XBMC HTPC

After my old CD-Player broke down I decided that it would be time to replace the 20 year old ancient HiFi rack with something more suitable. Either an universal player or a self built HTPC. The HTPC won obviously...

Hardware

I built the PC based on a recommendation from c't Magazine 26/2012 -not the most recent hardware (from a mid-2013 point of view) and not the cheapest possible system and also not the most silent solution, but a good overal setup:

• CPU: Celeron G1610 'boxed' (including cooler and fan)
• Motherboard: Gigagbyte GA-Z77MX-D3H
• RAM: 2x4 GB Transcend JM1333KLN-8GK
• Disk: Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
• BluRay: Pioneer BDR-208DBK
• Case: Silverstone GD04B
• Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power L7 350W
• Case fan: 2x Scythe Slip Stream 120 500rpm (SY1225SL12SL)
• flirc.tv: IR dongle (shares the remote of my Sony TV)

Surprisingly, there are only very few HTPC cases, which fit in a HiFi rack, while having enough space for regular microATX components, a full size BD-ROM player and USB 3 front ports.

I had a look at the Silverstone GD04B (the only with USB 3 front connectors AND a full size drive bay), the FractalDesign Node605 (only slimline drives) and the OrigenAE H6 (no front USB 3) which I liked the most, but which was unfortunately too large for my cabinet. Finally I chose the Silverstone case. The aluminium front panel is nice, but the overall built quality is not spectacular given the price (and it has only two "HiFi" feet at the front).

I had to replace the fans, which came with the Silverstone case, because they are really noisy. The CPU fan is acceptable. Overall, this makes for a very silent (but still audible) system, which -thanks to the SSD- boots in < 20 sec. to XBMC.

All media data is stored on a home NAS, thus only a small system disk had to be installed.

Assembly

Straight forward, no surprises -although I can't remember when I last had to dig out a screwdriver to fix drives and case lids in place (no thumb screws on the GD04).

Some Images:

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Software

Operating System

Had to be Linux if possible. The most mainstream Media Center software seemed to be XBMC, which is developed using Ubuntu, so this decided the flavour of underlying OS. To prevent a reinstall every 9 month or so, I decided to go with the current LTS version 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

In case things would not work out (e.g. unresolvable issues with graphics, sound or BD-playback) I had planned to fail back to Windows 7.

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Media Center Software

XBMC 12 Frodo

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Installation

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Things which work

• DVD playback and DVD autostart on insert
• CD-ROM playback and CD-ROM autostart on insert
• mkv and other video formats
• Megapixel image display
• Video streaming (youtube et al)

So all basic functions of XBMC work as advertised using hardware acceleration where possible.

Issues

• BluRay playback: As advertised. BD+ encrypted discs won't play, the others will work more or less (with menus working halfways).
• Hanging system. I had several occasions (while playing audio CD-ROMs and DVDs) when XBMC got stuck. I was able to login via ssh in some cases and e.g. kill the XBMC process or restart the machine. Should not happen
• flirc.tv. Although a very hassle free solution (insert in USB port at the back (!) of the case and go) it has an anoying issue with key repeats. If I press and hold a key on the Sony remote, flirc.tv apparently issues lots of key presses, which confuses XBMC at times. To date no solution to this.
• Noisy BD drive. The BD-drive is somewhat resistant to "spindown", it appears to get less noisy, but not really silent. At least not to audio CD player noise level.