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Building HTPC Cheap
#1
Building HTPC Cheap
So after discussions with the female, we have decided to pickup playing Dance Dance Revolution again (we both used to play some time ago!)

We are what the cable companies like to call "cord cutters". We have no cable service at all and rely solely on internet content and streaming video.

Coupled with a WDTV Media Player (kind of like an Apple TV)

http://www.liquidsilver.org/wp-content/u...player.jpg

I can pretty much stream what I want. This is obviously a cheap solution ($100). I've decided to move onto XBMC w/ an HTPC (Home Theater PC). It's a little more expensive, but it opens the door to a much more customized feel... as well as ability to play some DDR and other games of my choosing. I've ordered some parts to build the PC and amazed that I came out at only $255!

Here is what I purchased:

Case: APEX MI-008 (Mini ITX)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811154091

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-H61N

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813128526

Processor: Intel Celeron G1610 Ivy Bridge 2.6GHz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819116889

Hard Drive: Maxtor 320gb

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6822144544

Memory: 1x 8gb DDR3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820233371


I'll update this tread once I receive the parts w/pics :-)
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#2
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
We've kind of done the same thing. We got tired of paying $100 a month for cable (when all the shows are crap anyway) and put it on vacation status. That means we just have to pay $5 a month to keep the cable and everything we've DVR'ed, and I think we can do that for so many months before having to go back to full price & services or shutting it off. But we have one of those neat little DVD player/network video boxes where we can watch DVD's, play music, or stream video straight from Netflix. I like it because I don't have to hook up my laptop like I did before. I hope I can convince my wife to keep doing this and get rid of cable completely. They've just upgraded our slow internet to something a lot faster, so now we can actually watch movies without it buffering every 15 minutes like it did before. The only reason we kept the cable was for the kids (and ended up watching just about nothing but kid shows, but with this box and Netflix they can find plenty to watch.
Christian apologetics is the art of rolling a dog turd in sugar and selling it as a donut.
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#3
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
I took a similar, but slightly different approach.

Media Server (doubles as a client):

Dell Inspiron 660s (available under $300 now, I bought an upgraded one with a Core i3, 6GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive for a bit more)
Plex Media Server (runs on Windows, OSX, Linux, and some NAS appliances)

There's clients for Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Roku, Google TV, and some smart TVs. The server can also serve up media via a web browser, and I can share my media library with anyone I want that has a Plex client. Streaming to portable devices automatically transcodes the stream to not suck up bandwidth.

I haven't played around with XBMC very much, though I understand it's very nice and capable. I happened to like that Plex worked with all of the devices I wanted to use it with and is super easy to set up. While I'm tech-savvy and perfectly capable of rolling a homebrewed system, really didn't want to fuck with it and went for easy to set up. I don't regret it. Big Grin
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#4
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
Oh! I recommend Intel NUC. Those tiny pcs come with a lot of power for HTPC!!!!!!!!!!!
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan
Professional Watcher of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report!
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#5
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
(July 18, 2013 at 6:37 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I took a similar, but slightly different approach.

Media Server (doubles as a client):

Dell Inspiron 660s (available under $300 now, I bought an upgraded one with a Core i3, 6GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive for a bit more)
Plex Media Server (runs on Windows, OSX, Linux, and some NAS appliances)

There's clients for Windows, OSX, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Roku, Google TV, and some smart TVs. The server can also serve up media via a web browser, and I can share my media library with anyone I want that has a Plex client. Streaming to portable devices automatically transcodes the stream to not suck up bandwidth.

I haven't played around with XBMC very much, though I understand it's very nice and capable. I happened to like that Plex worked with all of the devices I wanted to use it with and is super easy to set up. While I'm tech-savvy and perfectly capable of rolling a homebrewed system, really didn't want to fuck with it and went for easy to set up. I don't regret it. Big Grin

XBMC is indeed very capable, I'm also pretty familiar with Plex as well. Really it doesn't matter all that much to me, as long as video playback is EASY (for the not so savvy people in my house).

I didn't go with a large capacity drive because I have a 3TB Nas and a 2TB local drive so there's no real reason for me to go larger.

I don't believe I'll need anymore power than what is allotted on that processor. Intel Celeron's have REALLY come a long way since 10 years ago!

With the small case comes the small (ITX) profile. The ITX boards are a tight fit, so I can't wait for the challenge lol
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#6
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: XBMC is indeed very capable, I'm also pretty familiar with Plex as well. Really it doesn't matter all that much to me, as long as video playback is EASY (for the not so savvy people in my house).

Certainly. Roku makes for a nice easy to use client, at least for Plex using their Roku app. I have no idea about XBMC support, though.

My roommate / brother is pretty non-tech savvy and he's had no problems figuring out the Roku once it was set up, same with my 11 year old. Basically just handed them the remote and told them to let me know if they had any questions - none so far.

I've found the biggest downside to to home media servers with respect to non-technical people is getting media onto the server. It's not a big deal for me, and I'm not about to give anyone write-access to the media library, so I do it for them. That's one part of the process that I'm still working the kinks out of. Maybe I'll change the OS (currently Windows 8 Premium) to something that supports remote desktop or install a SFTP server or something. I don't want to expose the media library r/w as network shares if I can help it.

(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: I didn't go with a large capacity drive because I have a 3TB Nas and a 2TB local drive so there's no real reason for me to go larger.

I do pretty much the same, primary media storage is on a USB 3.0 external drive, and I also have a NAS, though it's mostly used for other things. There is, IMHO a huge advantage to using external storage - you don't have to back up a ton of data if you find yourself needing to reinstall the OS, etc.

As inexpensive as external storage is, I actually use two drives and use the second as backup / archive for media in case of a drive failure. I don't have anything irreplaceable, but I don't relish the thought of replacing all of my media when a drive fails.

Were I to build a media server from scratch, I might go with a 64GB SSD big enough to hold the OS etc and continue to store everything external. Faster, noise free, no moving parts to fail, and lower power consumption. What's not to like?

(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: I don't believe I'll need anymore power than what is allotted on that processor. Intel Celeron's have REALLY come a long way since 10 years ago!

With the small case comes the small (ITX) profile. The ITX boards are a tight fit, so I can't wait for the challenge lol

I would expect the Celeron will be fine - serving media is not a CPU-intensive task at all. It's transcoding that gobbles up the cycles. One of my requirements was to do any necessary transcoding on-the-fly on the server side, and another was that I needed to be able to support multiple simultaneous transcoded streams - for those reasons, I went with a more powerful CPU which in practice is more than adequate. Transcoding on the server was really important to me as nothing is going to kill a battery or chew up bandwidth faster than transcoding HD streams on a smartphone or tablet.

Yeah, ITX boards are a tight fit. That's one of the reasons I opted to not DIY - I don't have any experience with ITX builds. Thinking about cable routing, cooling, etc all became "someone else's problem" buying off the shelf. DIY would have let me choose exactly the form factor, case, etc that I wanted, but I found myself changing my mind and being indecisive about everything.

Looking at the case you selected, it looks to me like mine's comparable in physical size (10.4" x 3.9" x 14.8" vs yours at 5.1" x 8.7" x 11.8").

The only thing that I wish I had with my setup is a traditional IR remote that works with Plex Media Center (for the TV that's directly connected to the server). I use an Android app (Plex Remote or Unified Remote) or standard wireless keyboard/mouse for that.

Anyways, I like where you're going with your build and will be watching this thread.
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#7
RE: Building HTPC Cheap
So I just realized I made a crucial mistake... the HDD I chose was an IDE drive with 5400rpm LOL

I looked and looked and I'm only seeing drives in the $25-$50 range mostly refurbished... so I said fuck it and ordered a different drive


New HDD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820147188
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#8
RE: Building HTPC Cheap



I'm running along parallel lines. The roku from what I read doesn't play the range of media types that the WD TV Live & Live Plus do. (And if you have your druthers, the Live Hub, in addition to having an internal hard drive, has an updated UI and better remote.)

I just purchased a Harmony One remote for $105, recertified.

My new PC will have 3+ outputs, one of which will connect via a 25' HDMI cable to my televison and A/V gear.

I have a mix of appliances, including a Raspberry Pi and WD TV Live, but am moving towards dedicated htpc's.

I just purchased a mini-ATX case, black, which will fit an old ECS uATX core 2 duo board and E2180 dual core pentium, and AGP graphics; that goes with the 26" I just moved into the bedroom.

My current main workstation will be converted into a Windows based htpc (I picked up a cheap, windows-only Diamond Multimedia tuner). It will have an E7400 core 2 duo and pcie graphics.

The WDTV Live may or may not be obsoleted; the one lack in it I'm noticing is that it doesn't support Amazon Prime that I can tell.

The Raspberry Pi and/or the WDTV Live and/or another dedicated htpc, along with an output from the main workstation, will drive a 32" wall-mounted flatscreen behind my workstation screens, and will be used for hosting semi-static displays of fine art, calendar/planner display, a separate video screen, or a separate computer screen (with the fine art being its primary purpose).

And I'm still midstream upgrading my file server from 2 TB to 8+ TB of fault tolerant storage. Things are a mess, but a rough guess would be that I have 3-4 TB of DVD content, plus another 1/2 TB of lossy video content. (And roughly 3/4-1 TB of audio content, most of it lossless.)

The only thing I'm really lacking is Blu-ray capability for the bedroom htpc. Beyond it being a big load for such a platform, I've got two Blu-ray burners, but don't want to split them up, so I can dual burn data to Blu-ray simultaneously. Still thinking about it; I don't burn very much blu-ray, but I'm still hesitant, and would rather spend $35 on a BDR reader.

(ETA: One of the few drawbacks to Blu-ray video that I'm finding is, now that I have a substantial library of titles, that means I also have titles for which I only have Blu-ray copies, which ties it to specific setups. There's a ripping program which will downconvert to DVD, but it's pricey.)


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#9
RE: Building HTPC Cheap



I've tentatively decided to buy a standalone blu-ray player for the bedroom, as that will allow easy access for insertion and retrieval of media, and the htpc itself can be operated completely wirelessly. (My Harmony One remote will control up to 15 devices, and a wireless keyboard with or without mouse/trackpad should suffice. That will probably thinly cover both rooms, especially if I use the remote for control of room fans, lights, or other appliances. I've got a Philips 7-in-1 remote which is easy to program with arbitrary codes, though its memory is somewhat limited; I may use that and one like it for things like fans and lights.)

(ETA: Looking at what's on sale at Target... A Samsung with a reputation for freezing up, and a Panasonic that doesn't support Amazon Prime. I've got a Sony which doesn't play DVD files from the USB port. I think I'll watch for a Philips; I've had many Philips DVD players and they've all been fantastic, being both good performers and feature-filled at a bargain price. Toshiba is another possibility.)



Oh sigh. The Lite-on BDR drive is on sale for $25, and there's a no frills LG for $35 (it doesn't even have ethernet). I'm leaning towards the Lite-on so that the sound won't have to be reconfigured in switching from and to Blu-ray.

Correction: I purchased the Lite-on, as TigerDirect is offering free shipping on it today, bringing it to $20 after rebate. (Though I'm beginning to regret purchasing the case with the bold red stripe on the front of an otherwise black case.)


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#10
RE: Building HTPC Cheap



Reading the manual for the WD TV Live Plus, I discover it can use a USB keyboard and certain keys are mapped for the normal functions of the remote control. (The WD TV Live — no 'Plus' — only differs from the Plus model in not being able to do Netflix, from what I understand. Though, my brief skimming indicates that part of the Plus' firmware is encrypted, making hacking it difficult; that may not be an obstacle with the original non-Plus version.)

And I've also discovered that, while it will only recognize one storage device per USB port, I can put a storage device, my Rosewill RNX-N100 Wi-fi dongle, and a USB keyboard on a USB hub and it will recognize them all. (Unpowered hub.)

And I discovered that it supports FLAC audio files (yay) but not APE (boo).

And thanks to some black electrical tape, those annoyingly bright LEDs are no longer annoyingly bright.


[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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