We all have thought it, what would it be like to have something connected to the TV which could lat us control every aspect of what we see on it.  Today, your cable box could also be a DVR, recording shows for you to watch in a heartbeat anytime.  Cable providers provide ever expanding libraries of movies to rival the once big names like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video.  Weather, traffic, streaming video from various sources, even HD video.  Why would you need a HTPC?  Well, not everyone does.

A HTPC makes the most sense if you own alot of our own video or wish to have online content to play.  Most to all Cable providers shy away from letting you add your personal library to what your cable box can show, unless you want to put it on a line in with a different device.  Not always ideal, but that depends on your point of view.  To me, a HTPC should be video or content at your fingertips.  If you have to get up and change a DVD or flick a switch, you did something wrong or just aren’t there yet.  Should you be able to browse?  Chat?  Play youtube video?  Sure, if that’s what you want it to do.

Your HTPC should be more than just a PC connected to a massive monitor.  A good interface can make everything work so much better.  That leave you with a few choices, both limiting each other:

• What hardware will you use?
• What interface?
• Where will your content be?

Lets take a look at my progression to my current solution…

History

Back about 5 years ago I purchased an Xbox. It was a bold purchase as I didn’t own a console since the Atari 2600. PC games were my life and well, consoles were the enemy. The kids on the other hand had other ideas. That didn’t stop me from turning it into a project I could really enjoy.

At some point soon after, I came across XBMC (XBox Media Center) and fell in love. It was pretty, versatile, and ran solely on the Xbox. Times have changed since then. HD video and h.264/x.264 encoding are king now, and the Xbox couldn’t cut it past DVD resolution without chanting “I think I can, I think I can…”

The project has grown past the Xbox onto most major OSs running on generic PC hardware. Which means with more powerful hardware and more than 64 meg of ram it can do so much more. The problem is finding the right hardware. Once the project turned to include Mac OSX, I used this as an excuse to finally get a Mac in the house. I was not disappointed.

It was a Mac Mini, 2ghz dual core, 2gb ram and about 80gb of disk. I used a DVI-HDMI cable and got a fiber cable to hook it into my 7.1 surround sound. The TV was a 1080p Samsung 52″. That little Mac Mini was driving the whole show, ripping though 1080p content without a jitter. That’s in my basement in the ‘media room’.

Disk is always the issue. Disk, disk and more disk. In 2000, I imagined what it would have been like to build a disk array with 1TB of disk. Now I own about 13TB of disk with about 80% dedicated to home media. My main stay has been the Buffalo TeraStation. I own five at various sizes (1,2 and 4tb) and some have been running almost nonstop for years. I also built a Microsoft Home Server and use it both at home network backup and somewhat secure file storage and serving. It also works great as my BitTorrent download server.

DVD No more

My first and on-going project is to turn my DVDs into files. What’s the point of having a media center if you have to constantly look for the media yourself and put in disks? XBMC is able to read ISOs directly much to my initial surprise so it was a no-brainer to rip everything to ISO. It acts as a real DVD so you get all the menus and extras unless you use a program like DVD Shrink to rip out the non-movie stuff to conserve space. DVDs can be anywhere from 2gb upward to a full 9gb in size. That can eat your less than 1gb disk up for lunch. Once I filled a Terastation up I knew I have to try something different.

I have tossed back and forth from making ISOs or Ripping/Transcoding to other file formats.  They both have their merits.  ISOs are big, most other file formats are not.  ISOs are quick by comparison to make, other file formats typically aren’t.  ISOs don’t require alot of CPU to make, other file formats can tie up your PC at 100% if you have a single CPU.  So, you need to decide what your priority is.

How you label your files (ISO or not) is important.  Programs like XBMC look up extra information based on this name.  That means the only way to successfully build your library is with care.  Most programs that pull from a DVD use the DVDs volume name to label the files.  Not ideal.  Heck I found one production DVD labeled ‘ UNTITLED’.  Rarely do you see these labels unless you put it in a DVD drive on your computer that there is no format to the name and being unique is questionable at best.

TV Shows

I get TV shows from a variety of sources, typically in avi/divx format.  Organizing them too takes care.  I spend an hour a week or something like a day each month since I’m too lazy to do the hour a week to reorganize my files.  One TV show per directory (ex: Lost in ‘Lost’) helps keep the clutter down.  Also keeping a consistant naming format will help.  Most have adoped a generic format of  “name SxxExx”  where Sxx is trhe season and Exx is the episode number.

For some, tossing the TV shows into the same directory as the movies works.  Having a library like the one I have, it doesn’t.

Music

Music should ideally be tagged or named cleanly.  If your Media Center uses filenames, name everything cleanly and use directories to organize the music.  I prefer “Artist/Album/Trackno. Title.mp3″, but you can do your own thing here as there are as many methodologies here.

Tagging only helps if your Media Center will use it.  The sign of a good source of online music is if they are already tagged an have album art added.  Today, the current mp3 tag version can hold everything from lyrics to pictures to track information.  Good Media centers can make use of this, but that requires regular rescanning of your library when you add/change anything.  That’s usualy not a quick process once you pass the 100 cd’s worth of music.

Photos

This is an underused feature and some Media Centers neglect it entirely.  Being able to find my photos and put on a somewhat animated slideshow is key.  What’s the point if you have to keep stopping the slideshow cause you need to skip 30 photos that have nothing to do with what you are showing off?  Organization is key.

Network

Home network can be very important.  Some can get away with class g Wifi while I swear by a 100base-T wire.  PCs now a day support 100base-T almost natively, including xbox, xbox360 and PS3.  Using a wire means much less chance of interruption in the middle of your movie.  Wifi on the otherhand could be disrupted by your microwave, cell phone, cordless phone, baby monitors, neighbors Wifi… the list can go on.

Your cable modem/router should have more then one network connection if it was given out by at least last year otherwise you’ll need to purchase a 100base-T hub with enough ports for all your devices.  For my home network I put in ‘switched’ hubs which can be a bit faster, something my busy home network needs.  But you should be fine with a run of the mill hub.

If, god forbid, you run out of ports, you can wire most hubs from one to another on a free port.  If your hub doesn’t support auto crossover, you’ll need a special crossover cable, looks just like a normal cable so it’s easy to loose.  Otherwise you just need to free up one port on the full hub/router and connect them with a standard network cable.  As a rule, try not to string one hub into another into another…  You can do it, but I won’t guarantee performance.  Try to put your cable modem/router in the middle if possible as that will guarantee each run gets a good potential bandwidth.

Storage

Well, finally down to this, this will be the core of your HTPC.  You can opt for one or more of the following three choices:

• Store everything on the HTPC
• Store everything on NAS (or other networked file server, say a linux server or Windows Home Server)
• Store everything on your desktop PC

Each has it’s merits.  Putting everything on the HTPC means that your network doesn’t suffer when you play a movie or you have to worry about someone turning off the device you were streaming off of.  Everything is accessable, and easier to train the significant other where things are.

Putting everything on your Desktop PC required you to share out the folder(s) with your video/music/pictures in them.  This makes for easier maintenance of your files.  Also if they are in different rooms, you get to play things in both.  This also means you don’t need alot of disk space on your HTPC which can reduce the cost.

Using NAS/fileservers like TeraStations and my Windows Home Server has helped keep my personal network in order.  Its harder to find things if you’re not privy, but with this, I can use lower power hungry devices like Terastations to reduce the electric bill a little.  As a side note, they only draw about 70 watts when idle, vs a PC that can be over 300.

There is nothing other than you Media Center software that would dictate which method you choose.  As long as you don’t mind spending a little extra $$, you can change your mind in the middle of building out your home network, otherwise consider your choice.

In my next HTPC post, I’ll help you build a HTPC from scratch with specs on the hardware.  This will be a small profile PC with all the power to get your movies on the bigger screen.