Revisiting the Home Theater PC | Hacker News Reader

Revisiting the Home Theater PC

codinghorror.com

35 pointsomh45 comments

Having been around the block many times on the HTPC front since 2000 from Mplayer through XBMC, Freevo, MythTV and countless others.

Of the non-live TV playing type, XBMC on the original Xbox was the best I'd ever used. It just worked, and some of the scripts were amazing. Sadly, 1080p HD wasn't quite doable on the little feller, so it was binned.

My best live experience was without a doubt with MythTV. But despite it being awesome, the loose coupling of the code to the OS to the hardware meant that I'd routinely get crashes and problems, and an inevitable degradation of the platform which just wasn't wife friendly.

I thought the original Apple TV was quite good, but it didn't handle flash or 720p mkv's well and was too underpowered for Boxee.

Boxee was great until the 1.0 release.

Currently I'm using a Mac Mini with EyeTV. No 10,000 foot view (as I don't use front row), just a dock with what I need on it. It's great. For non-live TV I have VLC, for live TV Eye-TV and anything I want for everything else. Stellarium and Google Earth are both incredible on a TV screen, I even do the occasional bit of photo processing in Aperture.

I just upgraded my XBMC setup with the newest Mac Mini-its great. Full 1080p playback, hdmi native interface. And XBMC runs very smoothly on it

I haven't paid much attention to Boxee - what's your complaint with the current model?

1.0 brought around some significant UI changes that I didn't really like at the time. Having said that, the thing that stopped me from using Boxee was that it was quicker to use VLC or Eye-TV to access my media. In the end, my workflow removed the need for it.

I'm not saying Boxee isn't great (it's pretty good) but it's no longer for me.

> "This is just the basic level of hardware to get a functional home theater PC"

Really? I use an Atom CPU, half the RAM, and offload decoding to the GPU for an average draw at the wall of ~15W while decoding 1080p, and a pre-built device with all that in costs less than his parts.

Slap Ubuntu on, add the NVidia and XBMC PPAs, install VDPAU and XBMC and you are good to go!

i3 is significantly more powerful than atom cpu, it's like apples and oranges.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/d510mo-intel-atom,2616-1...

Yes, but it's a single-purpose computer than can apparently fulfill its purpose with a cheaper and more efficient Atom.

I would dare say a media center will have more and more usefulness as time goes by. New services and features to be added.

Atom is just so underpowered that if you have some new kind of software to use for a new service that is not GPU accelerated yet, it basically won't be able to get the job done at all.

The problem is that by the time you come up with this strange new service that requires gobs of CPU power, you might have to buy a new machine anyway, and you'll get something way cheaper and/or faster anyway. Premature optimization, unless you already have something specific in mind (e.g. if a new standard is on the horizon).

(And getting something cheaper that you can upgrade in that instance is less likely in the price range of cheap multimedia solutions)

Except we are talking about a $30 savings for buying Atom over i3 in a media center.

If it was over $100, I could see your logic. But not for $30.

If it comes down to building your own solution, then yes, splurge a bit.

But I think the greater counter-argument against the solution proposed by the author is a pre-built media player device (boxee, WD etc.). Not big on CPU, but sufficient for the tasks outlined in the original post.

Building computers in the low price segments is pretty dominated by "constant" factors, i.e. case, PSU, mainboard. You can easily double your RAM or increase CPU by a large factor with a relative low percentage increase in total price.

I didn't make it clear but I was advocating a pre-built device - I went with the ASRock NetTop 330 because it was exactly the specification I wanted, and cheaper than building it myself.

Not really.

I got my complete Atom box for €120. Core i3 started at €350.

More powerful is not better. More powerful is more expensive to buy and to run, noisier, hotter. He was bragging about how low his power draw was, and how cheap his box is. I suggested getting a cheaper box that draws less power yet still contains all the functionality he needs.

Personally I don't need anything more than XBMC on my media center, and given the popularity of the device I had (ASRock NetTop 330) I doubt XBMC would add features that wouldn't run on it, historically they have always targeted relatively under-powered devices (original XBox, and now iPad et al).

On the power front, CPUs have steadily been getting faster and faster all these years, but our general requirements have not risen with the same speed. I have an Atom N270 in my netbook, which is basically a single-core version of what's in the NetTop, and I am running Windows 7 and frequently play Team Fortress 2 (it looks like minecraft, but it's playable!)

You can't really describe something as "underpowered" without a context of what it's for. If I was still doing video editing, I would probably consider your computer "underpowered", but if I was building a dedicated server to run iptables to replace my Netgear router then Atom would be overpowered.

Point of order: It's not single-purpose. I had mine dual-booting Ubuntu and Windows 7, and it was quite capable in each (Windows 7 felt slightly sluggish compared to my netbook, which is strange because the nettop is faster). The hardware is completely standard, just an ITX form factor Atom + 9400GT pairing, which is a fantastic combination for decoding video for very little power draw or noise.

What happens if rtorrent is running in the background with a few dozen torrents and you try to decode 1080p?

Nothing.

rtorrent is starving your network bandwidth and disk i/o; video is decoded by gpu. The atom cpu is enough to handle both at once. If you get choppy playback, it will be due disk i/o.

As Vetinari said: Nothing. The CPU is dual-core and barely loaded by video decoding. Depending on your connection speed and the piece size of the torrents, you may run out of RAM though (there's 2GB total in the box and it's quite easy to make rtorrent use that much).

Serious question: can you play a blu-ray with Ubuntu? Also how do you do netflix streaming (if you do)?

I went i3 and Windows 7 so i can get blu-ray + netflix.

Blu-ray is the one thing XBMC can't do, I have a stand-alone player so I've never looked into the options for playing them on a PC. That said, people are pretty good at stealing decryption keys, and once the encryption is dealt with you're left with fairly standard video format that XBMC (and many other players) could play and accelerate. The other issue would be the interactive menus, but perhaps working out which title is the main film and just playing that would be satisfactory for most people?

It doesn't seem insurmountable, a good place to look for that kind of information would be the Doom9 forums.

As for netflix streaming, I'm in the UK, so I know nothing about that! I know it doesn't integrate nicely with XBMC and it isn't easy to do in Linux, though.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the XBMC Windows version has come along in leaps and bounds recently and now runs quite smoothly on my laptop, so if you play things other than bluray and netflix you might want to check it out.

HTPC is still the way to go. The problem with simple all-in-one solutions like Apple TV, Google TV, and others is there's too many codecs for video and audio. The only way to guarantee support for all of them is using an HTPC with either VLC or upgrading the codecs in the operating system.

Media Portal is much better than Windows Media Center. Media Portal is also better than XBMC if you need TV tuner support. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Apple TV is designed around playing content downloaded from iTMS. Google TV....they'll figure out something eventually. Neither one is really made for live TV.

* I've settled on the AppleTV because it's $99, so not much of a loss if it doesn't work out.

* Most of my videos are already in an MP4 compatible format already DVD->Handbrake->Apple Universal preset.

* It's dead quiet, no moving parts, no fans, and 6W of power.

My problem with the HTPC is it was a full Windows stack so it included all the headaches of antivirus, updates, configuration, and UAC prompts required a keyboard be nearby.

I can certainly see why some people have the inclination to go with a HTPC but I don't have the time nor the space to keep PC in the living room. And now, XBMC has been ported to the AppleTV so you get most of the functionality of the Windows application on an inexpensive device.

Found this demo video of XBMC On Apple TV: http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/20/xbmc-comes-to-the-new-app...

Apple TV with XBMC for $99 is damn difficult to beat. I might need to visit the Apple Store soon.

The reason the original post gave for getting rid of his old machine was that it couldn't handle 1080p content. The AppleTV can't do more than 720p (with XBMC it can decode at least some 1080p, but downscales it to 720p for output to your TV).

I'm less concerned about the resolution where absolute bandwidth is your limiting factor. ATV has an absolute bandwidth of 6MBps. OTA has an absolute bandwidth of 18MBps in the US. Even if it could use 1080p, outside of still images, its going to look like crap during complex scenes. Its the balance between bandwidth and quality. If I want high-quality (like Avatar or any Pixar movie) I'll get it on bluray, for everything else ATV DVD-quality is fine.

But as I said before, some people will have the need for a HTPC. I have a moderately small apartment and don't watch that much TV. I realized, a while ago, that keeping a dedicated PC, recording shows I'll probably never watch, running 24 hours a day was futile. If there is something interesting I can watch it live, download it through iTunes, or pull the occasional torrent.

I jailbroke my 2nd Gen AppleTV and can confirm XBMC works nicely - and you can add different apps to it too. I did the new untethered jailbreak using Seas0nPass, it wasn't to difficult (~30 minutes).

Edit: Oh, and XBMC just gets added as another menu item, so you can still use the regular AppleTV ui too.

Can you set it up to automatically start with XBMC? How hard/easy is it to upgrade XBMC as new versions come out? Does the AppleTV support a keyboard or some other device (iPhone?) to control ATV?

1. Not that I know of, but it's just two clicks to the right on the home screen - I usually just leave it running all the time, so it isn't much of a problem.

2. No idea. If I had to guess it wouldn't be harder than the original jailbreak, and potentially much easier.

3. You can use your iPhone/iPod touch's Remote app to control the ATV (the remote it comes with is a pain for text input) [No jailbreak required]

Thanks!

My problem with the HTPC is it was a full Windows stack so it included all the headaches of antivirus, updates, configuration, and UAC prompts required a keyboard be nearby.

This was my main problem with an all-in-one HTPC. It was amazing when it worked, but my housemates didn't appreciate it for the 1% of the time when they couldn't watch TV because of a crash, or Windows Update.

XBMC, which is my HTPC frontend of choice since early XBOX 1 days, recently released a Apple TV 2 Version, which still has a few flaws but is very actively developed and improved. This is not XBMC Lite, it is the full package you know from the desktop. Add a NAS for movies, music and TV Shows and you have a very good solution. It's impressive that the underpowered Apple TV is able to play 1080p content flawlessly, however while being able to play 1080p the Apple TV scales everything down to 720p - this seems to be a hardware design decision which can't be changed, the XBMC team is looking into it. Given that I use a 720p beamer it isn't a problem for me though. Apart from that you get a full featured HTPC software which has been around for years on a power efficient instant-on box that costs you a hundred bucks.

I second the comment on there suggesting a 2 year old Acer Revo + Ubuntu + Boxee/XBMC does all this and more with little fuss.

Same here. My Acer Revo hangs off the back off my monitor in the Vesa mount with Ubuntu+Boxee. I don't see it, and I don't hear it. It's my only permanently on machine at home, and because it's a full Linux box, I also use it for performing nightly rsyncs of my off-site server. It also runs Vuze for downloading video.

The HTPC is the caviar solution. I messed around with "dedicated units" such as an ASUS O!play (highly recommended if you just need to stream media in your network). Also tried streaming media with the Blu-ray drive that came free with my TV. Even tried the pre-built Dell Zino HD with it's tiny atom like intel processor.

In the end, an HTPC is what _I_ needed (wanted). I can stream from netflix, play a blu-ray, watch youtube without a wonky interface (like the blu-ray players/tv have), stream media from my WHS (Windows Home Server), etc. It plays everything I throw at it.

Is it perfect? No way. Too complicated for my wife/family/mere mortals to run and it has the downsides of a full Winders stack (constant updates, etc).

But, at this point I don't see a true alternative. Codecs are king. I can download (almost) any software/codec combo and play the media.

I run and i3 and find it to be a perfect combination of speed/power consumption for an almost silent media pc.

Btw, the little Dell handles everything fine. The major complaint is that the tiny fan spins up when watching blu-ray/high-def/flash content. That's one of the major downsides to a prebuilt PC. Usually one area sucks. I love the tiny Dell form factor but the whine of the fan is a negative.

With proper sleep/hibernate, the power useage issue would be (mostly) moot. However, just when I get my sleep/hybrid sleep/hibernate working correctly, MSFT patches Windows and I'm suddenly back to square one.

I'd love to see a version of Windows where sleep "just works". From my research though, this appears to be as much a hardware + driver issue as an OS issue. Apparently that's why Mac's sleep so well. Hardware/OS all under one company's control.

That's interesting - the only machine I've had which couldn't sleep under Windows is my Mac Air, whose drivers are supplied by Apple. The Mac Air Windows drivers also don't provide a way of turning off the wifi on flights, amongst other things.

How long have you had the Dell? I bought a Zino HD intending to use it as an HTPC, only to have it choke playing Netflix or Hulu at 1080p on my 32" LCD TV via HDMI. I swapped it for one with an upgraded processor and video card, and it's burned up two hard drives since. After the second, I did some Googlging that I should have done in the first place, and it seemed pretty clear that there was a heat issue (and I give the device plenty of room for ventilation), so I gave up on it. I'll call Dell out to replace the drive again, and unless I can somehow convince them to swap in an SSD, I'll toss it on Craigslist or eBay.

I used to have this affliction as well. At one point I had a dual processor (not dual core) giant tower with turbo-jet-sounding fans running MythTV. I had a ton of other solutions since, but eventually just settled on Roku. Netflix and Hulu is plenty for most purposes and I no longer have to spend the time to transcode video.

For my legacy stuff, I just an NSLU2 (SlugOS) + ushare + XBox 360. Everything just works.

I went from a HTPC to a WDTV and was pretty happy for awhile but decided to go back and build a HTPC/NAS box that runs 24/7.

XBMC, Sabnzbd, Sickbeard, Torrents, Hulu, Transcoding/Stream with AirVideo, on Iphone/IPad.

If your sole purpose is watching video, I think for most people a all in one device that's $70-150 is better suited.

Seeing a comment on Jeff's blog, I was jut looking up the WDTV ( http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Network-ready-Media-Pl... ) and tempted to try it out. I currently have XBMC on a classic Xbox and was wondering how this compares to XBMC (video formats, updates).

if you go the WDTV route, make sure you get the latest one, WDTV Live Plus, as it also streams Netflix. The interface/remote is the biggest issue, I'd like to be able to control with iOS or Android device.

I've bought three of Viewsonic's VMP75s (http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-NexTV-VMP75-Network-Player/d...) and couldn't be happier. There are a few complaints in the reviews, especially regarding the UI, but most of these have been fixed by the latest firmware. The support for various container formats and codecs is excellent; the one feature it lacks that the WDTV supports is Pandora.

Interesting, thanks! This box looks so much slicker than the WDTV too. Since I watch quite a few foreign movies, one of the useful features with XBMC is the ability to adjust the subtitle display (add delay or speed it up by a couple of seconds) and also the ability to browse and pick a subtitle. I am curious if either WD or VMP has any additional options with subtitles. It is not a game-stopper by any means but I am still trying to decide whether to go with an XBMC capable box or these options which are also much cheaper.

Except a kill-a-watt cannot give accurate readings off a powersupply with PFC (also kill-a-watt are calibrated poorly, no 2 units will give quite the same measurement).

I am sure it's very low, my dual-core i3 is significantly more efficient than my old AMD X2 but the 22watts might not be exactly right.

They do have a floor below which the sensors can't get a good reading. I read that below 100W it's +/-10W. So Jeffs actual wattage could be 32 or 12W really.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com