Building Another HTPC

[nekrosoft13]

I started playing around the with "MyMovies" software that blends with VMC and I can settle with that for backing up DVDs and playing them back. The video quality is 1:1 so there is not compression and no fuzziness ;) . My biggest issue/concern right now is the hard drive space. I ripped "The Last Kiss" and "Batman Begins", just the movie and 5.1 audio via DVDShrink (no compression) this morning. This wound up being 4GB for "The Last Kiss" and 6.3GB for "Batman Begins". So if the average movie is 5GB for JUST the main movie and 5.1 audio, then my configuration below will only allow me to store roughly 120 movies (give or take). I've got a 40GB folder for my torrent downloads (movies, music, programs, etc) and about 25-30GB of that is movies and music. Looks like the 640GB drive won't last long huh?


that why i told you use h264 ;)

[six_storm]

that why i told you use h264 ;)

I asked you earlier in the thread about how you rip your DVDs but you never answered ;). I'll play around with those programs and see what I can get.

[six_storm]

I don't know if all HTPC cases are like this but both of my brothers have Silverstone cases that look like the one you've posted six_storm and they were a complete waste of money.

They do not offer any special features at all. They don't have any tool-free features (not even thumbscrews) for anything, they don't have a removable HDD tray, they had a stupid bar right in the middle running the length of the case that got in the way of CPU HSF installation, the fans were very noisy and it wasn't like they were made out of quality thick aluminium either.

I've never had a regular Silverstone case so I don't know if all of them are like that, but I've ruled myself out of ever spending a lot of cash on one of their HTPC offerings.

Here's what I was looking for in a case: 2 optical drives (DVD and BD-ROM), 4 or more HDD bays, room to work, room for airflow and good looks to match my home theater furniture. The Silverstone case does all of this and I haven't really seen any other case that does this. Do you have a suggestion on the case? I'd be glad to take a look at it. :D

[six_storm]

http://shop1.frys.com/product/5690181

The Gigabyte Mobo I picked out plus an AMD Athlon X2 5600+ CPU = $69.99! Think I should do this instead of the same board plus the 4050e?

EDIT - Dang, that sold out fast. Guess I'll keep an eye on it and see if it comes back in stock.

[six_storm]

Just ordered the Gigabyte board, the AMD CPU, the Corsair RAM, CoolerMaster PSU and the Microsoft MCE Remote. The wifey made me split the total amount in half and only spend that much for this month. But hey, this will give me time to research and keep my eye open for the right case.

So back to DVD ripping and audio converting. nekro has yet to give me some details on DVD ripping ;) and I do have another question. I have all of my music in iTunes, I'm guessing in AAC? So what would be the best codec to export my iTunes library to in order to use with VMC? MP3? FLAC?

[crainger]

WMA Lossless.

[six_storm]

I was checking on what quality my music in iTunes was and of course, it was the standard 128k AAC encoder. Is there any way that I can convert my entire library to some other format, maybe even enhance the quality just a little bit? Or would I be wasting my time?

[crainger]

You can convert without loosing much more quality, but you can't add quality. In fact you might find it hard to convert to any format without loosing quality.

[WeReWoLf]

A nifty little program out there (made by an Aussie Company) is called Wavepad. You can convert AAC to just about anything else you want out there, and jack up the encoding quality so you don't lose the quality from the AAC conversion.

For Dvd ripping, DVDFab Platinum is very handy. You can rip it to specific sizes, screen size, audio type, bit rates, etc... Also very handy for backing up any discs you purchase and don't want them scratched. Example, To rip Madagascar with screen size 944x508 (16:9 ratio) with H.264 Mp3 @ 320 kb/s and overall Bitrate of 1026 kb/s, it comes to a total of 796 Mb. Going fullscreen on my 42" with that kind of rip is slightly blurry, but sitting back from it you see no difference to DVD.

Same details, but with 128 kb/s AAC audio, i get 681 Mb.

[six_storm]

A nifty little program out there (made by an Aussie Company) is called Wavepad. You can convert AAC to just about anything else you want out there, and jack up the encoding quality so you don't lose the quality from the AAC conversion.

For Dvd ripping, DVDFab Platinum is very handy. You can rip it to specific sizes, screen size, audio type, bit rates, etc... Also very handy for backing up any discs you purchase and don't want them scratched. Example, To rip Madagascar with screen size 944x508 (16:9 ratio) with H.264 Mp3 @ 320 kb/s and overall Bitrate of 1026 kb/s, it comes to a total of 796 Mb. Going fullscreen on my 42" with that kind of rip is slightly blurry, but sitting back from it you see no difference to DVD.

Same details, but with 128 kb/s AAC audio, i get 681 Mb.

In DVDFab, how do you change options such as audio codecs, resolution size, etc?

[WeReWoLf]

Open up dvdfab, choose the disc location (disc source, up top in the centre) then on the left side, down in the second selection part under DVD to Mobile, click generic.

It'll give you a list of video locations from the disc, and have the largest one (the movie) selected. Then select audio input (should have the first one ticked), then underneath audio, it'll have the Sub selections. Untick those if you don't want subs on your movie.

Click next, then click configure. Up the top, next to generic is a dropdown list of your audio selections. Choose either H.264 Mp3 or AAC, then name it as you wish. Under that is your options for screen size and encoding size.

I usually use Fixed bitrate and use between 1024 - 1280 for best results. Select your screen size and sized aspect ratio. Leave framerate same as source. With Audio format, select the largest one, which provides best audio quality, and you can even increase the amount of volume from the original disc. If you deselected the Subs in movie selection screen, then subpicture is not configurable.

When all done with that, hit OK, then hit start.

When all is finished, Output file goes to "C:\Users\*****\Documents\DVDFab\"

[six_storm]

Open up dvdfab, choose the disc location (disc source, up top in the centre) then on the left side, down in the second selection part under DVD to Mobile, click generic.

It'll give you a list of video locations from the disc, and have the largest one (the movie) selected. Then select audio input (should have the first one ticked), then underneath audio, it'll have the Sub selections. Untick those if you don't want subs on your movie.

Click next, then click configure. Up the top, next to generic is a dropdown list of your audio selections. Choose either H.264 Mp3 or AAC, then name it as you wish. Under that is your options for screen size and encoding size.

I usually use Fixed bitrate and use between 1024 - 1280 for best results. Select your screen size and sized aspect ratio. Leave framerate same as source. With Audio format, select the largest one, which provides best audio quality, and you can even increase the amount of volume from the original disc. If you deselected the Subs in movie selection screen, then subpicture is not configurable.

When all done with that, hit OK, then hit start.

When all is finished, Output file goes to "C:\Users\*****\Documents\DVDFab\"

Thanks! I'll give it a shot now.

[six_storm]

Just tried ripping the Wedding Singer in an avi (h264, aac) and honestly, I don't think it will be worth it doing it this way. I think I'd rather just do a straight rip of the main movie in VIDEO_TS folders and let Vista Media Center pick it up that way. Yeah, it will be a waste of space in a sense, but I want to have a good, clean looking UI in VMC; want it to be easy to use for the wifey and guest. For example, I want to be able to use the MyMovies plugin or the DVD Library section in VMC, be able to look at movie posters and decide on which movie to select.

As for the music, I was pretty sure that I couldn't "enhance" it anymore so I'll just leave it as is. I'll try and export all of it to MP3s for my HTPC since VMC won't play M4P formatted songs. Thanks for all the info guys! I'll keep you up to date on this build. The parts should be here Wednesday, but it will be another month before I can buy a case and hard drive. :(

[WeReWoLf]

As i said, give Wavepad a try. You can convert just about anything under the sun to Mp3 with it.

[six_storm]

Got all of my ordered parts today, can't wait to plug it all up and get things rolling. Now I just need a case and a new HDD to store all my stuff on. More than likely, I'll order the Silverstone case. I just can't find anything that really matches what I really want in a case.

[npras42]

Do me a favour mate and let me know how it goes with the case. As I said I've seen a couple of Silverstone HTPC cases already and thought they were awful, but they must be at least 2 years old each and I'd like to see whether they're any better nowadays. Can't believe that there aren't a bunch of desktop-style HTPC cases out there for full ATX boards, I thought they would be really popular!

[six_storm]

Do me a favour mate and let me know how it goes with the case. As I said I've seen a couple of Silverstone HTPC cases already and thought they were awful, but they must be at least 2 years old each and I'd like to see whether they're any better nowadays. Can't believe that there aren't a bunch of desktop-style HTPC cases out there for full ATX boards, I thought they would be really popular!

Yeah, I'm a little surprised there isn't much of a selection when buying a budget HTPC case.

[six_storm]

Just installed Windows Vista Home Premium and started downloading Windows updates. Since I only have 34 GB of free space for movies right now, I'm going to transfer a DVD rip, some AVIs, some music and some pictures over so I can get all the right codecs set up properly.

[six_storm]

I finally got everything up and running. Cut my Raptor drive in half, Vista's partition taking 34GB while the Data drive is taking 35GB. I transferred a few movies, both AVI and DVD rips, and a few MP3s. Amazingly, all of the codecs I downloaded (see below) work like a charm! The MCE remote works really well and is easy to use, however, it has a little lag when changing the volume. Oh well.

Codecs:
QTLite
AC3 Filter
xViD
FFDShow
CoreAVC 1.0.6

Now I need to transfer all of my iTunes music to MP3.

[mullet]

XP
PowerDVD
Media Portal
daemon tools
DVDFab to .ISO @100% Quality
2 x 1TB drives = 400 standard DVD's

DONE.

[nekrosoft13]

I finally got everything up and running. Cut my Raptor drive in half, Vista's partition taking 34GB while the Data drive is taking 35GB. I transferred a few movies, both AVI and DVD rips, and a few MP3s. Amazingly, all of the codecs I downloaded (see below) work like a charm! The MCE remote works really well and is easy to use, however, it has a little lag when changing the volume. Oh well.

Codecs:
QTLite
AC3 Filter
xViD
FFDShow
CoreAVC 1.0.6

Now I need to transfer all of my iTunes music to MP3.

I would recommend Vista Codec Pack, but if you don't want that, then at least install Halli Media Splitter, some files like MKV, TS, M2TS etc.. might not play at all without it

[six_storm]

I would recommend Vista Codec Pack, but if you don't want that, then at least install Halli Media Splitter, some files like MKV, TS, M2TS etc.. might not play at all without it

Halli Media Splitter is included with CoreAVC :D

Well, I knew this would come up but I'm going to have to cut some spending on the remaining parts. :( I really really doubt I'll be able to come up with the $160 to have the Silverstone case shipped. So now, I'll just get a cheap case for the time being and use it until I can scrape the money to get it (Christmas probably). I'll still buy the 500GB or 640GB hard drive but I will also have to wait on Blu-Ray for another month or two.

[nekrosoft13]

mine is kind of on hold as well. I'n trying to find decent case for about 50-70.

I got this old ugly looking beige Antec case, don't want to use that.

[six_storm]

I know that WavePad was a recommended program but I wanted to ask this. Is there a program out there that will automatically convert your iTunes library (music that has been imported from CDs) from M4P to another lossless format that can be read by VMC in a single click? I don't want to have to go through all 3,000+ songs and individually convert them from M4P to MP3 or whatever. Any thoughts?

[LovingSticky]

Was thinking about HTPC, but purchased this, IAMM NTD38HD:
http://www.iamm.co.kr/new_2007/eng/index.php?m=2&s=1

Very happy with the device :) Internal 2" LCD can be used to browser music collection without switching-on TV, and it can play almost any SD/HD video format.