2012 Multi-room HTPC - Page 2

Ok, cool. Thanks.

I'm reading mixed things about the 360 as an extender. Some love it. And the price is right, since I've already got it. But some report it as slow and lower quality. I"ll have to see for myself. But if the Echo is affordable, that will make a good alternate choice. It will likely have a faster boot time than the 360 and/or built for 24/7 use. Any indication of price? 

Turns out I'll have cable cards in my new apartment -- Comcast is the provider, and we'll hook up the TivoHDs to start. This means I can build the HTPC before getting a house. But I'll definitely learn more these new DVR systems before making any purchases. 

I'm also reading very mixed and confusing things about streaming ripped Blu-ray content by an extender. There are threads at the other forum saying, flatly, it's not possible. 

My best, optimistic, understanding from what I've read and what Matt has written here is that a plug-in is used to do real-time transcoding of ripped content to a format the 360 can play. And because the i3 is *so* fast, it can do that transcoding with modest CPU usage and not interrupting 4-tuner operation / playback. (But people using older systems, like Core 2 Duo and older, have trouble doing this real-time transcoding and/or have problems getting other re-encoded content to play without real-time transcoding.)

Now, that downside to that is real-time transcoding is going to reduce quality. And a point of doing straight rips is to preserve full content. I need to understand this better and determine whether to keep my plan of 360 as main interface (to save money) or to buy an additional extender and put the HTPC as the main interface. (Lower streamed quality on the bedroom is less of a concern.)

The details on the Ceton Echo are going to matter. (My wife will give me grief over buying a second Xbox 360 as an extender if needed for optimal setup.)

I've watched this video and one other. This one shows a 360 as an extender, and the title says it's coming from an InfiniTV-based HTPC.

35 seconds to boot

10 seconds to bring up the first channel selected

5+ seconds to change channels

Another video showed the same startup time, but had much faster channel changing times.

I'll have to compare to my Tivo, but this seems pretty slow. I notice the 1.5 sec channel changing time when I'm watching cable at a hotel; a five-second channel change time could be tedious. I need to do more searching to see if this is typical, and check some more on leaving the 360 on full time. 

This probably means my cost goes up:  put the main system in the living room, the Xbox as extender in the bedroom. See how it works and then decide whether to buy a new xbox for dedicated extender, buy the Echo, or build another dedicated PC as extender. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ralphie_B 

I can see that being a concern, depending on how you usually watch TV.  Almost from day one of having a digital cable box with on-screen guide, I migrated away from the channel +/- buttons and used the guide instead.  And WMC's guide is SO much more appealing than the one on my cable boxes. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

Yeah, I can't think of the last time I used +/- on my remote.   It rarely happens because in the digital, it's not organized so easy to make me want to do that..

The video is showing lag in guide use, starting  about 1:19. Bring up guide, select new channel. It takes five seconds from selecting new guide entry to new channel appearing. I would assume that it's an effect of changing channels, regardless of method (channel button up/down or guide selection).

Another video shows the channel changing to be much faster. I've read mixed reports, suggesting this slowness through the 360 is not unique but not universal.

I need to search more on responsiveness on a main HTPC and other extender behaviors.

It might be the lag depends on main HTPC and not the Xbox. On that video, I didn't see any notes on his system, except it has a Ceton tuner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

(4) The powercord that comes with the Antec is already 6 feet and measured.  I'd use it, save your money ;)

Looking closely...Antec power supplies don't ship with power cords. I'll have to make sure I've got one or buy one, after all :)

I've revised my proposed build list with links, costs, and software items that might be necessary. This is meant to be realistic but not final.

I've still got a lot of practical questions to sort out, and the specific hardware choices are still preliminary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Breaux 

How far along are you? How are assassin guides?

No farther :) I recently changed jobs and moved out of state. This planning was, in part, something to enjoy while in my hotel after work the first couple weeks. My wife is out and we're moving into a new apartment, so my planning has slowed. I'm still learning, since I don't want to buy until I've got a sense of my new budget (and if we're going to buy a house here!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

List looks good.

 

I think Assassin does a good job with guides.   The problem with all guides, though, is that hardware, hardware prices, and goals change on a daily/hourly basis.   And so you can come up with suggestions for people, but I think a lot of people do a good job getting exactly what they are after and coming to case-by-case evaluation.. because the price of X today isn't the price of X tomorrow; and the value of it today doesn't stay the same, etc.

 

I also think you have to evaluate your goals - and who you're trying to satisfy.

 

Dave, I like your choices. You have to remember though if this is going to be in the livingroom you're bottling up a bit of heat so it won't be dead quiet.   That's a tradeoff.   But done right, it should be very nice.  :)

Good points, all. I've not bought the guides yet. The build decision...I'm coming to terms with not "dead quiet", but I can't have a roaring lion :) I've got to do some reading at Silent PC Review. 

The two big design issues for me are:

* How's extender performance? I've got a thread at TCF, and I'm getting wildly diverse experiences there, too.

* What do I want to do about disc ripping / transcoding? I don't know yet what storage I need. Ah! I just now saw my wife has unpacked our movies! I can start counting :)

* Do I wait to learn about Ceton's new devices?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Breaux 

Another question: Are you doing this over 802.11n wireless, physical ethernet, or powerline? Instead of doing cable, could you do OTA with the same tuner?
I have DirecTV right now and their DVRs are great. (haven't tried whole house DVR yet but hear it works great) and I would love to go to a HULU, NETFLIX, XBOX 360, and OTA setup. I think that would cover 90% of my shows and my wifes shows and give us movies.
Mark

Main device wired. Extender probably wireless, 802.11n. As MattCR explained to me in a different thread: the Ceton is cable-card only, no OTA. You basically have to choose up front if you're doing OTA or cable and buy the right tuner cards. We've gone cable (part of the apartment lease) and so there's probably no going back...
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Pierce 

From the original post -- "Grid guide still won't take up the entire screen."
Apart from making the grid guide way more attractive with colorful logos, the My Channel Logos utility lets you increase the number of rows on the program browser up to 11 (which is way too many to take in all at once -- one begins to understand why it defaults to far fewer). $3.40 well spent -- http://mychannellogos.com/default.aspx
If the Ceton Echo is slow in coming out, I'd recommend something like the Zotac ZBox Nano AD10-PLUS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173030) loaded with Windows 7 as your extender. Tiny and surprisingly high performance. You could probably mount it on the backside of your TV.

Thanks. I'll check that out.
 

As for more extenders: Ceton is said to have the "Echo" coming out. Matt estimates it will be out this summer.

I've read negative things about Netflix on HTPC. I've also read on the Xbox it requires running the Netflix application outside the Media Center application and also requires you have a Gold account. I don't use Netflix so i've not spent much time thinking about it, but you should make sure it's an OK solution if you're an avid subscriber.

Matt, here, or someone some other place said Hulu can be set up with an HTPC for a good experience.  That was a concern and something I read assuaged my concerns on that. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattCR 

I've had no trouble setting up Hulu, Netflix, ITV, BBC.. PlayOn/TubeCore or SecondRunTV both accomplish it with fair ease.    You don't have to have a gold account to make Netflix run on Media center, just a netflix subscription.   The interface isn't perfect, but it's usable.   There are more things in the works, soon

I'd just read some comments that people didn't care for the Netflix PC interface. I've no experience with Netflix streaming. I've not subscribed in over decade :)

And I meant to say that using Netflix on the Xbox requires a Gold account. Unless you can avoid that with an extender configuration.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Partners/Netflix/Home

Library unboxed, I recounted.(*) I'm gonna need a bigger boat :) (**)

I've got to think about this. Spending $660 on hard drives alone is unappealing. I've got to learn about a RAID, what the starting costs are, and make an judicious decision on how to approach this. This is a lousy time to be considering a 9 TB purchase (sigh)

(*) TV series is a good counting. Movies is a bit loose regarding two-disc special editions, but close enough for this.

(**) "Planet Earth" caught my eye with is 6 x 50BD label, so I assumed the worse, all 50 GB Blu-rays.

(***) Estimated purchases in the 12 months. I don't buy many movies. In large part because I have unopened DVDs bought Black Friday 2007.

Also: I'm seen some speculation the Ceton Echo will be as low as $150, based on the 'less than the xbox' comment from Ceton. I have no idea, but I hope so, since that would make it a much easier purchase.

That's good news.

I've done some reading on the MediaBrowser software. I like how it's a 7MC plug-in, and should be a nice integrated experience for TV and movies. But I realize it requires a fair bit of handholding and manual naming of ripped media.That will be tedious and error prone with 400+ discs, including about 30 seasons of TV. But the results look nice.

I've seen recommendations of Total Media Theater 5, but especially after reading about MediaBrowser, I don't understand what benefit there is to TMT. It seems like just a Blu-ray player.

We're so backlogged on TV from the holidays and the move, that our Tivos are overflowing. I'm tempted to buy a Tivo Premiere to alleviate the acute problem. But that $20 monthly is a problem.

I'm also starting to rethink my plan of ripping all my discs. Cost is prohibitive in the short term; creating a 10 TB drive to hold it all looks to be $1000. Drobo, unRaid, or WHS system: it's all 3x$220 drives and a hardware box. I might be better off going with a single 3 TB drive and a 64 GB SSD boot disc. I'll prioritize what movies / shows to rip. I can play with transcoding / compression. If the system is a success smashing success, I could buy a second drive and install it with minor effort and keep ripping. And then plan out more space as drive prices fall, capacities increase, and build a 10 TB box in the future. And with the separate boot drive, I can presumably move and rebuild my media storage setup without borking the system's setup.

This decision leaves one major decision for me: what case?

Do I get a Silverstone that can hold, at most three drives (a boot and two data drives) and plan to build a standalone storage box in the future?

Or do I get a case than can hold 4+ drives, and plunking in multiple drives as I go along, without a fancy-pants networked storage RAID device?

I played with the demo Premiere at Best Buy last night. I left ambivalent. The Tivo pause/play/rewind features are as awesome as every. I love the 6-second hop-back Tivo has after a fast-forward. (I fear losing that one awesome detail on a 7MC system). And the Premiere's 30-second jump is cool. And going up from the TivoHD's 20 hours of storage to the 45 hours on the Premiere would be really great. A pair of Premieres, with its' 5x faster transfer speed would also be good. And I liked the live video available when navigating the menu.

But the interaction at the menu level, the guide, the HD interface...it felt sluggish, unimproved over TivoHD. It wasn't painfully slow, but it crossed that threshold to where I noticed the brief hesitation with every menu selection. The HD interface isn't finished: one level deep and the old SD menu returns. The guide interface is unchanged from the Tivo HD, and no more responsive. It's a good design, but I had the impression the Premiere had some new awesome way to find, explore, and select TV shows. I never saw it.

And the $200 price jump for the XL, with 150 hrs storage, is steep.

The whole affair felt half-baked. Not lousy, but not impressive.

I'm increasingly interested in a media center system. As a luxury item, I want a single box to watch TV or movies on. As I toggle between Tivo to the Blu-ray to watch some Prison Break on DVD, I am annoyed by devices turning on and off, and waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the Blu-ray to come up, and then swapping discs when I've seen the four episodes, and then a power and input switcharoo to get back to TV.

Still, it is tempting in the short term to upgrade one Tivo: if I could buy a Premiere for $99 and keep my $11/mo sub, it would probably be a good buy. Presumably, I could swap the cable card from the current HD to the new Premiere without a cable-co service call. I should contact Tivo about it pricing.

At TCF, I'm told the BestBuy unit is not current and there is a significantly improved update including a new Guide for the Premiere.

I'm suffering analysis paralysis :)

I need more space than I can buy initially, so I'm a bit unsure of what to do there. Case and drive choices are in flux.

Drives are expensive, and there are rumors prices will come down sooner than later. So wait and hope to save $200 - $300?

Ceton is working on a 6-tuner card. That would be the bees knees. I could wait for that...but cost and release date unknown. 

And then there's the Q; six-tuner system that some say will play Blu-ray and DVD rips. This could be a solution. But cost and release date unknown.

And of course iVy Bridge is coming out soon, and I always hate buying right before a major product launch :)

Practically: I need a new case option that will hold at least 3 x 3.5" internal, 1xSSD, and 1x5" external blu-ray. And then see if there is likely big new hardware from Ceton in SPring or not until Fall. My upgrade plan starts feeling like Spring, early Summer. Need some time for understand our new budget and some insurance cost issues. But I'd like to have an improved solution before Fall. I'm increasingly dissatisfied with the Tivo and Blu-ray player setup.

Sounds good. My planning will continue. My buying has been frozen, having reviewed the household budget, until we can sort out selling the house and house-buying plans.

Bah! Stupid life-events interfering with my toys ;)

I just heard Ivy Bridge is postponed from the expected Spring until Summer.

Doesn't really affect me, but I won't make any plans around it :)