I have been lab testing a lot of setups for work so someone can write an article up on "tivo alternatives".
While everyone will have list of favorite hardware setups, I have found the following to be true no matter what you use. This is my off the top of my head guide for what everyone should consider when picking hardware out.
** NOTE ITS NOW an hour since I started this and there are some damn good things in here. Perhaps I should just write up a huge definitive guide to building a PVR and avoiding the common mistakes myself
**
My recommended considerations when picking hardware:
- Decide how you will use your MCE setup. Stand alone pvr with low cpu intensive applications will cost you signifigantly less than something you will try to play the latest video games on.
- Where are you going to put this computer? Do you have kids? Do you like whirling noises? Do lights on in a bedroom make it difficult to sleep? Do you want to replace your space heater with a computer? Some thought into where you will put this system will greatly improve your ability to pick parts that fit your lifestyle. bright lights, neon kits, glowing water cooling fluid may impress people, but you have to live with it.
- Your computer can only send so much data between internal components. HDTV greatly increases the amount of data that will be handled by your computer. Hard drives can only read/write so fast. You can "combine" drives in a raid setup to help speed this up. while this is not a technically accurate statement, someone needing a diy guide should pay attention to FSB or System bus speeds can help avoid possible jumpy/missing signal.
- Intel vs AMD. I personally am an AMD fan and will normally not purchase Intel machines. HOWEVER. video codecs tend to be written to support all the bells and whistles found in Intel CPUS. I have not done a cpu load comparison between intel or amd to find out how the various codecs and software decoders function with MCE. In video editing and encoding setups, intel cpus tend to be 30-40% FASTER than amd. In other words, intel vs amd equivilant in speed and the intel cpu tends to run 20-25% less cpu load or finish the video task in 30-40% less time. Microsoft has been pretty good with amd support for their codecs, however your mpeg2 decoder is not a microsoft product.
- HARDWARE BASED ENCODING AND DECODING. Hardware is better than software (in most cases). You can reduce your costs, ambient noises, fan noises and heat produced by your computer by building yuor setup smart. If your not trying to run the latest 3d games, there are some excellent video cards around the $100 mark that support hardware decoding. Look for the following items for a MCE based computer: DirectX 9 video cards, MPEG2 and WMV hardware decoding. Some cards offer more options but these are the main ones you will run into with MCE. Same goes with Video Tuner/Capture cards. If they can hardware encode the video steam, thats less data on the system bus and lower cpu needs. If your not heavily 3d gaming, the extra whistles are a waste of money.
- In General SATA drives use less power and run quieter than IDE/PATA drives. Take the model numbers of the drives your considering to buy and spend a little time on the manufacturers website. Look up teh tech specs. While you may not understand most of whats there, you may find DB ratings, temp ratings, and you will almost always run into recommended usage. Look for the magic PVR and Video Storage needs in the recommended usage list. Some manufacturers (like IBM/Hitachi) have tools for extremely advanced users that allow you to change some settings in the drives. Usually these tools will have presents for PVR usage. Setting the drive to run optimally will make it a better experience.
- Not all DVD drives are the same. I have a personal loyalty to plextor so I will always use their drives. Plextor dvd drives have a lot of settings you can change to better your experience near a TV. (eg, spin up time) Real life example, by default when you put in a movie DVD. The drive will automatically kick into 1x style settings and run near silent. PERFECT for watching a dvd movie. I cannot speak for other manufacturers, I am not familar with their drive offerings.
- Cases. I group cases into several sections. 1: Towers, they stand up. 2: Desktops, they sit sideways usually offered in full height and slim. 3: SFF (Small Form Factor) or Cubes. 4: rackmount. Can be handy for those with high end A/V setups. Some cases are louder than others. Some have brighter lights. Some fit in your furniture, some stand near it. Its all personal preference for this one. HOWEVER, some cases are offered as QUIET cases. These cases tend to use newer fan technology that are quieter than older ones. on a Quiet case, you also tend to get a small power supply. Be careful if your using high end parts, you will probably need better power. The huge warning is SLIM CASES. These cases tend to have riser cards to turn your slots from verticle to horizontal. You will quickly discover your 8 slot motherboard has been reduced to 2 slots. There are a lot of low profile cards out there now that fit into these well, but if the slots on teh back are goign the wrong way and you are not mechanically able to modify that, its worthless to you. Word of warnign about SFF. While under normal usage they are quiet computers. when you add the additional cards to build out your media center, they tend to get really hot and the fans run at full speed to compensate. If you know someone with the SFF your thinking of getting, ask them to play some doom3, farcry or Half-life 2 for abnout 20-30 minutes while your there. by the time they finish, you should hear the difference.
- Getting ready for the future. HDDVD and BLUERAY are coming. since they are high end bit rates, I'm thinking they may only be offered as a SATA drive. spending a couple more dollars now to make sure you have 2 extra sata drive "slots" can mean not replacing your motherboard/cpu/memory in the future. Since the companies are choosing sides, to get highest quality video viewing in my home, I am going to need both to make sure the kids can watch the disney movies and dad can watch anything he wants. This is also a good consideration for case. If your case only has room for 1 5.25" drive, you will not be able to put both of these internally later. Yet another upgrade you can avoid spending a couple more dollars today. Same goes with your dvd drive you buy now. If you hope to replace it in the future for HD or Blueray, it really doesn't matter what drive you buy now. you can reduce the impact of worthless hardware later going as cheap as you can on parts you know you will replace.
How to build an MCE system.
- Step 0. Your going to go in and out of this computer a lot the first night, I dont recommend trying to make it all nice and neat with wires and in its final resting spot. It will just create more work.
- Step 1, put all the disks your hardware came with away except for hte MCE2005 CD/DVD. I don't care if it says MCE versions, in my decades of experience, that cd was out of date 2 minutes after they sent it to be pressed.
- Step 2, Go onto another computer with a burner and download the following:
- motherboard bios and tools to update. Check your mobo manual for how to do this, you normally need a floppy drive and disk for this. This is the only usage for a floppy I have found lately so don't be shy about borrowing the drive and temporarily puttin in the new machine.
- motherboard chipset drivers. Usually these are not MCE versions. If your manufacturer doesn't offer MCE versions, go with the XP version. Once again going over your MOBO manual will tell you what your are looking for. Most likely its a chipset driver and possibly seperate sound and lan drivers. Most manufactuers offer the ability to dl the newest install CD in teh support section.
- Video card drivers. MUST BE THE MCE VERSIONS.
- TV TUNER drivers. MUST BE THE MCE VERSIONS.
- DVD FLASH UPGRADES. (didn't know you can update your dvd drive???) espeically true with burners. These will not be an MCE version.
- MPEG2 DECODER. Always look for a dvd player offered by your video card manufacturer first. This will always produce the best results in my book. If thats not avaiable I personally do not use full versions of software dvd players. Windows media player has preset mpeg2 decoders from various manufactuers for $15 and downloadable. Just stick witht he companies that also have full dvd player software that is MCE approved and go for their dvd/mpeg2 for windows media player versions. I personally have tested the sonic versions and they work great for me.
- Step 3: Uncompress/unzip and burn to a CD/DVD. Rememeber your about to install a new comptuer, you may not have network abilities or even a simple unzip program. Dont forget the bios will most likely need to be on a bootable floppy.
- Step 4: Install the minimum requirements in your computer, (mobo, memory, cpu/fans, DVD drive and that temporary floppy). Master is better than slave with drives. Your computer will run faster if your hard drive and dvd/cd are on SEPERATE CABLES. Most dvd drives shipped setup for slave so dont forget to change that to master on teh drive. THE MASTER GOES ON THE MIDDLE CONNECTOR ON THE CABLE IF THERE ARE 2 ENDS.
- Step 5: get this running. Boot up the first time to the floppy and install the bios upgrade. Boot up the second time and go into the bios. TURN OFF ALL EXTRA PARTS YOU WILL NEVER USE IN THAT COMPUTER. This is where technical ability comes in handy, but if your not connecting a printer using a parelle cable, turn off that port. If you have 1 DVD and 1 HD and oyu can run 8 drives in your computer, TURN off the other controllers. Serial ports, floppy controller, game controller, etc etc etc. All of these devices use IRQs and that will be your biggest headache in getting everything stable later on.
- Step 6: boot up into the MCE cd and install MCE.
- Step 7: install your motherboard drivers. (dont forget the lan and sound drivers if they are not a single install package).
- Step 8: Install your video card drivers. After reboot, setup your video settings best for the screen you are using.
- Step 9: install your dvd/cd flashbios upgrades.
- Step 10: go into windows update and keep running/installing/rebooting and repeating until ever single patch offered is installed.
- Step 11: if you plan to use a virus scanner now would be a good time to install this and do a full inital computer scan. theres not much on the drive yet so it shouldn't take too long. Make sure you disable the eral time scan for the rest of the setup, just in case its the cause of the problem.
- Step 12: launch media center edition and see if its complaining about anything. Play aroudn witht he only spotlight, etc etc. remember yor tv cards are no installed yet. At this point your making sure the default comptuer is operating. (you can optionally install the remote before step 12, this is a good time to get it going).
- Step 13: If your good at mapping things out, pull out your mobo manual again and find the section for default IRQ setup. There will be a map for what slots use what IRQ and what internal parts are using what. Remake this chart on your own crossing off all the parts you turned off. Try to get everything so it is not shared. Since your going to use a PVR, you really want every PCI slot with a tuner card, your video card and your hard drive controllers to be isolated. If your using an external usb tuner, that is a major consideration also.
- Step 14: now that you have your map, install your tv tuner cards in teh best slots for best performance. If your have just enough and can't get htem isolated, you will have to go into the bios and hand map out the IRQ usage across the PCI slots to best achieve this goal. You may also want to do 1 tuner card at a time. Start with the analog tuner since this is a requirement to get into the TV setup screens on MCE.
- Step 15: install the MCE versions of your TV tuner card drivers and go into MCE and run the tv setup. go over everything, find a good antenna placement and enjoy. If yuor using a cablebox/SD Sat receiver. Just connect the box up, install the IR blaster that came with your MCE remote and The setup is very simple, you'll know fast if it worked right. If you have an FM tuner, hook up the fm antenna and try that out also. When your done and ready to install the Digital TV tuner just shut down your machine and unplug it. Follow the same instructions again but with the digital tv setup. digital TV will have to be some type of antenna, you cannot get HDTV from cable/sat boxes at this time.
- Step 16: before you finish up and put everythign in its place, its time to stress test. test out everything happening at the same time. (assumgin you have 2 analog tuners, 1 digital tuner, fm radio and a dvd drive). go into the guide and start recording 2 different analog channels, 1 digital channel. Go between the channels your recording and see if anything is skipping, smooth video playback, etc. If anythign is a problem, you most likely have an IRQ conflict or your hard drive/system bus cannot keep up. If its ok, start listening to radio while its recording. If thats ok turn off teh radio and pop that favorite dvd into the drive and start watching it. watch a few moments then go into your recorded programs and see if the programs recorded smoothly during the same time you were in the dvd. There are developer stress test machiens that can help you pinpoint more specific problems, but you need to basically do this for a living to really follow them AND it takes several DAYS to completely stress test an MCE machine. However if your having problems, this is a good place to turn. If you didn't know, ther are MANY movies, that are offered in WMV DVD on standard dvd disks. Check ou tthe microsoft windows media player HD section on their websites. You may want to go pickup one and use that during yuor stress test instead of a standard dvd. not to mention, they look REALLY good and a small but good cross section of content.
- Step 17: everythign is working well, its time to clean up the room and put your MCE in its final resting place and turn it on for the last time
This would be a good time to reflect on how much you just spent, how much trouble you went threw and pack the kids up and run to the nearest computer store to buy that $200 UPS system that you never had a reason too. Theres nothing like doing it all over again for no reason because the power went out while recording survivor. Get one of the good ones that can connect to the cmoputer and tell it to turn off before the battery runs out. When trying to figure out the size, rememebr yo just put in a xxxW power supply. you want at least that number on the ups. The objective on the UPS is to make sure the parts that cannot suddenly loose power, don't. Your TV just needs a surge protector, the computer will turn itself off since you got the good model.
- Step 18: Run out and get the kids an xbox with media center extender, a wireless network for your house,etc etc. (it never ends
).
Bryan Socha
Media Center MVP 