Ok, so basically my aim with this thread is to:
a. Help ailing fellow media centre users who want to get the most out of their PC's and who are not sure how to go about doing it.
b. Provide a bit of a walkthrough to show how it's done and which apps to use to make your life easier, share my lessons learnt and time invested to save it for others.
c. Show you just what's possible with a little bit of effort for a fun project.
Enjoy
Alright, so many moons ago (OK, I lied, it's just about 6-8 months) I decided to whip out an old PC from my cupboard and turn it into a media machine for my lounge so I could get my energy drinking monster out and into my office (har - more like a laundry room).
Initially the machine I started with was quite simple:
- AMD 3000+ 64 bit
- 2 Gigs DDR2 RAM
- Geforce 6600GT GFX Card
- 19" Cheapie LCD monitor
- Windows XP
- Winfast DV2000 TV Card
- DVD Writer
This was all attached to my Sony 5.2 entertainment system as well as an Optoma HD80 (Full HD) projector.
So, basically i purchased a HDD, added it to the above and this is how it started.
I was blown away by Windows 7 so immediately removed my XP and faithfully stashed my CD away safely for a later... um.... museum; and chucked on windows 7 RC1 because it's awesome and free, which is even more awesome!
I later replaced the 19" monitor with a cool 23" full HD (1920x1080) LCD which cost a cool R1900 (Samsung 2333SW). I did this was because it was such a ball ache to have an extended desktop (ie, 2 screnns running as if they are next to each other and you can drag applications from one to the other) all the time. With the advent of the new monitor having the same native resolution as the projector I now run them in pure clone mode (ie. they are showing the identical stuff). This worked well!
However, the machine wasn't potent enough to play full HD movies, so I upgraded the mobo to a gigabyte SLI mobo I bought second hand (R400) as well as a new 2.3Ghz Core Duo 2 CPU (R500). This worked well but the PC was working dam hard to play full HD movies because the CPU stresses, so I canned the 6600GT and purchased a passive cooled 9600GT (second hand - R500). I also added a Creative X-Fi extreme music card I had lying around as well as the Blu-Ray drive I stole from my gaming rig. I also stole 4 Gigs ram from my gaming machine because 8 was pure overkill.
Over time I've been slowly building up my storage and now have a nifty 3.5T's housing all my stuff.
I was having power issues with my crappy PSU causing all kinds of issues. So I've replaced it with a nice 370W PSU with a 12cm ball bearing fan, it's completely silent!
I've also added a Hauppage Remote control and IR receiver I bought for R150 on www.take2.co.za as well as a wireless receiver for my Wifi network at home, wireless KB and mouse as well as a externally powered USB Hub for ease of access and port availability.
I built the PC onto a slide out shelf inside my TV cabinet (I built that too) which works great! It has awesome access to everything! That build log is also here on the forums somewhere.
OK, now is the software time, this is complicated!
I started testing out many forms of media centre (Moovida, XBMC, MediaPortal, Windows Media Centre and even a Mythbuntu linux build). Windows 7 Media Centre came out tops for me in a huge way! It's puer brilliance once you take a bit of time to tweak a few things.
1. So, first off was to sort out my media library, this is actually pretty dam easy in Windows 7 because you can arrange it like folders within the different libraries shown on the left inside windows explorer. Windows comes setup that way and it's perfect! You can have files and things scattered over various drives, you just add it to the library by dragging and dropping and it will always remember where it is.
2. I had some issues with my files not playing because of different Codecs. I was quite a pain having a external sound card AND a TV card because they all have their own codecs and that caused quite a bit of havoc. I'd strongly recoment getting a motherboard with a digital output so you can use you big fancy amplifier of DAC for the digital>analogue conversion.
I HATE huge codec packs which clutter up your machine, I wanted something invisible so I thankfully stumbled across Antipack codec pack which allows DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration). This allowys your GPU does the work not your CPU, and at most it's been at about 10% load. It's found here.
I also installed MadFlac decoder (because I have lots of audio in FLAC format) and some associated plugins to get it part of my music library (Windows 7 does not come with native FLAC support, check out this thread on hack7mc.com. I had some sound issues with some movies because of the native media centre codec's so I installed the Media Centre Decoder utility (again found on hack7mc.com) which lets you take control of the 7MC codecs. I changed the audio codec away from the standard (for the X-fi card) and subsequently haven't had any problems.and that sorted it all out!
3. I thought the menu system on media centre was a ball ache! So much crap I didn't use, and I wanted to make my own menu's, remove unused buttons, add my own buttons as well as add buttons to link to external apps. So, I just use Media Centre Studio. This also helps change themes for 7MC (I've got a plain neat black one below). I also had huge issues getting my TV card to work with the native 7MC live TV software so I simply programmed a button to open the native Winfast software (programmed to open in fullscreen so it's seamless, also added a DSTV icon for effect). Take a look at it in this screenie below:
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_1.jpg
4. The native movie / video browser was terrible and missed out on so dam much, so I installed Media Browser (found here). Media browser is completely customisable. I added my own menu's, changed theme's a thousand times. It lets you browse thru DVD covers, folder backgrounds, add's descriptions and text to movies, etc etc etc. The possibilities are endless! This is the most important piece of software you neeed for 7MC.
Here are some screenies to show just what you can do:
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_2.jpg
1. My menu where I go into media browser, note no other crap and clutter in my home menu's, only the stuff I want/need.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_3.jpg
2. My next screen, This is inside media browser, my first welcoming screen. Here I've tried a few things and this is what works best for me in terms of a folder structure. 1. Box sets (eg. James bond, matrix, batman, LOTR, etc etc etc). 2. My HD Movies 3. My SD movies and 4. Series. Those Icons are custom icons that I've put in to replace the standard stuff.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_4.jpg
3. Inside Series, all my choices, all the background images change depending on which series you are looking at. If you have more then 1 background then it automatically chenges between them.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_5.jpg
4. Inside Burn Notice - Choose which season
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_6.jpg
5. I chose season 2 - now it shows me all the available episodes (note the changed background)
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_6.jpg
6. Inside an episode, a brief write up, rating, aspect ratios, actors etc.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098238_265_FT15656_8.jpg
7. Inside "Box Sets" menu and then James bond, note my HD movies have the Blu-Ray box cover
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098723_265_FT15656_9.jpg
8. Inside Standard Def movies
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098724_265_FT15656_10.jpg
9. Inside a movie so you can see the write up.
There are hundreds of themes and formats to choose from, this is my current favorite but I do change quite often.
Now, I use an awesome app to get all the media backgrounds, folder covers, episode images, tags, etc etc etc and it's called metabrowser and I wouldn't be able to live without it!
Also, to change from standard pictures to the pics embedded in the DVD boxes / Blu ray boxes etc I use an awesome app called Stark Covers.
I installed Cyberlink Power DVD 9 so I can watch Blu-Ray's from the internal drive in the PC.
a. Help ailing fellow media centre users who want to get the most out of their PC's and who are not sure how to go about doing it.
b. Provide a bit of a walkthrough to show how it's done and which apps to use to make your life easier, share my lessons learnt and time invested to save it for others.
c. Show you just what's possible with a little bit of effort for a fun project.
Enjoy
------------------Hardware---------------------
Alright, so many moons ago (OK, I lied, it's just about 6-8 months) I decided to whip out an old PC from my cupboard and turn it into a media machine for my lounge so I could get my energy drinking monster out and into my office (har - more like a laundry room).
Initially the machine I started with was quite simple:
- AMD 3000+ 64 bit
- 2 Gigs DDR2 RAM
- Geforce 6600GT GFX Card
- 19" Cheapie LCD monitor
- Windows XP
- Winfast DV2000 TV Card
- DVD Writer
This was all attached to my Sony 5.2 entertainment system as well as an Optoma HD80 (Full HD) projector.
So, basically i purchased a HDD, added it to the above and this is how it started.
I was blown away by Windows 7 so immediately removed my XP and faithfully stashed my CD away safely for a later... um.... museum; and chucked on windows 7 RC1 because it's awesome and free, which is even more awesome!
I later replaced the 19" monitor with a cool 23" full HD (1920x1080) LCD which cost a cool R1900 (Samsung 2333SW). I did this was because it was such a ball ache to have an extended desktop (ie, 2 screnns running as if they are next to each other and you can drag applications from one to the other) all the time. With the advent of the new monitor having the same native resolution as the projector I now run them in pure clone mode (ie. they are showing the identical stuff). This worked well!
However, the machine wasn't potent enough to play full HD movies, so I upgraded the mobo to a gigabyte SLI mobo I bought second hand (R400) as well as a new 2.3Ghz Core Duo 2 CPU (R500). This worked well but the PC was working dam hard to play full HD movies because the CPU stresses, so I canned the 6600GT and purchased a passive cooled 9600GT (second hand - R500). I also added a Creative X-Fi extreme music card I had lying around as well as the Blu-Ray drive I stole from my gaming rig. I also stole 4 Gigs ram from my gaming machine because 8 was pure overkill.
Over time I've been slowly building up my storage and now have a nifty 3.5T's housing all my stuff.
I was having power issues with my crappy PSU causing all kinds of issues. So I've replaced it with a nice 370W PSU with a 12cm ball bearing fan, it's completely silent!
I've also added a Hauppage Remote control and IR receiver I bought for R150 on www.take2.co.za as well as a wireless receiver for my Wifi network at home, wireless KB and mouse as well as a externally powered USB Hub for ease of access and port availability.
I built the PC onto a slide out shelf inside my TV cabinet (I built that too) which works great! It has awesome access to everything! That build log is also here on the forums somewhere.
------------------Software---------------------
OK, now is the software time, this is complicated!
I started testing out many forms of media centre (Moovida, XBMC, MediaPortal, Windows Media Centre and even a Mythbuntu linux build). Windows 7 Media Centre came out tops for me in a huge way! It's puer brilliance once you take a bit of time to tweak a few things.
1. So, first off was to sort out my media library, this is actually pretty dam easy in Windows 7 because you can arrange it like folders within the different libraries shown on the left inside windows explorer. Windows comes setup that way and it's perfect! You can have files and things scattered over various drives, you just add it to the library by dragging and dropping and it will always remember where it is.
2. I had some issues with my files not playing because of different Codecs. I was quite a pain having a external sound card AND a TV card because they all have their own codecs and that caused quite a bit of havoc. I'd strongly recoment getting a motherboard with a digital output so you can use you big fancy amplifier of DAC for the digital>analogue conversion.
I HATE huge codec packs which clutter up your machine, I wanted something invisible so I thankfully stumbled across Antipack codec pack which allows DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration). This allowys your GPU does the work not your CPU, and at most it's been at about 10% load. It's found here.
I also installed MadFlac decoder (because I have lots of audio in FLAC format) and some associated plugins to get it part of my music library (Windows 7 does not come with native FLAC support, check out this thread on hack7mc.com. I had some sound issues with some movies because of the native media centre codec's so I installed the Media Centre Decoder utility (again found on hack7mc.com) which lets you take control of the 7MC codecs. I changed the audio codec away from the standard (for the X-fi card) and subsequently haven't had any problems.and that sorted it all out!
3. I thought the menu system on media centre was a ball ache! So much crap I didn't use, and I wanted to make my own menu's, remove unused buttons, add my own buttons as well as add buttons to link to external apps. So, I just use Media Centre Studio. This also helps change themes for 7MC (I've got a plain neat black one below). I also had huge issues getting my TV card to work with the native 7MC live TV software so I simply programmed a button to open the native Winfast software (programmed to open in fullscreen so it's seamless, also added a DSTV icon for effect). Take a look at it in this screenie below:
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_1.jpg
4. The native movie / video browser was terrible and missed out on so dam much, so I installed Media Browser (found here). Media browser is completely customisable. I added my own menu's, changed theme's a thousand times. It lets you browse thru DVD covers, folder backgrounds, add's descriptions and text to movies, etc etc etc. The possibilities are endless! This is the most important piece of software you neeed for 7MC.
Here are some screenies to show just what you can do:
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_2.jpg
1. My menu where I go into media browser, note no other crap and clutter in my home menu's, only the stuff I want/need.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_3.jpg
2. My next screen, This is inside media browser, my first welcoming screen. Here I've tried a few things and this is what works best for me in terms of a folder structure. 1. Box sets (eg. James bond, matrix, batman, LOTR, etc etc etc). 2. My HD Movies 3. My SD movies and 4. Series. Those Icons are custom icons that I've put in to replace the standard stuff.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264097867_265_FT15656_4.jpg
3. Inside Series, all my choices, all the background images change depending on which series you are looking at. If you have more then 1 background then it automatically chenges between them.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_5.jpg
4. Inside Burn Notice - Choose which season
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_6.jpg
5. I chose season 2 - now it shows me all the available episodes (note the changed background)
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098237_265_FT15656_6.jpg
6. Inside an episode, a brief write up, rating, aspect ratios, actors etc.
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098238_265_FT15656_8.jpg
7. Inside "Box Sets" menu and then James bond, note my HD movies have the Blu-Ray box cover
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098723_265_FT15656_9.jpg
8. Inside Standard Def movies
http://www.pcdoctors.co.za/e107_files/public/1264098724_265_FT15656_10.jpg
9. Inside a movie so you can see the write up.
There are hundreds of themes and formats to choose from, this is my current favorite but I do change quite often.
Now, I use an awesome app to get all the media backgrounds, folder covers, episode images, tags, etc etc etc and it's called metabrowser and I wouldn't be able to live without it!
Also, to change from standard pictures to the pics embedded in the DVD boxes / Blu ray boxes etc I use an awesome app called Stark Covers.
I installed Cyberlink Power DVD 9 so I can watch Blu-Ray's from the internal drive in the PC.
