HTPC Update

Since the last of the movies will be converted and on the Media Server when I get home from work today, I thought I would give a bit of an update on this HUGE project, as well as lessons learned.

Storage space became an issue. In trying to find a balance between video quality and file size, I eventually settled on a method using DVD Decrypter and Handbrake that takes about 15MB per minute of video. I had severely underestimated the amount of space I would need for all of the television episodes that I have. I don’t have any kind of TV signal at the house, so my tendency is to wait until late summer and buy the season I just missed on DVD. This is kind of a mixed blessing. I don’t have to sit through any commercials, and I get to see what happens next week immediately, but since most TV series end on a cliff hanger, I have to wait almost a whole year to see how it is resolved rather than just the summer hiatus. As far as space goes, a one hour television episode runs about 42 minutes of actual episode. So that mean 42 minutes x 15MB per  minute = 630MB per episode. An average season of television is 22 episodes, so 22 episodes x 630MB per episode = 13.86GB per season. And of course, there are more than one season for each show, so for NCIS, for instance, that has 5 seasons out on DVD, that’s almost 70GB for just one show. I have MANY shows. Needless to say, I ran out of space on the 1.5TB drive before I got done converting all my DVD’s. I ordered a second 1.5TB drive, and it is now in the process of filling up. The movies are complete, only three shelves of TV shows left to do.

In hindsight, there is a much easier, and a bit cheaper solution. When I started this project, I wanted to have HDMI video and audio from the PC to the TV. This is what made me go with a home built computer to hold everything. I wasnt paying enough attention to what was out there. The AppleTV has HDMI out and supports full 1080p resolution. NewEgg.com currently has a four drive Network Attached Storage device with 4 1TB drives pre-installed in a RAID 5 array. I could have bought both of these for about $500 less than what I have spent already, and had the same amount of storage space, but with some safeguards for the data. I don’t have any data safeguards at this point, so if I lose a drive, I have to start this conversion process all over again. And keep in mind, I have been converting discs for the better part of three months.

The AppleTV has advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage in my mind is how it displays your files if you haven’t bought or rented them through the iTunes store. Basically, you just see file names, which isn’t very informative if all your files are labeled with the show name and numbers indicating what season and the episode. XBMC is much better at this, downloading cover art and movie/TV information, and displaying it in an attractive front end. The advantage of AppleTV is that you can load XBMC onto an AppleTV and have it show as an option under the regular software. The disadvantage of this is the XBMC doesn’t take advantage of the AppleTV’s built in hardware video decoder. This means that high definition video doesn’t play very well on the AppleTV through the XBMC front end. I am pretty sure that if you play those files in the AppleTV menu, it will use the decoder, and make full 1080p files run smoothly.

I think that eventually, I will replace what I have going as a HTPC with the NAS/AppleTV solution. This will give me the data integrity that I need, and make the entertainment center look a bit nicer. Then I can use the motherboard from the HTPC to build a better gaming system. The two 1.5TB drives will be saved until the price drops a bit more, then I will get 3 more matching drives and build another NAS. I will need the space if I start converting my Blu-Ray stuff.

The HTPC Project: Implementation

I posted before regarding my plans to build a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) and use it as a media server. I had done considerable reading on the subject, and knew in my head what it was I wanted the system to be capable of. The requirements were fairly simple: It had to fit in my entertainment center, it had to look nice, it had to have a lot of storage space for movies, music and pictures, and it had to connect to my HDTV using a HDMI cable. I wanted a clean look, and the single HDMI cable connecting to my TV for both video and audio was a big plus. My build would have only three cables connecting the HTPC, power, video/audio, and network.

I ordered the following from Newegg.com, a place I highly recommend.

• Zotac 8300 AMD motherboard
• AMD Athlon X2 5200 CPU
• 4GB of Kingston DDR2 800 memory
• Lite-On DVD drive/burner
• hec Micro ATX HTPC case w/power supply
• Seagate 1.5TB hard drive
• nMedia Wireless keyboard/remote combo

After it all arrived, I assembled the PC in the very tight case and fired it up. The next two days (thank god for long weekends) were spent experimenting with various operating systems trying to find the proper balance between operation of the PC for watching movies, plus the fastest method to convert my DVD’s into files for the media center to use.

I started by loading the 64-bit version of Windows XP. I did this mainly because I would be able to load Ubuntu later and have it as a dual boot. I wanted the 64 bit under the theory that it would handle the conversion process quicker than a 32 bit OS. After loading windows and all the drivers, I had a full 1920×1080 resolution desktop on my TV, and audio being carried over the single HDMI cable. So far, so good. I had previously ripped a two hour movie to my main PC’s hard drive to use as the benchmark, and that PC was able to convert the movie in about 4 1/2 hours. I loaded up Handbrake and changed the video profile to match what I had been doing on the main PC, and kicked off the conversion. The method I was using was a two stage process, and the first stage was running about 70% faster on the new system. Strangely, the second stage ran about 20% slower than my older system. Overall, there was no advantage to the 64 bit OS. I attribute this to the fact that there is no native 64 bit version of Handbrake for windows, so that process was running in an emulator. Ultimately, the conversion process failed after about two and half hours, so it was a no go.

Next came the 64 Bit version of Ubuntu. I installed that and downloaded the 64 bit version of Handbrake for Linux. The conversion rate for that was a little better than it was for the 64 bit windows, and did not fail. I ran into a bigger problem with Ubuntu, however. While the manufacturer of the video card does offer video drivers for the Linux platform, they don’t support the audio over HDMI. I found a lot of tips and tricks to make it work, but each of them I tried would crash the system hard. I didn’t want to build a tinkering system, I just wanted one that would be easy to set up and maintain. I gave up on Ubuntu since I needed the audio over HDMI.

I loaded a copy of 32-bit Windows XP and got all the updates and drivers loaded, and ran the conversion process again. It was the same speed as the 64 bit Windows, so I decided to stick with it. At this point, I started doing some more experimentation with the Handbrake settings, and found that I could get comparable picture quality out of a different preset,and it reduced the conversion time considerably. Rather than a 2.5 to one ratio between conversion time to “watch time,” meaning a two hour movie took about 5 hours to encode, this was closer to real time, one minute of conversion time to one minute of view time. I also decided to try a different Media Center software package, as the one I was using on the Mac in the bedroom was still in closed alpha, and I didn’t have an invite. I went with XBMC, which is the basis for the Boxee I was using on the Mac.

XBMC is the best Media Center software I have found, bar none. After playing with it on the HTPC for a while, I went into the bedroom and downloaded the Mac version and deleted Boxee. I started doing DVD rips on the HTPC, but with a different method. XBMC will play ISO files. An ISO is a image of a DVD. These files take up a LOT more space on the drive, but the conversion factor is about 5 times faster. With 1.3TB of space available, I wanted to have my movies on line more than I wanted to save space. The old method was literally going to take a year of conversion time. The way XBMC handles TV episodes in ISO files was not to my liking, so I am still going to convert them the old way, but I was able to get three times as many movies viewable on the HTPC in two days as what took two weeks before.

My method now is to rip the DVD into an ISO, let XBMC put it into its library so I can watch it. I rip a shelf worth of DVD’s at a time, this usually takes one evening after work. Then, I queue up about 8 movies worth in Handbrake to do the conversion to the smaller files when I go to bed, and they are done when I get home from work the next day. Then I can use the HTPC to actually watch movies in the evening, and queue up 8 more for the next night.

This is the most fun I have had with a computer since I got the new version of Delicious Library for my Mac. That is, until I was searching for a right angle USB adapter so I could sit the computer in my Entertainment Center the right way and stumbled across another HTPC case that I like better. The worst part, one of the cutomer reviews made the comment that it fits perfectly in his entertainment center, the same one I have. I guess I will order one of those eventually. I really like the way it looks.