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BrianG · 03.16.2012, 11:17 AM

Little update:

Got all the PC parts in, put it together, and installed most of the immediate software last night. Everything seems to be working fine so far.

I ended up using Media Browser, which is a plug-in for Windows Media Center. This is probably the best plug-in I've found bar none! Even though I just have a pile of DVD ISO files, this plugin automatically downloads all the metadata for each movie (includes DVD cover image, synopsis, ratings, actors, etc). So, I don't have to do anything special to manage the library - I just drag-n-drop new movies as I get/rip them and the background service part of the plug-in does the rest. Using the meta data the program creates, it allows you to search for a movie by actor, title, year, genre, etc - which is really nice if you have lots and lots of movies. If a particular movie has the wrong picture associated with it, just change the ISO file name to match what you'd find on IMDB or whatever and MediaBrowser will automatically get the right metadata for it. Cool! It is set up to use Daemon tools as the default ISO mounting software, but can be set to use whatever software you want.

The TV tuner setup works well too. Quality is so-so, but I'm on analog cable, so that's to be expected. It's really only for the wife's cooking shows or for the kids to watch Dora, Sesame Street, or whatever, so it's fine. When setting up the TV tuner in Media Center, it found that my cable provider already has a TV guide service it can use, so I didn't need to go find any kind of special software after all. I can schedule recordings, record on the fly, "pause" live tv - basically all the things TiVo does, but better and free. And even when recording shows, the tuner card (WinTVR-2250) has built-in MPEG hardware en/decoding so CPU usage is very very low.

Also installed a few simple/older games for the kids to play: Microsoft Flight, Midtown Madness 2, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, etc. Even running at full 1920x1080 resolution with AA and AF turned up, game play is as smooth as silk (helps that these are older titles). And after about 30 minutes of play, CPU temps got no higher than 42*C according to CoreTemp.

Physically mounting this box was a bit of a chore though. As it uses a regular mid-size tower, the depth is about 5" more than the shelf it is sitting in. So, I had to make a new shelf that was deeper and move the whole entertainment center out a few inches. I want to replace the dual glass doors with something that is lockable (to keep little kids out) and then cut out part of the new door to install a hefty screen (expanded metal?) to still allow adequate airflow. And speaking of kids, I didn't connect the reset button and set up the power button to "do nothing" when pressed in case they get clicked by inquisitive little fingers.

Next, I'll install IIS (with ASP), MySQL, and get the intranet site set up. Then I get to really start tinkering to see about transcoding! Should be fun.

	(#44)
BrianG RC-Monster Admin Offline Posts: 14,609 Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Des Moines, IA	03.16.2012, 11:17 AM Little update: Got all the PC parts in, put it together, and installed most of the immediate software last night. Everything seems to be working fine so far. I ended up using Media Browser, which is a plug-in for Windows Media Center. This is probably the best plug-in I've found bar none! Even though I just have a pile of DVD ISO files, this plugin automatically downloads all the metadata for each movie (includes DVD cover image, synopsis, ratings, actors, etc). So, I don't have to do anything special to manage the library - I just drag-n-drop new movies as I get/rip them and the background service part of the plug-in does the rest. Using the meta data the program creates, it allows you to search for a movie by actor, title, year, genre, etc - which is really nice if you have lots and lots of movies. If a particular movie has the wrong picture associated with it, just change the ISO file name to match what you'd find on IMDB or whatever and MediaBrowser will automatically get the right metadata for it. Cool! It is set up to use Daemon tools as the default ISO mounting software, but can be set to use whatever software you want. The TV tuner setup works well too. Quality is so-so, but I'm on analog cable, so that's to be expected. It's really only for the wife's cooking shows or for the kids to watch Dora, Sesame Street, or whatever, so it's fine. When setting up the TV tuner in Media Center, it found that my cable provider already has a TV guide service it can use, so I didn't need to go find any kind of special software after all. I can schedule recordings, record on the fly, "pause" live tv - basically all the things TiVo does, but better and free. And even when recording shows, the tuner card (WinTVR-2250) has built-in MPEG hardware en/decoding so CPU usage is very very low. Also installed a few simple/older games for the kids to play: Microsoft Flight, Midtown Madness 2, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, etc. Even running at full 1920x1080 resolution with AA and AF turned up, game play is as smooth as silk (helps that these are older titles). And after about 30 minutes of play, CPU temps got no higher than 42*C according to CoreTemp. Physically mounting this box was a bit of a chore though. As it uses a regular mid-size tower, the depth is about 5" more than the shelf it is sitting in. So, I had to make a new shelf that was deeper and move the whole entertainment center out a few inches. I want to replace the dual glass doors with something that is lockable (to keep little kids out) and then cut out part of the new door to install a hefty screen (expanded metal?) to still allow adequate airflow. And speaking of kids, I didn't connect the reset button and set up the power button to "do nothing" when pressed in case they get clicked by inquisitive little fingers. Next, I'll install IIS (with ASP), MySQL, and get the intranet site set up. Then I get to really start tinkering to see about transcoding! Should be fun.