Setting up a Home Theater PC used to be a huge ordeal. Before Windows Media Center (and other all-inclusive media software), configuring a HTPC was an ongoing project as there were no standard or tested methods on achieving stability or automation. Getting a PC to ran as simply and reliably as an appliance has always been the goal of any Media PC enthusiast.
Home Theater PC enthusiasts started the trend several years ago as a way to get professional home theater features without expensive (and expansive) appliances. HTPC users were the first to enjoy progressive-scan DVD, upscaled video, MP3 jukeboxes, and PVR features before the rest of the industry. Although these features were eventually available to the consumer via home theater appliances, the HTPC is the only real “all-in-one” package. Many people still love their HTPCs, even though they haven’t been as bullet-proof as consumer appliances.
Now Windows Vista is here, and along with it a brand new Media Center. Previously Media Center 2005 was officially licensed to OEMs (and for good reason, because it was a lot harder to configure). Vista’s Media Center resolves most of these configuration issues, even with third-party “beta” drivers.
I have discovered several pitfalls when using Vista as a Media Center, and have finally resolved them through trial and error. This article is the result of my experience and informs you how to configure a stable Media Center PC.
Many media PC enthusiasts want their equipment to look and behave like official home theater equipment. PVRs and game consoles, after all, are nothing more than computers, but have achieved wide acceptance as HT appliances. Your box should be silent, have a professional look, and should operate without a keyboard and mouse… failing to do so adversely affects the SAF (Spousal Acceptance Factor) and will have your wife nagging you to buy a “real” Tivo.
There are several PC enclosures that fit the bill, but there are many more that are cheap or don’t have professional features. At a minimum I would look at cases that had a front VFD display at a minimum (LCDs tend to have viewing angle problems, and don’t look like consumer equipment IMO). The case should also have at least two front USB ports and one Firewire port. The other features are up to personal preference, but I would recommend that the case have a volume knob, a stealthed DVD drive door (preferably centered), “official” looking case feet, and an aluminum bezel. Antec’s Lifestyle Fusion HT cases are very nice, but you really can’t go wrong with a Silverstone or D-Vine cases.
I have 4 home theater PCs running, and the Silverstone GD01MX Grandia has some of the best features (although I like the look of the Silverstone LC16 better: I’m just a sucker for centered DVD drives).
Selecting the right sound card can make or break your home theater PC, and your choice depends on your speaker configuration. If you have an external amplifier, you will probably be using a SPDIF connection (a wire or optical cable that streams digital audio information directly to an external amplifier).
If you are using SPDIF, then you might think that the quality of the chips or Codec doesn’t matter. Even though the audio bypasses conversion to analog audio, cheaper chips (generally those integrated into motherboards) can cause audio skips, crackling, or video sync problems (even with Microsoft’s new MPEG audio decoder). If you are experiencing any of these issues, then you may want to check if SPDIF is enabled, even if you aren’t using it. Some audio software has the SPDIF option even if the motherboard doesn’t have a digital audio port! I have resolved nearly every one of my audio issues by using an add-on audio card and/or disabling SPDIF.
You may also choose analog connections to your speakers. Some sound cards support up to 7.1 speakers and decode Dolby Digital and DTS right on the card! You will need to set your amplifier to “External Decoder” mode, or use directly connected speakers.
DVI, HDMI, and VGA
Most video cards available today include a DVI and VGA port. Many HDTVs today include a DVI port, with newer ones favoring HDMI, and may even include a VGA port. If your new HDTV is an LCD, then there’s probably little difference between that and a computer monitor, as they are both progressive technologies. It’s best to use DVI or HDMI on an LCD or plasma display, as the video signal is completely digital from the card to output.
DVI or HDMI is the preferred video connection because the signals are completely digital from the card to final output. You want to try to minimize the conversion of digital to analog as much as possible. You will need to buy a DVI to HDMI conversion cable to connect a typical video card to your new HDTV monitor, and you will lose the audio capabilities of the HDMI cable. There are some exotic HDMI PC cards that have the audio and video integrated, but right now these are limited to OEMs.
Both ATI and nVidia’s support of HDTV has been getting better over the past few years, but the quality of older generation cards are debatable. ATI always had the lead on HDTV signaling until the nVidia 7×00 line. Prior to this, nVidia’s cards produced inconsistent HDTV output, and the 5×00 line’s HDTV support was horrible. Nowadays, any modern card will work fine on any modern display. If you have an analog HDTV (like the first rear-projection CRTs), then I would recommend ATI’s cards, as they have better HD signaling support, and have component adapters to complement the CRT’s analog nature.
Selecting your drives
If you’re planning a large media server, then you should consider that the more hard drives you add can potentially increase the noise produced. From my experience, the latest Seagate drives are the quietest ones available. Not only are the spindles quiet, but the drive mechanism can barely be heard. If you have the money, buy as large a drive as you can so that you don’t end up with 3 or 4 hard drives in your HT appliance.
If you’re really concerned about noise and heat, then use 5400 RPM drives (if you can find any). 5400RPM drives are plenty fast for media applications. Some people even use laptop hard drives in their home theaters, as they are the ultimate in silence, and produce very little heat. You can even RAID two or more laptop hard drives to get the same performance and capacity as a desktop drive, but without the noise or heat. I really wouldn’t recommend using a disk array in a HTPC, as even the slowest drives are capable of streaming even high definition content.
DVD drives can be another enemy of silence, and some are noisier than others. Newer drives spin the disc according to the data being read, so streaming video from a DVD should never sound like a plane taking off. DVD drives are so cheap nowadays that you can buy a new one if you need to, so look for a brand that has “quiet track” or other silencing technology stamped on the box somewhere.
Making a HTPC that doesn’t make a lot of noise is mostly a matter of the equipment you choose. Some modders really go overboard by using Dynamat (or other noise insulation) and rubber grommets, but most noise reduction can be achieved by choosing the right fans and third-party heatsinks. The Silverstone GDMX16 integrates silent fans and rubber insulation into its design (you can read more here).
The rule of thumb of fans still rings true in the home theater world: the bigger the fan, the quieter it is. I would consider a case that had 80mm exhaust fans over 50mm any day, no matter how silent the 50mm fans were. If you have a particularly noisy fan, they can always be silenced with a rheostat or fanbus (I wouldn’t use any 7-volt tricks or any other “ghetto” methods that could damage the power supply).
Active heatsinks are another source of noise, as they usually have very small fans. You should use a high-quality third-party heatsink over any OEM heatsink (which usually are made of aluminum). Copper heatsinks are much more efficient at sucking heat away from the chip, meaning that it can be cooled with less airflow (i.e. quiet fans). You can consider passive heatsinks if you have some creatively-placed fans that blow across several components. The copper Zalman flower coolers are silent and effective, and can be mounted on just about any motherboard. You can also find good third-party heatsinks for your video card that are quiet, and some even exhaust hot air direcly outside the case.
Pretty up the insides
Take the time to route your cables and tie them down with zip-ties or Velcro. Not only will you be satisfied that you did a professional job, but you will maximize the potential airflow in the case. Airflow is much more important in HTPCs because space is at a premium and they tend to get cramped very quickly. I would recommend using SATA drives because of their space-saving cables, but you should use rounded cables for any classic ATA drives (like your DVD drive).
Proper case placement
Make sure your HTPC is placed properly to ensure that the exhausted heat does not build up and damage any equipment. Your home theater PC should never be behind a closed door (unless you have some exotic system that draws air from your cabinet), and you should leave at least 1 to 2 inches of space at the back of the cabinet. Your HTPC should not be touching any other equipment and should be separated by shelves. If there is a shelf above your PC, make sure that either (a) there are at least 2 inches of space between the PC and the shelf, or (b) that the shelf does not touch the back of the cabinet. If your case overheats then you will experience application errors, a system crash, or even hardware failure.
Now that the hardware is installed and prepared we can begin installing Windows Vista Home Premium. We chose Home Premium edition because it includes everything we need, and nothing we don’t (the Media Center application, but don’t need remote desktop or any other of Vista’s expensive features).
If you have any parallel ATA drives, I would recommend installing Windows to that drive. Although you can install Windows to any drive you like, the boot sector must be written to the first partition of the first physical drive, and parallel ATA drives take this slot before any SATA drives are initialized. I’ve had several problems when installing Vista on SATA drives when there was a PATA drive present.
Fortunately, Vista is now included on one DVD and has the latest hardware support. The installation procedure is much quicker and incredibly simplified when compared with Windows XP. After answering a few questions, it runs pretty much unattended until it’s time to create a login account.
Installing drivers
Now we need to install the audio, video, and capture devices. This is another area where installation is greatly improved over Windows XP. Even though many Vista drivers are currently in beta, they provide enough functionality for a Media appliance. In Windows XP, I sometimes would have issues getting a particular device configured, but devices in Vista work with little or no configuration.
If using an ATI card, you will need to download the latest Catalyst drivers. Catalyst uses the dot Net framework 2.0, which conveniently has been included with Vista! You may also want to download ATI’s AVIVIO add-on for Catalyst, which allows any X1000 series card to encode and decode video in hardware (although I’m not sure if Microsoft’s decoder uses it).
If using an nVidia card, you will need to download the latest GeForce drivers for Vista. In the past you had to download (and pay for) nVidia’s MPEG decoder to enable PureVideo. I’m not sure if Microsoft takes advantage of PureVideo, but Microsoft’s MPEG decoder does a great job, and the video looks very good. Only nVidia’s 6600 line and above support PureVideo in hardware (but not the 6800 AGP as this chip was developed before PureVideo was released; 6800 PCIe works, though).
Owners of Creative’s audio cards are going to be very disappointed. The Live! Line of audio cards are no longer supported, which means no Vista drivers. You can find hacked versions of a Live! Driver online, but they only enable 2-channel audio and no EQ settings. The Audigy line and above have beta Vista drivers, but currently offer only the minimum of support. The drivers do support SPDIF audio streaming to your amplifier, but do not support onboard decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS streams (as the XP drivers do).
I eventually had success when using SPDIF with my Audigy card in Vista. When I first installed the drivers I had audio and video sync problems, but I will comment on how to troubleshoot that in the Configuration section.
One of the best front displays for home theater are the Soundgraph iMON displays, which are included with higher-end enclosures. The iMON software is tuned for home theater applications, and displays pertinent information about what is going on with Media Center… at least it does in Windows XP.
I downloaded Soundgraph’s iMON driver for Vista, and while it does install and work properly, it doesn’t seem to catch everything from the new Media Center, even when you manually switch the display mode from Auto to Media. I couldn’t get it to display the graphic equalizer either, no matter which audio channel is being monitored. The only thing the iMON will now do is cycle through system information and news. I hope this will be fixed in a driver update, as this is the only component not working on my Vista Media center.
Since your Media Center is set up to be an appliance, there’s no need to login every time it boots. You can easily enable auto-login without any additional software. Read our guide on how to enable auto-login in Vista.
Setup network shares
It’s a lot easier to edit and compress Recorded TV on another workstation than on the Media Center PC, so you should set up network shares for other PCs to see your new central media depository.
Vista’s games can be controlled with your remote
Previously in Windows XP you had to find and disable “Simple File Sharing” to share anything more than a pre-defined system folder. Now sharing directories in Vista is much easier. Just right-click the folder to share and select Properties. On the dialog window, there are two buttons: share and Advanced Sharing. Click on Advanced Sharing and select the options you want (on my network I let Everyone read, but only Administrators can write). This allows you to extract media off for editing, and push edited media onto the box.
Browsing and launching American Idol from Recorded TV
The main interface
Choose your codecs
Microsoft would love for everyone to use Windows Media for all of our videos, but this just isn’t a reality. Many of us “acquired” audio and video from other parties, and they use various different codecs.
The most popular of these are Divx and Xvid. You may also need to download and install some audio codecs for your videos to play properly, such as AC3. Vista likes to create thumbnails for all of its videos, so if the codec isn’t installed, then you’ll get an error “COM Surrogate has stopped working” or similar cryptic error (but Media Center just crashes without any explanation). If you get any weird errors when navigating to any directory where videos are found, then there’s a file in there using a codec that isn’t installed.
To determine which codec you need, try to find the offending video file (it’s probably the one without a thumbnail) and pull it into VirtualDub. Click on File, File Information, and you’ll see the error code for the missing audio or video codec. Search this error code in Google and you’ll probably find the codec you need. Most of the time if you install Xvid, Divx, and AC3 then you’ll have most of the bases covered. Make sure you get the latest version of these files, as older versions do not work in Vista.
Software DVD player?
Media Center 2005 required a third-party MPEG decoder, mostly due to licensing issues that MS didn’t want to deal with. Many of these codecs were included in third-party software DVD players (like PowerDVD and WinDVD).
Star Wars in 1080p plays smoothly
Some of the extras in Vista’s Media Center
The main interface is compacted while watching a program
Finding the right codec was an absolute nightmare. Some decoders were better than others, some had hardware support that only worked on certain video cards, and the system was flaky overall… nVidia’s PureVideo technology is nice, but is only enabled when using nVidia’s MPEG decoder (available for a nominal fee), and many people had problems with it crashing on several 6×00 boards. Depending on the audio and video combination, users would experience audio dropouts, video sync problems, and even random crashes… things that an expensive appliance should not do.
Microsoft has finally included their own MPEG decoder for audio and video with Vista Media Center. Since MS controls the codec, you no longer get those annoying “the broadcaster has restricted playback on this PC” messages. The decoder also does a lot of things automatically, so there are no complicated settings to mess up. If you set up Media Center to use digital output and select 5.1 speakers, then it will output Dolby Digital over SPDIF whenever it encounters the stream. If you configure it to use digital output and only specify 2 speakers, then it will only output a stereo PCM stream.
Your video is now full-screen behind the new Guide
Before I figured this trick out, I had a hard time getting audio to work properly. I had installed PowerDVD 7 (which was my codec of choice on Media Center 2005) and had audio and video sync problems, even when I hacked Media Center to use PowerDVD’s codecs. You no longer have to install a software DVD player to play DVDs in Vista Media Center; in fact this third-party software can actually interfere.
I’m not sure if Microsoft’s MPEG decoder uses hardware acceleration (PowerDVD 7 detects ATI’s AVIVIO and nVidia’s PureVideo automatically), but video runs smoothly and looks as good as any other codec. Even high-definition 1080p files played smoothly on an Athlon 3000+.
In summary: Just use the default Microsoft MPEG decoder. It’s free and works great.
Now that the software and drivers are installed, you can begin to tweak Vista’s new Media Center. One of the first things you’ll notice it the improved interface. It looks a little more complicated at first, but the usability is greatly improved. Basically instead of drawing each pixel on the screen, Vista draws window and video information to an off-screen “texture”, which can be manipulated by 3d acceleration hardware (which is why you will never see any more window “tearing” in Vista).
Media Center can now take advantage of Vista’s new UI system, which uses your video card’s hardware acceleration for everything. Tactile response is greatly improved, as selected video thumbnails fluidly shrink and grow like a button when selected, and support awesome overlay and transparency effects, all without taxing the main processor.
Digital music is also greatly improved. Media Center 2005 had major problems with it’s MP3 database, and could literally take 5 minutes or longer to load up the audio catalog, and would automatiacally insert its own genres of music (I have my music organized into 15 general categories, but Media Center would introduce 100 more).. Radio support was also very limited, only allowing 9 station presets, with no labeling.
Radio interface is still simple, but much improved
Vista’s Music support is greatly improved… the MP3 catalog loads up instantly, has better search and organization options, and album art is now an essential part of the interface. Over-the-air Radio support is now much more enjoyable. The interface allows for labels of station presets, time-shifting, and is actually a functional radio rather than a novelty. There are many more features that make Vista’s Media Center better than any other Media package currently available. Microsoft has done an excellent job and fixed nearly every gripe I had with Media Center 2005.
In Media Center 2005 I would install extra games, patches, DVD writing support, configure video options, and do many other tweaks to get Media Center functional. None of these things are required with Vista’s Media Center. Nearly everything you could want is included. You may want to install a third-party web radio program onto Media Center, but that’s really about it.
Game Ex
The one essential third-party Media Center component is GameEx, a front-end interface to MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). This thing has so many features that it can be a standalone media center, and even supports video features that even Media Center doesn’t have (like FFDShow).
GameEx requires the dot net framework 2.0, which is included with Vista so installation is very simple. Configuring MAME can take a little time, as there are lots of options, but the step-by-step configuration wizard walks you through it. It even supports Daphe (an emulator for laser-disc games like Dragon’s Lair) and can be configured to support any other command-line emulator.
GameEx’s MAME interface is expansive, and is a virtual database of arcade information. Not only can you find games by genre, manufacturer, year, controller type or graphic type, but it also supports photos of the arcade cabinets, marquees, manuals, flyers, and even intergrates screen artwork with the game! If anything else, GameEx is the Encyclopedia Galactica of classic video games.
Oh, and since it’s Windows Vista, your Xbox 360 controllers plug right in and just work without any additional software.
Conclusion
Most of the time to install your Vista Media Center is in choosing and installing the right hardare.
At first I had my doubts about this new Media Center. I did run into a few problems with Vista initially (mostly getting Dolby Digital to work without skipping), but even these “beta” drivers installed more trouble-free than some of XP’s “mature” drivers. Installing Media Center 2005 used to be a weekend ordeal, even when I knew everything to be done. I can now get a Vista Media Center up and working from start to finish within 3 hours. The only problem to iron out is a crash when Media Center tries to create a thumbnail of a video without the proper codecs.
Vista Media Center is not just a minor improvement from Media Center 2005, but a worthwhile and substantial upgrade, and is much easier to configure and manage. It is the most stable version yet, and has lots of eye candy and usability improvements. If you have a Home Theater PC, then Vista Home Premium Edition is worth the upgrade.