CURRENT HARDWARE

Motherboard: ABIT AN-M2HD

The motherboard is an ABIT AN-M2HD.  It can accommodate the Athlon CPU listed below.  It has 4 memory slots, 4 SATA connections, 1x PCIex16, 1x PCIex1 and 2x PCI slots.  It also has GigLAN and on-board audio.  It has an HDMI port so I may try it without a video card in place and see how it performs, as it should be able to output up to 1080p video.

 

CPU: Athlon 64 x2 4800+ Dual Core Windsor @2.5GHz

This was originally used in the HTPC, but due to the motherboard issue, I replaced the motherboard and this CPU with the M2A-VM/5200+ setup.  This CPU is pretty good, and has worked great in the playback of HD material.

CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS8000A

This was the cooler used with the 4800 CPU.  The big issue with this CPU cooler is the it is wide and could interfere with surrounding components.  When I had it paired with the M2N-X motherboard, the heatpipes actually rested against the memory.  When installed in the M2A-VM motherboard, the heatpipes would cover the first 2 memory slots.  Mounted the other way, they would interfere with some tall electrolytic capacitors.  The locking tab also interfered with the chipset heatsink, which I had to remove to install/uninstall this CPU cooler.  It performed rather well though, and it was very silent.

RAM: Mushkin Silverline 996527 PC2-6400 2x1GB RAM

I got this kit as a B-day gift.  Should work nicely in Dual Memory mode.

Case: Generic

I will use the same Generic case that I'm currently using in the existing MediaPVR box.  The required equipment will be swapped out.  I'm using a simple Generic case because the computer resides in the basement office and doesn't require a nice box, since it isn't on display.  The case was recycled from an acquaintance that wanted to get rid of their old computer.  So I stripped the parts out, and used the case.  

HDD: Western Digital WD1600AAJS SATA drive

I'm going to be using the same 160G drive that was used in the Gen1 MediaPVR project.  I was going to use a 500G Seagate, but opted out to use that drive in the UnRAID server (if required).  Or I may use it in a future bedroom system, once we get a nicer TV in that room.

DVD-ROM: Lite-on SOHD-16P9S DVD drive

I won this off ebay a while back and was used in the Gen1 MediaPVR project.  This will be only used for watching DVD movies and for installing things.  It is an IDE interface drive and is capable of 16x DVD read/48x CD read abilities.  Supposedly with the right firmware, it is blindingly fast, and is relatively quiet...I think I have the wrong firmware...so I'm going to have to look into it.  Doesn't really matter though, since the system resides in the basement, drive speed noise is not an issue.

Capture Card: Hauppauge WinTV-150 PVR

This TV Tuner card is a carry over from the first gen MPVR system.  I'm using the composite input for video.  Most likely will connect the coax input to the ol'VCR and backup all my tapes (well the ones that are worthwhile).  This card comes with a 45-button remote and IR Blaster which I am using to control the whole system, minus a few features, and the blaster can control the satellite set-top box.

Capture Card: Hauppauge HVR-1250 ATSC Tuner card

This TV Tuner card is used for receiving the OTA signal from my antennas.  I used this same type of card in the HTPC and have been very pleased with its abilities to tune in weak stations, when compared to the internal tuners in my TVs.  This was a very nice Christmas gift.

Power Supply: Thermaltake TR2-430W

 

I was using this supply in the final days of the Gen1 system.  It is a very capable supply, and I decided to continue using it because I had made some wiring changes in order to use a MayIR circuit.  I had originally intended on using a OZC supply, but I didn't want to muck with its wiring when the TR2 already had it done.  This is a 430W supply, and I'm barely using its outputs to drive this system.  It should work nicely.

IR Switch: MayIR circuit

This circuit is used to turn on the system from complete shutdown or from standby using any IR remote control.  More details on this DIY circuit can be found here.

Gaming: Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 Gamepad

Got this as a Christmas gift and will use it in the MediaPVR Gen2 system to play emulator games as well as other types.  I includes the rumble effect, though I don't know how to incorporate that into the old console emulators.

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CURRENT SOFTWARE

Main Software:

Win XP w/SP3

MediaPortal v1.2.2 using the latest StreamedMP skin

      Extra Plugins loaded: Moving Pictures, TV Series, MCE to Girder, myFilms, aMPDroid, myNetflix, OnlineVideos

 Not my screen, will add when I get some screen captures

MediaPortal's TV Server 3 for the ATSC TV tuner

Windows Media Player 11 Upgrade - mainly for the wmv-hd and other HD codecs

WinTV 7.0 - for the IR abilities and the ATSC board drivers

MPC-HC - mainly for video playback verification.  If I can play it in Media Player Classic, then I should be able to play it back successfully in MP

Drivers and Codecs:

SAF 6.09 codec pack used by MP for all video media playback

Real Alternative Codec

CoreAVC - codec used for HD movies that cannot be played via DXVA

Utility/Management Software:

MAME/SNES9X/Fusion emulation (along with ROMs) - for classic console gaming play

mc2xml - Media Center EPG scrapping software

RealVNC - server for remote access control

Signal Monitor - Hauppauge's signal monitoring software for checking the signal strength of incoming OTA stations.

TSReader - for ATSC OTA signal verification and analysis

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NOTES

Currently the system still in the planning stages.

*12/5/10*

Well so far I have gotten the motherboard, and the CPU just came in today.  For the first bit, I'm going to use a stock cooler I had kicking around, though it sounds like an airplane taking off (meaning it's loud), I've modified it by adding a thermal control.  So under normal conditions, I'm hoping it won't be so noisy.  Well anyways, along with the 2600 Pro, the 500 Gig hard drive, and the spare Thermaltake power supply, I have enough to power on the system and verify that it works.

Fingers crossed.

*30/09/10*

The system is now back and in development.  I just recently purchased the ABIT motherboard to use.  I still have to pickup memory.  Then it is just to swap everything over. 

*5/10/10*

The Abit AN-2MHD motherboard came in yesterday.  I have to connect it up to the CPU, and I have to pickup some memory for it still. Everything looks in order.  Hopefully I won't have any issues with using the board.

*22/11/10*

Got the memory (Mushkin Silverline) on the weekend, and finished installing the MediaPVR Gen2 system (decommissioning Gen1 at the same time).  Some of the parts, including the case were recycled from the Gen1 system.  Everything seemed to work out well, and I'm generally pleased in the systems performance.  I didn't have to add any extra sound or graphics cards.  The onboard HD graphics adapter is working out rather well.  I played back a couple of HD movies, and except for some glitches, HD play pretty smooth.  I going to play around some more with the HD codecs and see if I can clean them up.  This allows me to keep the PCIex1 slot open for a future ATSC tuner card.

Basically the system is shown below, excuse the wire mess...I'm not the best on cable running yet.

*29/11/10*

Noticed some quality issues with some video playback over the weekend.  The one was some terrible tearing occurring during DVD playback after ffdshow upscaling to 1920x1080.  The second is stuttering and distortion during playback of 1080P HD material.  I think I solve the tearing issue by going into the settings for the nVidia drivers for the on-board video.  This also had some affect with the 1080P playback problems.  What really fixed the HD playback was fiddling with the MPC-HC player settings.  I had to disable/"block" ffdshow filters and adjust the internal filters and use CoreAVC.  This all helped with stuttering.  The system is capable of playing back the 1080P video more smooth.  What I have noticed though is that the picture gets distorted at times...like images are overlayed on top of new images, and the picture becomes very blocky.  I will try and get a screen capture of this, but it is only happening with certain video too.

*30/11/10*

Spent time last night playing with different setups in MPC-HC, but I couldn't get 1080P HD video to play properly.  I even went as far as to install the ATI HD2600 I had sitting around, but I think it conflicted with the onboard video, and I couldn't install the Catalyst drivers or management system.  I then went back to the onboard video, and decided to try the SAF codec pack that I used on the HTPC when using MediaPortal.  Un-installed all the other codecs, ran SAF...well...1080P HD playback is now rock solid.  Video that gave me problems with stuttering and artifacts are now playing smooth.  I ended up re-installing DScaler MPEG decoder and AC3Filter codec back on so I can use Zoom Player for DVD playback.

The only thing that I noticed different when using SAF is that it configures MPC-HC by turning off all internal filters, and only using a version of ffdshow that is supposed to allow for DXVA.

The only thing that I have noticed is a little bit of tearing in the video.  So I will have to go through the nVidia settings a little more, and hopefully take that away.  The only other thing is that when using the SAF codec package, I can't upscale DVD content with ffdshow.  I can filter video with ffdshow on the fly, but for some reason it will not allow me to resize (upscale) to 1920x1080.  I will take that drawback and keep 1080P playback anytime.

So now I think I've been successful at keeping open the PCIex1 slot for a future ATSC tuner card...YEAH!!

*1/12/10*

Well, I may have spoken too soon.  What I discovered was when using the above scenario, 2.39:1 1080P video played fine.  But when playing 1.85:1 1080P (fullscreen) video, it would run choppy, and audio would sputter.  If I went and used CoreAVC as MPC's external filter, then the 1.85:1 video would play fine, but the 2.39:1 video would exhibit pixel artifacts similar to this screen shot:

Here's another example of the issue I'm seeing when using the CoreAVC decoder:

Upon further investigation, I found it isn't really with 2.39:1 video aspect, but more as to how it is encoded.  After scouring I found out that a branch of the H.264 codec, called x.264 made some changes to the way the codec encodes video.  These changes affected how the end decoder is able to decode the media file.  CoreAVC was one of the affected decoders.  Their V2 decoder is supposed to clean up this mess, so I'm going to give it a try (I currently have CoreAVC 1.9.5).  If updating to V2 works, then I think then I will have been successful at getting full HD playback from the on-board video.  Fingers crossed.

*2/12/10*

Installing CoreAVC 2 was a success.  All different types of HD video played flawlessly.  The artifacts were gone.  So then I decided, since I was using the SAF setup, which I have noticed before that I can't resize DVD video in ffdshow when using SAF, but I looked at how MPC-HC was configured, that I could then un-install SAF and install the individual components.  Well I was able to resize DVD video, but then all HD material playback choppy.  For the life of me, I don't know what I was doing anything different to the SAF codec pack, but for some reason when using SAF, HD runs smooth.  So I figure I'm going to bite the bullet and not worry about resizing DVD video so I can at least playback HD material...so I re-installed SAF along with the CoreAVC codec for HD playback.  I'm still using Descaler/AC3Filter for DVD decoding.  FFDShow is still used in ZoomPlayer to perform some extra filtering on the fly during DVD playback.

*4/1/11*

I haven't been reporting here all too much, but one of the nice Christmas gifts that I received was a wireless gamepad from Logitech.  I've started to integrate it with this system so I can play some of the different emulators I have on this system.  So far I have it working with SNES9x and will include more in the near future.

*13/1/11*

The gaming console integration has continued.  Most of the emulators used {ALT}{F4} to close, so my existing Hauppauge remote definition works fine.  MAME uses the {ESC} button to close, so I had to create an extra button state to take care of that console as well.  The only emulator that is giving me any grief now is the Sega Genesis emulator called Fusion.  It is running choppy for some reason.

I also got for Christmas an HVR-1250 Tuner card for this box.  I had it installed since then, and for the most part it was working.  The only issue was a codec issue when watching live HD 1080i content via GBPVR.  I haven't really utilized the tuner since installing but figured I'd look into fixing it.  Since the time that I first installed it to now, though, something happened, and the tuner stopped working.  I didn't have any video in GBPVR, and WINTV7 indicated that the tuner didn't exist.  May have been an overload or something, but I had to un-install the card and re-install.  That's where all the fun started.  After re-installing, WinTV was fine, but then I lost the s-Video connection to the PVR-150.  GBPVR displayed the ATSC signal, but not the PVR-150 s-Video.  WinTV was the same.  Then I discovered that even though I defined the S-Video input to the PVR-150, WinTV addressed the input to the HVR-1250.  This would have been fine, as the PVR-150 would be used to channel change the STB, and all signals routed to the HVR card, but later I found that GBPVR stopped displaying any video.  Also, I could not setup the HVR-1250 s-Video in GBPVR...there is no setting for it.  So I completely un-installed WinTV and the two cards and re-installed again.  But this did not help at all, and it seemed that I couldn't get video to work in GBPVR, nor get the s-video from the PVR to work anymore...now comes the twist.  Since GBPVR seemed to not work, I figured I'd just try MediaPortal.  After installing and setting up the TV Server, I was able to scan from the ATSC card, both digital and analog signals, but the funny thing, I defined the s-video input to the PVR card, and it works.  I couldn't even get this to work in WinTV, but MediaPortal it works.  So over the next day, I'm going to finish setting up MediaPortal on this machine, and both the MediaPVR and HTPC will be virtually setup the same.  The only tricky thing with MP is to setup controlling/blasting the external STB.

*14/1/11*

So MediaPortal is installed, and I'm mapping the satellite channels manually.  This is my only grief with the TVServer.  There should be an easier way to map the sat channels to the EPG to the input...GBPVR can do it, so I don't understand why after all this time MediaPortal can't.  Not only that, but I basically learned how to do it by trial and error, as there seemed to be no info on the MediaPortal website on how to map EPG channels to external set-top-box/analog tuner input.

Also I just have to finish integrating MediaPortal with Xlobby, and this system is as good as gold.

*20/2/12*

So like what I mentioned in the HTPC thread, I swapped over from Xlobby to a full run of MediaPortal v1.2.2.  I state the three main reasons why the change of heart.  It took about 5 days to get the bulk of the three media machines switch over, but so far, things have been running exceptionally well.