Home Media Center/Theater PC

10splaya22

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Right now I'm using my 5 year old laptop and using it to play movies from the harddrive and displaying it on the TV (60" Vizio smart TV). Im connecting it using VGA and using a headphone jack on the computer for sound which goes to my receiver.

I just bought a new receiver (Denon AVRS500BT) and will buy some speakers off craigslist (Klipsch HD Theater Speakers) and would like to upgrade my computer now.

My wants are:
-HDMI out to maintain surround sound and audio and video quality.
-Large harddrive (1 TB or more) to store all the movies I currently have.
-Can handle audio and video needs for movies easily
-Web browsing for the rest of the time I'm not watching movies

So I don't think I need a powerful computer at all but would like it to be a smaller size like THIS. I would also like to buy a computer off the shelf instead of building one but if it will be that much better than I'm not completely opposed to that. I just think with my requirements I could buy one but would like to see what everyone's recommendations are. I don't need anything fancy or super fast.
 

GodStang

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I have made a few HTPCs. two where tiny. Could only hold 1 hard drive, and bluray player and then had two TV tuners for DVRing with Media Center. The MoBo had a HDMI port for hooking up to TV and had about 8-12GB of Ram. Nice little piece. Wanted something a bit better so we replaced it with one to hold two 3GB hard drives and 2 dual port TV tuners to record 4 shows at once. Plus a blue ray player. Also had USB 3.0 for getting Movies off/on it quickly. All of them self built. Very easy and pretty cheap.
 

Blown 89

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Anything small will work. Honestly, even a Raspberry Pi will do what you want these days. You need to redefine what you consider small if you think the computer you linked is dainty because quite frankly that thing is ****ing massive.

If I were you I'd look into the Intel Nuc series and a small external hard drive or something similar. Even the $90 OUYA will do what you need with the addition of Plex or something similar. Low power and small are the important things for an HTPC IMO.
 

10splaya22

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Anything small will work. Honestly, even a Raspberry Pi will do what you want these days. You need to redefine what you consider small if you think the computer you linked is dainty because quite frankly that thing is ****ing massive.

If I were you I'd look into the Intel Nuc series and a small external hard drive or something similar. Even the $90 OUYA will do what you need with the addition of Plex or something similar. Low power and small are the important things for an HTPC IMO.

Well I just looked at the size of the case I linked and it was a lot bigger than I was expecting but then again size isn't a huge concern. I would like it to be around THIS size.

My biggest issue in building one is making sure everything fits together. I need to do some more research I know.

EDIT: I'm looking at the Nuc series right now. That looks much more like what I was envisioning.
 
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Blown 89

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What you get depends on how you plan on using it. Is the main purpose to get video content, view existing content, be a computer on a big screen, etc. Then there's the question of how you plan on getting content, what you plan on doing with it, and how much content you have.

Personally I have a very old VOT132 running OPENELEC. Everything is automated and I control it using the TV remote via a CEC adapter on the HDMI line. No keyboards or mice and I don't have a desktop to access. Browsing, youtube, torrents, etc are all automated through plugins. The CEC adapter automatically handles input switching based on the active source.

Media is stored on one of two 2TB external HDDs...one is nearly full of TV shows and the other stores my music and movies. It also acts as a server throughout the house. The 52" TV by the pool uses a gen1 Raspberry Pi running the same configuration to stream content through the network as does the TV in the workout room.

As a pure HTPC something like that or Plex is the way to go depending on how you get content. Anything that offloads HD content to the GPU will work since CPU processing power means very little to the function of the system. If you're looking to use it as a desktop on a big TV in your living room you'll want more CPU processing power and more ram to handle page swapping. That's better suited for web browsing, video games, and traditional programs. At that point you're moving toward SFF systems (small form factor) which use more power and take up more space. Based on your list of wants it's hard to recommend something because you're "wants" are fairly general and can be handled by just about everything on the market.
 

bigmoose

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I run my cable and video files all though my own home built media center. I run the Intel NUC(i5 CPU) with a 3TB external USB3.0 Hard drive for mass storage. I run windows 8.1 with media center which boots off an mSATA inside the NUC. I use media Center for cable using a Silicon Dust Homerun Prime. I have the HDMI going to my Yamaha receiver.

My whole system is controlled by a Harmary Smart remote, which is the ~$100 one with a hub. The remote is RF so you don't need line of sight and the base station is IR and blasts everywhere. This was the best purchase i've made. The NUC has built in IR receiver which is very nice. I've had other systems before the NUC and the 3rd party IR adapters never worked right.

The only thing missing for this setup is a bluray player. I just use my Xbox One so its not a problem for me. Windows does have problems handling uncompressed audio streams. If you have surround sound and want true DTS-MA i recommend a stand alone bluray player.

I have had zero problems with this setup. The Nuc is so small and easy to use its worth the extra $. You could mount it on the back of the TV if you wanted.

Win 8.1 is way more stable than windows 7 from what i've seen. If you plan to use cable(CableCard) stay away from Ceton, i had nothing but problems with them, the adapter was always locking up and they stopped supporting the product over a year ago. However, Silicon dust has been rock solid and they have new products on the horizon. Silicon dust also makes an antenna version if you don't have cable.
 

Blown 89

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Bigmoose,

Why not run audio passthrough and let your Yamaha receiver handle the audio rather than Windows? Cut out the middle man.
 

10splaya22

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Well I ended up buying a Dell Inspiron I3847-3850BK. It has an i3-4150, 8gigs of RAM, 1TB hard drive, and everything else I needed to replace the laptop. I figured it would do everything I needed it to do and I got it for $370 plus I wanted something that worked out of the box.

I also bought a 120GB SSD to boot from and store program files. I didn't need a bluray player since I have a PS3 and don't watch blurays much at all anyways.

I looked at the NUC but decided I could get a normal desktop (didn't need the smaller form factor) and add to it later if I need to. I also don't need the TV tuner since I don't subscribe to cable service and wouldn't watch it much anyways even if I did.
 

JasonSnake

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Yeah just about any modern off the shelf PC can play HD movies using the integrated video card these days. If you decide to use your PC to play BR's, there are a ton of Blu-Ray drives out there that come bundled with PowerDVD so you don't have to buy separate software.
 

bigmoose

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Bigmoose,

Why not run audio passthrough and let your Yamaha receiver handle the audio rather than Windows? Cut out the middle man.
That might work. I was thinking of windows media center in particular. If another program was used for bluray that could do passthrough then you'd be all set.
 

JasonSnake

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PowerDVD has pass-through, even with HDMI. So you should chain your PC through your receiver then TV.

If you have a bunch of MKV movie rips then the best bet is to download and install AC3Filter (free) and it will let you pass through the DD-AC3 / DTS streams to your receiver, although I've never tried this combination with HDMI. I'm still old-school optical/coax. AC3Filter works with Windows Media Player (which I prefer to use as well).
 

Satyr

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I've been running an HTPC setup for almost 4 years now. Almost 10 TB of storage and I use XBMC as a frontend. Tons of plugins that yield access to YouTube, previews, trailers, etc. Haven't used cable in the same amount of time and never plan to again. Plenty of streaming services between Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and Google (plus the normal TV channels that offer a lot of free shows through the web)--no need for anything else.
 

jcthorne

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I ran a HTPC for about 6 years.

Now we run a whole home Tivo system. It handles all our home media, including some 60TB on a NAS server, music, photos, everything on all tvs in the house. All locations work exactly the same and access to everything. OTA TV, DVR services, web video, netflix, hulu, amazon prime etc.

Very high Wife Acceptance Factor and very little day to day muddling. It just works.

It even integrates episodes of series from multiple locations combining OTA, CATV and OTT services into a single shows list and search engine.

Really, check out Tivo again, its come a long way and has a very active developer community.
 

alicecooper

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Any off the shelf PC now a days will run everything just fine if you want to go the HTPC route. I use mine as an HTPC, web surfing PC, and gaming PC for racing sort of games. All of my music, video, tv shows, and movies are on a virtualized server with redundant storage in my office (ESXI 5.5). Works pretty good, I plan on getting XBMC loaded up on the HTPC soon so I can use my phone as a remote.
 
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hoamskilet

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I've been running an HTPC setup for almost 4 years now. Almost 10 TB of storage and I use XBMC as a frontend. Tons of plugins that yield access to YouTube, previews, trailers, etc. Haven't used cable in the same amount of time and never plan to again. Plenty of streaming services between Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and Google (plus the normal TV channels that offer a lot of free shows through the web)--no need for anything else.


Bingo. Exactly what we've been doing for 4+ years as well.
 

Stanley

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What would be a good HTPC build? I saw one online that was built for all the streaming and also played old games with an emulator but it was a year or two old.
 

Blown 89

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What would be a good HTPC build? I saw one online that was built for all the streaming and also played old games with an emulator but it was a year or two old.
Anything. Literally anything will make a good HTPC these days. I prefer mine to be small, quiet, and power efficient. Something like the NUC or a bay trail mini computer are ideal IMO.
 

WireEater

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I use to run Serviio (had great media support) on a dedicated box. I had around 7TB of movies. I would use another front end, forget the app, to index and create all the meta data for the movies. It was really nice. I would have all the correct covers. It would collect all the actor information, etc and when you pulled up a move it would show you all your other moves with the same actor, etc. It doesn't take much to run one just make sure you do it over wire LAN if you don't want to deal with stuttering. I was streaming BluRay 3D content without issue. Any newer generation processor and 8-16GB ram should do plenty fine.

This was when I had FiOS and I could download a BluRay in 10 minutes, now I am on DSL and don't bother with any of it anymore. It's very easy to cut cable now-a-days.
 
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alicecooper

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I use to run Serviio (had great media support) on a dedicated box. I had around 7TB of movies. I would use another front end, forget the app, to index and create all the meta data for the movies. It was really nice. I would have all the correct covers. It would collect all the actor information, etc and when you pulled up a move it would show you all your other moves with the same actor, etc. It doesn't take much to run one just make sure you do it over wire LAN if you don't want to deal with stuttering. I was streaming BluRay 3D content without issue. Any newer generation processor and 8-16GB ram should do plenty fine.

This was when I had FiOS and I could download a BluRay in 10 minutes, now I am on DSL and don't bother with any of it anymore. It's very easy to cut cable now-a-days.

I stream full HD content with my wireless, I only occasionally have quality issues that are very brief, that is on wireless N 74Mbps on a business class AP. It supports wireless AC 867Mbps, once I buy an adapter, my HTPC will be running on that since my house is not wired for Cat5/6 :(. Also fiber is awesome, I have a local fiber company. But if you do stream HD over wireless I would say at a minimum make sure you have a good router with wireless N 150Mbps or higher, not one of the cheap >$50 ones, I had a $25 one that couldn't handle two PC's streaming youtube.

What would be a good HTPC build? I saw one online that was built for all the streaming and also played old games with an emulator but it was a year or two old.

Any modern PC would do, my brother does a lot of emulator stuff and he says his main limitation was RAM. At 4GB he said he was getting close to maxing out, so I would suggest 8GB. You shouldn't need more unless you plan to play modern games and plan on adding mods to them. I know when GTA 5 comes out, I will be glad my HTPC has 12GB because I am going to mod that game like crazy.
 

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