TANK
Shared on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 14:02It's been some time since i updated on my HTPC build mostly because i hadn't put it together, i was still missing some pieces. I have all the core pieces together now and have built the HTPC. So get ready for a mega update complete with great highs and some kick in the nuts lows .....
THE GOOD STUFF :
WIFI :
I finally found a WORKING Vista WiFI N card, it's a Linksys. I'm not a fan of Linksys but they've got the only card that's solid on Vista that's N right now so that's what i had to get. Vista came up and used it right away. One thing i do really love is that the N antenna isn't connected to the back of the card, it has a cable instead that attaches to the card. Why is this cool? Well for an HTPC, typically it would be in a cabinet so having an antenna that you can stick outside the cabinet and cable to the PC is great! To my shock circuitcity.com was the cheapest place to get it, they have it in their outlet for $44.99 and i picked in-store pickup to save on shipping. To my shock when i got there, they took another 5 bucks off, so i got an N wifi card for cheaper than a name brand G card. Here's the LINK to CC.com's outpost listing for the card.
REMOTE :
Getting a remote control for a Home Theater PC is a royal pain in the ass. Most 'media center' remotes only work with Vista or XP's media center applet and the build in microsoft media apps like Media Player. Occasionally you'll find one that works with other apps too but finding one that works with all possible media applications you may want to use is just a daunting task. But you don't really want to strap a keyboard and mouse to this either, who controls the typical home theater with a mouse and keyboard? That's just stupid and not at all wife friendly. So the solution I had started to consider were 'air mouse' or 'presenter mouse'. But then i started to find some combination media center remotes with track balls. This I thought would be ideal, if the media center remote didn't work with a particular application you could always use the built in track ball and mouse around to the GUI controls. The down side to this is you end up with a remote for your HTPC and you would still need a remote for your TV and Receiver (and other av things). So not ideal but I was all set to place an order at newegg.com for an xgene wireless trackball MCE remote but a trip to Frys this morning found the PERFECT solution, a Gyration Universal PC Remote Control. It looks like a normal remote, has text and number input abilities, all the MCE features, channel and volume up/down PLUS it's a universal learning remote so it can control up to 3 other devices besides your HTPC, so like your TV and Receiver as well. And the last greatest part is, it has Wii style gyroscopic mouse control so you wave it around like a wiimote to move the mouse around the screen ! It's P-E-R-F-E-C-T ! The downside? $100 ! The price was killer BUT again circuit city outpost came to the rescue, they have it for $36.96 ! I couldn't believe it, here's the link.
THE GOOD STUFF :
WIFI :
I finally found a WORKING Vista WiFI N card, it's a Linksys. I'm not a fan of Linksys but they've got the only card that's solid on Vista that's N right now so that's what i had to get. Vista came up and used it right away. One thing i do really love is that the N antenna isn't connected to the back of the card, it has a cable instead that attaches to the card. Why is this cool? Well for an HTPC, typically it would be in a cabinet so having an antenna that you can stick outside the cabinet and cable to the PC is great! To my shock circuitcity.com was the cheapest place to get it, they have it in their outlet for $44.99 and i picked in-store pickup to save on shipping. To my shock when i got there, they took another 5 bucks off, so i got an N wifi card for cheaper than a name brand G card. Here's the LINK to CC.com's outpost listing for the card.
REMOTE :
Getting a remote control for a Home Theater PC is a royal pain in the ass. Most 'media center' remotes only work with Vista or XP's media center applet and the build in microsoft media apps like Media Player. Occasionally you'll find one that works with other apps too but finding one that works with all possible media applications you may want to use is just a daunting task. But you don't really want to strap a keyboard and mouse to this either, who controls the typical home theater with a mouse and keyboard? That's just stupid and not at all wife friendly. So the solution I had started to consider were 'air mouse' or 'presenter mouse'. But then i started to find some combination media center remotes with track balls. This I thought would be ideal, if the media center remote didn't work with a particular application you could always use the built in track ball and mouse around to the GUI controls. The down side to this is you end up with a remote for your HTPC and you would still need a remote for your TV and Receiver (and other av things). So not ideal but I was all set to place an order at newegg.com for an xgene wireless trackball MCE remote but a trip to Frys this morning found the PERFECT solution, a Gyration Universal PC Remote Control. It looks like a normal remote, has text and number input abilities, all the MCE features, channel and volume up/down PLUS it's a universal learning remote so it can control up to 3 other devices besides your HTPC, so like your TV and Receiver as well. And the last greatest part is, it has Wii style gyroscopic mouse control so you wave it around like a wiimote to move the mouse around the screen ! It's P-E-R-F-E-C-T ! The downside? $100 ! The price was killer BUT again circuit city outpost came to the rescue, they have it for $36.96 ! I couldn't believe it, here's the link.
NOW THE BAD STUFF :
BLURAY PLAYBACK:
So..... in order for you to be able to play back BluRay discs on an HTPC, your connectors need to pass the High Definition Copy Protection authentication (HDCP). If your setup doesn't, PowerDVD will tell you it can't play the movie for you. Which is what happened to me despite all the research i've done to make sure all my shit is HDCP compliant.
It turns out that even though a lot of ATI and Nvidia based cards list HDCP compliance on the box , it's only for the DVI-I port even if your card has an HDMI port on it like mine does. WTF is that about? So even though i have a video card that is HDCP compliant and a TV that's HDCP compliant and an HDMI cable connecting the two, i can't play back BluRay discs. What i need to do is get a DVI-I to HDMI adapter from ATI which they make one for their 2400 and 2600 lines and newegg sells them for 7 bucks. It's a special adapter that'll also pass through the audio via the adapter to the HDMI cable which is cool but this restricts you to 5.1 channel sound.
I've found only two cards now that i've been looking at specifics that will support HDCP over HDMI both of them from MSI. One based on ATI 3650 technology for 74 bucks and another one based on Nvidia 8500 technology for 63 bucks. Someone told me that Palit also makes a card or two that will do HDCP over HDMI.
The only reason i can think of why the majority of support is for HDCP over DVI is because these go into computers and manufacturers must feel like people hook these up to PC monitors. They obviously don't think many people hook these up in their living rooms . So it looks like i need to get this ATi adatper for now until more card choices become available. yes there are some affordable options now but i'll hold off getting a different card because of the next topic :
HD AUDIO FORMATS :
There are a number of new HD audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and various other 7.1 channel lossless audio codecs. The issue is that unless you bought a receiver that supports that kind of stuff, you won't even hear it. But it's not even an issue right now because there are currently no BluRay movies that even support these new HD audio formats. So this is in the back of my head right now becuase of this issue :
There is no support for 7.1 audio over HDMI in PCs, or at least none that i have yet been able to find. Yes you can get 7.1 channel audio for gaming rigs but gaming and bluray movie playback are totally different. I have yet to find an audio card that fully supports 7.1 channel audio playback of all the latest HD audio formats. The best thing i've found so far is that Intel G35 based motherboards have Dolby TrueHD certified for 5.1 playback. So that's the first problem. T he second problem is..... how do you get the audio to pass through to your video card to go out the HDMI cable in 7.1 ? A lot of computers today have SPDIF connectors, the motherboard in my HTPC has 6.1 support via SPDIF but most SPDIF support won't go to 7.1 audio. So i don't know if in the future maybe there will be a video card with an HDMI in which you would pair with the HDMI out of a sound card? HDCP also applies to sound, which SPDIF is not HDCP compliant as far as I know.
So the whole audio thing beyond your standard 5.1 AC3/DTS/DolbyDigital especially in HTPCs is really a freak'in mess.
So right now i don't believe it's even possible to build a Home Theater PC that is 1080p HDCP compliant over HDMI with the latest HD audio formats also HDCP compliant. The gear just isn't out there to do it. So for now i'm going to need to just stick with 5.1 channel audio, at least it appears that I can still mix that over my HDMI cable thankfully because of a custom adapter ATI made to do it that i wasn't even aware of until today. On the plus side, i don't need to rush out and buy a next generation HDMI switching receiver that does all the new 7.1 formats because it seems like it'll be some time before i could ever take advantage of that.
HTPC PICTURES:
Here's a picture of my HTPC closed and open
BLURAY PLAYBACK:
So..... in order for you to be able to play back BluRay discs on an HTPC, your connectors need to pass the High Definition Copy Protection authentication (HDCP). If your setup doesn't, PowerDVD will tell you it can't play the movie for you. Which is what happened to me despite all the research i've done to make sure all my shit is HDCP compliant.
It turns out that even though a lot of ATI and Nvidia based cards list HDCP compliance on the box , it's only for the DVI-I port even if your card has an HDMI port on it like mine does. WTF is that about? So even though i have a video card that is HDCP compliant and a TV that's HDCP compliant and an HDMI cable connecting the two, i can't play back BluRay discs. What i need to do is get a DVI-I to HDMI adapter from ATI which they make one for their 2400 and 2600 lines and newegg sells them for 7 bucks. It's a special adapter that'll also pass through the audio via the adapter to the HDMI cable which is cool but this restricts you to 5.1 channel sound.
I've found only two cards now that i've been looking at specifics that will support HDCP over HDMI both of them from MSI. One based on ATI 3650 technology for 74 bucks and another one based on Nvidia 8500 technology for 63 bucks. Someone told me that Palit also makes a card or two that will do HDCP over HDMI.
The only reason i can think of why the majority of support is for HDCP over DVI is because these go into computers and manufacturers must feel like people hook these up to PC monitors. They obviously don't think many people hook these up in their living rooms . So it looks like i need to get this ATi adatper for now until more card choices become available. yes there are some affordable options now but i'll hold off getting a different card because of the next topic :
HD AUDIO FORMATS :
There are a number of new HD audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and various other 7.1 channel lossless audio codecs. The issue is that unless you bought a receiver that supports that kind of stuff, you won't even hear it. But it's not even an issue right now because there are currently no BluRay movies that even support these new HD audio formats. So this is in the back of my head right now becuase of this issue :
There is no support for 7.1 audio over HDMI in PCs, or at least none that i have yet been able to find. Yes you can get 7.1 channel audio for gaming rigs but gaming and bluray movie playback are totally different. I have yet to find an audio card that fully supports 7.1 channel audio playback of all the latest HD audio formats. The best thing i've found so far is that Intel G35 based motherboards have Dolby TrueHD certified for 5.1 playback. So that's the first problem. T he second problem is..... how do you get the audio to pass through to your video card to go out the HDMI cable in 7.1 ? A lot of computers today have SPDIF connectors, the motherboard in my HTPC has 6.1 support via SPDIF but most SPDIF support won't go to 7.1 audio. So i don't know if in the future maybe there will be a video card with an HDMI in which you would pair with the HDMI out of a sound card? HDCP also applies to sound, which SPDIF is not HDCP compliant as far as I know.
So the whole audio thing beyond your standard 5.1 AC3/DTS/DolbyDigital especially in HTPCs is really a freak'in mess.
So right now i don't believe it's even possible to build a Home Theater PC that is 1080p HDCP compliant over HDMI with the latest HD audio formats also HDCP compliant. The gear just isn't out there to do it. So for now i'm going to need to just stick with 5.1 channel audio, at least it appears that I can still mix that over my HDMI cable thankfully because of a custom adapter ATI made to do it that i wasn't even aware of until today. On the plus side, i don't need to rush out and buy a next generation HDMI switching receiver that does all the new 7.1 formats because it seems like it'll be some time before i could ever take advantage of that.
HTPC PICTURES:
Here's a picture of my HTPC closed and open
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