Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 514

List for new HTPC build

1. Ivy Bridge i3-3225 3.3 GHz Dual Core – $145
2. ASRock H77 Pro4-M - $90
3. Ram but i wanted to go with a 8 gig setup. What do you recommend ?
4. Crucial M4 128GB SATAIII - $125
5. SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum front panel, 0.8 mm SECC body Lascala Series LC20-B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case $ 125
6. ** I have 16 drives and will fill the Silverstone case with 7 storage drives and use a SSD for the OS
7. ** I have a lite on blu ray drive already
8. Also have a corsair 850watt modular ps
Am i missing anything ? Want something that will run smooth with 1080p as well as 3D

Going the Assassin's route with this build. Have a Norco 4224 fully loaded. Just too big. It was fun for a while. Now want to go a different route and lose the TMT5 playback and AnyDVD. Like Makemkv. Finally no more watching preview after preview when i just want to watch the movie !!! I like the eye candy of MediaBrowser for sure !
Edited by keithkeith - 3/18/13 at 11:24pm

I've done that - - and finally set the preferred language so I don't have to check/uncheck as many boxes. I don't know why I didn't do that sooner. But some discs, I think the last Twilight is one, have over 30 main title length tracks listed. I looked it up and found the right one. Anybody know if there is one site that keeps track of all these?

Just google the movie and makeMKV and you'll find a thread on it. Only issue is that somethings the rental and the purchase disc have differences so you need to to check what people are referrencing when the post.

Thanks that did the trick

Followed guide:
'Launch XBMC Seamlessly From WMC'

XBMC launches fine from inside WMC BUT anytime I try to exit xbmc it goes back to WMC then freezes, I then have to go to task manager and shut down WMC

any ideas?

my system, newly installed and followed assassin guides:

Win7 64bit all updates

ASUS P8H77-M/CSM LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
Model #:P8H77-M/CSM

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner w/ MPEG-2 Encoder PCI-E x1 - OEM
Model #:1229

Seasonic SS-460FL Active PFC F3, 460W Fanless ATX12V Fanless 80Plus PLATINUM Certified, Modular Power Supply
Model #:SS-460FL Active PFC

Intel Core i3-3225 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ...
Model #:BX80637I33225

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Model #:CT128M4SSD2

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ

SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum skin over plastic front panel, 0.8mm SECC body Grandia Series SST-GD05B-USB3.0 Micro ATX Media

HP ir

logitech Harmony

Are you trying to use "back" or "exit" ??

A shortcut for alt+tab should be a sufficient interim workaround

I click on the icon on bottom left of screen that opens menu and click on top item 'Exit'


should I be using back button on remote?

back did not work.

I fixed the issue by changing my theme from AERO to win7 basic, found this in the XBMC forums.
Edited by JL-F1 - 3/21/13 at 3:41pm

Hey can someone let me know if this build looks good. Maybe Assassin can you take a peek. I basically used your guide for the parts just a few things i was unsure of. Also dont want to forget anything before i place my newegg order

1. Ivy Bridge i3-3225 3.3 GHz Dual Core – $145
2. ASRock H77 Pro4-M - $90
3. Ram but i wanted to go with a 8 gig setup. What do you recommend ?
4. Crucial M4 128GB SATAIII - $125
5. SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum front panel, 0.8 mm SECC body Lascala Series LC20-B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case $ 125
6. ** I have 16 drives and will fill the Silverstone case with 7 storage drives and use a SSD for the OS
7. ** I have a lite on blu ray drive already
8. Also have a corsair 850watt modular ps
Am i missing anything ? Want something that will run smooth with 1080p as well as 3D

Going the Assassin's route with this build. Have a Norco 4224 fully loaded. Just too big. It was fun for a while. Now want to go a different route and lose the TMT5 playback and AnyDVD.

I'm runnin the same motherboard - very easy to use and add components to. ASRock gives you some cool utility software that allows you to adjust case fan and cpu fan speed (rpm & temp) from Windows without having to reboot into the Bios everytime. Also 8gig of RAM will be enough unless you are adding multiple extenders.......
Otherwise - looks good....let it rip!

Toys

Nice. I basically used the best build assassin has on his guides. I've been running a old dual core in a big norco. Only thing Is I wanted a bigger case than the ones listed in the guides.

Also the ram was listed in the guides for a 4gb setup. I wanted to go 8gb and possibly add more in the future if need be. What ram would work best for that MB ?

Thanks for the reply

Check the motherboard manual or the ASRock website for a list of tested RAM. These days I don't even bother trying to guess what works and just stick with what the manufacturer has tested to be compatible.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231314&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

This is what I found according to asrock's website. Pretty sure that board says it comes with DDR3 1600 ram

Not sure where to ask this, but I'll try here. I use MCE Standby tool to wake my HTPC and restart Mediabrowser. Mediabrowser starts up perfectly fine, but about 60 seconds after that it will jump to 'Recorded TV' in WMC. I have the MCE Standby tool set to goto the default screen upon restart. Anyone run into this issue? I haven't been able to figure out where to change/disable this.

Hey Toys7505

Guess I didn't read the manual end to end. Where did you get the software to control the case and cpu Fan. I've been going into the bios screen since I built it to control these settings.

Correct
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H77%20Pro4-M/?cat=Download&os=Win764

Might try this, never used it before

Sorry if this is a resolved issue but yall always have the best answers, and I have been going in circles looking for the best method to deal with forced subtitles on DVDs (not BDs - everything I find refers to BDs).

I run Windows 7.
I rip my DVDs to mkv using Makemkv.
I use XBMC with to play the mkvs.

- Has a method been found for identifying whether a DVD has forced subtitles?

- Is there a method to have XBMC show only forced subtitles when subtitle tracks are included in an mkv ripped from DVD?

- If XBMC can't do it by itself, is there a method to extract only forced subtitles from a DVD or mkv ripped from a DVD.

Feel free to just direct to a thread or section of the guides, but like I said, I have been having trouble finding info specific to DVDs. Thanks

Need to build another HTPC for my cousin, who instantly fell in love with my setup, although he doesn't care about an ultra fast performance, but XBMC and storing his movies.
So, here i am back again to build a budget htpc.

Per today's newegg's deal they have a good collection of combo motherboards and cpu. I was interested in this one.. do you think its a good cpu/mobo combination for 125 bucks.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1224946

ASUS F2A55-M LK PLUS FM2 AMD A55 (Hudson D2) Micro ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
AMD A6-5400K Trinity 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Dual-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7540D

I believe the cpu also holds a good gpu... is it good enough for bitstreaming DTS?

Do AMD's make ideal HTPC's. I love my intel i7 though, but this is more budget oriented towards the cousin. Or do you think i can do better for the same price around?
Edited by holyindian - 3/29/13 at 3:33pm

that mobo does not have hdmi. I'd choose another

Ok great, thanks for that tip.. i didnt notice that.. i thought HDMI is mandatory in the mobo these days!!

By the way, hows the cpu alone for an htpc?

Putting together a Server based on assassinserver.com

WHS 2011+Flexraid

Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl
ASUS P8Z77-V

Intel Core i3-3220 or Intel Core i5-3450

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

Crucial M4 128GB ssd

5 WD Red 2TB HDD

Two Questions:
1.
For realtime 1080p MKV to ipad 1 and Roku 2(720p tv) via PLEX AND 1080p file serve to HTPC in the house which cpu would do all three at same time easy: Intel Core i3-3220 or Intel Core i5-3450?

2.
Could I use the SeaSonic SS-520FL 520W Fanless instead of SeaSonic M12II 520 Bronze 520W ? with above setup and CPU


thank you
Edited by JL-F1 - 4/3/13 at 4:53pm

If your going to do alot of streaming to devices I would go up to the i5 and bump up the ram to 8gb. The ram is pretty cheap now and you won't regret it later.

I've streamed 1080p movies to my Roku 2 and 3 without issue. The system sends the MKV file without transcoding.

However if your going to stream WTV files via plex it does do the transcoding on the server and this does take a lot pro processing power hence my recommendation for the i5.

I don't have the PLex app on my ios devices, so I can't speak on what the plex\ios relationship is regarding streaming video.

I do both straight streaming to HTPCs, and transcoding to PS3s, iPhones, iPads, etc. Simple streaming does not take much processor, transcoding does.

I also have Blue Iris installed on my WHS, and it's watching 6 cameras around the house. I also have other 24/7 apps installed on the server, basically anything that needs to be on all the time, it's on my WHS. Even with all that, I still hover around 4GB of RAM in use - but RAM is cheap right now so I also recommend 8 GB.

I built my WHS with a 45w AMD 610e processor to keep power consumption down, while having 4 cores for all the different tasks it does. It's performed well, and I am thinking I have had it running for about 3 years. I started with WHS 1 and I think I upgraded to Vail (WHS 2011) about 1.5-2 years ago.

I'm using the SeaSonic fanless in mine. When you have a lot of hard drives and CPU usage, things can get pretty hot. From experience, I'd recommend getting an ultra-efficient power supply with a fan to assist with chassis cooling, otherwise you'll have additional fans in the case which negates the savings.

I see no need for SSD in a server. I have 3 SSDs in machines throughout my house, and have never considered putting one in my WHS. Your choice though.

I have seen a lot of posts where folks say that high-speed drives are not necessary. I've seen my WHS go into periods of heavy thrashing on my data drives. If I were to build mine over, I'd go with 7200 RPM drives over the 5900s I have in there now.

hi,

i would like to ask the opinion of some of the expert here at avs forum. my problem is with my marantz av7701 which is not wireless and my internet provider is verizon and my router is actiontec mi424wr. when i contacted the marantz tech support he advised me to have a bridge. what type of a bridge do i need because when i talk to verizon they dont supprt such home network setup.

any suggestion or recommendation is highly appreciated.

If your avr is near a coax run (can be the verizon fios TV feed) and you use the std verizon supplied moca routers, you can buy one of the actiontec moca adaptors which will allow network access via coax. Very simple to use and IMO much more reliable than wireless.
http://www.amazon.com/Actiontec-Verizon-Coaxial-Network-ECB2200V/dp/B005DIQ2OC/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1365129351&sr=1-2&keywords=moca+adapter
Here it is on Amazon

I use a couple MoCA adapters to reach my Roku and PS3. They work great. They on reach about 80Mbps but it's good enough for local HD streaming (and Netflix/Hulu obviously).

Much more reliable than Wireless and Powerline in my experience. Powerline is dependent on your existing electrical setup and MoCA is mostly dependent on how many splitters are on your coax network.

Since MoCA appears to be made for video how, if possible, would you connect an HTPC located in the family room to an HDTV in the bedroom in order to watch a movie? I'm presuming this is not possible, is that correct?

Networking has been possible over coax for ages. See Arcnet or 10base2 Ethernet. This is just another form of networking over coax. My FiOS comes into the house on the last leg over MoCA. It is common.