Topic: Media Center PCs

[jpschust]

I'm looking at putting together a media center pc for my new place.  Ideally I'd love to build it myself, but I need some reading on the systems- can anyone point me in the right direction?

One of the biggest things for me is getting it to look like a real component for my system and not a computer on the shelf.  note that the unit cannot be hidden in my new place, it will be on the rack (not a screw in rack, but rather a shelf rack) with my other components.

[jbraveman]

It would be really cool to hack out  the insides of a regular stereo component and make it into a pc.  Here is a guy who made a pc out of an old radio.

http://bdwoolman.net/radio/index.htm

these also look a lot like audio components:

http://store.niveusmedia.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.3/.f

[jpschust]

thanks much!

[pfife]

Doesn't Macdaddy have a setup w/ a PC in it that looks somewhat lo-profile?

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

These are a little expensive, but they look pretty cool.

http://www.ahanix.com/

[pigiron]

Here's just one article on a homemade box using linux...

http://angerman.net/articles/jukebox/

... where he used an Ahanix case (looks like a stereo component, quiet, lcd display, etc, but not cheap)...

http://www.ahanix.com/ctg_htc.html

All I can say is, if ya got the time and money, do it.

I built one for my 19" rack system and it's great... 400G of flac tunes on removable RAID1 fires up at the push of a button... download directly to it (and alt contol it) using wireless lan... tiny external antenna on a wire http://www.hawkingtech.com/products/index.php?CatID=32&FamID=58 can be put almost anywhere and this allows the ethernet bridge to be hidden (like behind the unit)... and no more burning.

[kindms]

www.silverstonetek.com

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm


I have LCO3V

I really like the case. If you are still thinking about building 1 i have a fanless powersupply I got from these guys and the thing is rock solid. It just didn't work with everything I tried to shove in to this case. I would be willing to let it go cheap just to get it out of my APT

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-30nf.htm

thats the link to the power supply i have. I might have used it for roughly 10 hours before switching to a fan based power supply. The case with my high end graphics card + p4 2.4 hyper thread was to much heat w/o another fan. It and it was easier to switch power supplys do to space requirements then add another fan. I also have to say that I modded the graphics card to remove the fans there as well so the whole thing was generating a lot of heat. It was a case of trying to put to much performance in a small foot print

[Daryan]

J,

Is video necessary?

D~

[jpschust]

J,

Is video necessary?

D~

yes.  hd video.

[macdaddy]

Doesn't Macdaddy have a setup w/ a PC in it that looks somewhat lo-profile?

yep...






and you can get much better cases than the one i have (like brush aluminum rack-mount w/ handles, etc.)...

but i have the rough draft that runs swell...

use an airboard, which can control foobar, and then use it to train a learning remote (i use one of theatermaster ones), and you run the whole thing via remote control...

she needs a new facelift, but she was all the rage a few years ago, when i first strapped her together running winamp2...

i think the lcd is a nice touch, too...

[bconnolly]

You can get full ATX formfactor cases that don't stick out at all.


(lower right)

I still find media PCs clunky and awkward to interface with.  Until I get a nice HDTV or LCD TV, I'm not going to futz with one again.  The display is the biggest problem... unless you have a nice display upon which to read the text, you're stuck squinting at fuzzy words and images.

If you're looking for just audio, you might try getting a Squeezebox.  It does FLAC, OGG, MP3, WMA, and pretty much everything else (probably not SHN, though) and can interface with a universal remote control or a browser (for advanced management).  The one drawback is that it cannot, as of yet, do 24/96.

I just ordered one yesterday.  I'll make a thread about it once I've put it through its paces.

[dnsacks]

few thoughts --

1) check out www.pcalchemy.com for lots of htpc case, etc. ideas.

2) hdtv via mediacenter is pretty much limited to broadcast-only (at least until the next generation of windows comes out) -- reason being that there are not any "cable card" compatible tuner cards on the market.  So, if you intend to feed your htpc cable/satellite hdtv, you might want to hold off 'till the optimal specs for the next version of windoze are available.

3) noise is the enemy of htpcs -- fan noise is necessitated by heat.  Heat can be minimized by keeping performance (processor & video card speed) down to the minimum amount required for your goals (i.e. if you don't intend to do much gaming, don't build a pc optimized for gaming.

[macdaddy]

few thoughts --

3) noise is the enemy of htpcs -- fan noise is necessitated by heat.  Heat can be minimized by keeping performance (processor & video card speed) down to the minimum amount required for your goals (i.e. if you don't intend to do much gaming, don't build a pc optimized for gaming.

exactamundo...

also - if you send the digital signal out to anexternal dac, you dont have the diginoise problem inherent in media pcs...

[kindms]

few thoughts --

3) noise is the enemy of htpcs -- fan noise is necessitated by heat.  Heat can be minimized by keeping performance (processor & video card speed) down to the minimum amount required for your goals (i.e. if you don't intend to do much gaming, don't build a pc optimized for gaming.

exactamundo...

also - if you send the digital signal out to anexternal dac, you dont have the diginoise problem inherent in media pcs...

This was / is what my issue was. I built a PC to be everything i wanted and highend vid + beefy processor and small form factor but with no noise. well i had a silent PC but the heat was making it act funny so I swapped power to add more airflow and that fixed my heat issue but it now makes more noise then i am comfortable with for serious audio listening. I will get a squeezebox for audio and probably just pull the guts out of the fancy case and build a full tower / server for gaming. The LCD on the fron of the sliverstones is pretty cool. it will scroll RSS feeds and give you all sorts of info. It displays what audio you are playing bit depth etc etc.