah it is strange. It's hard to explain what the defect is exactly, the easiest way to explain it is when watching various videos I noticed parts of the screen where the picture was distorted at certain spots during playback. It shows up horizontally across a section of the screen where the picture gets distorted. Many times, it shows up as a horizontal line and the picture above and below that line don't line up exactly.

If you have a .mkv of "Dark Shadows", you can see it very clearly in the beginning when the studio logos appear. I just took the Blu Ray and created my .mkv using MakeMKV.

At first I thought it might have been a problem with the encoding of my .mkv file, but I found the same thing on multiple files. So I ran the same test with WMC and it worked fine there. This led me to believe it was an issue with XMBC. And when I uninstalled Frodo, reinstalled Eden and didn't see it any longer, I was able to nail down it's a problem with Frodo.

To your point, if it wasn't an issue in Eden but is now in Frodo, that's weird. I even tried uninstalling Eden and reinstalling Frodo to double check, and I see the same thing.

Note, I posted in XBMC forum and it was recommended I enable "Vertical Blank Sync" in settings under Video. I did this and it APPEARS to work. I'll do some more testing, but it appears enabling this may have resolved the issue.

It appears the artifact I was noticing is referred to as "Screen Tearing", and commonly appears when the camera pans horizontally. The video isn't matched up exactly with the display refresh. This matches with when I would commonly see the artifact, as I noticed it when something was moving horizontally across the screen.

Strange because it works fine on Eden even with this setting disabled.
Edited by bobby2478 - 3/6/13 at 3:56pm

Just wanting to get some quick advice to make sure I am not missing something, this will be my second HTPC I am building. My old one is getting moved over to my dad to use so I am doing some minor upgrades. Below is what I have, let me know if I am missing anything or if someone wants to recommend a different part.

Silverstone GD05-USB3
Silverstone SST-ST40F-ES 400W PS
ASUS Maximus V Gene LGA 1155 Intel Z77 motherboard
I3-3225 Ivy Bridge
G Skill 2x4gb DDR3 1600 ram
4TB Seagate HDD (already have)
128gb Crucial SSD (already have)

Just need to add in a cheap blu ray drive and I think I am set.

Is there a special feature/reason you want such an expensive Z77 motherboard? If not, a less expensive ASUS H77 micro-ATX motherboard would do just as well at half the price.

No specific reason however I want at least 4 SATA 6Gb/s on board if you have any other suggestions let me know.
Edited by MikeCandler - 3/7/13 at 11:08am

Quick question.

Is there a guide to sync xbmc between 2 or more HTPC (with xbmc). Using a win8 server with 3 HTPC.

thanks
S

I've not seen it, but I haven't been through Assassin's guides for a while

This should get the job done http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Sync_multiple_libraries

The only caveat is during these steps For W8 just follow the W7 guide, but note there is no Standard Configuration that I could find. I can't remember the MySQL installation exactly, but Standard wasn't one of the options. Otherwise, follow all the steps after getting it installed, including the firewall rules. I didn't think they'd be necessary, but I couldn't get it working without them.

Another thing not obvious to me was that you need to re-add your sources when you've finished. The sources should be SMB or NFS paths, even if (like me) you're storage drives were local to the machine that you host MySQL from. Also, the host must be running for other libraries to work, so it's best to set up MySQL on your server

Thanks for the quick reply.
My server is W8, but does not have xbmc on it - I assume that I must install it on the server as that is the only machine that is 24-7?

Cant wait!

thanks