Fun and Games

[c9]

Devices:

• plain old boring TV; no bloody A, B, C, or HD.
• rather fancier than it needs to be set of rabbit ears (modern rabbit ears look more like a radar installation on a battleship actually)
• DVD player
• CD player
• VCR
• Nintendo 64
• Amp
• Work laptop (sometimes, but often left at work)
• Desktop with Media Centre (currently installed but overheats)
• IR Receiver for Media Centre Remote
• Harmony universal remote

Interfaces:

• RCA Audio (Red and White)
  
• RCA Video (Yellow)
• Fibre audio
• Component video (currently cheating and using three RCA cables for this; I know, I know)
• S-Video
• VGA & HDMI (not in use)

Frustration level:

• High

Comments

[lifein2x3.livejournal.com]

plain old boring TV; no bloody A, B, C, or HD.

TNG - Relics. I am officially a geek. :)

[c9.livejournal.com]

teehee

[thespos]

That made me giggle, too. :-)

[quicktongue.livejournal.com]

Guilty.


Nice use of TNG Humour too.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

/me points at you and laughs.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Don't just stand there; fix it!

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

OK. You're duplicating effort. Ditch the DVD player and the CD player and use the media centre PC instead.

Might want to stop it from overheating first -- maybe a nice HTPC case? I have this one (or a similar one, I can't tell), and it shipped with a bunch of nice, quiet fans pre-installed. Of course, that costs money; if that's not in the cards, maybe just an extra fan or two. They're cheap. Might also be time to re-apply all your heatsync grease.

If you don't have enough composite connections on your TV for the VCR and Nintendo, you can buy a cheap switchbox at Radio Slack for not much money. If you go a little higher-end on that, you can get one with an IR receiver in it that you can control with your Harmony.

I'm assuming you're using composite out from the HTPC to the TV -- what kind of video card do you have in there? There are DVI-component adapters that work with some cards -- you're best off checking with the manufacturer of your video card for that.

Or am I missing the point? What exactly is it you're frustrated by?

[c9.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm so trapped in the past. "Enough composite connections" -- you're funny. My TV has 1 s-vid, 1 composite, 1 RCA vid, 1 coax. :)

The frustration is mostly that I built an HTPC and it's going to melt, noisily. I think I need a better case, cooler components in the case, and better ventilation inside the stereo cabinet.

Wiring and remote control has lots of frustration potential, but that'll probably be fine. I just want everything on one remote (should be easy) and everything wired properly. I think the noise and heat of the HTPC are the only issue.

Video is BFG6600 AGP (but the cheap version, not the BFG-branded one).

What CPU and video do you have in that case, and how hot does it get?

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

I'm cheating a bit there. I got an el-cheapo MB/CPU combo from NCIX with a mobile Athlon 2800+ on it, so it runs rather cooler than a desktop part, and it's underclocked to 800MHz thanks to speedstep. There's only one HD in the machine, as my media is all stored on the NAS. It runs about 30C, but it's not enclosed -- it looks nice, so why enclose it?

Now, before I had the mobile part, I was running an Athlon 1800+ with a 200GB HD for local storage. It was enclosed, and it was running about ~40C. Still ran fine though.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

[root@kane ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 8
model name : Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP-M Processor 2800+
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts fid vid ttp
bogomips : 1600.90

[root@kane ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:05.0 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] RAID bus controller 180 SATA/PATA [SiS] (rev 01)
00:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 07)
00:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
00:0b.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] (rev c1)

[c9.livejournal.com]

Ahh, sneaky. Is the CPU able to keep up with everything OK?

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

Behold the power(saving) of Linux -- under load, the CPU automatically steps up to full bore, 1600MHz. But it still doesn't melt :)

One potential way to save money on a CPU is to buy an Hauppage PVR-250 card -- it has on-board MPEG-2 encoding, which means you can get away with a much leaner CPU. Then again, with the cost of CPUs being what it is (low), there's probably not any savings to be had there if you already have a tuner card.

As you can see from my lspci, you can get away with much less in the graphics card department if the 6600 is kicking out too much heat. The 440 chipset is passively cooled. Then again, this assumes MythTV; I have no idea what requirements MCE has.

[c9.livejournal.com]

I have the Hauppage 150, not sure what it has.

The 6600 may be hot, I haven't checked it specifically, but it comes with a big fan at least. It's required for MCE. Last time I tried MythTV it couldn't handle my old video card (IIRC). Haven't tried since.

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

The 150 doesn't have hardware encoding, but it's a very nice card regardless. Linux will handle the 6600 easily (it's what I'm using on my desktop). You need to install the nvidia proprietary display drivers to get TV-out working. Ubuntu ships the nvidia driver as a package, making for pain-free installation.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Will Ubuntu+Myth understand my existing IR receiver (it came with the Hauppage). Or will it require convincing?

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

There may be some configuration involved, but since the PVR-150 is one of the most popular tuner cards out there, I'm sure someone's done it before.

I'm going to try getting my remote working next weekend; I'll let you know how it goes :)