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Jaguar-infinity
Honourary Member
Joined: 07 October 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1437
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| Posted: 04 August 2006 at 6:48pm | IP Logged
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As some of you may or may not be aware a few weeks back i asked about setting up a mediaPC. I got some pretty fair feedback and so the process began. In case any of you are interested i thaught i'd put up this thread about how i've gone about it all to make life a bit easier for you should you want to do it 
Step 1 - Research
as a wise person once said to me - RTFM!  . For this project it was very usefull to do just that. I needed to find out what software would suit my needs most and i also needed to consider what i actually wanted my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to do. I set about a few aims
- Being able to play my movies, preferably of hdd not disc
- Music player
- still be able to do simple internet stuff and word processing when required
- TV interface (esp recording) would be great
- Simple to use GUI (as the rest of the family would probs use this too)
Those were the key points i wanted to be able to do. so the next step was finding out what i could use to meet that. I started searching the net and soon found Myth TV. It looks like an awsome package, very highly rated and for a while was the number 1 contender. Its a linux based Media that turns a PC into nothing more than a HTPC. This does however limits what it can do outside the media role, but it could be overcome. There was also an issue of configuring the thing as linux, despite its strengths, can be a pain to get going at times (i was having nightmares about trying to get tv tuners working etc).
After searching around a bit more though i stumbled accross what turned out to be the final solution. MediaPortal is still an open source program and still uses the GPL, however its designed and built for MS .NET framework. After reading the MP forums and documentation i set it all up on my laptop to start playing and experimenting. I soon found that while it was simple to get running the options for tweaking were excallent and soon had a customised setup running. so far so good and it let me do more stuff than i set out to achive!
the final thing to work out was what additional software i would need. after umming and arring i came up with a list
Codecs
- ogg codecs
- Xvid
- MPEG2 decoder
- AC3 codec
Ripping and burning software
- Nero
- DVDshrink
- DVD Decrypter (v. similar to dvdshrink but good all the same)
- DVDx (encodes my DVDs to XVID)
Desktop apps
- Gimp 2.2
- Open Office
- Firefox
Additional software
- Latest drivers
- Zone Alarm firewall
- Ghost imager
Step 2 - Hardware setup
Ok so i'm set to go, all i need now is to set up my hardware. The system setup looks something like this
- 2Ghz AMD proccessor
- GeForce FX5200 perconal cinema edition (inc TV tuner)
- 512mb Ram
- 40gb hdd for windows and all proggies
- 250gb hdd for mass storage
- SB LIVE! 5.1 soundcard
- 5.1 creative speaker set
It's a pretty modest setup but i will be upgrading it as money becomes avalible. It does ok though, when ripping DVD to Xvid it adverages 13fps (1 sec incoded for every 2 its running) so for now it will do.
Installing the hardware into the case in a neat fasion is a bit of an art i think, not having cables everywhere is a usefull thing, makes it way easier to work in. However this is easier said than done. Other things i considered in this is how the cables would look at the back. for this reason my coundcard is installed at the bottom so the audio leads get muddled as little as possible from the TV tuner ariel leads that go to the graphics card tuner and planned Digital tuner cards installed later on.
The next thing i did was work on the BIOS. To make boots as fast and smooth as possible i did everything i could do to streamline it. This process is different motherboard to motherboard so i won't go into much detail here, There are a number of guides to explain how these things work on the net. For my BIOS i disabled things like the RAID controller that wasn't needed and if put on auto takes about 10 seconds to determin that theres nothing for it to do. Thats 10 seconds you can cut out and sit there waiting. Add this time saving to other things like manually setting boot device order, what drives are where etc so it doesnt waste time searching for things it doesnt need or have means the BIOS now boots alot faster and is loading windows at the soonest possible moment. IMO its worth streamlining your BIOS :)
So now we install the operating system. The windows install is pretty straight forwards, just follow the instructions. For my HTPC i installed everything to my 40gb HDD where all the software will go and all my media will go on the 250gb hdd. Once this is done i had to go about installing all the drivers for my soundcard and craphics card, including the tv tuner components. this gives us a nice steady setup ready to begin work on the software side of things :)
Step 3 - Software
Ok so were booting into windows in under 60 seconds, we've got her humming away nicely with all those drivers doing their things. now lets work on that software!
First things first - windows is full of rubbish, so to get rid of as much as possible goto control panel >> Add\Remove programs >> windows components and untick anything you dont need (i think the only things i left in there were paint and calculator). Its not much but its a start :)
I then started by installing the firewall and then the drive imaging software. Once these were inplace i did a windows backup image so i could go back to a clean install if it all went pair shaped. After that good old firefox gets installed closely followed by all my media codecs. Installation is pretty simple so far :)
Next up its the latest version of Windows Media Player (yeah i know, but its about the only downside of MediaPortal, it prefers to use WMP) and then DirectX 9.0c. Following this i installed the ripping and burning software as now all the components are in place i can set them up to use the right codecs i want no problems. And finally its the desktop applications like GIMP and OpenOffice.
Now we do another backup with windows all set up :)
Step 4 - Media Portal
Ok this is what its all been coming to, are we ready? then lets begin!
MediaPortal is open source. It means its easy to get hold of. Just goto the website and download the latest version (though i would avoid versions with RCx in the title as they're 'release candidate' versions not final versions. I used version 0.2.
Now MP needs certain things to run, some of this we've already installed like directX and mediaplayer 10 but it also needs .NET - never fear MediaPortal is here. By running the MediaPortal setup it automatically downloaded the .NET framework aswell as the installer to allow it to install. It then installed the lot and started to install it self. How simple is that!
So media portal is set up now to configure it. In mediaportal this is easy. In the media portal program you have a basic settings configuration panel but mediaportal also has an advanced settings panel that can be located in the start programs directory and when its running it looks like this
click image for larger version
In here i set the default folders for my videos, pictures, music etc. I set mediaportal to load on windows start and in full screen mode.
After this i installed some Plugins for mediaportal, such as a calendar program and also a MP soduku game to go along with the inbuilt Tetris. These are easy to download on the mediaportal website :)
Step 5 - Final Tweaks
So what final things make for a nice touch? well i set the task bar to autohide, just keeps it out the way making for a cleaner look. i also made sure the only desktop icons were the mediaportal ones and the recycle bin. Im working on a few extra ways of customising the operating system towards mediacenter use, graphical and system tweaks. I'm getting ideas from various sources including the mediaportal website its self.
What else is left to do?
- Convert my DVD collection to Xvid, the big project of which is converting my entire Stargate collection, all 8 seasons worth of episodes)
- Get another big hdd (i figure .5Tb should be enough for a while....)
- Better wireless keyboard + mouse
- More RAM
- A Digital tuner card
- Convince my parents its worth putting on the 38" TV!
- look at installing some simple to control games (like RTS games not presition FPS's)
there's probably more but those are my aims for now :)
So has it been worth it? Well apart from getting RSI from writing all this up i'd say yes. All my planning at the start really paid of, i'm very happy so far, and it's looking like i've met all of my aims and then some :) I've got some work left to do and i'll update here as it goes but as i'm away from home a fair bit it could be a bit between updates
hopefully i'll get some pics of the setup online soon :)
Stu
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All i do at work is hang around all day, shoot stuff or go swimming... when can i do what everyone else does and sit around instead?
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Jaguar-infinity
Honourary Member
Joined: 07 October 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1437
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| Posted: 04 August 2006 at 6:48pm | IP Logged
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Booking a spare forum post window for updates and pics 
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All i do at work is hang around all day, shoot stuff or go swimming... when can i do what everyone else does and sit around instead?
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Nhumrod
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Clan Leader & GM
Joined: 09 September 2002
Location: Scotland
Posts: 13897
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 12:54am | IP Logged
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sweet! good job!
btw did you know you can use an MCE remote with media portal?
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Jaguar-infinity
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Joined: 07 October 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1437
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 12:59am | IP Logged
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yup, indeed you can. its just a pain in the rear end trying to get windows to run it - all that WGA crap (ment to be for win MCE only). For the same price you might as well get an ATi or Haupage remote as mediaportal nativly suports them as well. Me however, i'm looking at getting a wireless game pad, dual purpose then, MP control and game control :) tho my nvidia remote does work to an extent right now (but its not nativly supported as well as some of the others)
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All i do at work is hang around all day, shoot stuff or go swimming... when can i do what everyone else does and sit around instead?
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Richie
Moderatus
Moof!
Joined: 09 September 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1643
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 4:05pm | IP Logged
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nice work Jag, i am way too lazt atn to do it, but its one of those things on my to do list
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MOOPH!
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hamble
Honourary Member
Middle Eastern Terrorist
Joined: 03 August 2003
Location: Bahrain
Posts: 1054
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 5:18pm | IP Logged
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Wow, it's that easy?... if only more people knew!
/sarcasm
Does no-one supply a solution like this out-of-the-box? If not, I spy a market opportunity. Someone get on it!
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Grizzler
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Janitor
Joined: 13 Febuary 2003
Location: Norway
Posts: 5192
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 5:51pm | IP Logged
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Like a windows media center pc which you can buy in every store you mean Hamble? :P
Btw, nice work Jag :3
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hamble
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Middle Eastern Terrorist
Joined: 03 August 2003
Location: Bahrain
Posts: 1054
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| Posted: 05 August 2006 at 7:01pm | IP Logged
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Well I don't know these things... I live in the middle of know-where!
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|SFH| Sent From Hell :: Community Forums : Hardware / Software Bits & Bobs
Topic: Setting up a MediaPC (
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