Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 307

I'm not sure why this is such a hard subject. If you know how to use your Harmony remote then it's the same as any other source your programming. Add a windows media center PC and you're good to go, at least with MC7 and MediaBrowser. There is no magic with regards to these. It's just another source.

Well with certain programs like xbmc / plex I want to be able to map keys like Menu to "C". However if I setup using media center PC with the code "Windows Media Center SE" They don't allow you to map the letter "c" Thus I am left using "MCE Keyboard" for plex/xbmc.... However if I want to use mc7/mediabrowser I would prefer to use the WMC SE Code and not the MCE Keyboard code...

Basically I want both codes to work simultaneously. Additionally, if I use the "MCE Keyboard" input/code thing it wont let my activity launch into MCE Startpage it only gives me options of My Videos, My Pictures etc etc. But if I Use WMC SE Code I can start into the MCE Startpage.....

All these little nuances are why I would love a guide

With the harmony remotes you are able to create custom activities or add control of any device to a given activity. What this means I can have a activity HTPC which allows use of the code sets of both WMC SE Code and MCE Keyboard codes. Meaning you will be free to map any available command from either device. If you check any of the Harmony forums you will find endless recommendations on how to accomplish this.

Is anyone using a hybrid hard drive? 500GB is about the same $ as a 64GB SSD.

Building my first HTPC. All of the components are recommended by Assassin. The case and power supply are also recommended by silentpcreview. I am looking for a very quiet computer. I will reuse a 500GB WD Carver Blue hard drive.


GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i3-2105 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 BX80623I32105

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL

Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

SILVERSTONE GRANDIA GD04B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

SeaSonic X series SS-400FL Fanless 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Ceton InfiniTV 4 Quad-tuner Card for Watching Digital Cable TV on the PC, PCI-Express x1 Interface
ASUS Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS

Great thread! I'm thinking about and HTPC system (master and remote system) as an upgrade to my two TiVo HDs. I'm in no hurry and probably can't do it until Spring. So I've got a few broad questions as I'm starting.

Should I wait for Ivy Bridge? is the next Intel update supposed to be big? Is there risk in buying early on new CPUs and motherboards?

The start of the thread says this info will never be charged for, but then there are numerous links to for-purchase guides. I don't mind paying for useful info, but I'm unclear what is for sale and how it meshes with this guide?

I've not read all 600 pages of the thread: is there discussion of setting up a satellite system? If I do this, I need a master / remote system, with room to add one or two more remote units in the future.

Using an IR remote like the Harmony One: is it mostly buying an IR kit for the case and configuring the software? Otherwise 7MC is set to work with IR remotes?

Thanks! Great advice and discussion here!

IVY BRIDGE I would not bother for a HTCP. It's way more processing power than you need. If your building a HTCP then an i3 LGA1155 is probably more than you need. Since Intel just dropped Sandy Prices- there is little doubt that Sandy will be cheaper than IVY. I would save the money and go with the cheaper option since the performance is more than acceptable. If you really wanted more- just step up to an i5 Sandy now. You probably could step down instead and be perfectly happy IMO. (and I am a PC enthusiast) Just use an SSD drive if you want speed. You don't need the CPU just for HTPC

Only way I would wait for IVY would be if your building a true performance enthusiast PC.

ASSASSIN PAID GUIDES The assassin Paid guide is quite excellent in all regards. It's straightfoward- easy to understand- very intelligently laid out for you.

There is no doubt it would save you countless hours as opposed to reading hundreds of pages here. His guide delivers the same info- better- in a few pages. He has pages on all sorts of stuff. Stuff your probably have no even considered yet. It is well worth the money IMO. Time is money.

If you had a question- or wanted to search this forum you could probably learn it all- find all the info you needed. But your talking about hundreds of hours of this.

Assassin basically did this- and then assembled all his expertise into a simple to understand guide. For a newbie- it's almost a must read. If you were not 100% satisfied he would probably refund your money anyways so you have nothing to lose but your time to try them.



Many remotes you buy for HTPC come with the USB dongle adapter thing that transmits to the remote. So- any HTCP with a spare USB 2.0 port will work just fine. There is lots of info on different remotes.

I have the Lenovo with mini keyboard. It came with everything, all I did was just plug the dongle into the USB port and install the batteries into the remote. It works perfectly for $44.

I might upgrade to something nicer in future- but there is some cheap and easy alternatives is my point I am making.

assassin, or anyone else, I've tried installing the Netflix plugin for WMC many times now and it always stops at 55%, as shown in the guides, and I click finish and go to WMC and the Netflix icon is not there. I've rebooted and tried installing with and without Silverlight and it still does the same thing. Any clues here?

Do you see "Internet TV" and/or the "Sports" menu in WMC? If they are also missing along with Netflix, then you may need to play with the DNS settings.

i was reading true your new guide about XBMC,
so i'm willing to give it a try.
but i'm running true some issue i can't find to solve or find on the XBMC forum.
i'm using now MC7 with MB,
and i got a folder where i got stored TV-Series/Movies/Kids/Music Video's.
this works perfect.
i'm trying todo the same with XBMC,
but i can't find a way todo so,
i know i can make seperate profiles but i don't want todo that (or is this the only way ?)
another thing where i run in to is the music view,
i would like to have the same view and feel as in MC7.
you start of in wall mode with all the covers,
but when you choose a album you get a list with the numbers on the album.
would you know if there's a way in XBMC todo this ?

Same thing happened to me. I fixed it by updating MC in the settings. I dont remember exactly how but there is a way to refresh/update MC then you will see Netflix.

If you configure the Harmony as both "Windows Media Center SE" and "MCE
Keyboard", you can have the features of both devices available at the same
time. (Of course, this uses one of a limited number of 'device slots' available
in the remote.)

After a few weeks using my HTPC, I just wanted to come back and thank Assassin (and the rest of you guys) again for the priceless advice you all have given me.

This past weekend I'd enjoyed watching some kickass 1080 movies while also impressing some friends.

Can't wait to (hopefully) expand on my PC to include a cablecard tuner, but first I'll need to buy another xbox!

Thanks again!

I would also add since it has not been said...

For a beginer or newbie... they could quite literally start on step 1 of page 1 of the guides.. and go step by step.. and configure an entire properly set up HTPC on the first attempt. They are that good and well organized.

I mean literally from the installation of windows on a bare HDD to the final finished machine... just by following the guides. When you done- it is actually configured and set up properly and "works"

I think this is basically impossible without these guides otherwise- as too many variables pop up and create "issues" when trying to build /install/ configure a HTPC from scratch.

I know for sure I had about 10 separate "issues" when I began this months ago.. most of which if not all of them were simply solved in Assassin Guides. He obviously encountered and defeated them before. Expertise was obvious.
The kind of expertise only a true enthusiast would ever possess due to the inordinate amount of time and "pain" to amass such knowledge.

(FYI - I am not new to building PC's, I have been an enthusiast since 1995)

If they could help me- they can help anyone IMO.

In my basic experience, I prefer XBMC because it has an internal metadata scraper that gets me as much metadata as i need, without having the additional step of running MCM. It also automatically gets the metadata of newly added movies or tv shows without telling it to refresh.

Also, I honestly prefer the look of XBMC without having to pay for a premium skin for MediaBroswer, plus, I feel its easier to use.

The only bummer is the remote I bought has a "start" button that automatically opens WMC. I wish I could reprogram it to open XBMC!

Again, these are just my opinions.

I don't do this. Should I?


I am strange I guess. I rip a bluray or download torrents and place them into a folder on my Velociraptor RAID0 array. I download directly to this drive, my download folder is located on it. I also rip discs directly to this drive/folder. On this drive, inside my torrent download folder: .. I have a FOLDER called "MediaMaster" I also have my MakeMkv program set up and configured to rip to the same drive and locations/folder.

I have a windows Library "shortcut" that I created on the left side called "MediaMaster or To be organized" I can access it with a single click anytime from anyplace. My windows 7 64bit is set up to use library shortcuts in my explorer.

Since the folder called mediamaster is inside the download folder where I download my torrents.. placing a finished download into this folder does not even need to copy and paste. It just "moves" instantly. This save me tons of copy and paste time. As soon as the download is completed I move it there instantly.

My Mediamaster program is then set only to autoscan and scrape and maintain this folder called "mediamaster"

So basically after I download something, or Rip a disc- I run mediamaster on it (paid version for resolution data) When Mediamaster is done and all album art, metadata, backdrops and artwork is done- I then move the finished movie folder to the final destination for storage on a storage drive(s).



That is what takes a long time. The copy and paste from the mediamaster folder where I organize and complete the movie folder to the final storage drive location in my collection. Since I constantly rip my collection (I am about half done) and also add more stuff all the time. I am always copy and pasting. I crave this to be faster most times.

My 10k rpm drives are quick for a spinning HDD (my OS is 120GB SSD) so the source speed is pretty good for copy and paste transfers. I would imagine the source is much faster than the destination. Most of my storage drives are WD blue, Samsung F3's, WDgreen, and a 3TB WD USB3.0 on a USB3.0card. Basically all about the same write speeds.

I find that I get between 40MB/sec and 80MB/sec depending on what drive I am copy and pasting to for final storage location. I use TERACOPY.

I know I probably do this strange way. But I find it easier to manage this way dailyalmost everday. When my collection is near complete I probably will do this much less than I have been doing it recently.

I would be very curious to hear advice or comments about how others do such things.

I don't usually set my MediaMaster to run and autoscrape my movie folders since they are usually "DONE" and complete already by process of how I do this.

Every once in a while I do set the Mediamaster to run on say a 3TB drive full of movies... I find it's almost all white and complete in the Mediamaster program. Very little missing or needed. I also find the performance of MediaMaster totally sucks and is slow as dirt. It is the worst on a 3.0 USB 3TB WD external (connected USB3.0)

So I prefer to let Mediamaster run on 5-20 folders only... at one single time. All on a speedy quick RAID0 array of 10k rpm drives. Huge difference on how long it takes to do it's thing. I also like to see what it is doing. Sometimes I add or replace a cover or something with a custom I find online in a forum or website that I like better than the one mediamaster grabs automatically. To do this on a full collection vs. a few movies (5-20) at time would be significant effort/time.

My final collections are 300+ movie folders. Too slow! Too much looking and searching and checking. I find it easy to manage a few movies at once. Once they are perfect I place them in the final storage destination and collection. If they are all perfect when I place them there then the entire collection should remain perfect. Yes? I see no reason to run mediamaster on these collections and folders daily. I only do that once in a while as a doublecheck.

No doubt the quick Velociraptor drives help the process go faster also. I am usually sitting and watching it work when mediamaster is running. I might read AVS or email or something if I have to wait before I do the final copy and paste into the collection. My mediabrowser does not use the Mediamaster or the Velociraptor Raid0 array at all - it is not included in any collection or function as storage.

In my new PC I plan to build Q1 next year I would like to set up my storage solution and at very least for my HD movie collection ( I use this the most) on something that is quick. Perhaps RAID hardware solution- or fast drives- etc... I have been looking into building a server.. or a NAS. Or looking at retail USB3.0 Raid Box solutions. I keep going back to just integrating my storage into my PC. The problem is the space it takes up in the case.

I considered building a server for storage- but I can't seem to think it could ever be better or faster than just connecting my drives directly to the MOBO inside my PC case. I would rather just have a case that can handle 10 HDD's and save the money on building a totally new server- use this saved $$ elsewhere on my system. Not to mention my PC already runs 24/7. So preventing another server from doing the same should save energy- even if I go performance oriented in set up and configuration. Seems like I could save energy and increase performance at the same time. Or is there something I am not understanding or seeing?

I have never had a server, nor built one. Not sure I fully understand them. I have build many PC's and understand that pretty well.

OK Comments ? Advice? Am I crazy or doing things wrong?

Where would I play with the DNS Settings?

I got it straight. Automatic downloads were not checked. That took care of it. Thanks for the help folks!

Thanks

I'll keep planning an i3 system. This is a pure HTPC system; no gaming. I do want fast rip / transcoding of my discs, so I'd upgrade to cut time significant from that.


Using my Harmony One is a WAF requirement. I like the kits that put an IR receiver into a drive bay.


I'll look into the paid guide. Saving time and removing confusion can be worth $20.

Yes. Why I asked what is the fastest drive I need another.

What's your opinion on the Blu burners ? They seem only about $40 and the media is cheap enough.

I don't burn much... but it might be nice incase I needed it

Thanks. How about transcoding / compressing? Is that CPU dependent?

I need to find some benchmarks, see if i5 over an i3 would be worth the cost in time saved.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to decide my goals and make sure an HTPC can do it before choosing specific parts.

Would this be a good power supply for an HTPC in the Grandia GB04B case?

CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 V2 (CMPSU-430CXV2) 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Its not modular. Not sure if it would be to loud or not.