Configurable media servers for HTPC?

[hired goon]

G'day,

I was going to build a HTPC and stick it in the living room, but gave up due to space and noise considerations. What I wanted was a front-end and a back-end. The back-end would contain the hard drive (media and applications), connected via ethernet/wireless to the front-end, which connects to the A/V pre-processor. And a remote for the front-end that would send commands to the back-end. Is such a configuration possible?

I see that you can get media servers, such as the D-Link DSM-320, which is part of the way there. I don't know if I can use the remote control of this unit to send arbitrary commands to the back-end, for controlling other applications (such as a TV tuner).

Are there any other products I should look at? Or is this just a dream for now?

--Geoff

[Marzen]

I'm currently debugging this CAT5-HDTV extender. Should be ready to ship this week. You would need to build/buy a video convertor to go from your video card output to component video. There are other similar extenders as well.

http://nti1.com/hdtv-extend.html

Cheers,
Marz

[c912039]

Hi Geoff,

I'm using a solution you may be interested in.

Im using a HTPC/Backend Server combination, as I had concerns over size and noise of a typical HTPC.

My backend server solution consists of a file server with 1 Tb disk space (the motherboard supports up to 12 hard drives - Ive only used up 5 ports so far), 2 PCs with hardware MP2 encoder cards to record Foxtel, and 2 digital free-2-air tuner cards to grab 7,9,10,ABC & SBS. The recorder PCs write the captured data onto the RAID striped file server disks over a 100 Meg switched network.

The HTPC tucked underneath the TV (Sony KVHR36M31 86 cm ) uses a mini-ITX form factor motherboard, which is fanless. The power supply is an extranl 'brick' (similar to a laptop PS) and is also fanless. The CPU is embedded on the EPIA motherboard, and is also fanless. The EPIA board I have is equiv to a Celeron 400, which isnt all that poweful. However, I use a hardware decoder card, called the X-Card, by Sigma designs in this PC.
The PC is connected to my 100 Meg switched network via Cat5, and reads the recorded data stored on the file server ove rthe network.

The XCard has composite/svideo and component output, the latter is connected to the Sony TV. The card comes with an IR remote and IR sensor which plugs into the serial port. I use some 3rd party software for the X-Card, called TVedia by 8 Dim, which provides me with menus to navigate around. The XCard/TVedia combination allows me to play DVDs, MPEG1/2 video files, play MP3 audio files, all decoded by the hardware chipset on the Xcard.

The menu navigation can be sluggish at times, as the screen has to be generated in software by TVedia, so the silent,but slow CPU on the EPIA motherboard is the bottleneck.

The X-Card will up-scale MP2 video to 576p, 720p and 1080i (Sigma Designs' chipset is used on many low-priced up-scaling DVD players) as long as the source is not copy-protected. It will play DVD's that have been stored on a hard drive and navigate the DVD menus, as long as the DVD stored on the hard drive is not copy-protected.
Audio out on the X-Card is handled by a standard stereo-out jack, or digital over coax (requires external Dolby/DTS decoder such as an AVR). I have mine plugged into a Yamaha RX-V1000 AVR.

I have used this setup for the last 3 years, and Im very happy with it.

Regards

David

[Marzen]

Hi David,
I looked up your Xcard 'cause it handles decoding vs. my system where it's all software. I'd be interested to hear more on your thoughts about it's stengths/weaknesses.
Here's what I have now. I kinda just jumped into it as I had some spare parts. I haven't really put much effort into tweaking it.
AMD 1.2G / 500M DDR 3200
80G HD, Ricoh DVD/CD-Rom
GeForce FX 5200
onboard toslink output/input
homemade VGA-Component adapter
PowerDVD, PowerStrip, Dscaler, Windows Media Player, Win2K
-interested in a GUI front end like MainLobby, etc.
-I just realized Xcard is coax out, I'd have to make a toslink converter
-want to install a TV tuner card, but:
I wish I could use a cablecard for satellite authentication
This is used as a jukebox & to play rental dvd's currently. Web surfing doesn't look very good at this time. TV recording would be great, but I don't think I can tie it in with Dish Network in way that it could be used as a satv receiver/decoder. At least not yet. DirectTV may support card readers in pc's first.
I get glitches during DVD video playback, never with video files like avi's. I also learned to drop the other volume levels after having some LOUD clicks come thru during a movie. They sounded like system mouse clicks from some background app that was running. I do like PowerStrip & Dscaler, but they seem to require a fair amount of tweaking.
Anyway, thanks for any advice you could throw my way.

[c912039]

Hi Marzen,

head over to 8dim's web site to check out the add-on application that I run as the UI to control the X-Card.

This outputs the UI via the X-Card's video connectors (choice of composite/svideo/component or RGB scart). It is customizable to a certain degree.

Via the GUI I can select individual video files to replay, or the title IFO file to play an authored DVD stored on magnetic disk. Or you can select a physical DVD/CD drive to automatically play a DVD video or music cd.

The playback is silky smooth, with no glitches. As I mentioned, the EDEN embedded processor on this tiny motherboard is struggling to keep up with a Celeron 300, and yet with the hardare playback on the X-Card, the CPU hardly breaks 15% util.

When drawing the UI menu, however, the 8Dim software as to draw up the screen in meory, encode it into MPEG2, then feed it to the X-Card to decode (thats how it does the on-screen GUI interface). On my fanless system, due to the slow processor, this draweing is not as snappy as you would get with your CPU. However,once you have selected them item to play back, then the CPU doesnt do anymore work.

The digital audio out of the card is never noisy. If I have the amp at very high volume, and have just the GUI UI running, this is some background hiss, but generally, you dont need the volume up that high when viewing the 8Dim generated UI, as there is no background music playing during navigation of the UI.

By the way, you can bring the UI up and overlay a playing DVD or video file at any time.

There are some video encoding/capture/TV cards that the 8Dim software supports directly, so you can use the 8Dim GUI interface to control recording TV programs.

I keep my playback and recording functions in seperate computers, as I want the playback PC to be as quiet as posisble, so I give it as a few a tasks as possible.
For my PayTV recording, there are no PC based cards for Foxtel Digital (and never will be), so I plug the video out port of the pay tv set top box into a Hauppauge MPEG2 hardware encoder card to do my recording. I use a device called a USB UIRT which can learn and send IR signals using software like Girder. So I wrote a script that sends the correct channel switch IR commands to the set top box, and then activate the software to record via the Hauppauge card, and write the resultant captured file to my file server.

Sigma Designs do have some new Hi-Def decoder chipsets in their line-up, however I dont think they will ever make a Hi-Def version of the X-Card themselves. Rumour is that there is a European manufacturer that is likely to make Hi-Def PC cards using Sigma's chipset. This would allow you to use your existing PC to play Hi-Def files, instead of having to upgrade to 2.5 Gig or higher CPU to get a smooth software based player to behave.

Regards

[Marzen]

Thanks David, I'm going to order the Xcard tomorrow morning for use at work with some new video products. That'll really give me chance to play with it before I purchase it. I'll read up on the UI at 8dim's website. I mentioned Lobby because that's the only one I've really seen in action. Anyway thanks for all the feedback.

Cheers,
Marz