Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 15

i though that you don't store media in the ssd. only os and program file store there. others and media should be store on seperate regular hard drive.

Right, I'm getting a 2TB HD for media. If you install a lot of apps and games, then 60GB won't last too long.

This. Darned Steam sales...

Dumb question: I used Blown_BD to rip my blurays. I only ripped the main movie and had it put into ISO format. I'd like to do the same with my DVDs. Currently I just ripped them with AnyDVD and they are the entire disc. I'm pretty sure Clown_BD doesn't work on DVDs. Any tips on software to do this?

Thanks,
Chris

DVD Shrink.

Will the proposed i3 540/mobo/ram/onboard gfx/ combo have enough horsepower to simultaneously record two to four ATSC stations at once while ripping a blueray disc? If no, what is the minimum that would do it reliably?


Nice write up assassin, it's been very helpful.

Frankly, the question is if your storage subsystem can handle all those tasks simultaneously. Those tasks don't really require that much CPU power.

Assuming Assassin's proposed HD @ 5200rpm...

A friend of mine who's done a few HTPC builds and doing the processes that I talked about above indicates some pretty heavy CPU usage. Why would this be the case? ........perhaps his tuner card don't support hardware encoding...?

Also, I plan on having a WMC7 plug-in that supports automatic commercial skipping. Also running automated archiving processes on recording content (WTV to HDWMV files).


Back to the original question, any guesses on if the i3 540/mobo/ram/onboard gfx/HDD combo be enough juice?

i record 2 hdtv signals, watch a bluray locally and have outgoing hd streams elsewhere in the house at any given time. no issues. but i use 7200rpm storage drives

watching the mkv bluray uses ~15% cpu while the recording and outgoing use <10%.. not sure what your buddy is smokin

If he's recording ATSC or ClearQAM HD, he doesn't need hardware encoding. Those are already encoded in MPEG-2. If you need to do recording and ripping simultaneously, I recommend getting two separate hard drives. One to handle recording and one to handle Blu-ray rips. I'm not sure how fast you can rip Blu-ray nowadays but BD 1x is 36 Mbps (4.5 MB/s). Assuming your drive can do 10x, that's 360 Mbps (45 MB/s). If you do both recordings and BD ripping on the same drive at the same time, expect to see a lot of break-ups in your recordings.


For the archival process, you probably do want at least a quad-core.


That's just playback speed. Ripping can be much faster and is only limited by the read speed of the Blu-ray drive.

i've never ripped BR > .MKV . Given I run this on the i3 how long should it take to rip a movie if I slap a BR drive in my HTPC ?

How fast is the BR drive? That's pretty much where your bottleneck is (unless re-encoding).

BluRay ripping to MKV using MakeMKV for me is anywhere from 15-35 minutes or so, really depends on the movie. I've found the worse the encryption on the disc the longer it takes. If it's got BD+ on it then expect it to take longer, in my experience anyway.

Frankly I could care less how long it takes. I'll start one up either first thing in the morning or before going to bed and it's obviously done by the time I get back to it.

Thats exactly my experience as well. its all on the bluray drive if doing bit for bit BD-mkv. This can quite easily be seen if you rip the folder to the hard drive and then do it i know i did it for a family guy movie and on hard drive took all of 15 seconds

Just placed my order.. FYI.. Free USB hub right now with the ASUS board.

--

1 x ($3.99) HDMI CABLE ROSE RC-6-HDM-MM-BK-3
$3.99

1 x ($119.99) CPU INTEL|CORE I3 540 3.06G 4M R
$119.99

1 x ($9.99) USB HUB IOGEAR | GUH285 R
$9.99

1 x ($99.99) MB ASUS P7H55-M PRO RT
$99.99

1 x ($19.99) REMOTE CONTROL ADESSO | ARC-1100 R
$19.99

2 x ($42.99) MEM 2Gx2|GSK F3-10666CL9D-4GBNQ R
$85.98

1 x ($49.99) KEYBOARD IOGEAR | GKM561R RT
$49.99

1 x ($69.99) HTPC CASE NMEDIAPC|HTPC 5000B RT
$69.99

1 x ($39.99) PSU ANTEC| EA-380D GREEN RT
$39.99

1 x ($-9.99) DISCOUNT FOR AUTOADD #25952
$-9.99

Shipping and Handling: $20.79
Total Amount: $510.70

No.. I have several extra.

Great thanks - I'll give it a shot. Does it leave the menus or will it also just get rid of those and give the main movie?

Also, has anyone customized WMC itself? The blue background and icons are pretty boring.

Thanks,
Chris

You can do just the main movie or add whatever you want. Like just the main movie and maybe if you wanted the bloopers you could just add those too.

Is that from Newegg? Whats the Discount for AutoAdd?

I first want to thank Assassin and all the other Avs'ers on this thread. I have been wanting to build/setup a HTPC or similar solution for my home. I have been lurking on HTCP threads for months now. However, the more I read the more I get confused. (Didnt want to start another thread cause this build seems perfect for me)

What I need.

• Be able to rip and play BD/DVD
• Be able to rip streaming content
• Acess Netflix and other media sources
• Media Storage for BD/DVD Movies/Songs/Pictures/etc.
• Possible DVR
• Must have HD Audio Capabilities
• Play iTunes library
• Abiltiy to expand to mutiple TVs
• Silent HTCP
• Component Case
• Budget of around $800 or LESS

What I already have.

• Fat PS3
• 3 Samsung Cable Boxes, One being a DVR
• Seperate Home PC and Laptop
• Pioneer SC-07 7.1 Setup
• Wireless Network

My questions:

1. Does this build fit my needs, and if so do I need to add any additional hardware/software?
2. Can I use this HTPC as my media storage too, and if so, how much storage can I fit into a normal HTPC without an over kill?
3. Is building a HTCP even necessary for my needs, or would I be better off with a different solution?
4. Would or can this replace one of my cable boxes/DVR?
5. And of course, must be WAF...!

Reserved for more questions once I think of them

Sorry for the long post

Can you say roadrunner speedy reply!!! Thanks again.

I guess I'm off to start shopping for my supplies...u suggest WMC for me?

My checkbook is already hurting from an imminent PC build, and now you tempt me with this? Evil. I have a new OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE60G (up to 285 read/275 write) that I was planning to use, but this Crucial SSD uses SATA3 and reads even faster. If I bought it I would use the OCZ SSD to upgrade a 3-yr old Vista system (takes forever to boot) to Win7. Which would you use as an OS/App drive? It appears the Crucial doesn't write anywhere near as fast as the OCZ, but I'm not expecting to write large chunks of data to it regularly.