Hey everyone, this is my first post on theGreenButton, and what a fabulous resource, it's already proved incredibly helpful and I don't even have a media center yet. Now, I understand some of these questions cannot be answered fully, but maybe some tips on what directions to pursue? I know some of these must have been answered at other places in the forum, I'm asking here to kind of build myself a reference to check, please don't take this post as some sort of selfish mandate for information from people, please answer at your own leisure.

Background: I'm a college student majoring in Computer Science, meaning I know just enough to break things effectively. I'm building this htpc for my father-in-law, who is a fairly un-tech savvy person, more than anything it needs to work. Many of my questions are nice features that would be cool, but certainly aren't deal breakers if they can't be implemented, I ask almost as much out of curiousity to see how far people in the community can push WMC. My budget for the system is very ranging, I'd be willing to spend $1000 if I felt it was worth the money. I know it is quite easy to spend much more than that on these things, but I feel $500-1000 is the range I want to stick to. I guess in the end, my most important question is, "Is this a workable solution for a non technically versed person? Could my grandmother use this on here own for a week without calling me?"

Here we go:

Hardware Questions:
1) I'm trying to find the right balance of power/price/efficiency in building this htpc box. I was looking mostly at lower end, 45nm AMD dual cores because I can get one with a motherboard for around $125. Am I overlooking something obvious? I intended to use the onboard amd/ati gpu, most specifically the 4200, present in the 785 boards. I've read some reviews that said it was fine for watching blu-rays and I doubt much else could need more horsepower than that in the near future. Does Media Center play well with integrated GPU's?

2)I intended to get a Hauppauge 2250 card, the one that is a double tuner hybrid card solution for around $110. I have not researched this very much yet, but saw it had hardware encoders and I only need it for OTA broadcasts. I Could likely get a much cheaper card and get a similar result, but I felt like I want some room in case the setup changes in the future. What about HD Homerun?

3)I would really like to get a slot load Blu-ray drive for the system, but it seems they're hard to come by and overly expensive. I'd also like the ability to read HD-DVD's and regular DVD's. Is there any good reader that meets most of these criteria for under $150?

4)For cases, I was looking at mostly silverstone, lian-li, antec, aluminum desktop cases (micro atx / atx). Any case a standout in your opinions? Ideally I would like something short, under 5 inches in height, but it doesn't need to be that small width or lengthwise.

5) Do you use active power supplies or fanless? I'm afraid the cpu cooler + hard drive + bluray + psu fans + system fans will just make too much noise and i'd like to reduce as much as possible, but I also don't want something that overheats too much. Thoughts?

6) Do you guys control your system with bluetooth keyboards like the logitech dinovo mini, or mostly use the MCE remote? I don't intend to use this system for anything non media related really, so the dinovo seems overkill, but I do like the functionality somewhat.

7) Anyone use an xbox 360 controller? Can I start and sleep the system using a 360 controller somewhat like the 360 itself?

8) Does RAM matter much, I intended to get 3GB, do Blu-rays or HD recording need more for any reason?

9) Would you recommend an audio card or is the motherboard audio generally good enough for most purposes? If you recommend using a card, should I steer away from Creative Labs and pick a more audiophile type brand?

10) Would I notice a big gain from using a small solid state for the actual system drive and storing all media on a hard drive? What about storing the television buffer on a solid state and then moving it to the hard drive when done recording?

11) CEDIA is coming soon, any purchases I should put off on till then?

Software Questions:

A) I've seen the MyMovies plugin, and know you can backup blu-rays with Any DVD HD, is there any system or scripting currently working that allows me to insert a bluray in the drive, have it auto backup to an automatic selftitled directory, and then added into WMC? I understand this could likely be accomplished with a smattering of third party tools and maybe some scripting, but I wonder if anyone has attemped an all-in-one solution? If not, I will start work on this immediately, any obvious reasons this won't work?

B) Recording TV in this setup will be exclusively OTA signals, Some of the HD OTA are actually extremely nice quality, can I record these and then silently in the background convert them to a more efficient format and readd to WMC, deleting the original? Can I auto cut out commercials after the recording finishes?

C) Does Windows Media Center Crash Often? This is not meant to offend anyone, I simply want to know because I will not be the person using this system mainly, and I can't have them using something that constantly needs restarted because of stability issues. How long does yours runs before restarting?

D) Can I forcibly hide the Windows Desktop and prevent the user from ever seeing the desktop. Can I hide folders from being selectable in WMC itself so the user doesn't add something generic like the C: drive to the pictures section. Better yet, can I turn off folder adding completely and use only what I specify? What about if they launch something like Boxee, Can I dark the screen until it launches or will I inevitably show flashes of the desktop no matter what? I toyed with hiding the start bar and using no icons to make the desktop not seem like the desktop.

E) Can Recorded TV be cataloged and thrown into the video section. This somewhat relates to the earlier question. Basically, if the user records a football season, and then want to keep it for some reason, does that have any way of moving to the videos section from the recorded TV section? This obviously isn't a huge concern, just might be a nice option.

F) I know I can customize menus in WMC with some hacks here and there, any reason not to do this stability wise? more importantly, is it better to leave things stock so updates don't destroy everything, or are updates few and far between enough that customization is a good way to get what you want for 6+ months?

G) If I want the functionality to be mostly user friendly, am I better served using an extender and tucking the WMC machine somewhere else? If so, what extender? This is a one television household, so don't take into account additional tv's as a factor.

H) Should I try to optimize windows 7? I'm thinking 'vlite style' removing unnecessary features and turning off services media center doesn't use. Has anyone written extensively on what WMC needs bare minimum to run without issue?

I want to thank members in advance for any answers they submit. I know admins might want me to parse this out a bit and post in different relating forums for different questions, if so drop me a message and I'll break it apart and repost in different forums (software/hardware etc). Thanks!

Some answers no particular order. 

If the hardware you are looking at supports BluRay it should be more than enough for Media Center.  3GB of memory is plenty for a dedicated Media Center PC.  If you are wanting to play both BluRay and HD DVD then you need to look at the LG BluRay drives, if you are only wanting BluRay and DVD playback any BluRay drive should work.  BluRay playback you are going to need either Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 9 or ArcSoft TMT 3.

Either the 2250 or HDHomeRun will allow you to record OTA, the HDHomeRun connects to your PC via ethernet while the 2250 is internal.  Both are good choices.

If you are going to use this as a dedicated HTPC then a remote is really all you should need.  The only time I go to the keyboard is when it comes to installing applications and when it is necessary.

For audio I guess it depends on how you plan on connecting Media Center to your sound system.  I personally use the onboard sound card connected via SPDIF to my reciever.  If you want to get another sound card then you probably want to look at ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3.

I personally wouldn't look at solid state drives right now, you won't really get the bang for your buck at this time IMO.  You might want to check out http://www.hack7mc.com/ to move your live TV buffer to a USB thumb drive.

As far as stablilty I haven't really had any major crashes, most crashes I have had are more releated to hardware issues than with Media Center itself.

For hiding the desktop, just set Media Center to start when Windows starts.  The desktop will still be there but, just in the background.

Personally I don't do too much optimizing of Windows by turning off services and etc., I'm sure there are others that have but, I don't see a big enough improvement to hassle with this.

 

1) I feel most people go overkill nowadays on hardware for HTPCs.  HDTV was new and required a high-end computer four years ago.  Four years is an eternity in the PC world.  Just about any dual-core of any speed will suffice.  The only reason a faster CPU might come in handy is if you are transcoding or converting video files or doing something that is not HTPC related (e.g. video games).  I have a quad core in mine only because it was on sale for $100 at a local store.  The HD4200 should be more than sufficient and it fully accelerates Blu-Rays.  I generally prefer the NVidia 9300 integrated graphics which requires an Intel processor, but that's mostly because the NVidia platform supports 7.1 LPCM for Blu-Rays, which the HD4200 does not.  The HD4200 will still do regular dolby digital and DTS and 2.0 LPCM.

2) The hardware encoder on the Hauppauge 2250 is only useful if you are recording analog TV.  If you are doing OTA ATSC HDTV, the signal is already digitally encoded and thus the expensive encoders are useless.  Save your money and get the $60 OEM or white box version of the AverMedia AverTVHD Duet.  It is a dual tuner that cannot do any analog.  The HDHomeRun does not do analog either, but costs a lot more than the Duet.  The HDHomeRun was the only game in town for unencrypted QAM from a cable company until the TVPack and Windows 7 came out.  Now I see it as more of a niche product for people that need a reliable external tuner.

3) As mentioned before, the LG drive is the only HDDVD and BluRay drive that I know of, and it doesn't come in slot load.

4) Cases have never been my concern as my HTPC is on the other side of the wall in my unfinished basement.  Still, if you want a low height case, the aforementioned AverMedia Duet is good as it is a half-height card and comes with the half-height bracket in the box.

5) HTPC isn't in the room, so noise isn't a concern for me either.  Still, with good choices in CPU, fans, and a good power supply, it shouldn't be hard to build a quiet PC.

6) I use a regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.  I'd love to have a DiNovo, but I paid just $25 for my setup and, at the time, the DiNovo was over $100 anywhere I looked.  It's a good idea to have a keyboard and mouse of some kind somewhere, but most of my control is with the remote.

7) No experience with it.

8) I'm running fine with 2GB.  If you don't run a lot of other garbage in the background, then 3GB should be fine.  However, most new PCs want the memory installed in pairs.  Using 4 sticks instead of 2 as would be needed to get 3GB puts a higher load on the memory controller and other components, which increases your chance of instability.  More sticks gives you more points of failure.  4GB is still dirt cheap, so go with a decent 2x 2GB kit and call it good.

9) I'm using the integrated audio.  What you want is dictated by what other components you're using and how much you care.  My sound is going through HDMI to an Onkyo A/V receiver.  Since it's all digital, the quality of the sound card doesn't matter much.  If you're doing analog, then a dedicated sound card might sound better.  In most cases, however, I would say that if you're still using analog, then you probably don't care much about how it sounds.  If you REALLY REALLY care about your sound the Asus HDAV1.3 might be for you as it allows you to bitstream the new high-def formats to your A/V receiver.

10) My concern with storing the buffer to an expensive solid state drive would be wearing the drive out.  I don't know how optimized the write algorithm for the TV buffer is, but I bet it's probably not optimized for a SSD and might wear the drive out rather quickly.  Bear in mind that the live TV buffer and recorded TV can be setup to go to different places and thus are different things.  Most of us are happy letting our hard drives do this job.  A USB stick might be useful for the live TV buffer, but a lot of us don't watch much live TV anyway.  I don't think you'd see much noticable gain other than maybe less noise from a moving disk, but most modern drives are pretty quiet anyway.  It is a good idea to have 2 separate hard drives, one for the OS and one for recording, but not required.

11) For the ATSC world, I doubt there will be anything major unless a new extender comes out.  In a one TV household though, a new extender isn't going to be a big deal.

A) I'm not aware of anything on the BluRay side, but I honestly haven't looked.  I know that there is stuff for automatic ripping of DVDs.

B) Yes.  Take a look at DVRMSToolbox.  I haven't played with it enough as hard drive space isn't an issue for me.  I have used a similar program called MCEBuddy to do the same thing to take my shows to watch on my smartphone.  Unfortunately, development on MCEBuddy seems to have stopped, so it's hard to recommend it.

C) Mine has been very reliable except when one of my memory sticks failed, which was clearly a fault of the hardware and not MCE itself.  Weak power supplies, overheating due to cramped cases, and hard drive failures are other significant points of failure, but other DVR boxes have a somewhat high rate of failure as well.

D) Not something that I've messed with, but you can setup MCE to start at startup.

E) Not something that I've tried myself.

F) Depends on the quality of the hack/tool and the extent you push it.  Personally, I prefer to get my system working and then leave it until something isn't working the way I want.  Others seem to prefer to install any and all updates right when they come out.  I think it depends on your usage model and tolerance.

G) I don't think this would be necessary myself unless you can't stand the noise of the PC or your parents just can't keep from jacking up the main PC.

H) I don't bother with removing the other services.  If it works, I prefer not to break it.