Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC)

Two years ago I had no idea that HTPC stood for Home Theater Personal Computer. I am sure this was also true for many ComputorEdge readers prior to reading this issue. In this article, I want to share what I learned about HTPCs, the components needed to build one, and what to do with it once you have it. I built mine from the ground up in January of 2009 after considering some commercial PCs that were described as multimedia PC’s, but did not provide everything I needed at a price to fit my budget.

First, a little history. Several years ago I purchased a laptop with Windows XP Media Center Edition. It came with a USB-connected standard-definition TV (SDTV) tuner box and a remote control that could be used to record and watch SDTV on the laptop. But there was a problem. Since this was a laptop, it was frequently away from home and shows did not get recorded. Then when stations started going HD, I bought an HDTV tuner stick, which raised a second issue. The hardware was inadequate because the CPU was not powerful enough to record and play back the HDTV programs, and the hard disk had limited space considering that an hour of HDTV programming consumes 7GB of disk space.

As a result, I decided to buy or build a computer specifically as a media center that would be able to record and play HDTV, play streaming video over the Internet and play BluRay discs. If you are only interested in a digital recorder, you should look at a stand-alone unit such as the Hauppauge HD PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder 1212 (www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html) for about $200. But building a PC from components is a lot of fun and is a lot more versatile.

As I started looking at the build/buy decision, it didn’t take long to realize that I was going to need to build the computer to get the machine I needed at a price I could afford. I wanted a machine that would function as an HTPC as well as be my machine for typical household PC tasks. Besides, I always wanted to build a computer from components. The minimum I figured I needed was a dual-core processor, 4GB of memory, a terabyte of disk space, a BluRay player, a graphics card that could support BluRay resolutions, an IR remote control and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

For the operating system, I decided to go with Vista Home Premium, which included Windows Media Center, with which I had experience. I needed a non-tower case for the hardware that would fit in the entertainment center under the TV. When I started looking and reading reviews for such a box, I started seeing the term HTPC. I did some research on the Web and quickly found out that I was building a Home Theater Personal Computer. I also wanted a graphics card that could support two monitors, one big-screen HDTV to watch and a smaller HDTV to use for surfing and e-mail, so that those types of activities did not interfere with my wife’s viewing pleasure.

I am not going into a lot of detail about building a computer in this article since there are several computer magazines that produce special issues covering build-your-own computers. The two I used as a starting point for my HTPC were MaximumPC‘s “Build the Perfect PC” (not to be confused with the men’s magazine with a similar name) and PCGamer‘s “PC Builder’s Bible.” They both have 2010 editions on the magazine racks until July 13 and 20 respectively. None of the magazines describe the construction of an HTPC specifically, but describe high-end gaming rigs for about $3,400, with the latest bleeding-edge hardware, as well as less powerful economy rigs for less than $700.

Starting with the general information garnered from these magazines, I started my online research. If you are reasonably hardware literate, I would recommend going to some of the large Internet computer retailers and searching for components that interest you, and start reading reviews, both good and bad, to get an idea of what might work for you. Some items will have hundreds of reviews, but look for ones with overall very good to excellent ratings. Often in the negative reviews you will get a lead on better choices. If you do not want to spend hours doing research, you may want to pick the hardware used in the articles and add the tuner capabilities.

After getting my HTPC put together, it was time to start it up for the first time. Since this was the first computer I had ever built, I was excited but nervous. My budget was spent, and frying a $250 CPU chip would not be good. Everything came up fine, but as I started installing the OS I began having problems, and I began to question the wisdom of the build. On about the third or fourth try, the install worked, but I noticed it was installed on the second hard drive. I then checked the first drive and determined it was dead. I sent it back, received a credit, and then ordered a 1TB drive to replace it. The lesson to learn here is not to doubt yourself, but to check your hardware—and one bad component out of a dozen or so isn’t that bad.

Windows Media Center is a fully functional digital video recorder similar to a set-top cable box or a satellite receiver, but it came as part of Windows Vista Home Premium. You are able to search for shows or movies and record every episode or just the new ones. You can also limit the channels included for recording. Now that I have Big Bang Theory set up to record all episodes, it doesn’t matter that it is moving from Monday night to Thursday night, since my DVR knows when shows are scheduled based on the updated guide and will not miss an episode. The only catch is at least one show needs to be in the current guide (which usually has the next two weeks) or you cannot select it. You can select shows to record by searching on Title or Key Word, browse by category, or select from the guide (good for the next day or so, but cumbersome to go much beyond that).

In order to configure Windows Media Center Guide, you have to enter your ZIP code whether you are using an antenna or cable. If you select cable, you have to indicate your cable company. Based on this information, it goes out and downloads a guide. I have two sources, cable and an outside high-gain antenna with a low-noise amplifier (you can see my comments on “Digital Antennas” in a previous Editor’s Letters here). The over-the-air signal is better than cable due to conversion and compression applied for cable. Also you can get all the sub-channels, not just the ones the cable company provides.

So I plugged the antenna into the HDTV stick, the cable into the QAM (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAM_(television)) ready tuner on the graphics card and started the configuration process. Windows Media Center can see both tuners and can record from both; however, it is unable to display the Guide for both at the same time. The big advantage of a DVR is its ability to record complete series of shows that are selected from the searchable program guide. I did some research earlier and knew I wanted to get SnapStream’s BeyondTV (www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/), but it was not in the budget, so I recorded off the cable for the first several months. A little while later I bought BeyondTV4 and have been very pleased with it. It incorporates all sources of input into a single integrated guide. This makes it easy to record shows from both inputs at the same time. BeyondTV also provides conversion between the high-resolution formats to ones that can be recorded on a DVD. The process compresses the data with some loss of fidelity. The DVD burner software that comes with it is very slow. BeyondTV also identifies segments with advertising so you can watch an hour show in about 45 minutes by zipping through the ads.

I have been very pleased with the performance of my rig even though it is 18 months old. It has no problem recording two high-definition shows at the same time while watching a third recorded HD show. BeyondTV4 allows you to schedule the conversion and ad-detecting processes at times when you are not watching TV, such as midnight to 6 a.m. for me.

My next steps include both hardware and software upgrades. I plan to add an additional dual-tuner card so I can record four shows simultaneously. I will be adding more memory and possibly switching out the graphics card and upgrading the CPU. One big add-on I want is a high-powered theater surround-sound system to use the 7.1 audio output. Finally, I want to install Linux and see if I can use it for the OS of my HTPC. I understand MythTV (www.mythtv.org/) is the most popular DVR software in the Linux world and Ubuntu is an easy-to-use distribution of Linux. Someone has put those two together to create a Mythbuntu (www.mythbuntu.org) distribution.

www.computoredge.com