HTPC Build Part 1: The Stuff

[lsiberian]

I don't think the i3 is a waste of money personally.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

The rips that I have from MKV are about 15 gigs or so. I believe that's the raw output stripped of all it's nonesense. I'm pretty sure that is not compressed. The one or two ISO's I have are maybe 20 gig or so... I'd have to check. Are you saying in #2 that an uncompressed rip of a blu-ray would take almost the entire drive?

Yes, thats 15Gb of highly compressed video. Uncompressed it would take according to this math: 1920x1080x24 (bit) * 24 (fps) * 2(hours) * 60^2 = about 8 terrabyte

Wasn't referring to stripped menus and/or extras

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I just looked up that thermal stuff and they have a video showing Arctics Silvers two step compound remover. Wasn't sure if you knew about this stuff or not. It seems to make the job pretty easy. (Video at the bottom)
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM - Newegg.com

Applying it its not the issue, removing the stock pad out of stock heatsink is

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

What about bitstreaming the hi-def audio codecs to my receiver?

AMD/ATI enabled HD audio bitstreaming since radeon 5xxx series. They were ahead of nVidia and WAAAY ahead of intel.

Jinjuku does have a good point and if you go back to original thread you'd notice that the cheap small htpc box i recommended was built around AMD cpu (with 8xxx series gpu)

But if you intend to run windows and do other things like recompressing video on this box, go with intel i3 - it's would faster

 

[itschris]

Applying it its not the issue, removing the stock pad out of stock heatsink is

The video showed the stuff to remove the that. You put a few drops of this stuff on and it dissolves the thermal pad that comes with it.

 

[itschris]

Yes, thats 15Gb of highly compressed video. Uncompressed it would take according to this math: 1920x1080x24 (bit) * 24 (fps) * 2(hours) * 60^2 = about 8 terrabyte

Wasn't referring to stripped menus and/or extras

Okay now I'm really confused. Is the movie file on the physical blu-ray disc compressed? I mean if you look at a blu-ray disc the entire thing is about 20-30gigs. MKV is not a compression scheme... just a container. i thought it takes the original files from the disc (which I assumed are NOT compressed) and puts them into the MKV container.

 

[itschris]

The video showed the stuff to remove the that. You put a few drops of this stuff on and it dissolves the thermal pad that comes with it.

BoredSysAdmin: About the cooler... is there a downside to putting on an aftermarket cooler (assuming noise is a non-issue)? I know the stock one will probably fine like you said, but I just figured while I'm building this thing... what could it hurt? I was looking at it as cheap insurance. Also, for me... there's also the "because it looks cool" factor as well. I don't get to do this kind of stuff anymore so it's also just fun to build this stuff.

If you're dead set against it for reasons I'm ignorant to, I'll certainly leave it out.

 

[jinjuku]

I don't think the i3 is a waste of money personally.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk

What does a $139 i3 get you for straight up HTPC use get you that the $59 AMD APU doesn't?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Okay now I'm really confused. Is the movie file on the physical blu-ray disc compressed? I mean if you look at a blu-ray disc the entire thing is about 20-30gigs. MKV is not a compression scheme... just a container. i thought it takes the original files from the disc (which I assumed are NOT compressed) and puts them into the MKV container.

Yes, MKV is just a container, but:
Original BruRay movie is certainly compressed and takes 30-40Gb of space. To make it a 10-15Gb MKV file the software apply a bit more video compression, which in my opinion is not really noticeable. Audio is typically carried over as is from BD

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

BoredSysAdmin: About the cooler... is there a downside to putting on an aftermarket cooler (assuming noise is a non-issue)? I know the stock one will probably fine like you said, but I just figured while I'm building this thing... what could it hurt? I was looking at it as cheap insurance. Also, for me... there's also the "because it looks cool" factor as well. I don't get to do this kind of stuff anymore so it's also just fun to build this stuff.

If you're dead set against it for reasons I'm ignorant to, I'll certainly leave it out.

Well it's your money - feel free to spend it - and yes - aftermarket cooler will make build look neater

I don't really see it as cheap insurance, but yes - it will boost the aesthetics Do keep in mind than just like in Home Theater build outs , nothing improves case aesthetics more than neat cables

This is my DIY NAS box - I hope that my self pat on the back on neat cabling is well deserved:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111982341744839796543/albums/5856810032319966337?authkey=CM7Y2Mqc17_aHg

And I did not used modular psu and I did use stock cooler. Core I3 is an overkill for nas, but some parity related computations which are running on it are quite CPU heavy, but the deal is to use same box as IT LAB and to run different OSes on it, but alas i am getting too geeky

 

[itschris]

I totally dig that box. I was checking out the cables from SilverStone for the drives a few days ago. After looking at your box... I'm definitely buy them now. That's a really clean build. I have my work cut out for me. I'm going to have really go over the NAS stuff with you in a few months. Are you using FreeNAS and are you using the controller on the M/B?

Speaking of cables... the guys from the my cable company were here the other day trying to fix my signal. I had to redo the cables back to Component from HDMI for the cable box due to handshake issues. I pushed the entire BDI cabinet away from the wall and was pretty much sickened by the spaghetti back there. It's a total disaster. When I complete the HTPC build, I'm literally pulling everything out, disconnecting everything, cleaning everything, and starting over. My biggest problem is that I have 6 foot cables where there needs to be a 2 foot. It's just stupid. That'll be fun all day affair, but worth it. I'm going to replace a lot of the cables with better fitting ones.

Regarding the MKV files... I didn't realize the Blu-Ray discs were compressed from the outset. So basically, MKVMaker is making copies of the original compressed Blu-Ray files from the disc. So I'm assuming if the compression that's already there does not affect quality, then neither should the MKV file. So what happens when the Blu-Ray player reads the disc. How does it uncompress the file without the storage space to do so?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

this is the box for my nas build - Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 support and 2 x 120mm Fractal Design Silent Fans - Newegg.com
No, I didn't used Freenas, more of straight ubuntu server (for learning purposes), but now I wish I did - too much hassle and I don't know linux well enough to handle it comfortably.
I will rebuild it as freenas in 2014 and that's my new year resolution I did play enought with Freenas and San

As I said MKVMaker not just making copy it decodes the video and compresses it again - yes - this does create additional very minor compression artifacts, but like I said they are not noticeable
BD Player does same thing as any other video player does, in fact the idea is as original since dawn of VCD's
It essentially reads a (small) portion of the compressed video file (more like stream), decodes into fast memory and sends it to display

 

[Grador]

I didn't believe make mkv transcoded, doesn't it just put the video in an mkv container?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I didn't believe make mkv transcoded, doesn't it just put the video in an mkv container?

Grador, You might have a good point here... however if it doesn't then how the heck 50gb BD becomes a 15gb flat mkv file?

 

[itschris]

I know you can compress MKV files... I do it with Handbrake, but I thought MKVMaker on its own does not, but then again I've never did a whole movie...just a couple pieces of it. I remember one Blu-Ray being 22gigs or so and I ended up with a 15 or 16 gig file when I was done, leaving out everything but the movie and the DTS-MA components. I assumed there was no additional compression.

 

[Grador]

Their website is not very good but I managed to find this quote: "Since all meta information is preserved in MKV and compressed media data (video, audio, subtitles) is not changed in any way it is always possible to transcode MKV files into original format. For example, MKV files produced from a Blu-ray disc may be transcoded back to a Bly-ray image or set of M2TS files without any losses by freeware transcoding tools"

 

[itschris]

Their website is not very good but I managed to find this quote: "Since all meta information is preserved in MKV and compressed media data (video, audio, subtitles) is not changed in any way it is always possible to transcode MKV files into original format. For example, MKV files produced from a Blu-ray disc may be transcoded back to a Bly-ray image or set of M2TS files without any losses by freeware transcoding tools"

So if I read that right, it just takes the raw files off the disc and puts them in a new container.

 

[Grador]

Yes, I believe that to be the case.

 

[aberkowitz]

this is the box for my nas build - Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 support and 2 x 120mm Fractal Design Silent Fans - Newegg.com
No, I didn't used Freenas, more of straight ubuntu server (for learning purposes), but now I wish I did - too much hassle and I don't know linux well enough to handle it comfortably.
I will rebuild it as freenas in 2014 and that's my new year resolution I did play enought with Freenas and San

As I said MKVMaker not just making copy it decodes the video and compresses it again - yes - this does create additional very minor compression artifacts, but like I said they are not noticeable
BD Player does same thing as any other video player does, in fact the idea is as original since dawn of VCD's
It essentially reads a (small) portion of the compressed video file (more like stream), decodes into fast memory and sends it to display

This is actually the case I wanted to buy, but it didn't fit into my built-in cabinet so I went with the silverstone. I thought the fractal was really clean.

 

[Rowdy S13]

I may be mistaken, because I have been playing around a lot with different things, but I ripped I am legend from BD and it was 32.XGB. I am pretty positive that I did that with MakeMKV, and just started. I did not unselect anything, turn up compression, anything at all except it start. I then used Handshake to make it smaller, again did nothing but hit start and it was massively smaller. I want to say ~5-6GB, but I cant remember exactly. My point is, if MakeMKV compresses at all compared to straight ISO rips it has to be VERY minimal.


Sean