HTPC, MCPC, XBMC, BIOS and other FLAs (four letter acronyms)

Or Home Theatre PC Pt II

Once I had got my new HTPC booting up to the BIOS without it sounding like a jet fighter on take off, it was time to decide which interface to employ, bearing in mind it has to be usable from around 3-4 metres away on my Sony Bravia KDL-46NX723 46" LCD TV. These interfaces are known as a TFUI (Ten Foot User Interface) for obvious reasons. Anybody who has tried to use a standard desktop from 3m+ on a TV will understand how difficult it can be to use.

So which operating system and which UI?

The OS boils down to two choices realistically; Windows or Linux, both having various versions to choose from. Windows has the choice of four XP Media Center Edition, Vista, 7 or possibly Windows 8. For the Microsoft platform I immediately discounted Vista, because it is resource hungry and just plain sucks, XP is pretty much end of life now, MS are killing it of for good at the beginning of 2014. Windows 8 has only just been released to manufacturing so I would have to install the consumer preview and upgrade later, also the Windows Media Center UI is an add-on and it still isn't clear if that will be a pay for extra. So Windows 7 looks like a candidate. I like Windows 7 it is the best version MS have released to date, stable and has some nice features for the desktop. But this isn't going to be a desktop and I would need to either use the Windows Media Center UI with its restricted availability of codecs and not particularly pleasant GUI or install a different TFUI. The cost of a full stand alone Windows 7 in its Home Premium guise at the time of writing is a shade over £100 at Amazon.co.uk.

There is an interface for windows with far better codec support which is Free Software; that is "Free as in Freedom not as in Beer" see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. XBMC "is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for Linux, OSX, and Windows". This has the bonus that is is also free in cost so for the Windows platform the cost for software come in at £102 plus shipping that with the £42 for the case and we are looking at less than £150.

If the TFUI/Media playing software is available for free and is cross platform there is no reason not to use it on a different operating system. This is a PC so to all intents and purposes Apple OSX is out. I know I could go down the Hackintosh route but as this machine runs an AMD processor we are at another cul-de-sac. Anyway as anybody who has tried creating a Hackintosh can lead to a whole load of hurt if you don't choose the components to be compatible right from the start. I you do fancy trying OSX out on PC hardware I suggest you check out Life Hacker's "Always up to date guide" or tonymac86  who seems to be the most clued up on this dark art.
  

So XBMC on Linux; it seems to be in many distribution's repositories but as I want this to be just a Media Centre I don't need a full desktop install of Linux. I found a version of Ubuntu Linux that is a stand alone HTPC OS, TFUI and media player. It is based on Lubuntu 11.10 which is an officially supported Ubuntu Linux variant so is not of questionable provenance should be around for the foreseeable future. It boots into the XBMC interface by default but you can log in to XBMCbuntu an LXDE desktop using the Open Box window manager. This has very few applications just a file manager and a terminal emulator but does also have the Synaptic Package Manager enabling the installation of any of the myriad of applications available in the Ubuntu software repositories. I just installed the Leafpad text graphical text editor in case I need to edit any configuration files and left it at that, although it has Vim and Pico installed so that was not strictly necessary.

XBMC runs great however I had issues getting sound to work, extensive googling came up with the answer. I from the command line in XBMCbuntu had to do an

aplay -l

this give me the numbers of my sound cards and devices which resulted in

card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: [Analog]
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: [Digital]
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: [HDMI 0]

I could then log out and back into the XBMC interface and tell it to use customised hardware settings under settings | system | audio output | audio | output device | custom, and in the format of  [device name]:[card number],[device number] as the defaults do not work so

plughw:0,0

works for analog audio through the sound card speaker output and

plughw:1,3

for my HDMI to the TV, I input the same values for passthrough and set the audio output field to HDMI then had great quality sound coming through the sound bar attached to my TV

All my files are stored on a Windows network so to be able to play them sources are input directly as a Samba  path  i.e. smb://[share]/[folder] with the the username and passwords saved.

The library function is not much use to me for video as I have my files categorised by file/folder names but for music it is invaluable as my music is stored in an iTunes library. So a database scan by right clicking my music source and selecting "Scan item to library" pulls in all the meta tags and the library pretty much works like iTunes, only a million times quicker, and doesn't fall over every two minutes. The image below shows the library categories rather than just files and add-ons, and the side bar pop our allows searching via genre, artist, album, song, year etc.

All in all I'm quite pleased with this even though I'm still getting some fan noise. I especially like the ability to play my iTunes library and the way it manages to play just about any video file format I throw at it. To make for a nicer user experience I have invested in a mini wireless keyboard and trackpad solution from RiiTek which was a very reasonable £19 from an eBay seller. There are many compatible Microsoft Media Center remote controllers available but the general consensus of opinion around Internet forums is they are of dubious quality/functionality unless genuine Microsoft certified. This little device however works perfectly.

Now I have done this build I'm thinking is this possible on a ultra micro computer with minimal power overhead and no fan noise whatsoever? Rasberry Pi can it be done? Watch this space...

Home Theatre PC

 HTPC (Home Theatre PC) aka The Media Centre PC

I had a thought, I know that's a dangerous thing to have, never the less I had one, "Wouldn't it be handy to have a HTPC". So I have a spare motherboard and processor, 4Gb of DDR2 memory and a 500Gb hard drive; just need a case. This is where my troubles began. I wanted a full height media centre case because I happen to have a fairly decent 500w power supply that runs fairly quietly, which is essential for a HTPC. Looking around the Net for a case I found loads of ITX and slimline micro ATX form factor cases and one or two very expensive enclosures from the likes of Antec, and Zalman costing upwards of £150, way out of my price range. My requirements were fairly modest, it had to be a black desktop style case to match my TV and peripherals, microATX and have a minimalistic appearance. Front facing USB naturally to accept thumb drives etc. and a card reader would be nice.

I settled on a X-Case Q100 from X-Case.co.uk at £36 + £7 next day shipping well under my £50 budget for a case. Their site has a few reviews mostly positive, it looked the part and came with a remote for Windows Media Centre although it didn't have a card reader it ticked all the other boxes so I took the plunge. X-Case.co.uk true to their word delivered next day.
This case is a strange beast with the power supply surprisingly situated at the front of the case. There is a vent in the case lid immediately above the power supply air intake and it exhausts out of the underside of the case fascia.
Hot air is expelled by two 60mm fans to the rear of the unit roughly where the power supply would be on a more conventional case. It is supposed to be designed for microATX for factor motherboards at (244mm x 244mm), however to fit my Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H microATX board, which is a full 1mm smaller in both dimensions so some percussive maintenance was required. The drive cage encroached on the motherboards turf by 1.5mm so I had to use a large flat blade screwdriver to hammer a slight dent in the upright pillar at the bottom enabling the board a snug fit.

Once I had fitted the motherboard I built the rest of the PC up without much incident although the drive cage wasn't the sturdiest nor easiest I have encountered, so all seemed well at this point.
However booting the machine into the bios it was apparent that cooling was going to be a serious issue. Now was where I discovered the the obvious mistake the designers made, plenty of vents to expel hot air but not enough opportunity for cool air to enter. This results in the screaming fan of my stock AMD cooler running at full blast and spectacularly failing to cool the processor while making my ears bleed. To cure this problem more cool air over the processor was needed so I performed a case modification by installing a 90mm whisper quiet fan in the case lid directly over the CPU cooler to force cool air onto the heat sink and fan, thus turbocharging the cooling. The two 60mm exhaust fans I left in place to expel the hot air and its good to go.

The image above shows the intake vent for the power supply at the bottom and the case mod intake fan I installed above the processor. Quite why X-Case.co.uk are selling what is essentially a seriously flawed product your guess is as good as mine. If it hadn't visually complimented my existing HiFi separates and BlueRay player so well I would definitely returned the unit, but it looks damn good so it stays. One other gripe the blue power led is seriously so bright you could almost read by it in the pitch dark.

Next entry operating system and software for HTPC...

Duel to the death? Logos at dawn?

Network World reports two movements of the Open Source World are getting ready for a cat fight over their logos. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) have taken offence that the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) have infringed the trade mark of their logo. Aparantly the keyhole cutout at the bottom of the gear emblem is too alike the cutout in the OSI design.

Personally I think the OSI logo looks like a doughnut with a bite out of it so beware of low flying lawsuites coming from the general direction of Cupertino! The gear logo is great it obviously gives a rather large nod to the OSI and so it should. So for pittites sake people get over it people you are both batting for the same side. It seems a little ironic that a movement promoting open source ideals should be bleating about trade marks. What next open source claiming copyright infringement!