Revision as of 18:02, 17 July 2013

After my old CD-Player broke down I decided that it would be time to replace the 20 year old ancient HiFi rack with something more suitable. Either an universal player or a self built HTPC. The HTPC won obviously...

Hardware

I decided to built a PC based on a recommendation from c't Magazine 26/2012 -not the most recent hardware and not the cheapest possible system and also not the most silens sollution, but a good overal setup:

CPU: Celeron G1610 'boxed' (including cooler and fan)
Motherboard: Gigagbyte GA-Z77MX-D3H
RAM: 2x4 GB Transcend JM1333KLN-8GK
Disk: Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
BluRay: Pioneer BDR-208DBK
Case: Silverstone GD04B
Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power L7 350W
Case fan: 2x Scythe Slip Stream 120 500rpm (SY1225SL12SL)
flirc.tv IR dongle (shares the remote of my Sony TV)

I had to replace the fans, which came with the Silverstone case, because they are really noisy. The CPU fan is acceptable. Overall, this makes for a very silent (but still audible) system, which -thanks to the SSD- boots in < 20 sec. to XBMC.

Surprisingly, there are only very few HTPC cases, which fit in a HiFi rack, while having enough space for regular microATX components, a full size BD-ROM player and USB 3 front ports.

All media data is stored on a home NAS, thus only a small system disk had to be installed.

Assembly

Straight forward, no surprises -although I can't remember when I last had to dig out a screwdriver to fix drives and case lids in place (no thumb screws on the GD04.

Some Images:

FIXME

Software

Operating System

Had to be Linux if possible. The most mainstream Media Center software seemed to be XBMC, which is developed using Ubuntu, so this decided the flavour of underlying OS. To prevent a reinstall every 9 month or so, I decided to go with the current LTS version 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

In case things would not work out (e.g. unresolvable issues with graphics, sound or BD-playback) I had planned to fail back to Windows 7.

Media Center Software

XBMC Frodo

Installation

Things which work =

Issues

BluRay playback: As advertised. BD+ encrypted discs won't play, the others will work more or less (with menus working halfways).
Hanging system.

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 * Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power L7 350W
 * Case fan: 2x Scythe Slip Stream 120 500rpm (SY1225SL12SL)
+* flirc.tv IR dongle (shares the remote of my Sony TV)
 I had to replace the fans, which came with the Silverstone case, because they are really noisy. The CPU fan is acceptable. Overall, this makes for a very silent (but still audible) system, which -thanks to the SSD- boots in < 20 sec. to XBMC.
+Surprisingly, there are only very few HTPC cases, which fit in a HiFi rack, while having enough space for regular microATX components, a full size BD-ROM player and USB 3 front ports.
+All media data is stored on a home NAS, thus only a small system disk had to be installed.
 == Assembly ==
+Straight forward, no surprises -although I can't remember when I last had to dig out a screwdriver to fix drives and case lids in place (no thumb screws on the GD04.
+Some Images:
+FIXME
 = Software =
 == Operating System ==
+Had to be Linux if possible. The most mainstream Media Center software seemed to be XBMC, which is developed using Ubuntu, so this decided the flavour of underlying OS. To prevent a reinstall every 9 month or so, I decided to go with the current LTS version 12.04 Precise Pangolin.
+In case things would not work out (e.g. unresolvable issues with graphics, sound or BD-playback) I had planned to fail back to Windows 7.
 == Media Center Software ==
+XBMC Frodo
 == Installation ==

Difference between revisions of "XBMC HTPC"