New HTPC Build - The Story So Far

[straycat264]

I've been wanting to build an OSX based media centre for a while now, and a couple of weeks ago I finally took the plunge, ordered the parts, and have been assembling and tinkering ever since.

It's going to be a while before I'm done, but I thought it might be worth relating the experience to date.

The Build
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-H67M-D2-B3
Processor: Core i5 2400
Case: Lian Li PC-37B Muse Black
GPU: PNY GT430 1024mB
Memory: Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1333C9 XMS3 8GB
HD: Samsung F3 HD103SJ 1TB internal Hard Drive SATAII 32MB Cache 7200RPM
Case: Lian Li PC-37B Muse Black
Optical: LG CH10LS20.AUAR 10x Blu-ray Reader, DVD/CD Read/Write
Wireless: Asus PCE-N13 802.11 b/g/n 300Mbps
Bluetooth: Belkin Mini Bluetooth Adapter * Class 2
Tuner: Elegato EyeTV Diversity

The initial build was pretty smooth - a clean install of Lion slid on very smoothly.

I haven't managed to get sleep working yet, but I've not spent much time on it - I'll give that a better go at the weekend. I need to get this working properly if it's to fulfil its intended role...

Software-wise, I tried out Boxee, XBMC and Plex, and settled on Plex, which just seems to have the nicest interface, and which does just about everything I need.

I'm trying out a copy of Remote Buddy at the moment, which is pretty slick - and the ability to control the whole thing via Wii-Mote is fun. Still working out the best remote control options.

The PCE-N13 works well, via separately downloaded Railink drivers, but I think it was a mistake to go that route - I haven't been able to make it work under 64bit, and the speeds, while decent for wireless, aren't too good for copying large media files. I may well replace it with a pair of homeplug devices - I'm not up for installing CAT-5 round the house. We'll see.

I'm trying out the Mac Blu Ray Player (yes there actually is such a thing now) from MacGo. Exciting that there is one now... but it's not ready for prime-time yet. I watched Avatar on it last night, and there were occasional pauses in playback, no subtitles for the Naavi sections, no access to the disc menus (it just skips straight the main movie), and no ability to skip chapters, or jump forwards or back in the timeline - attempts to do this necessitate starting the film again from scratch. They seem to be updating it frequently, so I hope this will improve with time.

Biggest issue at the moment is screen resolution. Turns out that my TV will only do 1:1 pixel mapping if you plug in via the VGA socket... which is at the front of the TV. And then you lose quality - so I'm trying to work out a decent resolution with SwitchResX, which is a slow and frustrating process. If anyone knows any working settings for my TV (PDP-436XDE) I'd love to see what they are.

The Diversity works like a charm - Elegato's software is nice, and I can play the recordings back via Plex.

That's probably about it for now. Further updates as I get more stuff working.

 

[straycat264]

Quick update - sleep now working.

Decent resolution found in SwitchResX
There's room improvement on this front - so I'll likely keep tinkering, but it's a laborious process (needs a reboot after every single tweak, for some reason)

So that's all the big stuff sorted - now I just have to enjoy using it, and refine things as I go...

 

[Stork]

I found this tutorial helpful: SwitchResX Tutorial

 

[straycat264]

I found this tutorial helpful: SwitchResX Tutorial

Yeah - that was the guide I used, and it got me fairly close. I think it helps that SwitchResX has seen some improvements since the guide was written.

I'm at the stage now where' I'm using all the screen space, there's no overlap, and text looks.... OK. But the resolution isn't all that high, so I'm going to have one more stab at improving it, now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing....