getting toes wet…prefab, barebones system

[jdibber]

I’m looking to get my ‘HTPC’ toes wet.  I’ve read a bunch of online users guides (for beginners) and forum posts on this board and others.  I’d like to setup an HTPC primarily for recording TV, watching live TV, web surfing and using online services, such as netflix.  I’d like to eventually incorporate extenders for viewing live and recorded TV in other rooms.  FF is not an issue.  I am adverse to building a system from scratch.  The HTPC would be integrated w/ a Denon AVR.  

My approach is to purchase desktop (dell, lenovo, hp, etc…) and add a ceton tuner.  I can get into this system (refurb/scratch and dent), including the ceton for about $600.  The desktop would have these min specs

intel i3

4+ g ram

1 tb harddrive

Windows 7 for wmc

gig lan/wireless n

Questions:

– Are these specs a good starting point?

– I picked the i3 for its speed, consumption and onboard video processing.  Would I need a graphics card?

– I’d like to have 7.1 channel HDMI audio pass through (dolby true hd and dts-hd master audio).  Is this a function of the mother board or do I need to purchase a sound card?

– Is there a specific mother board that should be used w/ the i3?

– Are USB 3.0 ports important given I’ll have space for expansion in the desktop?

Many thanks

 

 

 

 

[Aaron Ledger]

The specs you indicate are perfectly adequate for what you want to do. You will not need a graphics card with the Core i3. When passing sound via HDMI, you will not require a sound card. The motherboard used will be dictated by your choice in OEM (Dell, HP, Acer, etc.). USB 3.0 is not a necessity. It is useful if you plan to use external storage for copying large amounts of data and want the transfers to take much less time than USB 2.0.

[jdibber]

thanks a bunch for the confirmation!

[SJMaye]

Built my second HTPC with these specs.  Worked out fine. On-board audio and video sure simply things and cut costs.

USB 3.0, but I am not sure where you may take advantage of this with a dedicated HTPC unless you are using an external USB hard drive.

I checked my MB manual, but got no specification for audio.  You will need to check the maker of the PC you select.

Great thing is all you are really doing is purchasing a good pc and adding a cable tv tuner.  Windows Media Center is built right in if you choose to use it.  Could not be more simple.

[jdibber]

update….for those interested in going this route.

I purchased a refurb lenovo PC with the above specs (a bit better actually, 6G ram, 1.5 tb drive, wireless n) and the ceton tuner for a little under $600.  A remote with IR receiver was another $13 on ebay.

The cablecard rental is $3.99/month.

I completed a Win7 update and added MS Essentials (free) for antivirus.

Installed Ceton tuner per install instructions.  Note:  Make sure cable card is placed into tuner correctly.  It fits in the tuner in both directions.  The instructions from Ceton were opposite of what I had to do.  Tough to detect the card when installed incorrectly 🙂

Everything installed and loaded without a hitch, including the cheapie remote.  Pretty close to being plug and play.

What ended up being time consuming was setting up the PC to work without needing the key board (e.g. so it worked like the STB).  There were plenty of guidelines on this website to help out.  I tweaked my bios, power mgmt and startup to open WMC automatically to Live TV.

My beef…It takes 35-40 secs to boot my machine, another 20-30 to automatically open WMC and another 45 secs to ‘search for tuners’.  All said and done, about 90 seconds to start watching Live TV from a system boot.

The rub…The remote has a sleep/hibernate button.  To avoid long boot-up times, I had planned to use the PC’s sleep/hibernation functionality.  Awake from sleep is about <5 secs and opens to the Guide, not last channel on Live TV.  After selecting a channel, WMC displays ‘Viewing or Listening Conflict’ for about 70 secs and then WMC goes black for about 10 secs.  All said and done, its 5 seconds quicker to use sleep over reboot.

According to Ceton, this is to be expected.  I don’t find it acceptable and has a low SAF.  I’m hopping I can find some tweaks to get this number down.  I don’t see the point of installing quick SSDs if it takes so much time for WMC and the tuners to talk with each other. 

-jd

 

 

 

 

[RehabMan]

You could keep the PC on all the time (allowing it to only go to “away” mode), by disabling sleep (see power options).  Another option would be to host the Ceton card in a server machine that is always on, but as you’re just “getting your feet wet” you probably don’t have that situation.

Unfortunately, the wait after power cycle of the Ceton card has something to do with authorizing the cablecard (perhaps some signal has to come down from the cable co) and the only way is to keep the power applied.  HDHR Prime gets around this by having the unit powered all the time.

We tend to fire up the HTPC to watch pre-recorded content about 95% of the time, so it is not a big deal to wait for a bit on wake-from-sleep for live tv.  For the first year, I didn’t allow my HTPC to sleep, as I was fearful about the WAF of the Ceton wait, and the reality of it is these machines don’t draw a lot of power (idling at 30w at $0.10/kwh or so… costs what… under $30 per year… assuming my math is right).

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