New HTPC System

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: AndrewKu
Well with macrovision you really aren't watching at 720p....

And as far as distortion goes, it is going to depend on the quality of your TV and how big the screen is.

True...I guess I need to try it some more, I was just discouraged the first time I did this weekend and found it to be jittery and generally blurry.

 

[AndrewKu]

Make sure you use the latest vid drivers, etc... There are things that have changed if you haven't upgrade in a while. For one, the new drivers have overscan compensation implementation.

 

[JavaMomma]

I think your system looks good, almost the same as mine with one exception

I use a PVR250 for the video catpure

BeyondTV Poll - ATI->Hauppauge

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: AndrewKu
Make sure you use the latest vid drivers, etc... There are things that have changed if you haven't upgrade in a while. For one, the new drivers have overscan compensation implementation.

I was using the Catalyst 4.8's, with the HDTV settings integrated into the video options. I believe the overscan is just how it's going to be with this TV, judging by what I've read. It's a 50" Panasonic PT-50LC13

 

[Boogak]

As long as you don't plan on doing FFDShow filtering, you'll be fine. The other poster wasn't kidding when he said you need a pretty beefy P4 for it, I originally had a Athlon XP 3200+ in my HTPC but I would get dropped frames every so often when watching DVDs with FFDShow. I upgraded it to a P4 3.0 and it now runs smooth as silk.

FFDShow basically resizes, sharpens, and denoises video "on the fly". Here's a useful guide from HTPCNews, it makes a visible improvement with DVDs on my Infocus X1 projector.

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: Boogak
As long as you don't plan on doing FFDShow filtering, you'll be fine. The other poster wasn't kidding when he said you need a pretty beefy P4 for it, I originally had a Athlon XP 3200+ in my HTPC but I would get dropped frames every so often when watching DVDs with FFDShow. I upgraded it to a P4 3.0 and it now runs smooth as silk.

FFDShow basically resizes, sharpens, and denoises video "on the fly". Here's a useful guide from HTPCNews, it makes a visible improvement with DVDs on my Infocus X1 projector.

I did some research on ffdshow last night. I see what you mean about "on the fly", but is there any way to do those kind of improvements ahead of time? Like, if I ripped a DVD (no compression or anything, just extracted it to play later) can I clean that up, and then play the "fixed" files? That's ultimately what I'd like to do anyway, is be able to play some movies right from the hard drive. Then I could use my existing P4 system to do the processing, and just play from the HTPC.

 

[Goi]

Not that I know of. Anyway, it's kinda a hassle if you have to wait 3-4 hours doing the processing before u can watch the movie, isn't it? Not to mention the insane amounts of disk space you're gonna have to come up with for the uncompressed, HD video. If you're gonna recompress it after resizing/sharpening/etc you're gonna lose quality again.

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: Goi
Not that I know of. Anyway, it's kinda a hassle if you have to wait 3-4 hours doing the processing before u can watch the movie, isn't it? Not to mention the insane amounts of disk space you're gonna have to come up with for the uncompressed, HD video. If you're gonna recompress it after resizing/sharpening/etc you're gonna lose quality again.

Not really, since I'm not watching movies constantly, and I can do processing whenever I feel like it. What about just normal ripped, non-enhanced movies? Would I still need a P4 for that? I like the idea of having a front end like MyHTPC, and having it hooked up to DVDProfiler and being able to pick a DVD from my collection, load it and play it without ever having to put in the disc.

 

[Goi]

That would be just normall ripping, and would depend on the speed of your DVD-ROM drive. Shouldn't take very long though.

 

[vetteguy]

A question kind of along these lines, assuming I wanted to rip movies to store for later playback, what's the best way to go about this? Can I keep the original video quality, but remove "extras" I don't need, such as foreign language tracks, etc? If so, what's the average amount of disk space a DVD would take up? Around 8-9GB I would assume? I probably have 75 or so I'd want to have quick access to, I don't need EVERY DVD I have stored on my drive.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: vetteguy
A question kind of along these lines, assuming I wanted to rip movies to store for later playback, what's the best way to go about this? Can I keep the original video quality, but remove "extras" I don't need, such as foreign language tracks, etc? If so, what's the average amount of disk space a DVD would take up? Around 8-9GB I would assume? I probably have 75 or so I'd want to have quick access to, I don't need EVERY DVD I have stored on my drive.

You can shrink them into .avi's using various programs, I prefer Gordian Knot. I feel it streamlines the process and is very flexible. Depending on the video bitrate you can get a file that looks ~90% as good as the DVD in 1/5-1/10 the space. The standards are 700 & 1400mb files, for backup to 1 or 2 CDs respectively, but for hard drive backup it'd probably be a better idea to rip most at a set video bitrate (7-800 is a good minimum to start with, but feel free to experiment - whatever works for you) and not care about filesize. Movie type also makes a difference; an action flick with a lot of movement, explosions, etc, often needs a higher bitrate for acceptable quality than, say, a drama film. If you're planning on a 5.1 setup you can even have the audio as ac3 (5.1 channels) instead of mp3 (2.0 channels), but that'll take up ~300mb for a movie, so generally isn't a good idea for the 700mb files ripped for 1-CD backup.

There is a good guide at doom9, including links to download Gordian Knot and various codecs. There are other programs which do this as well, including an automatic version of GK (I much prefer the regular version, which is far more flexible - it doesn't take much to learn what you're doing either). If you absolutely hate GK, try DVDshrink. I'd also recommend a copy of Virtual Dub to anyone who tinkers with video, it's a killer freeware video editing utility. This is all, of course, only to back up DVDs that you already own. Keep in mind this is very cpu-intensive and takes a while to do - at the least a few hours per dvd. If you're backing up to a hard drive, remember that hard drives do occasionally fail - you may want to back up your backups.

If you try this out & run into any problems, or the guide isn't clear enough, feel free to PM me about it if using GK.

 

[rsd]

Originally posted by: vetteguy
A question kind of along these lines, assuming I wanted to rip movies to store for later playback, what's the best way to go about this? Can I keep the original video quality, but remove "extras" I don't need, such as foreign language tracks, etc? If so, what's the average amount of disk space a DVD would take up? Around 8-9GB I would assume? I probably have 75 or so I'd want to have quick access to, I don't need EVERY DVD I have stored on my drive.

with DVDShrink you can easily rip just the main movie title or whatever else you want to the HD. Generally each movie is 2-7gb for just the main title. And this is not compressed or anything so you have the original quality.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: rsd
with DVDShrink you can easily rip just the main movie title or whatever else you want to the HD. Generally each movie is 2-7gb for just the main title. And this is not compressed or anything so you have the original quality.

I'd experiment with compression, at least a little. On a 19" crt, which looks 10 times as good as the best hdtv, I can't tell the difference between a compressed .avi with 800-1k or more video bitrate and the DVD from more than a few feet away.

 

[MrChad]

Check out TheaterTek's DVD software. It's designed with HTPC's in mind and has received excellent reviews from Home Theater Forum users.

 

[Goi]

If you want to keep the original video quality and you have the filesize, I believe any DVD ripping software would do. Compression has to be done properly in order for quality to be good, and it takes a long time, especially on an AXP system.

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: MrChad
Check out TheaterTek's DVD software. It's designed with HTPC's in mind and has received excellent reviews from Home Theater Forum users.

Checking it out now...

 

[vetteguy]

Here's something I just thought of...since I have overscan on my TV...if I play a DVD on my PC and am connected to the TV and play it in full screen mode, will it get "chopped" due to the overscan?

 

[3chordcharlie]

Compression with DVDshrink was definitely slower than real-time on my XP1800 when I tried it out. You're looking at a couple of months to get all those movies on there unless you have lots of time to babysit

I guess compressing to maybe 1.5gigs average per movie could probably be done without noticeable quality loss. With HTPC you're also free to use any codec you want; someday I'll get around to making divx or whatever the latest version is of all my VHS stuff.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: vetteguy
Here's something I just thought of...since I have overscan on my TV...if I play a DVD on my PC and am connected to the TV and play it in full screen mode, will it get "chopped" due to the overscan?

Overscan is where the desktop 'image' is larger than the tv, yes? Where the sides, top & bottom get cut off a bit (go offscreen)? It happens to mine when I boot up no matter what reso I'm in, changing it to any other reso fixes it - tried that?

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie
Compression with DVDshrink was definitely slower than real-time on my XP1800 when I tried it out. You're looking at a couple of months to get all those movies on there unless you have lots of time to babysit

I guess compressing to maybe 1.5gigs average per movie could probably be done without noticeable quality loss. With HTPC you're also free to use any codec you want; someday I'll get around to making divx or whatever the latest version is of all my VHS stuff.

Yeah, athlonXP's are supposedly a lot worse at this than p4's. My main rig (p4b 2.6) will shrink a movie (dual-pass) in about ~4-6 hours, depending on the length of the movie. A64's are supposed to beat p4s at it though. Not sure about DVDshrink, but Gordian Knot has a queue system, so you could conceivably take an hour or so to set it up to encode 10 or more DVDs and just let it run for days if needed until it finishes. Really only limited by hard drive size; DVDs take up 5-10gb or more uncompresssed and must be on your hard drive before you start compressing them.

 

[Alternex]

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I think your system looks good, almost the same as mine with one exception

I use a PVR250 for the video catpure

BeyondTV Poll - ATI->Hauppauge

Now that BeyondTV will have dual tuner support.. how does BeyondTV compare with SageTV? I was gonna get the SageTV + dual PVR250 bundle

 

[Aganack1]

I own that case and to be honest it sucks... the door on mine after about a month wont close tight. its not easy to work inside of. make sure your cpu socket isn't close to the edge of your board, your power supply will be right on top of it. it only holds two hard drives (which i thought would be plenty considering i had never owned more then one before... i now own 6 and had to switch cases.) it only supports 60mm case fans which in a htpc kind suck becasue they are loud.

 

[JavaMomma]

Originally posted by: Alternex

Originally posted by: JavaMomma
I think your system looks good, almost the same as mine with one exception

I use a PVR250 for the video catpure

BeyondTV Poll - ATI->Hauppauge

Now that BeyondTV will have dual tuner support.. how does BeyondTV compare with SageTV? I was gonna get the SageTV + dual PVR250 bundle

I did try out SageTV and the interface is alright, although it doesnt look as pretty as BTV. One nice thing about Sage is it plays music and stuff where as BTV does not. BTV is only good for watching recordings and TV.

The reason I went with BTV was because SageTV doesnt seem to download the guide up here in Canada and BTV does.

Unless the SageTV + dual PVR250s bundle is a real good deal. I'd recommend buying the PVR250s and trying out the trials for both pieces of software and then picking which one you want. I know with BTV if you download the trial you'll get a discount and a coupon if you sign up. I got the software for $39US.

I do not have dual PVR cards so I can't really make any comment on that feature.

 

[Lyfer]

I hope your gonna OC that cpu. XP2200 seems mighty slow for a HTPC. Why not an Athlon 64 2800 with cool n quiet enabled? (just slap on a Thermalright SLk948 with the stealth fan).

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Aganack1
I own that case and to be honest it sucks... the door on mine after about a month wont close tight. its not easy to work inside of. make sure your cpu socket isn't close to the edge of your board, your power supply will be right on top of it. it only holds two hard drives (which i thought would be plenty considering i had never owned more then one before... i now own 6 and had to switch cases.) it only supports 60mm case fans which in a htpc kind suck becasue they are loud.

Can't help with the rest unless you want to buy 200gig+ drives.

But 7-volt fans can help a lot with noise. It's my new favorite trick in the whole computer world!

 

[oneshot47]

Originally posted by: 3chordcharlie

Originally posted by: Goi
Do I hear Bose? Hehe...

P4s are better if you're gonna be doing any sort of video post-processing via ffdshow. Many avid HTPC enthusiasts do that, including rescaling to HD resolutions, sharpening, denoise3d, de-interlace, etc. All these are operations that will kill any AMD processor, even the A64s. In fact, P4s can barely handle them either unless u have a 3+GHz model.

Can these things be done at recording time, so it just takes longer to process incoming video before it is ready to be viewed? Or do they have to run at playback time (maybe PCI-E will end up helping someday if that's the case)

He obviously went for 'bang for the buck' and there's absolutely no way any intel system could be as fast as this one for the price.

"Bang for the buck"? Bose? Couldnt be farther from the truth.