I have no clue about HTPC's but I wanna learn

[mjfoster77]

Ok so I'm thinking about building a HTPC. I mostly want to be able to load my blu-ray movie collection to a hard drive, so I don't have to handle dics. I keep reading about this but I'm getting more and more confused as I read about this. There seems to be so many different types of software. I would want something that is easy to use and looks good. I don't really need to store my music collection since I play my zune through my receiver.

My only concern is will I be giving up picture quality or sound quality because the movies are compressed? I currently use my ps3 for bluray movies. I have harmony 880 remote, is that useable with a HTPC? If I were to us a 1.5 or 2 tb drive, how many hours could I expect to get out of them.

I'll give you a run down of my equipment if that helps any. I have a panisonic ae3000 projector, pioneer sc-07 reciever, tivo, xbox 360, and a ps3.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

If you just to play BluRay movies or it's compressed version without too much complications, WD TV Live! could be the device for you - it's pretty inexpensive and while I don't have myself there bunch of folks here whom swear by it.

About sizes, math is easy - uncompressed BR movie could take about 30-50 gb, compressed to 1080p and dts sound is about 8gb, and 720p ac3 would be around 4.7gb or even a bit less.
Remember: For HD sizes number of gigs in Tb is exactly 1000, not 1024

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Everything seems complex at first, and HTPC is no exception.

But the more you read and learn, the simpler it seems after a while.

Less than a year ago, I had never even opened up a PC; I had never installed RAM or anything on a desktop PC.

And now I have built 6 PCs from scratch.

It you want the EXACT bit-for-bit duplicate of a BD, you will need a PC with at least a $50 ATI Radeon HD5450 graphics card. This will allow you to bitstream DTS-HD MA/ Dolby TrueHD/ & PCM from your PC to your Receiver/Pre-pro.

You have to use Power DVD10 Ultra as the software.

You will need DVDFab blu-ray to blu-ray software. This will allow you to rip just the main movie to your hard drive. Since you are concerned about quality, like me, you don't wan't to COMPRESS anything.

A 1 hr BD main movie is about 11 - 13GB.

A 2 hr BD main movie is about 25 - 30GB.

A 3 hr BD main movie is about 40 - 45GB.

Lord of The Ring (each movie) is like 47GB.

Avatar is like 47GB.

I have a 24TB network storage (NAS). Each of my other 2 HTPCs in the network has 6TB of HDD.

You will need A LOT more than 2TB if you want to store BDs uncompressed.

I don't see the point of compressing movies because you will lose a lot of picture quality. What is the point?

Just get some more HDDs.

Get a BIG PC case - like the ANTEC 1200 (or similar for cheaper prices).

I have the Antec-1200 case. I also bought an additional HD cage (3 more slots for HDDs). So I have a total of 12 HDDs. Each HDD is 2TB = 24TB.

I used an external BD-ROM for loading the OS - Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Oh, yeah, you will need Windows 7 for the HD-audio bitstreaming.

Get a motherboard with 6 SATA connectors. Get 2 more RAID controllers (like the Syba or similar that has 4 SATAs on each PCI card).

Anyway, that's a lot to digest if you are new.

Just keep on reading and learning untill it doesn't seem new anymore before you start building your PC.

But anyway, prices:

Case: $90 - $150
Motherboard (MoBo): $60 - $150
CPU (Intel 2.6GHz Dual Core 775 socket): $60
RAM 2GB: $50
Power Supply (PSU): $50 - $100
ATI Radeon graphics card: $50 - $150
HDDs 2TB: $130 - $150 each.

BD-ROM External: $100 - $150
BD-ROM Internal: $60 - $150

 

[jinjuku]

How many movies are we talking about? Is your collection currently solid with a few titles added here and there?

You may have to client / server this. A WDTV for the front end (client) and a machine with plenty of storage for the back end (server).

Do you have a budget? Is a budget what you are trying to figure out?
Do you only want to stream movies? Do you want cable card (M-OCUR) capability? Do you want Netflix streaming? IPTV? Music Streaming? Hulu? Vudu?

 

[GlocksRock]

I have about 75 blu ray rips on my 2 TB drive, most are movie only, but a few are the full disc .iso since they are tv shows.

 

[mjfoster77]

Thanks for all the advice. I want to run some of the equipment by yu guys to see if I'm heading in the right direction.


Case:
Antec Black Aluminum / Steel Fusion Remote Black

CPU:
amd Athlon II X2 255 Regor 3.1GHz Socket AM3 65W

Hard drive:
Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EARS 1.5TB SATA

Motherboard:
GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD

Memory:
Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3

The motherboard has onboard GPU, but it is an older card then the ATI 5450 someone suggested. Could I get away with the onboard or would that be a bad idea? Everything that's listed would run me about $540 with out buying windows 7, which I think runs $99.

 

[s162216]

You might be able to get away with it but I would recommend getting the ATI card as well because its unlikely that you'll be able to bitstream lossless bluray audio like DTS-MA or TrueHD over HDMI through the onboard card as the ATI 5000 series are the first graphics cards able to do that without another very expensive sound card. Plus the external card will be better.

Everything else looks quite good, you might want to get a bit of a more powerful processor though, a quad core would be better as it'll take much less time ripping blurays and would increase performance quite a bit.

Have a look at how much an Athlon II X4 640 is where you live, in the UK where I am their quite reasonable at about £120 which is roughly $180 converted but it'll be much less than that really. Its a good entry level quad core. If your budget stretches to it, have a look at the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition or the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. These have a lot more processing power.

A bit more memory might be worth it as well but don't go beyond 4GB as you need a 64 bit operating system then instead of the traditional 32bit version. Its a common mistake with people building their first computer to add like 8Gb of memory and then only use a 32bit operating system where the maximum it can recognise and use is 4GB.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I have a Gigabyte (MA780)MoBo on one of my PCs. The MoBo itself is fine, but the integrated AUDIO sucks. It's an integrated LOW-END ATI card. It can't even bitstream 5.1 DD/DTS via HDMI! It even says so in the owner's manual. It can only bitstream 2.0.

I'm not sure about your particular MoBo though (MA785).

You will most likely need that PowerColor ATI HD5450 card to bitstream the HD Audio.

My other MoBo is the Asus P5Q Pro Turbo ( more expensive). But for some reasons, it has issues with bitstreaming 96kHz Dolby TrueHD over my Network. The Gigabyte M780 worked perfectly.

Okay, I just looked at the ATI Radeon HD 4200 Specs on the MA785 mobo:
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/ati-radeon-hd-4200/pages/ati-radeon-hd-4200-specificatications.aspx

It looks like it does have 5.1 audio via HDMI, but NOT HD-Audio (7.1 TrueHD/DTS-HD/PCM).

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

a quad core would be better as it'll take much less time ripping blurays and would increase performance quite a bit.

I don't know about that. Faster in terms of seconds maybe.

I have a AMD dual core 2.7 GHz (PC2) & a Intel Quad Core 2.83 GHz (PC1). I usually rip 2 BDs at a time using DVDFab. It seems like they both finish at about the same time with similar length movies. If there is a difference, it's not like Night-and-Day - insignificant.

As far as transfering BD ISO files from internal HDD to my NAS, it takes similar amount of time as well.

But if you have the budget, there's nothing wrong with gettting a faster CPU.

 

[GlocksRock]

A faster CPU won't help you rip blu rays faster since that has more to do with the drive speed than anything. Unless you plan on doing video encoding, you will be ok with a dual core cpu.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I sure liike Antec

This is the Antec Fusion Remote w/ Dual 120mm 3-speed fans:

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NzE4

But for a few dollars more , I like the Fusion Remote MAX:

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NzE0

Well, okay for about $60 more:

http://www.buy.com/prod/antec-fusion-remote-max-chassis-4u-rack-mountable-5-bays/q/loc/101/209055724.html

This Fusion Max looks more like a high-end Receiver and has two 120 mm fans (1 installed, 1 optional) + one 140 mm fan.

 

[sammywantsya]

Ok so I'm thinking about building a HTPC. I mostly want to be able to load my blu-ray movie collection to a hard drive, so I don't have to handle dics. I keep reading about this but I'm getting more and more confused as I read about this. There seems to be so many different types of software. I would want something that is easy to use and looks good. I don't really need to store my music collection since I play my zune through my receiver.

My only concern is will I be giving up picture quality or sound quality because the movies are compressed? I currently use my ps3 for bluray movies. I have harmony 880 remote, is that useable with a HTPC? If I were to us a 1.5 or 2 tb drive, how many hours could I expect to get out of them.

I'll give you a run down of my equipment if that helps any. I have a panisonic ae3000 projector, pioneer sc-07 reciever, tivo, xbox 360, and a ps3.

i totally agree with you there im also confused with it but i want to learn also thanks for opening this similar thread that i was thinking of. hope i can learn things while reading ^^