Building the ultimate A/V component? 47
ibbey writes "The recent articles on hacking Tivo have me thinking... What would it take to assemble a combination PVR, DVD, MP3, CD, Web browsing system? Assembling the basic components is simple enough: Reasonably fast PC, ATI All-in-Wonder video card, DVD player, big hard drive, etc., all connected to a nice TV. But what about things like a remote control? Who want's a DVD/PVR without a remote? A wireless keyboard would work, but would be less then ideal. How about Dolby Digital output? Anything special needed? What other features are needed/wanted in such a system?"
What about the case? (Score:1)
AND doesn't cost $200 for the case alone?
Re:Home Theatre PC (Score:1)
More to add (Score:1)
Re:Home Theatre PC (Score:1)
I've got that (Score:1)
I also have a Sound Blaster Live with a daughterboard that provides among other things dolby digital i/o. Right now I've settled for A set of 6 Cambridge SoundWorks speakers but plan to upgrade to that neat little Bowse set.
And a nice DVD drive that reads just about everything including VCD and even CDi.
For a kind of remote I use a Gravis Xterminator. I have it programmed so it works good for TV and DVD software. however I ussually keep a crib nearby which is especcially handy when entering numbers. A better option is in the plan. There is software for Plam and PocketPC devices that let you create you own GUI interfaces and use them like universal remotes. It use the IR port on the device. There even also such software for Gameboy. This would work with my computer and every other device in the house with a remote (TVs, VCRs, Laser Disc Player)
I have a cable/IDSN/56k hybrid modem that lets me view 300k movies from places like iFilm and AtomFilms. I doubt I'll be seeing Episode II with it, but all the great classics are fast becomming available for internet download. Just to name a few off the top of my head: Metropolis, Nosforatu and Gold Rush. Try not to read anything into it that those are all silent films, there *is* sound and color available.
At one time I wanted a CD changer but then MP3 came along. I bought a 20gig hard drive instead. It cost me less and is a better way all arround.
Right now I just have a normal 20inch monitor (1600x1200) but it delievers a much better picture than any TV I have, especially with DVD. Once again I have plans to upgrade to a HDTV projector when I can find a deal. I picked up a nifty set of devices from Radio Shack to beam everything from my computer to any room in the house.
Bottom line is that I have mostly computer based entertainment system (Laser Disc and VRCs seperate) that works for me and, that believe it or not, cost less than buying traditional componets separately. But I will be the first to admit this is not for everyone. Right now everything operates through windoze and that means the blue screen of death pops up along with hardware conflicts and not enough memory errors. The plan is to eventually run it all with Linux. It is a hig maintenence system and often when your in the mode for seeing a DVD it just won't work and you have to settle for an internet film instead, or visaversa. Or other times (like right now) it's in the shop. If your looking for the highest quality and don't want to work on it every day, get the stand alone componets.
Re:Been there... (Score:1)
They're still saying they will be releasing it, but the wintv-d came out last October!
Oh, pci bandwidth is not relevent. The HDTV-out is from the card, and all these kinds of cards use a technique called "vga overlay". The vga signal passes thru the card before going to a monitor.
Re:Been there... (Score:2)
The problem that I see with this? Sound cards. (Score:1)
The idea is good, but the execution needs to be refined before I would do it.
For those who think I'm anal, and have some disposable income, check out HeadRoom [headphone.com]. I recommend the Sennheiser HD600's with any of their amps, plugged into any reasonable preamp.
Remote Control (Score:1)
Re:remote control, etc (Score:1)
linux drivers (Score:1)
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Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:2)
Re:Wait, it shouldn't be that difficult... (Score:1)
Steve.
Done That (Score:1)
Re:linux drivers (Score:1)
In terms of video capture, the ATI Radeon uses a very similar setup as the Rage 128 All-in-wonder. Im not sure, but I do believe it is if not the same chip, a very close one to the Rage 128 All-in-Wonder, which is currently supported by gatos, so it is possible that the Radeon All-in-Wonder, will be supported by gatos almost out of box.
So, there is no support right now, even though almost all features on the card seem to have possible/plausible support, except perhaps MPEG decoding. (But its not even on sale yet, so its kindof neat talking about it almost like their was...) In fact, the Radeon 64/32mb ddr cards are both sold out on shopati, and I haven't found ANY in stores yet. So, you'll have to wait till early-mid september to get one most likely.
For more information, check on the ATI lists, and gatos/dri lists and homepages.
Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
Re:remote control, etc (Score:1)
Yes. Sony DVP-CX850 [sony.com]. 200 CD/DVD changer, nice on-screen catalogue, loads of different outputs on the back, very good quality audio and video playback, PC keyboard input (though it's not clear if you can CONTROL it like this, or just use it to enter names of tracks and discs)
As far as I know, it's the only DVD changer that manages anything like that number of discs.
Lovely-looking beastie - I have one on order through staff sales! :-)
Re:What about the case? (Score:1)
Cheep,
Fits your needs,
Right here, right now (eg, not building it yourself)
My mp3 player (Score:2)
I also have a remote mouse which came with the scan converter, but unfortunately no remote keyboard - though i would suggest one of those keyboards with the mouse built-in.
This meant i could watch TV fullscreen or in a window via the BT848, play MP3s with mpg123 & LIRC (remote buttons worked for stepping through tracks and selecting playlists) and surf the web/chat on IRC at the same time on the same screen. I also had the playstation plugged into the BT848s composite input so i could play PSX on the same screen or in a window with the click of a mouse.
Was fun, great for the 'wow factor' but somewhat fiddly without extensive desktop and application customisation to increase font sizes etc.
I've since torn the setup apart, and just use the P200 as a general purpose PC.
But this stuff is all quite doable, a lot of fun, and linux is a great platform to do it on.
Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
You're right that most of them have IR headers, but this is IRDA. It is not compatible with normal consumer IR signals like those found in remote controls.
Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
This had been part of the plan until I got my FPS2000 speakers a couple months ago. The FPS 2000 is the four-speaker equivalent of the system you mention, and built from the same components, just without the Dolby Digital decoder. Unfortunately, they suck. They sound notably inferior to the FPS 1000's, which cost about half as much. Just goes to show you, paying more doesn't mean you get more, even from the same company.
Affordable hardware MPG encoder... for linux? (Score:1)
I once purchased the Dazzle DVC encoder, which only does MPEG1, but does it in realtime in hardware, which actually makes it usable on a normal basis. [Capturing 2 gigs of raw video, only to spend 6 hours compressing it, is too much work except for something very special]
Unfortunately, there is no linux driver for the Daz DVC, (which is why I rarely if ever use it anymore, sadly). It plugs in through the parallel port, so it shouldn't be -that- hard to reverse engineer.
Still, seems like it might be wasted effort, when MPEG2 [and, hopefully, soon MPEG4] will be standard into the future.
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man sig
Re:remote control, etc (Score:1)
Been there... (Score:2)
P3-800/Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/128 Mb PC133 SDRAM
ATI PC2TV
Pioneer DVD-ROM/Sigma Hollywood+
Hauppauge WinTV-D
Cable modem thru a linux firewall.
Toshiba TW40x81 HDTV (upto 1080i)
Yamaha RX-V1 Digital Receiver.
Linn AV51 Speakers
The Toshiba remote controls the TV/VCR and is programmable for the HDTV remote. It controls the WinDVD thru programmable IRMAN (works great for DVD's and CD's!) Wireless AirBoard for keyboard control of surfing, screensavers, and other digital media.
Waiting for:
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder (next version includes DTV and HDTV-out/component connections)
DC/Pro 24/96 (for dvd-audio)
-Radeon AIW will be an amazing card with TIVO-like quality and functionality.
-Hauppauge's WinTV-D card displays HDTV in downsampled 480P format, but digital decoded sound thru Yamaha 6 channel input sounds great. It seems they are not releasing their WinTV-HD for proprietary reasons - which has really been the whole sad story for all these digital media on PC's. This has been a major project of mine for almost a year. It's been an incredible pain with windows, and proprietary roadblocks, and running cool yet quiet... Next challenge is getting everything to work under linux.
Features.. (Score:1)
Aside from that immature comment (I just hadda get it outta my system) I think that it should have these features:
DVD/VCD support
Mpeg player
10/100 Ethernet connection with software to allow it to talk to ANY system
CD player
MP3 CD support
DVD audio support
MP3 ethernet player (I.E. plays MP3's over ethernet connection)
Optical output
Surround sound support
Digital tuner
HDTV support
Switchbox capability (switch between other dedicated devices for audio/video)
A cool looking remote
And having a low price tag would be nice, but with all those features I think it is unfeasible
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net [nerdnetwork.net]
Re:Wait, it shouldn't be that difficult... (Score:1)
What I'm doing... (Score:1)
If the latter, then that is something I'm working on now... And I'm hoping a bog standard P166 with a Realmagic Hollywood Plus, DVD drive, big HD and ethernet should be all thats required!
I'll need to get a surround sound speaker set for the full effect, and I'm not sure about the audio side of the PC - does the HW+ handle it? But it looks like a fun, geeky and (considering I already have most of the H/w) relatively cheap experiment!
remote control, etc (Score:4)
As for Dolby Digital, I'll bet that some high end sound cards support it, but I have no links to back this up. Also, Linux support may very well not exist for these. (hmm, I'm assuming you would be running Linux but you don't say... however this is /. afterall) ;-)
For other features, networking is a must, to control it from elsewhere and perhaps to get program data like the Tivo does. I've always envisioned my house of the future having a central audio server somewhere with all my CDs as high quality MP3s. Then in each room would be some sort of networked terminal for song selection, and a pair of speakers connected to the server's sound card. Have as many sound cards as rooms where you potentially want to have something different playing at the same time. The same could be done with video. I suppose someday soon disk space will be cheap enough that we'll store terabytes of DVD video the same way we store gigs of MP3s now.
Then, it'll need intelligent software to control it. The software should take command-line input, gui input, networked input from remote clients, ir remote control input, and of course, voice input. Fast search/play capabilities are a must, but a menu-driven UI could be available for those who want it. My current system at home [216.86.198.119] (not quite the audio server described above, but slowly getting there) has a custom perl script I wrote that plays songs, albums, etc based on regular expression searches. So rather than wading through a menu to get to Rock -> Van Halen -> 1984 -> Hot For Teacher, I can simply type "playmp3 ^Hot" and it will play everything that matches. Great convenience. Same thing for playing movies on DVD (hmm, do they make 200-disc DVD changers or anything like that?) and selecting TV programs to watch.
Just some random ideas, that's all I have to say...
Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
And for audio, get an SBLive! with a LiveDrive2 or Digital I/O Card 2 - It has Optical and Coax in/out for digital sound. I don't think it's Dolby digital.. I'm not sure how well 4 speakers works with it, I've never used it. (I have one, but I only use the optical output for my Minidisc recorder). Then again, you wouldn't have to worry about the output, really. Get the $300 Cambridge Soundworks digital home theater system (which I have, excellent speaker set) and you've got digital sound. The digital input should handle DVD audio fine. Granted, if you want to input from more than two digital sources (one optical, one coax) you're SOL.
It would make a decent all-purpose AV system though.
If anyone has more info on Dolby Digital with SBLive, let me know, I'm interested.
Sounds Like My Coffee Table (Score:2)
Re:remote control, etc (Score:1)
Also, I haven't played around too much with the SBLive linux drivers.. they play sound, and that's fine for me. I don't think they are open source, but I could be wrong. I haven't looked into it in a while.
The software would be the easy part - making all the hardware work together and function how you want it to seems harder.
there are AV alternatives already on market (Score:2)
It goes beyond any of the units (in speed for sure!) I have seen with its AMD Athlon 800 MHz processor. As noted by another 'Slashdotter' it features an ATI All-in-Wonder card which really rocks the video aspect. A Soundbaster Live coupled with 4 Cambridge speakers provides a Dolby Digital Surround experience.
It comes stock with 56k modem but I was able to negotiate for an Ethernet adapter for high speed connectivity. The only drawback may be the wireless keyboard but there may be IR options built into the motherboard that can be advantageous.
I think it's quite humorous that Apple brings out the G4 Cube touting it as a new and revolutionary threatening to sue competitors while Equtek [equtek.com] has had their E-Qube since early November 99' (I've had mine since February)! I guess it clearly shows that marketing might resides in the all-mighty dollar!
LinuxHTPC project - Debian based distro (Score:4)
I'm just about to start work on LinuxHTPC - a Debian GNU/Linux based Home Theatre PC distribution.
Probably the best source of information is the AVScience HTPC forum:
Basically the hardware to go for at the moment is either an SBLive Value with digital out or a 24bit 96kHz audio card (such as Delta Dio 2496) and the Geforce2 Ultra. Some of the GeForce cards are able to handle HD material with their HVDP chipset, but NVidia admitted that some 1080i material wasn't performing too well and hence the Ultra.
The SBLive has a problem though - the digital out is not a true SP/DIF output and so has nothing in the way of voltage constraints. It is possible to damage an expensive receiver.
The Delta Dio 2496 (aka DCPro2496 at Digital Connection) provided both coaxial and optical inputs and outputs and RCA analogue outs. This is the one to go for, but I haven't been able to confirm the functionality of the current Alsa drivers, let alone save enough for the card yet.
Both audio cards can output Dolby Digital and DTS, but native 44.1kHz audio can only be handled by the Dio - the SBLive upsamples everything to 48kHz and hence introduces all sorts of jitter and artifact problems.
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niall@holbytla.org
Re:Wait, it shouldn't be that difficult... (Score:1)
I hate to say it, since I detest Windows, but I suspect you're wrong. All the software I need already exists on Windows. The ATI card mentioned includes the PVR software, which, as you say, is the toughest part. If it wasn't for the hardware support, Linux would be FAR superior to Windows due to it's simple scriptability & better networking. But, until Linux get's support for DVD & PVR, I don't see a way to NOT do this on Windows. Grrr.
As far as the video card... How do I drive the TV without a video card? And, as previously mentioned, the SBLive doesn't do Dolby Digital... Just PCM-- which isn't useful to me. You're final conclusion, though seems right in line with what I've figured. My initial calculations put a well configured, but not loaded system at about $1000, loaded, it's closer to $1500.
Re:Infrared/Digital Output (Score:1)
Home Theatre PC (Score:1)
There is also talk about tweaking the G400 [matrox.com] into displaying HDTV signals from DVD's. I have yet to find a card that exploits this, but according to the documentation on the GeForce2 [nvidia.com], it should be able to display in all HDTV modes (480p to 1080i)as well as record HDTV !!
Re:Sounds Like My Coffee Table (Score:1)
A killer system using off the shelf parts.... (Score:1)
Sure, it'll cost a fortune, but at least it doesn't run Windows! : P
Re:Done That (Score:1)
Sounds good, but it appears to lack one of the key features: PVR (Tivo) features. If they added that, it would be VERY close to what I want.
Re:remote control, etc (Score:1)
Thanks for the link!
FreeVo? (Score:1)
Great Ask Slashdot - Dolby 5.1 Question (Score:1)
Re:Sounds Like My Coffee Table (Score:1)
Re:LinuxHTPC project - Debian based distro (Score:1)
Oh and I should stress that software based solutions are only really appropriate for progressive displays - RGB monitors and projectors or progressive DTV with an RGBHV->component converter. Watching DVDs upsampled to 1920x1080p at 120Hz on a big fucking screen is awesome :-)
If you want to output to an interlaced TV stick with a hardware decoder card with s-video output.
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niall@holbytla.org
Dolby Digital on SBLive? (Score:3)
You DO however have to make sure your sound card has that feature first of all (Some Aureal A3D and AC97 Codec's have them... not many but some do)
Check out Turtle Beach's site for the Aureal cards... Also I think (but not sure) Cirrus Logic makes a AC97 chipset (I can hear the EWW's right now) that is used in a pretty nifty sound card by VideoLogic that has multiple AC97 codecs for doing multi-speaker (surround... I forget now) But I do recall it mentioning something about offloading MP3 decoding to the sound card (Forget the typical AC97 "winmodem" style sound card)
I think it's actually a requirement for AC97 codec designers to have that option, I remember a C-Media chip (used in the BookPC's) that in the manual for the BookPC it mentioned optical out or something. (I don't have it anymore)
Though in the C-Media Windows driver it's there (S/PDIF out)
I think the SBLIVE by default is set Digital out always on, and has an option to disable the analog instead.
(DON'T BE FOOLED, THE OLD BOXED SBLIVE DOES NOT HAVE THE DIGITAL OUT. IF IN DOUBT, GET THE X-GAMER MODEL. It's exactly the same except has gold plated connectors and an Digital CD connector)
BTW... if anyone missed it, there is (in windows 2000 at least) an option to use DIGITAL audio mode... It works on IDE drives (and SCSI with less reliabiliy) but tends to skip easier. You can use this instead or if you have more than 1 CD drive and only 1 CD-Audio cable. (Like I do)
Ja ne.
Re:Sounds Like My Coffee Table (Score:1)
I can't draw a picture, but Dillinger's big-ass desk(tm) from TRON is what I'm talking about. Then use a wireless video transmitter/receiver to put it on the TV screen....