Home Theatre PC's - Setting up the PC

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Ok - that's the overview. Lets look at things in more detail.

The PC
There are lots of things to consider for anyone starting out but before you actually get started think carefully about where you are going to put your PC. For example, if you end up putting the PC in the lounge, you might want something that blends in with the rest of your lounge. A beige box in amongst a black tv/stereo may not be best. However if it is being stored away in a cupboard, and you are just streaming to the tellie, then you can probably repurpose an old pc

The second thing you need to consider is the FAF (Family acceptance factor, also called the wife acceptance factor). You will want something that is reliable, easy to use, and easy to explain to people with not too many remotes.

You can buy, build, or buy a specific device eg boxee, chromecast, appletv. There are pluses and minuses for each solution, so take time to consider each and pick a solution that will work best for you. So if you consider that, and still want to go down the PC path, you can buy or build. I was definitely build, because I've bought too many PCs that were constrained in some way by the manufacturer, and couldn't be upgraded. Or after 2 years, I needed to upgrade because it no longer worked the way I needed my pc to. It needn't be too expensive. Mine was $1300, but as you will see I could have done it for less. However after my first pc build, Ive ended up with a pc that still meets my needs and then some, 2 years later

Here are some things you need to consider:

The CPU
In most cases an i5 type chip will be perfect for an HTPC. I went with an i7 chip with video on board. In the short term that meant I didn't need a separate video card and the i7 extended the life of my PC a bit (generally people don't upgrade their CPU's). If I needed a video card I could buy one later. The cooling fan I used came with the chip.

The Motherboard
This is the main board on the PC. I looked through a few computer magazines and found one recommended for a HTPC build. It was blue!. It had 6GB/s SATA interface on it (basically means a fast interface between the board and the drives). I also wanted a USB3 external connection, for moving files about quickly, and obviously an HDMI port - again audio on board saved me some money but I could buy a separate audio card later if I wished. Audio needs to at lease=t be 5.1 channels.

You can choose different sized boards to fit in different sized PC's so consider the case along with the board. I put mine in a full sized PC, in retrospect though I maybe should have gone with something a little smaller ;-)

Hard Drives
I ended up dropping in a few hard drives I had from other PC's. I think I also bought a 2TB Western Digital green. The storage drives should be large. You will need them to store all the recorded content you will have, particularly if you plan to move your dvd's and video onto the PC. If you only plan on streaming, then you may not need as much space - however 2 TB isn't that much these days

The operating system (OS) on my build sits on a 180GB SSD drive. These things are amazing and I'd recommend at least dropping your OS onto one. They run fast, so the PC is always zippy. Boot up time for Windows 10.1 is about 20 seconds from start, and I'm never left waiting for the operating system to catch up. Putting the OS onto a separate drive also means you can reload it at any point without destroying all your files. It's worth spending the extra on one of these if you have it.

The CD / DVD / Blu Ray Player
Not much to say here. Get one that will burn disks - at least DVD's, and plays Blu Ray. Think I paid about $60 for mine. When Ultra HD comes in I can replace it with a better model. Make sure it is reasonably quiet, so do a search online and read some reviews

Memory
I put in 2x 4gb memory sticks in mine (I was planning on running 64bit windows. 32 bit windows will read up to 3.5GB only, which isn't enough). There are 2 extra slots so I can put up to 32 GB in it if I need to. THere is a point where if you add memory it will cost you more, but not actually give you much benefit. I'm happy with my 8GB

Case
This is where you should spend a bit more. It needs to look reasonable, but it also needs to be quiet. You don't want to be listening to a whirring fan or a rattling case half way through your movie (believe me I have a noisy PS3 I never use because of the fan on it). The case I have has very little in the way of connections on the front. Inside the case has a silencing compound on the inside, and all the drives are suspended so they don't cause vibrations on the case. Don't compromise here it is worthwhile paying extra to get what you want.

Additional Fans
The case came with a fan in the front, I put a fan in the back. It needs to be a silent or near silent fan, so should be large which will mean it will run at a low speed. I forget what size it was, but it wasn't expensive - just a silent fan

Power supply
A near silent power supply is a must. Just get what you need power wise, but make sure it is a good brand. Cheaper brands won't last and won't be quiet. I think mine is a 600w power supply which is heaps

Minimising noise
As you have probably guessed minimising noise is key. It's why I don't have any video cards in the PC as it's just one less fan to make noise. Through careful selection of components I ended up with a PC that I can only just hear about 10cm away from it, so I'm pretty happy with that.

You can vary the formula depending on what you want to do - save costs in some places and spend more in others to get exactly what you need, but that's the basics to get you started.

Any questions, comments on component choice, shout out. 

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Ok - thats the PC and the basic kit will get you the ability to play some  blu rays through your tellie, or with an internet connection run Netflix. But hey, if we wanted to do just that you would have gone for a media streamer at under $200. There's a bit more involved than the PC. "More Power" as Tim the Tool Man Taylor would say!

Most people are interested in recording a bit of tellie. Gone are the days of vhs tape - a miracle in its day but alas time moves on! Recording off the TV really frees up your life. No longer are you tied to  when the scheduler wants you to watch a program. I've found myself wasting whole nights just sitting in front of boring dross, because there happened to be a 30 min program on.

Now no more. Yes I've revolted (many would say I'm revolting!) and now watch most of our television "time shifted". That's the technical term used when I get to chose what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and it's not something out of Dr Who!

To do that you need a TV tuner. Surprisingly enough there are slim pickings in this space - generally a USB tuner you plug into a USB port on your computer and run the aerial connection out the back of the device, or a PCI Card tuner that you put inside your PC. I went with the latter but have played with the former and wasn't that excited about the quality

The PCI Card version I got was a Hauppague 2100 from memory. It wasn't too costly. What you need to make sure you get is something that works with the freeview system in NZ. The standards are as follows:

DVB - S (freeview satellite)
DVB - S2 (not currently in use in NZ but possibly a good option for future proofing)
DVB - T (freeview terrestrial)

Your card may also pick up FM radio and Analogue (which is now no longer used in NZ)

All packages should come with some type of software of varying quality to get you viewing. The software and the hardware replace the tuner in your TV, essentially just making the tv a screen only. I'll write more about different software packages in a later post

Many solutions also come with a remote of some type. Congratulations you have another remote, but don't get too excited. You will have plenty more by the time you have finished!

It's fairly simple to set up. Plug the tuner into the PC, connect the freeview aerial to the aerial socket, and then connect the PC to the TV.(hopefully with that lovely HDMI cable that helps with all the High Definition goodness!). Switch it all on, put your TV on the PC input and install and configure the software. Then sit back and watch Coronation Street through your PC!

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Software

There is a fairly good range of software around, but for ease of use, you can't go past Windows Media Centre(WMC). It is available as an add on for Windows 7 and 8, but beware with the looming rollout of Windows 10, installation of this OS will remove windows media centre.

Both windows 7 and 8 will be around for a while yet, so if you want to go down that path then that's not a bad idea. I'm no penguin (linux) expert so if you want to go down that path you will need to do some research. That said, most of the remaining options I'm going to talk about below pander to the Penguin brigade also

To bring your recordings, dvd's, music, videos, and pictures together you can run one of the following pieces of popular software. Check them all out because what suits me, won't necessarily be the best option for you

Plex Media Server
By far the most flexible option, the software can be configured as a media server (think, a centralised server that serves all your lovely media content out to all the devices on your network, and via the internet to your remote device). It can also be configured to run as a standalone player for use on one machine. Setup is reasonably simple with probably the best interface of the three options, although it's fair to say, none of these options is a patch on WMC. There is an active community around the software, so lots of plugins. You can find out more here http://www.plex.tv

Kodi
Also a good option, recently renamed from XBOX media centre (XBMC), this also has an active support community. There are lots of things to tweak, and apparently it even comes with it's own tv recording software. This would be my choice if it weren't for the UI which I found less than intuitive and difficult to navigate easily. Maybe I just need to play with it a bit more or apply one of the skins. Find out more here  http://www.kodi.tv

Media Portal
I found media portal one of the eaiser to set up with good instructions, and an excellent UI / setup wizard available. Once it was done, I really liked the UI. You can use it to record tv programs, but only by installing a separate recorder, such as kodi. Configuration options were probably the  best laid out, out of all the media software mentioned, but it felt early 2000's in terms of usage - so a mixed bunch really! You can find out more here  http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

There are plenty of comparison sites out there. Let google be your friend and do some research! Here is a good starting point
https://crunchedd.com/18169/10-popular-media-center-software-perfect-htpc-build/

That should be the PC setup. Just a few more things to cover off which I will do in separate posts. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments then ask away below, or create a new thread.