Desktop PCs

My Revo cost about £190 (you can currently get them for about £180) as I bought the Linux version. There are a few other machines for that price, but they’re mainly above £200. The Linux version is fine if you either have a copy of Windows lying around (a retail copy, OEM copies are tied to the hardware, technically) or are happy to run Linux (not necessarily the one installed) and competent enough to get hold of a copy (or use the supplied one). Most people, though, will want to run Windows. Now you can buy a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (the most popular version) for about £75 (for OEM, retail will be £83). The only problem is then you can’t install it as the Revo has no DVD drive, you’d need to buy an external one if you don’t already have one, you’re looking at £30-40. So now we’re talking about a total cost of £285 (180+75+30).

You can of course buy a Windows version of the Revo. There are three versions: one with 2GB RAM and 250GB hard drive, which costs £240; one with 2GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive, which costs £285; and one with 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive, which costs £299. Personally, I think the smallest model is more than enough for most people (in terms of RAM and drive space). So now we’re only looking at £240, but we still don’t have a DVD drive, so if you want to install any software, rip music or movies or do any one of the other things a DVD drive is useful for, you’ll still need to buy an external one. Assuming this is going to be the only machine in the house, most people need one I would say, so you’re looking at £270-280.

For that money you can find alternative machines out there with a lot more CPU power (and therefore longevity), expandability and are all in one box (instead of having a DVD drive trailing off it). For example, Dell currently has its base model Inspiron desktop with either an Intel Dual Core 2.7Ghz processor or an AMD dual-core Athlon II 240 X2 processor available for £299 (£279 if you opt for a Celeron or Semperon chip, both quicker than an Atom). You still get 2GB of RAM, plus a 320GB hard drive, and the larger case provides a lot more potential for future upgrades and expansion should you need it. It’s not all rosy, it doesn’t come with WIFI like the Revo. I found an Acer Veriton with 1GB RAM (I’d recommend 2GB as a minimum but it’s an easy upgrade for about £25), 160GB hard drive and Windows 7 Pro for £255.

If you’re not fussed about the OS there’s the Acer Aspire X1301 for £284 which comes with 4GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive and a dual-core Athlon 215 X2 processor. I found a 2.7Ghz Dual Core Pentium Lenovo with only 1GB RAM and a 250GB hard drive. eBuyer even have some ‘Extra Value’ machines with no OS that start at £228 for a 2.9Ghz Dual Core Pentium with 2GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive.

Now these are big box machines, the Revo is small (though not especially quiet I found) and probably don’t use great quality parts, but I’d still bet they’ll out last the Revo. If you want something smaller, there’s a smaller Inspiron model from Dell for £50 more. The Advent Firefly with a 2.6Ghz processor Pentium Dual Core comes in at £320 and looks nice and small. There all likely to draw more power than the Revo, though most manufacturers are being very hot on this at the moment so I wouldn’t expect them to draw a huge amount and most people don’t leave them on all day so the extra cost will be negligible.

Laptop PCs

It’s a similar situation with laptops as well.  Using PC World as a pricing example, you can grab a netbook, which is typically powered by an atom processor, for £199.  For that you get an eMachines device with a single-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 160GB hard drive.  It also has four hours of battery life and weighs just 1.1Kg.  You only get a 10.1” screen though and no optical drive, and it comes with Windows XP.  There’s plenty more in the £240-£300 bracket.  They don’t even stock a dual-core netbook.

Ignoring the refurbished laptops, they start at £300 for a EI Systems Sorrento, which has a 2.2 Ghz Celeron 900 processor and 2GB of RAM with a 15.6” screen.  It weighs 2.4 Kg though and there’s no mention of batter life.  It does come with Windows 7 though.  The Celerons are the lower end of Intel’s processor range but are still much faster than any Atom (about twice looking at some benchmarks).

Not a brand I’ve heard of, so come up a bit further (£380) and you can get a Compaq Presario with an AMD Athlon II M320 processor which clocks in about four times faster.  Comes with 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive and a 15.6” screen.  Again, you sacrifice weight and no mention on battery life.  It comes with Windows 7.

It looks like £400 is where you start getting the full dual-core processors, generally with 2-3 GB of RAM and 250-320GB hard drives.  These are the more popular 15.6” size, smaller ones come in a bit more (13.3” Toshiba for £420).

Shop around though and you can get that Presario with the AMD Athlon for £360.

OK, so these machines are nearly twice as expensive, but computers are not just about the initial cost.  The benefits of the other machines are that they come with an optical drive, making it easier to install software, bigger screens which make them easier to use and, more importantly, they’ll be capable of running software happily for several years, which the Atom-powered netbooks won’t.  And that’s before you consider they usually allow for upgrades to memory and hard drives that could keep them going even longer.

Conclusion

My original question was whether an Atom-powered PC is worth buying for the average user. The answer is no, it’s not. For less and certainly not much more money there are a range of machines that offer vastly more processing power and future proofing than any computer that runs the Atom platform. Personally, I think it makes the Atom machines a false economy.

My advice would be to buy a more powerful machine rather than splash out on a netbook or nettop (as they’re called). As a second machine an Atom-powered device may be suitable, for fairly light activities, but not as a general computer for most users. In that respect they have their uses, but a smartphone or a tablet would provide most of the functionality.  A second-hand machine would be better in most cases. Don’t be fooled by the hype.

You, your company, your club, whatever, could have a great website that’s easy to maintain in no time, read on to find out how.

What You’ll Need

To host your own website you need four things:

1. A domain name (i.e. www.yourwebsite.com)
2. A web host to host your website (store the files and make them available for people to see)
3. Static HTML files or a Content Management System to display your content
4. Some content

This article will run through setting up the first three, the last one is up to you.

Step 1 – Register a domain

The first thing you’ll need is a domain name.  This allows people to find your website.  To register a domain you need to buy one from a domain registrar.  Some web hosts will offer them as part of hosting packages, but I recommend setting one up on your own to give you more control (some web hosts don’t let you take them with you).

Personally, I’d recommend 123-Reg for any UK domains (e.g .co.uk) and Go Daddy for generic/US domains (e.g .com) as they offer good prices and flexibility in how you handle your domain name.  There are plenty of others out there.

On the registrar’s site you’ll be able to search for a domain name and it will tell you if it’s available (and typically what other variations are too).  You may find your preferred domain name is taken, if so you may need to get creative.  Some sites will offer suggestions for alternatives too.

I’d recommend only sticking to .com, .net, .org and .co.uk domains unless you have no choice (they’re the ones people are likely to try if they can’t remember which it was).

At the time of writing, a .com domain will cost you about £7.50 for a year while a .co.uk will set you back £5.98 for two years (minimum is two years).

Step 2 – Get a web host

Once you’ve registered a domain you’ll have a name, but it won’t point to anywhere, so the next is to get some hosted web space.  Again, there are a lot of companies that do this.  If you’re just hosting a basic personal site or one for your business then practically any package will suffice, you don’t need huge amounts of space or transfer allowance.

There are (broadly) two types of web hosting: Linux and Windows.  I recommend Linux as there are generally more hosts around, they’re cheaper and it supports a wider range of (free) software.  Due to the software we’re going to install in the next steps we need a Linux host and, ideally, one with Fantastico or similar automated install options.

One other consideration is whether to host in the UK or elsewhere (typically US).  I’ve hosted in both and it doesn’t really make a difference (US hosting is generally cheaper) but be aware of any data protection rules you may need to adhere to.

You can find some of my suggestions for hosting here, I’ve previously used Meir Hosting and their ‘Personal’ plan should be fine for most people (you can always upgrade at a later date).  For £1 a month (at the time of writing) you can’t really go wrong.

During the sign-up process don’t forget to indicate you already have a domain and fill in the relevant details.

Once completed you should get details of how to point your domain at their servers so your website appears when you type in the address.  This will be in the form of an IP address or domain name for their nameservers (typically two are specified).  You’ll need to login to the account with your domain registrar, go to the control panel and modify the nameserver addresses (it may be under DNS controls/settings).  Check the FAQs for your registrar if you’re not sure.  Note that it may take up to 48hrs for it to come into effect (although usually much quicker).

Step 3 – Install WordPress

The first question is probably: Why WordPress?  Well, it’s a mature platform that’s easy to use and has a big user and support base.  That means anyone should be able to pick it up quickly and if you want to add functionality there’s probably already a plugin that does it.  By example, this site runs WordPress.

You can visit the WordPress website and download the files, unpack and upload, manually create the database, update the config file and install.  The easier option is to find a host that offers single-click install of WordPress (as many hosts do, check their features).

This will differ slightly depending on the host.  One common platform is Fantastico.  Vidahost, one of the hosts I use, offers a video about installing WordPress using Fantastico that should be relevant to any host that has it.

Make sure you install it in the main directory and not a subfolder/directory.

Step 4 – Find a theme

Once you have WordPress installed it’s time to find a theme for your site.  WordPress comes with some default themes but they’re fairly lame and there are plenty of more exciting/relevant ones out there.

You have two options:

1. A free theme.
2. A paid (premium) theme.

A premium theme will cost money, typically not that much depending on the source and type.  For a non-exclusive theme (one that other people besides you could use) you’re probably looking at $20-$150.

There are plenty of free templates out there though, which are perfectly good quality for a great-looking website.  You may need to check the terms for the theme if you want to use it for a business as a few are not for commercial use.

There are plenty of places to find themes, just stick “wordpress templates” into your favourite search engine, but a few to get you started:

• The official WordPress themes directory
• WordPress Themes Base
• Top WP Themes
• Free WP Themes

You can usually search by type or colour and other options and preview the them so you can see in detail what it looks like.  Note that for a standard website you’re interested in how the pages look more than things like blog posts.

Once you’ve found one you’re happy with, download it.  You should end up with a saved zip file.

To install it, login to your copy of WordPress (typically www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin) and pick the Appearance tab, then the Add New Themes link.  Select the option to Upload and Browse to the zip file you downloaded.  WordPress will then upload the theme and present some options.  Select Activate to make the the theme live.  Click the Visit Site link at the top and you should see your website now sports the new look.

Some themes may offer you some options to customise as well, you may need to play with these to get the results you want.

Step 5 – Customise WordPress

Okay, we’re nearly there.  We have the theme installed, but we need do a few things before we can start adding content.  First, WordPress adds some default content we need to delete.

In your copy of WordPress, click Comments on the menu, hover over the single comment and select the Trash link (or tick the checkbox next to it and select Move to Trash from the Bulk Actions dropdown at the top).  Now click the link for Trash at the top and click the button to Empty Trash.

Next, click the Posts option on the menu.  Same here, hover and click Trash.  Then click the link to Trash and empty it. 

Now on to the Links menu option.  Select all of the links (use the box at the top above all the options to select them all) and pick Delete from the Bulk Actions dropdown, then hit Apply.

Right, nice and clean.

Now click the Pages link on the menu.  There should be a default page called About.  Click the page title or the Edit link to open it up.  Where it says About, delete it and put Home as this is going to be the home page.  You can change the text now or wait until later.  You also need to untick the ‘Allow Comments’ and ‘Allow trackbacks…’ options under Discussion.  Hit Update on the right to save it.

Now click the Settings link on the menu.  Under General Settings, change the blog title to the title of your website (your name, company name, etc), modify or delete the tagline, update the email address and pick your timezone.  Then hit Save Changes.

Now click the link under Settings for Reading.  Modify the ‘Front page displays’ option to select ‘A static page’ and pick Home from the dropdown list.  Hit Save Changes.

Again under Settings, pick Discussion.  Untick the boxes for ‘Atempt to notify…’, ‘Allow link notifications…’ and ‘Allow people to post comments…’ and hit Save Changes.

Lastly, also under settings, hit Permalinks.  This controls how the URLs of your pages appear.  As you’re only creating pages, just pick ‘Day and name’ and hit Save Changes.

If you use the Visit Site link at the top you should now see your domain with your theme and the home page you modified.

Step 6 – Add content

Next is to add some content.  Back into WordPress.  If you didn’t update the Home page earlier, click the Pages link in the menu and modify the Home page, the text editor is similar to Word.  You can make text bold, italic, add links, lists, etc.  Hit Update when you’re done.

To add other pages, under the Pages header in the menu select Add New.  Type in the name of the page (e.g. Contact, About) and put the content in the box below, hit Publish when you’re done.

If you visit the site again you should see your new page listed, click on the link and it should display the content you just entered.

Add more in the same way until you have your site (you can also upload images and other media).

Step 7 – Bonus features

So you’re all there, with a website built and ready to go.  The benefit of doing this on your own domain with your own domain name means there are some other benefits:

• You have your own branded email addresses (i.e. you@yourdomain.com), which look far more professional than one from your ISP or a free email service, you can also take it with you should you need to change.  You can either set this up as a mailbox where you can access mail online or download to your favourite email client (e.g. Outlook) or you set it to forward to any other email service.
• You can integrate other social media services into your website (such as Twitter and Facebook) using some of the many plugins available.
• Easily add a contact form to your site, to save advertising your email address to spammers.

Conclusion

So there you go, how to get a website up and running quickly that anyone can edit and update (so no need to keep going back and getting charged by a pro) that hopefully looks professional.  No more need to use terrible FrontPage templates or web pages created in Word.

My only concern is that there aren’t many templates for WordPress designed just to act as a website instead of blogs and even making a page your home page you end up with static content that implies blog content.  I’m thinking of knocking up some more flexible templates to get around that.

Anyway, it won’t end the number of bad sites out there, but maybe it’ll help someone.

1. Silence is Golden
   Making a PC totally silent is hard and can be expensive, but well worth it.  My top tips are to pick a good case and case fans, don’t scrimp on these.  Another rule of thumb is that if it’s got a fan it’ll never be silent (CPU coolers and PSUs) no matter what they say.  Fan controllers are a great way to help reduce noise to a minimum though.
2. It’s All About the Case
   Definitely don’t scrimp on your case, but research it well first, my Silverstone LC17 wasn’t cheap and is nice (if big), but I built an HTPC for my brother using an Antec NSK 2480, which is their budget HTPC case and it was infinitely easier to build, had nice separation of PSU and main compartment (to keep heat down) and vibration dampening mounts for the HDDs as standard (not quite as quiet as mine, but it didn’t take a fanless CPU fan, fanless PSU and some fan controllers to get it that way).

   There’s also a massive range of sizes and styles out there, so take a look around.  Silverstone, Antec, Thermaltake and Lian Li are a few quality makers but are by no means a complete list.

3. Trade Horsepower for Less Power
   HTPCs need very little processing power, playing back even HD video is not CPU intensive, just make sure you have reasonable graphics, onboard generally suffices depending on the type.  Recording TV likewise takes very little power.  Where you’ll need it is transcoding (changing the format of recorded material) or ripping DVDs.  An Atom processor on the ION platform works perfectly well to deliver content, so it doesn’t need to be a beast.

   Review your CPU choice to see if there are lower-power options available, some of the new processors require 95+w to run, mine works fine and only draws 45w, the Atoms only draw 10w.  That means less heat is being generated so you need less cooling, which means the computer can run quieter (and you can have a smaller case).

   If you plan on doing any transcoding (and some of the add-ons to strip adverts do this too) bear that in mind when picking your CPU, you can get around this by scheduling the work to be done overnight to minimise impact too.

4. Regular Servicing
   HTPCs are not for the faint-hearted, this isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ piece of kit, it’ll need you to keep it running (installing updates, rebooting, finding drivers, etc) and it will freeze and crash occasionally, it’s not as slick as a bought solution.  The pay-off is you can do a lot more with it and the options are endless, plus you can upgrade at will, rather than being locked to the hardware.  

   I’m not sure I’d recommend one to someone who isn’t prepared for that and knows what to do when you find it non-responsive after a Windows Update or it blue screens midway through playing back a movie (i.e. the relatives, you’ll be doing endless support).

Anyway, I thought it was time to get around to writing up my experience with that build. 

This build came in for under £400, I could have shaved more off if I had used the included remote that came with the tuner (but I wanted to be able to wake the machine using it) and had bought cheaper case fans.

The Hardware

Case: Antec NSK 2480
PSU: 380w included in the case
Mobo: Asus M4A78-VM 
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e
Cooler: Stock AMD supplied with CPU
RAM: 2 * Kingston 1gb DDR2 800mhz
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 500Gb
DVD: LG GH22NS40 SATA Black
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD 500 (dual tuner)
Keyboard: Nexos 2.4Ghz Wireless Multimedia Keyboard with TouchPad
Remote: Generic Windows MCE IR remote look-a-like
Other: 2 * 120mm Sharkoon ‘golfball’ case fans

Comments on the Build

I preferred the 2480 case to another option (the Antec Minuet 350) and I was very impressed, it was well made and had good segregation of PSU and motherboard as well as excellent mounting (vertical, on their side) of the HDDs, which had silicon/rubber grommets on the mounts to insulate vibration.

I was worried about using the stock cooler, thinking it would be too noisy, but decided to try it and was pleasantly surprised. I went with the Hauppauge tuner as I have had good experience with them over the years, but my older model seems to be struggling in Win7, not sure who’s to blame though. I went with a wireless keyboard as I’m not massively thrilled with my IR one, this was OK but it didn’t make me change mine.

The motherboard only came with one SATA cable and due to the placement of the DVD and HDD drives I had to get a SATA power extension to reach the HDD, I bought a kit which had a molex-to-SATA power converter on it and a SATA cable in the end.

I went with the WD drive as I’ve had good experience with WD and my two 1Tb drives have been excellent, they are extremely quiet. I’d also seen some reports of reliability issues on the Samsungs, which seemed to be the main competition. A colleague of mine had two 500Gb Samsung drives fail in the same week well inside a year (replaced under warranty thankfully).

The Sharkoon fans were expensive, but they are awesome. If money’s no object and you want total silence I’d recommend them. There’s probably a better balance of noise vs cost out there though.

The Software

I went with Windows 7 RC (this was sometime last year) as it was free (for a while) and it uses Windows Media Centre.

I also installed Media Browser (why wouldn’t you?).

As with mine, I went with a black theme.

Codec support came courtesy of Shark007′s pack.

I also installed DVD Shrink and AnyDVD for ripping DVDs to the HDD.

Problems

Apart from finding the lack of SATA cables and the reach of the PSU power a bit short, generally all went smoothly.

Windows 7 was fun to install at first, initially I was using a PATA DVD drive with a SATA HDD and this seems to be a problem. Once installed I was very impressed with 7mc, less so after upgrading mine, but that might be a hardware issue. The biggest problem I had was when I hooked up a spare Belkin USB wireless-N stick my brother had to enable internet access (an N1 Wireless USB Adapter – F5D8051uk – I think). I could not get Win7 to connect to the internet (it connected to the router fine). After a lot of trial and error, plenty of head-scratching, swearing and trawling of the interwebs I found an updated driver fixed it.

Conclusion

Generally a fairly easy build, aside from a few quirks with the hardware/software interface and it was working well when I left it (although they had issues with the strength of their TV signal which caused problems, obviously).

As before I installed Astrotoy7’s black theme (I used Media Center Studio to install) and the latest beta of Mediabrowser.

As with Vista I installed the codec pack from Shark007.net (obviously picking the Win 7 version this time).

The installation wasn’t pain free, however.  After installing I found that my TV tuner kept giving me an error about no tuners being available, despite the fact that none of them were being used.  Thankfully it wasn’t affecting recorded programs (it did initially, it did improve after some tweaking).  Initially I assumed it was the Hauppauge tuner drivers and Win 7 but I tried installing the latest drivers and no joy.  In the end I tracked the answer down to a Green Button forum post (I had seen others to be fair) which suggested it wasn’t the tuner but the graphics card, the onboard ATI HD3200, more specifically the catalyst control centre it comes with.  I had the latest drivers but these don’t help, I had to downgrade to the 9.8 drivers and low-and-behold that seems to have sorted it and I now have a fully reliable HTPC back.  The new drivers also seem to have sorted some other reliability issues that meant random freezing and reboots.

Another issue I had, which seems to have sorted itself too (after the graphics upgrade, though it could have been a Windows Update fix), was connecting to the network after waking, for some reason no matter what I did it only found it as a public network rather than my home network, so wouldn’t connect to the internet.

All in all not a great changeover, normally I follow the old rule of ‘don’t install a new MS OS until the first service pack has been released.’  I thought Windows 7 was a service pack for Vista, so went ahead, probably not the wisest choice on reflection.  Maybe it doesn’t need the service pack anymore, but certainly give it couple of months to bed in.  The ordeal is over now though and everything is running smoothly again, I hope.

My Build

My HTPC consists of:

I have left out the £37 for AnyDVD as unnecessary and the prices don’t include any postage I might have paid.

That’s a fairly pricey build (cheaper than some I’ve seen, and probably cheaper/better than a bought model).

A Cheaper Alternative

So I’ve been hunting around for a cheaper set of components. Some have come down since I bought them, some have gone up, but by trawling the forums and various online PC parts stores, here’s my suggestions:

This doesn’t include any postage costs.

For that you should get a reasonably low power machine, capable of 1080p playback (you can add a Blu-ray drive should you wish) and with capacity to be upgraded later. It uses onboard sound (5.1) and graphics (HDMI).

Some alternatives were the Antec Minuet 350 case (£79.98 from Ebuyer), but it only supports half-height cards I think, which rules out the TV tuner, and it’s not as well designed as the 2480. I have left out a CPU cooler, the CPU will come with one, it’s fairly quiet from what I understand as the CPU is low power, possibly an after-market one may be needed (for example, Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 LP, £13.77 from Scan). I haven’t included OS, at the moment I would load Windows 7 release candidate on it for free (until July 2010), otherwise you’re looking at £60-90 more for Vista. Obviously any parts you can reuse help the cause.

In the future it may be the likes of a dual-core Atom with Nvidia ION will do the job, although I’m still not convinced they’re quite up to the job of acting as a full PVR (most don’t have the PCI slots for expansion and I’m not too keen on the USB tuners).

I found Theydon Bois’ build over at the AVForums (which is a great resource by the way) and some of the screenshots were awesome. I set about trying to recreate it on my PC. I downloaded the updated version of MediaPortal and played around but it just didn’t work well enough for me.

I mentioned in my previous write-up that I liked Vista Media Center. It had a slick interface and just worked, rather than requiring lots of setup and tinkering like MediaPortal. When I saw what you could do to Vista Media Center with MediaBrowser I was sold. The problem was, my hardware wouldn’t support Vista. I tried downloading the (new at the time) beta of Windows 7 as this was supposed to be much less resource hungry, but I wasn’t able to install it. I was going to buy a small off-the-shelf PC, but I couldn’t find one that had the specs I wanted at the right price, so I bit the bullet and upgraded.

New Hardware

I spent a lot of time reading around for suggested hardware and in the end I chose:

• Motherboard (Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H – £67.98)
• RAM (2 * 1Gb Crucial Ballistix 240pin PC2-8500 – £26.70)
• Processor (AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e – £52.83)
• CPU Cooler (Scythe Mini Ninja – £36.09)
• Hard Disk (Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB – £79.41)

Total: £263.01

I bought all this from Dabs.com, being the cheapest supplier for most if not all the parts.

Existing Hardware

From the existing parts I reused the following:

• TV Tuner (Hauppauge Nova T 500 Dual Tuner – £49.99)
• Remote (Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote and IR receiver – £19.96)
• Wireless Keyboard (Microsoft IR Media Keyboard – £23.48)
• HTPC case (to fit ATX mobo) – Silverstone LC17 – £65.67
• Case fans, one 92mm Antec TriCool, one 80mm Antec TriCool – £3.87 + £3.99 (didn’t need the 80mm)
• AnyDVD €49/£37
• Fanless PSU – Silverstone ST30NF £71.09
• 2 * Zalman Fanmate 2 fan controllers for case fans – £3.99 ea

The total for which was £283.03. Combined total of £546.04

The Upgrade

The motherboard was mentioned in a lot of HTPC builds and has a good rep (and should be capable of HD playback if I decide to buy a Blu-ray player or download HD content). The RAM is faster than the standard stuff I was going to buy, but it was cheaper for this from Dabs than the standard stuff direct from Crucial (go figure). I like Crucial RAM, it’s usually a good price and I’ve never had any fail on me. The processor is a 2.6Ghz 64-bit dual core beasty, but I was mainly interested in the low power consumption compared to other processors (45 Watts), for a machine that was going to be on a lot it’s important. Likewise the WD Caviar Green, low power and a good rep. Again, I have had lots of experience with Western Digital drives, all good, and the Samsung Spinpoints, the other drive in contention as they’re also supposed to be very quiet, had some reports of failures, too many to make me happy. Scythe CPU coolers have a great rep, I couldn’t fit the full-sized Ninja into my box (despite it being huge), so went with the Mini, which I’m running fanless (they are two case fans right beside it).

Installation went smoothly and I was soon ready to install the OS.

Additional Hardware

I found that, by the time I moved all my recorded TV and ripped DVDs onto the main disk I was out of space. I also found that playing DVDs back on the old ROM drive I had was very noisy, so I later bought:

• Second Western Digital Caviar AV Green Power 1TB (£77.04)
• Pioneer DVR-116DBK 20x DVDRW Black (£20.64)

These were from Novatech.

Playing back DVDs from the disc was still loud, not so bad though. I don’t usually bother now, I just rip it to HDD and play it from there. So build costs went up to £643.72.

Software

I also bought a copy of Vista Home Premium (32-bit Upgrade) at a cost of £65.52. Taking the build costs to £709.24. This meant I got Vista Media Center though. As I had an upgrade it was a bit of a pain as I had to install XP first (later I found there’s a way around this, but too late!). Installation went smoothly, VMC picked up my tuners no problem and I was soon watching TV.

I spent a lot of time transcoding my .rec files to mpeg-2 using the batch process in VideoReDo and then transferred everything onto may main machine (well, an external HDD at a time, which is when I spotted I was running out of space and bought a second drive).

I also installed iTunes as I use it on my PC to listen to and buy music as well as the odd TV show. I setup a back-up process to copy everything over to the media centre PC and I now have two iTunes installations that work perfectly. I went this way because it meant not having to have my other PC to play back any of the media and, as a nice side effect, I get a complete back-up too.

I have another process that does the same for my images, so I can show them to people in the lounge on the TV should I wish to.

My motherboard does support ‘Just a Bunch of Disks’ (JBOD), which is similar to RAID 0, without the problem of one disk failure taking out all of your data. Unfortunately, despite vain attempts, I think I needed to set this up before I put data on my first drive (the disks need to be formatted together). Thankfully Media Browser let’s you create a file that tells it to read multiple folders, even on different disks, appear as one in the UI and I just moved my TV recording folder to the second disk, you can then set this in Media Center.

I also installed a pack of codecs to help me support playback of a variety of formats. Most of mine were MPEG-2, but there were a few odd ones too. And I was tempted to squeeze some down using xVid or DivX, but decided buying additional storage space was cheaper than spending my time compressing my videos.

Something else to bear in mind, I originally had problems playing back DVD rips with Dolby Digital surround sound, the reason for this was although my TV had some sort of fake Dolby Digital support, it wasn’t right. My sound options (the Supported Formats tab on the properties of the playback device) had Dolby Digital ticked, just uncheck whichever options your TV/amp/receiver doesn’t support and DTS and Dolby Digital and the system will probably pass the AC3 audio straight through and solve it (you may need to switch pass-through on in the options of the code pack for ffdshow).

Vista Media Center Mods

I found a ton of add-ons for Media Center, but I only really use and care about one: Media Browser (formerly Video Browser). I also changed the theme, I think to the Vista Ultimate theme from here. Certainly it’s a black theme anyway. Having had mine suddenly revert back to the default theme, which is ugly, and find that the black theme I mentioned is better, but still ugly, I tracked down my theme to the Back in Black theme. I didn’t install mine using the dll though. I used an app called MediaCenterFX, which seems to be very hard to find, so I’ve stuck a copy of the version I us up here. I have also uploaded a copy of the theme file for Back in Black.

Media Browser Movies Coverflow

Media Browser Movie Detail

Media Browser TV Shows

Click for larger version of images

As you can see, the reason for using it is because it makes Media Center look awesome. Seriously, this adds the wow factor, it’s great showing it to people when they visit. It’s very customisable too, check out the gallery and this thread in the forums for more screenshots.

For metadata I found I had to use a combination of Media Browser (which will do most), Media Scout (again, did most of the rest) and Salami’s Movie Organizer, which I found the best and easiest, but it did less bulk than the others.

Another essential add-on is Lifextender, which automatically monitors your recorded TV folder and processes the files to remove adverts. It’s not perfect, sometimes it doesn’t get them all, sometimes it shaves a bit off the programmes, but generally it’s very good and saves a lot of the hassle of fast forwarding (something I don’t find too great in Media Center, preferring the 30 second skip instead).

I use a couple of other plugins, though most I rarely use, for things like YouTube, you can use Yougle, but I’ve found it’s easier to just use the browser.

Conclusion

Having just totalled up the cost of the build I probably could have bought a machine for about that sort of money. To be honest though, they wouldn’t have matched my spec for that price. I have a machine with 2Tb of storage, most off-the-shelf models were 500Gb, or a lot pricier for up to 1Tb, and dual tuners (most are single). I also have a machine which is silent most of the time (I get a strange high pitch whine after it’s been on for a while, something to investigate, I suspect it’s either the PSU or one of the HDDs). Plus I have more expansion options (I suspect I’ll need another drive at some point, hardly any of the my movie collection has been digitised, that’s going to take a lot more than 2Tb, probably more like double figures, and that’s before HD content).

On the downside, having just run a Watt meter by it, the machine uses 4W in sleep (not bad), but idles at 80-85W and tops out at about 105W when recording and playing back multiple content. That’s much better than my desktop machine, which uses about 180W at idle and over 200W when in use, but it’s still higher than I’d like it to be. I may investigate a mini-itx system next, the new dual-core Atom’s with Nvidia’s ION look pretty nice, should run Windows 7 OK, can do HD playback and use less power.

That said, I’m very happy with the system, I’ve had a couple of people interested in building one and it generally runs very well. I occassionally need to reboot it, but usually it just sleeps and wakes fine, it runs 1080p content OK and being able to access my music and the internet have proved useful, especially as my main machine takes so long to load, this HTPC is out of sleep and usable in about 5 seconds. I’m very happy with Vista Media Center too, it works well, has proved stable and is nicely customisable. It reliably records things and the huge amount of stage means I don’t have to worry about running out, plus I can easily watch content from my other machine with the need to convert it. I definitely recommend using a PC this way, even if you buy one.

Hardware Round-up and Costs

A quick run through of the final hardware setup (new items in bold):

• ATX motherboard (Asus A7N8X-X Socket A/462 – £54 back in 2003)
• Sound card (from an even older machine)
• Processor (AMD “Barton” Athlon XP 2500+ 1.8Ghz – £66 back in 2003)
• RAM (512Mb Crucial 184-pin DIMM – £54 back in 2003)
• Graphics card (Asus Nvidia FX 6200 with TV-out – £24.67)
• TV Tuner (Hauppauge Nova T 500 Dual Tuner – £49.99)
• Remote (Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote and IR receiver – £19.96)
• Wireless Keyboard (Microsoft IR Media Keyboard – £23.48)
• DVI cable (£2.49)
• HTPC case (to fit ATX mobo) – Silverstone LC17 – £65.67
• Quiet CPU fan – Zalman CNPS7000B-CU – £17.63
• Large HDD – WD Caviar 400Gb – £54.64
• Case fans, one 92mm Antec TriCool, one 80mm Antec TriCool – £3.87 + £3.99 (didn’t need the 80mm)
• AnyDVD €49/£37
• Fanless PSU – Silverstone ST30NF £71.09
• ATX 24-pin to 20-pin converter cable £0.99
• 2 * Zalman Fanmate 2 fan controllers for case fans – 3.99 ea

Total spent (not including original hardware): £383.46 (plus postage, so probably around £420)

Suppliers Round-up

A quick round-up of the suppliers I used and how I found them.

Ebuyer – cheap prices, good service.

Amazon – not much needed to say, not always the cheapest, good service

Overclockers – I’ve used them before, cheap and great service.

Cablestar – a company I found which also sells on eBay, I have bought several sorts of cables from them, they have a good range a great prices

After Hours – they were the cheapest for my case, but aside from confirming my order I didn’t hear anything from them for a week, I had seen a couple of negative reviews and when I first contacted them I didn’t hear anything back, only when I requested to cancel my order did they respond, then I got my delivery confirmed.

Novatech – not the cheapest on many parts, but good service and quick delivery.

Micro Direct – cheapest place I found my fanless PSU, fast delivery, no problems (no confirmation it had been sent though).

Quiet PC – again, not the cheapest, although they stock a range of parts few other equal, good service.

Images

Conclusion

I was looking for a PVR which would give me expandability and easier access to my content, all in one place. It also had to match up to a shop bought PVR, it had to be easy to use, reliable, not draw too much power and, above all, be silent in operation. I’m reasonably happy. The machine still isn’t silent, with the CPU cooler and HDD still generating a bit of noise, and a fair racket when playing DVDs, but as the machine is located at my head height and about three feet from me that’s understandable, if it were in a normal living room environment you would have trouble telling it was on. I don’t find the software particularly easy to use, neither GB-PVR or Media Portal hit the mark for me and the pay-for packages lacked Freeview support (yes, there is a world outside the US). I’m also at a loss as to how I get the machine to sleep, then wake up if it’s set to record as a paid device would.

The package that started me thinking about building an HTPC again was Vista’s Media Centre, and the two packages I tried didn’t measure up. For example, when I installed a USB TV card Vista Media Centre automatically found it, downloaded TV channels and set it up, why don’t all of the packages work this way (I’m asking a lot I know)? Plus it has an in-built burn feature (not that I’ve tested it) for getting shows onto DVD.

Looking back at the hardware, I’m only disappointed by two parts: the keyboard, I’m not massively impressed, it works, but is less than ideal, the mouse takes a lot of getting used to and, in reality, getting a keyboard out all the time is awkward. A regular bluetooth or RF one would probably be better than IR. It was cheap and it does do the job though. The other part is the case. Don’t get me wrong, the case if well-built and works well, but it’s massive and is, therefore, somewhat ungainly. I think the disappointment was because I saw my built PVR as being the same size as a normal PVR, DVD player, etc. I’m happy enough to hang on to it though.

I did end up buying a lot more hardware than I thought, and spending a lot more money on the project. Looking back I could have bought a pre-built media centre solution for not much more and a PVR for much less, although finding a PVR that saved into a format I could easily burn may have been hard, plus I can play any media format and access the internet all from one machine. I am considering replacing the remaining original components a building a machine capable of running Vista and using Media Centre, although that would probably mean replacing the CPU cooler and graphics card as well.

The Software

I started by installing a copy of XP Pro I had lying around, once that was running I set about the PVR software.

I initially installed GB-PVR. It’s not open source, but is free, and seems to have a lot of support. It is actually designed as two pieces of software, a back-end recorder/scheduler and a front-end for controlling it and playback, they can be run on the same or separate machines (so you could have a media server somewhere running all the time and something like a Hauppauge MediaMVP controlling it, which GB-PVR has good support for). I had checked the transmitter used on my PVR so I could pick the TV transmitter to use and got on with setting up GB-PVR.

I have to say that it was far from the most intuitive setup I have ever done, and don’t get me wrong, I’m good with computers, well into expert, which means this would probably be bewildering for normal users. It found my hardware without issue, but whenever I tried to search for channels it found nothing. I checked everything twice, spent a long time using Google and hunting forums, no joy. I gave up and installed Media Portal.

I liked Media Portal better from the start and it was a bit easier to get my head around. Still no joy finding channels though. I installed the WinTV software that came the TV card and it found channels. So, no problem with the reception or hardware. I spent a long time searching online for help and in the end I found out about ScanChannelsBDA_UK (I have mirrored a copy here as I had to sign up to download a copy, the only place I found it online). That found channels, and from which transmitter it found them, turns out I was using the wrong one. Back into GB-PVR and it found the channels. I tried in Media Portal, still no joy. So I finished setting up GB-PVR and it was all working. I had to install a copy of PowerDVD I had lying around to get MPEG2 encoders/decoders though.

After a brief use I wasn’t happy with it. The TV picture seemed to jerk, like it was dropping frames, which made it difficult to watch. More than that though, the interface felt old and ugly, clunky to use. I thought I’d give Media Portal another try. I figured I would uninstall GB-PVR as it may be conflicting, I was right, that sorted the problem and I was OK to set Media Portal up. I was much happier with it from the start, still a few weird things in the interface, but it looked nicer and seemed to work better.

I spent the first week tweaking and changing settings. Initially I had a problem that the sound went weird when I tried to record, which I tracked down to the MPEG encoder I had chosen (Media Portal comes with some encoders and decoders, unlike GB-PVR). I added a plugin to launch external applications and added IE so you could easily launch a browser and surf the net. I also enabled the My Burner plugin so I could, I hoped, burn saved files straight to DVD (as I mentioned, part of my reason for disliking me current PVR was the work involved in doing this).

I played around with it for a few days, got it picking up my photos, music and ripped DVDs from the NAS, checked it was recording programmes, setup my Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) using XMLTV GUI (incidentally, easier to set this up to put the file, called tvguide.xml into the xmltv folder in the Media Portal programme folder). Setting up the TV channels and then matching them to the EPG was the most laborious process though. I also managed to get hold of some custom channel icons so many of my channels had the channel logos, making them easier to identify.

I installed a copy of SpeedFan to help control my fan speeds, which did make a difference in noise, but as I only had a CPU fan that could be controlled it meant the heat immediately rocketed up, it showed me it was possible though. I also noticed that my optical DVD ROM was way too loud when playing back (optical drives try and spin flat-out all the time, in reality anything over about 1.5x is wasted on playback). Media Portal does come with an option to control the spin speed of a drive, but it didn’t seem to work, although I have an old drive so it may work with newer ones. After much hunting I grabbed a trial copy of AnyDVD, which had the added benefit of making the drive region free and removing those seriously annoying piracy warnings you can’t skip.

I was happy that my hardware was capable of running the software and acting as a PVR, so I decided it was time to make it look and act more like a PVR than a PC.

Adding Hardware

First off was to find a case. I had a full-size ATX motherboard, so that limited my options, getting a sleek slimline case was out of the question, which was probably a good thing anyway, as I believe the old Athlons run very hot, so it would give more room for air circulation. The old machine survived using only three fans: one in the PSU, one on the graphics card and a CPU cooler, no case fans. I’d swapped the graphics card for a passively cooled one, putting the heat in the case up. There aren’t too many HTPC case manufacturers. The most popular seem to be Zalman, Antec and Silverstone. I liked the look, and the price, of the Silverstone LC13 or the Silverstone LC17. In the end I went for the latter, but it was fairly hard to find for sale in the UK. The LC17 is a huge case, with room for two optical drives stacked on top of each other, up to 6 3.5″ drives, a full-size PSU and a full-size ATX board, plus cooling fans.

Checking my old machine I identified the noisiest elements, which seemed to be overwhelmingly the CPU fan (with the graphics card fan gone, which was far noisier). For a replacement I looked for a Zalman flower, which seem to get great reviews and comes with a fan controller, although I was planning on using SpeedFan anyway. There are actually a variety of different models. I settled on the CNPS7000B-CU, fairly cheap, supports a range of CPUs (including the Socket A/462 my Athlon XP uses) and comes with all the mounting brackets.

I knew I needed a larger hard drive to store the recorded shows on. The board was only capable of PATA (parallel ATA) connections, which limited my choice. After much hunting and reading many reviews I settled on a 400Gb Western Digital Caviar.

Lastly I grabbed a few case fans, one 80mm and one 92mm, both Antec TriCools, which are bearing fans, so quiet, and come with three-setting fan controllers built in. The LC17 also comes with two 80mm fans mounted in the case.

The case was the last to arrive, but it was a fairly simple process to transfer all my components over. The CPU cooler just fit without touching the case, meaning the case fan I was going to mount there wouldn’t go. I mounted the 92mm fan, on it’s lowest setting (where it’s silent) to the front of the middle 3.5″ mounting rail. In the end I left the two Silverstone fans where they were, I only connected one, to a motherboard fan slot, thinking it would be controlled by SpeedFan.

I fitted both the HDDs, figuring to use the original 40 Gb as the OS/system disk and the new one for storage. I attached the CPU cooler directly to the motherboard, not using it’s fan controller.

When I fired up the machine I was expecting whisper-quiet. That’s not what I got. I spent some time starting and stopping the machine to find the noisy components. There seemed to be three culprits: the original 40 Gb HDD, the CPU fan and the two Silverstone case fans. I removed the IBM HDD, it was an old 7,200 RPM drive, hardly surprising it was noisy, then found that the WD drive was mounted using the wrong size screws, so it still had movement, I found the correct screws and bolted it in tight.

I attached the fan controller that came with the CPU cooler and set that to about as low as it would go, I also ordered a couple of Zalman Fanmate 2 controllers (which is what came with the CPU) for the case fans, and again, set them low (the noise from the case fans was more due to the amount of air they were shifting than any noise from the fans).

It meant reinstalling the OS and setting up all the software again, luckily I found out how to backup the Media Portal settings. After a few days waiting for parts and then several hours reinstalling everything I was back in business, but the machine was still too noisy (my aim was a machine you could barely hear when it was running). I checked the case again, the HDD was making a noise, where it was quiet/silent before. I figured my bolting down the drive hadn’t helped, so switched the screws back, giving the drive some play, and that dropped the noise.

As a side note, from what I read the quietest drives are 2.5″ laptop drives, mounted on rubber bungies to stop vibrations being transmitted into the case. This was designed as a low-cost project, so I didn’t want the premium of a 2.5″ drive.

It still wasn’t quiet enough for me though, there was still too much noise, enough that my ears gave a sigh of relief when I turned the machine off. Hunting through the case I found three sources: the CPU cooler, although quiet, was still not silent; the HDD was making some noise, though not much and the PSU, although quiet, was far from silent. I decided I could live with the first two. The PSU was an old one I had left over, although supposedly silent, it blatantly wasn’t. I hunted around and there were plenty of options for a ‘semi-passive’ PSU (which means it runs fanless below a certain temperature, above that a big fan cuts in, typically bigger than 80mm so it can turn slow). I didn’t want semi-passive, that still left the possibility for noise, I wanted silent, which meant fanless. I had the case cooling to cope with the extra heat and the LC17 case has the PSU on it’s own, away from everything else, with a vent straight out of the case.

There aren’t many fanless PSUs, certainly not many at reasonable cost (and forget it if you have a powerful system, mine was all running from a 300w PSU). Many of those mentioned over at SilentPCReview.com just could not be found for sale. In the end I managed to get my hands on a Silverstone ST30NF, figuring it would go well with the case.

The presented a different problem, however, it comes with a 24-pin ATX cable, my board is an old one with a 20-pin socket, which meant buying a converter cable (24-pins are basically 20-pin adapters, with an additional four pins bolted on the side, many PSU manufacturers allow them to be detached, or let them hang separate so you can plug them in or not depending on your board).

You can find part three here

1. I keep filling up the hard disk

2. Even though I export the files, they take so long to convert and burn to DVD I rarely bother, so I have GBs of external HDD space taken up storing programmes I may burn to DVD at some point

I also have a NAS (network attached storage) with some ripped DVDs, my photos and music on which no one else can really access, so I was thinking of creating/buying something to allow the rest of the family access these things from the TV. As I realised my problems and the device I was thinking of could both be solved by a media centre PC I started researching the options.

I had an old PC lying around anyway, and getting rid of old PCs is always a chore (for my last two I contacted a local IT charity that specialises in taking old hardware and re-using it, but never heard back from them, in the end they went to a friend’s son), so it seemed to make sense to convert it. I was aiming to make this on the cheap, to show you didn’t need a top-notch machine, to test the concept ahead of possibly building a top-of-the-line machine using all-new parts. My initial research suggested it was probably powerful enough, despite it’s age. Part of this desire to build a media centre PC (or an HTPC as they’re more commonly known, which stands for Home Theatre PC) was having not long had a copy of Vista which comes with Vista Media Centre (on Home Premium and Ultimate only). It was a great app and whet my appetite, although I knew Vista would not run on my old machine, so I went looking for alternatives.

As it turns out, there are plenty of media centre apps out there, some free and some commercial. Early on I decided I wanted to stick with Windows, as much as I have have heard good things about MythTV, I just wanted ready to spend time learning a new OS and run Linux. I was fine with buying some software, I figured it would be better quality. So my research led me to the likes of BeyondTV and SageTV, as well as free software like GB-PVR and Media Portal. At this point I came across a realisation, while I had read a lot of sites, forums, posts and blogs regarding what people had done with their media centres and what they recommended, they were overwhelmingly US-centric and dealt with analogue TV. Being based in the UK, naturally I wanted Freeview (free to air digital TV), which very few of the projects I saw did, so the cards they used and, as it turned out, most of the software, did not mention or support digital cards. The good news is that both of the free options did, so I was down to GB-PVR and Media Portal for the software.

Initial Setup and Testing

I figured I’d start simple to test the water, keep most of the existing hardware and just supplement it with require components so I could see if the project was feasible. The hardware I started with was:

• Generic tower case
• ATX motherboard (Asus A7N8X-X Socket A/462 – £54 back in 2003)
• Quiet PSU (Zalman ZM300A-APF – £47 back in 2003)
• Sound card (from an even older machine)
• Processor (AMD “Barton” Athlon XP 2500+ 1.8Ghz – £66 back in 2003)
• RAM (512Mb Crucial 184-pin DIMM – £54 back in 2003)
• IBM Deskstar HDD (40Gb)

Checking the tuner card compatibility of both bits of software I settled on a Hauppauge Nova T 500 Dual Tuner (partly as Hauppauge seems to be used for many HTPC projects), to give me the option of recording two channels as with my existing PVR, I figured I could always add more later should I wish (most media centre software will support a number of cards, 11 is the highest number in any project I saw). The other benefit is this offer two tuners on one card, which means only one aerial lead and one PCI slot used. Freeview has the benefit of being transmitted in MPEG2, the same format used on DVDs, and the format most TV cards record in, so it saves having expensive hardware and load on the machine encoding the TV signals.

Next I needed a new graphics card as my existing one didn’t have a TV out. I figured I’d output to an HD TV, so something capable of supporting 720p or higher, with a DVI or HDMI output. I didn’t need anything too fancy, it wasn’t for games, so I settled on an XFX Geforce FX5700 Ultra 128MB with a DVI out as a cheap, capable card. Unfortunately, that went out of stock, so I changed to an Asus Nvidia FX 6200 (Nvidia seemed to edge out the ATI’s for cost and performance, plus my options were limited as I needed an AGP card).

I also wanted a remote and a wireless keyboard as I wanted this to be used by the family and they would want a remote. They keyboard would mean we could surf the internet or whatever from the couch too. I opted for the Microsoft MCE 2005 Remote and IR receiver, partly as it was quite cheap, partly because I figured it would have good support (both of the packages I would be using support it) and a Microsoft IR Media Keyboard, which makes use of the same IR receiver and looks pretty good, again, good value too. Worth noting is that the TV card came with a remote, which is also supported by both bits of software.

When they arrived I started putting it all together and that’s when the fun began.

Find part 2 here and part three here.