Building my HTPC (Part III)

Despite Bluray defeating HD-DVD, I just bought myself a HD-DVD drive. Why? Well, a SATA (or IDE) Bluray drive will set you back over AUD$200 currently, and I just picked up the Xbox 360 HD-DVD Addon for a mere $48. That $48 also includes King Kong on HD-DVD!

"But you're buying defunct technology!"

Yeah, that's true, but I'm picking up a whole heap of movies for dirt cheap - not just cheap for HD content, but cheaper than buying the 'normal' DVD versions. How much cheaper? Well, EzyDVD are (were?) running a HD-DVD clearance sale:

Title	HD DVD Price	DVD Price
Chronicles Of Riddick, The - Director's Cut (HD DVD)	$9.92	$38.99
Chronicles Of Riddick, The - Pitch Black	$9.92	$19.99
Heroes - Season 1 (7 Disc Box Set)	$29.83	$95.99
Shaun Of The Dead	$9.92	$12.98
Terminator 2 - Judgment Day	$9.92	$23.99
Total	$69.51	$191.94

(yes, I realise most of these can also be bought in packs with other movies, so the savings could actually be much lower, but I'm trying to illustrate a point)

So, what are the changes to the HTPC? PowerDVD Ultra is required for HD-DVD playback (UltraDVD would also work I guess, but I didn't have that on hand).

With my particular HTPC, I had to make sure that PowerDVD's options had hardware acceleration disabled, otherwise playback was choppy. I suspect that a lot of other HTPCs with integrated video probably face the same problem, enabling hardware acceleration actually hurts performance because too much of the processing is offloaded to the video chipset, and the video chipset is actually slower than doing it all on CPU.

Student Partner Bootcamp

Last Thursday (21st) Microsoft was kind enough to fly me up to Sydney to attend the two day MSP Bootcamp 2008. I met two MSP's back at Mix On Campus (but since it was so close to the wedding, I didn't take anything in), but that's about all I've done as a MSP so far, so it was a great opportunity to meet more fellow MSPs and find out what sort of things they've been up to. Turns out, not a lot, as there were so many new MSPs!

The event was to cover what the coming year would bring for MSPs, tips for running our own demos (thanks to Andrew Coates), as well as some of the promotions that Microsoft are running such as Dreamspark, Its Not Cheating (and INC's Golden Blog competition - more on that later) and one of the best bits….FREEBIES!

Included in the freebies were: 1gb USB stick, a frisbee, two shirts (one tshirt, one polo), itsnotcheating totebag (?), Student Partner stickers, Student Partners branded laptop bag. Oh, and flights, food and accommodation! Edit: photo updated, thanks to Edmund. I forgot we also got Gears of War!

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough room to bring my laptop and camera up to Sydney with me, but Edmund Tse (another MSP) did, so he's got a few photos up.

In all serious though, it was fantastic to meet a lot of like minded people, and it was a whole lot of fun. Nick should definitely be commended for doing such a fantastic job of organising it all!

Building my HTPC (Part II)

The proposed HTPC went ahead, and the final list of parts was

Software

• Vista Ultimate 32-bit with Service Pack 1 (didn't have the x64 install iso downloaded yet)
• CoreAVC
• FFDshow

Hardware

• Intel Pentium E2160
• Asus P5K-VM
• 500gb Western Digital HDD
• 2gb DDR-2 Kingston 6400 (800mhz) Kit
• Antec NSK2480
• Logitech Harmony 525

From my list of parts, the dedicated graphics card has been dropped (for now, its a money thing), and the CPU and motherboard were upgraded. The CPU was upgraded from an E2140 (1.6ghz) to a E2160 (1.8ghz) simply because that's all the store had in at the time.

Case

The Antec NSK2480 is not designed as a HTPC case, but as a general desk case. The HTPC version of it is the overpriced Fusion 430 (aka Fusion V2), which comes with a 430w PSU (+50w), a VFD display and a 'stereo' looking volume knob - it really isn't worth the extra AUD$100 for it.

There are really only two problems I have with this case (and I'd imagine would apply to the Fusion 430 as well); it uses very bright blue LED's (which just require you to not plug in the HDD LED and separate power LED) and that there isn't a way to "stealth" the optical drive - granted it isn't a HTPC case so it doesn't "require" it, but given how nice the case looks it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Motherboard & CPU

The CPU is a Conroe core, despite having the Pentium moniker instead of Core2Duo. The E2160 is a 65nm chip, clocked at 1.8ghz, with 1mb L2 cache and a 800mhz front side bus. The beauty is, its the cheapest dual core processor from Intel (that the store had in stock, with the E2140 being cheaper and slower) yet it is more than capable of decoding 1080p content.

The choice of motherboard was to opt for a better featured (specifically, included SPDIF out), more robust motherboard. Asus' top of the line uATX motherboard goes for ~$250, and the P5K-VM is pretty much the next step down, but only costs ~$150.

While the motherboard was more expensive than what I "needed", the cheaper ones available are generally regarded as 'okay' but not 'rock solid' if you attempt overclocking. By just ramping up the front side bus (FSB), still using the stock Heat Sink/Fan (HSF), I was able to get this CPU up to 2.94ghz. That's an overclock of a fairly impressive 1.14ghz! Somewhat unneeded for HTPC duties as it decodes 1080p perfectly well, but for gaming and other duties I may put this computer through later on in its life, certainly an added bonus out of a $83 CPU

Remote.

Only a brief word on the remote, the Logitech Harmony 525. It is your 'run of the mill' universal remote capable of learning IR commands, but it also has USB connectivity to download IR commands from Logitech's database. I won't say the database is flawless, but it had an entry for Media Center, my TV (Bravia KDL40W3100), my speakers (no surprises on that one however, they are Logitech speakers that were hooked up to my computer - we still "need" to get an amp/standalone speakers) and even the air conditioner! On top of that, the 'activities' options are awesome - if I want to watch TV, it switches the TV on, the speakers on, and the speakers to the right input. Likewise, if I want to watch something on Media Center, it'll switch the TV on, Speakers On, Change TV Input, Change Speaker Input, and even go to 'My Videos' (if I had a MCE IR Receiver).

I will give Logitech huge credit for the packaging. It is a standard looking blister pack which would normally require scissors and much bleeding, but this pack had a 'tear away' section, where little perforations in the plastic meant no cutting (or bleeding) was needed. The contents of the packaging also included 4xAAA Duracell batteries as well as 4xAAA Duracell batteries already in the remote!

Performance

Thanks to CoreAVC, it is actually possible to play back HD (1080p that is) material without a dedicated graphics card. This rig is capable of playing back H264 without any sync/stuttering issues. VC-1 plays back fine too, but every now and again it was as if it was dropping frames - I haven't had the time to properly research the subject - VC1 is not decoded by CoreAVC as far as I know - meaning I was using the stock Vista/WMP11 decoder.

Thanks to the power saving features of the CPU, it kept dropping down to about 1.9ghz (despite being overclocked to 2.9ghz) when playing back 1080p material - it simply has way too much oompf!

The other major codec to try out is PowerDVD, which has hardware acceleration through PureVideo/UVD, however that does not apply in this situation of onboard graphics. If I was to purchase the graphics card I intend to, yes, it would make a significant difference, however if I was to use CoreAVC which is a purely software/cpu decoder…well…the numbers in the table above won't change.

Power DVD performance

It's fairly easy to see that CoreAVC uses a lot less of the CPU than PowerDVD does - as much as 22% in some sections! Throw in a ATI HD 2400 Pro for as low as AUD$35, and the tables would certainly be reversed.

One interesting thing to note is that although the only VC1 content in this test had a higher CPU usage under PowerDVD, it was a LOT smoother, and didn't suffer from the occasional stuttering. It was also much faster at flicking through the video.

Final words..

I'm extremely happy with the performance, looks, noise and cost of this computer. All up, just AUD$667 (including remote)!

eSATA rocks

eSATA (External SATA) rocks for file transfer. Oh, sure, it sucks in terms of not providing power over the cable, but the raw speeds of it make you over look that, especially when its a 3.5" drive that requires extra power anyway (if over USB).

I recently purchased the above very very shiny Coolermaster X-Craft eSATA/USB (non-usb hub version). It came with an eSATA bracket, but my laptop has eSATA built into it, which is where I see the most benefit - I get better performance out of the external 7200rpm drive that I do my internal 5400rpm drive.

$49 well spent.

Edit: I should note, this particular design is fanless, which usually leads to a pretty warm enclosure. Well, the good news, after being left on all night (10:30pm -> 9am) its barely above room temperature to touch.

Wabber v0.1 - WPF Jabber Client

AMIM

A long time ago I tried making a MSN Messenger (/Windows Live Messenger) service client, using WPF. This was certainly fuelled when Yahoo announced their WPF client for Yahoo's IM Network. Unfortunately, my C# skills at the time certainly did not extend to making a library capable of connecting to MSNP reliably, particularly the later and more interesting versions (ie, v11+). I turned to the MSNPSharp library (which is based on DotMSN), but unfortunately I had difficulty following the logic of it (different authors between MSNPSharp and DotMSN I believe led to some inconsistencies in the code), and with no documentation, I eventually abandoned the project.

The above picture is actually 'live', connected to WLM. Sending/Receiving messages works fine, its just any other automated data that usually crashes it out. Display Pictures worked at one stage, but only from the official client, not Trillian and the like.

Introducing Wabber

Over the past few days/weeks, I was toying with making my own Twitter client like Will, and he suggested a really cool idea of using the 'instant notification' method (rather than scraping 70 times/hour) by connecting via XMPP (GTalk).

To understand the Jabber-Net library, I've sort of blown it more into a Jabber client than just a small addition to my twitter client, named Wabber. It currently only connects to Google's Gmail/GTalk server (hard coded for simplicity), so you'll need an account to get started.

Features

• Filtering contacts (ie, "Search for contact" instantly)
• Yahoo style "tiling of contacts"
• Yahoo style of "resize shows/hides details" (not shown in this version though)

To Do for vNext

• vCard decoding/processing so names are prettier, which will let me show avatars, proper names, etc.
• Simplify multiple contact logins to a single contact, rather than one for every presence (including offline!) notifications
• VoIP (via Jingle)
• Logging
• Error handling/notification of failed logins/etc
• Add/Remove contacts
• "Conversation Manager" doesn't always associate the same person
• Moving of window
• etc

Download

Executable download

(Source to follow, need to add documentation, and more importantly, error handling)

Building my HTPC (Part I)

For Christmas, the wife and I bought ourselves a 40" Bravia W Series LCD, and we've really started to appreciate 1080i TV broadcasts, and other HiDef content. We also happen to own two computers each (1x laptop, 1x desktop), so we decided to put one of them to use as a HTPC, since we lack the extra limbs to make use of two computers each at the same time.

Current Configuration
Software

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• CoreAVC
• ffdshow

Hardware

• AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (S939)
• Gigabyte K8NF-9
• 320gb Seagate SATA HDD
• Pioneer 111D DVD-RW
• 3gb DDR400 (2×1gb + 2x 512mb)
• MSI 256mb 7900GT
• Corsair VX-450 (450w) PSU
• Sony 40" W Bravia LCD (KDL40W3100)

With us both being gamers, this system ('my' desktop), is more appropriate as its fairly capable. There is just one problem for HTPC use - its a little noisy.

The AMD X2 (S939) processes aren't the greatest things on the block, but they're certainly no slouch. Being an older CPU, the amount of heat generated (and power used) is significantly more than AMD's current generation CPU's, and depressingly more than Intel's Core2Duo line up. The X2 3800+ for example, has a Thermal Design Power (the maximum amount of power the CPU will use) is 89w. Compare that to the Intel E2140, which has a TDP of 65w - although some reviews put its 'true' TDP well under 40w.

Back to the issue of noise, I've managed to silence the both the graphics card and CPU by putting on massive, and reasonably expensive, coolers. The 7900GT has a Thermalright HR-03, and the CPU has a Scythe Mini Ninja.

So with that all said, we're going to buy a new system soon that will spend its life as a HTPC. The current computer will move upstairs to be the workhorse, and the other system (X2 3800+, mATX mobo, 7600GT) will be given to in-laws in a custom built case (more on that soon)

Proposed Configuration
Software stays the same (maybe X64?)

Hardware

• Intel Pentium E2140 (Yeah, its under the Pentium name, but is still a Conroe)
• Asus P5GC-MX/1333
• 500gb Western Digital HDD (quieter and cheaper than a Seagate)
• 2gb DDR-2 (maybe 4gb?)
• Sapphire 512mb HD 3850 Ultimate (or 8800GT/HD 3850 with aftermarket cooler)
• Antec NSK2480 (case)

Eventually we'll add a HD-DVD or Blu Ray drive to it, but the current cost isn't particularly worthwhile, given the "war" is still not over.

The crazy thing is it'll cost roughly $720. By comparison, when I built the current HTPC, the ram was $200, the CPU ~$500, and the graphics card ~$550.

• The X2 3800+ was the low end of dual cores, but single core still made up the majority of sales - the E2140 is the slowest Conroe CPU out
• the 7900GT (was actually a 7800GT, it got upgraded under warranty) was a similar sort of card to the HD 3850 - not the fastest, but great value for money.
• 2gb of ram was still considered a massive amount, 4gb today is almost considered normal today, and will only set you back $130.

The case isn't a particularly HTPC-esque case (I plan to use it for my distant-Windows Home Server case), but its a stop-gap solution until I finish building my own case out of Jarrah and Tasmanian Ash - but that's for another post…