Home Media Server Requirements

[Ilmater]

I have two TVs in the house. One I plan to hook up to a simple, weak HTPC or just an Xbox 360. I plan to use it to watch live TV channels, recorded TV, recorded movies, music and radio. The second TV sits right next to my main PC. I want to be able to do all the same things with that TV as well, and even if both TVs are being watched and maybe a third program is recording at the same time, I'd like to have enough power to surf the web or something simple.

My question is, I would expect that PC (my main one) to have a much greater need for processing power. I want to plan for the worst-case scenario, and I can very realistically imagine a scenario where I want to watch both TVs live, record a third program, rip a DVD, and surf the web all at the same time (maybe I can't surf the web if I'm ripping, that wouldn't be the most important). Can someone help me understand what pieces of hardware would be most important to upgrade, if any at all?

Examples:
- I have an Athlon II X2 250 right now, should I upgrade to an X3 that I can unlock its 4th core?
- I have 4GB of DDR2 RAM on that computer... would DDR3 be better (I would have to do this if I upgraded the processor)?
- I plan to get either an ATI HD 5570 or 5670 video card; should I be getting the 5670 because of my greater processing needs?
- Should I look into RAID 0 for my hard drives in case I try to download a big file while I watch both TVs and record a third channel? Will my hard drive become a bottleneck?

At the end of the day, if I end up going with an HTPC instead of an Xbox 360 as my media extender on the other TV, I'm just going to upgrade my current computer and put all of its parts into that HTPC (mobo is micro ATX and has on-board HDMI/optical output, processor isn't too power-hungry, I have extra hard drives, etc.). Going that route would cost me about $100 more than just getting an Xbox, but if I really SHOULD be upgrading my main PC for all this extra work, then I'd just rather save the money on the Xbox and use my old parts to build a second HTPC with them.

Thanks for any help you can give me!! I posted this same question at AVS Forum, so if any of you frequent both places, you should know I'm not flooding the internet with this question, I would just like to get the opinion of some computer-centric thinkers and some home theater-centric people as well.

 

[Winterpool]

I've spent over two years now working (in an amateur capacity) with 'home theatre' scenarios, including projectors, Pioneer plasma, and Sony/Samsung LCDs; analogue and digital; Apple TV, PS3, notebooks, and fully fledged HTPCs; and everything from Windows Media Centre and Boxee to VLC and Flash Player. There's a host of variables in home viewing, not the least of which is price...

I can say the least painful solution in almost all cases was some sort of PC (especially one built for HTPC with sufficient processing power and connexions, eg HDMI), simply because they're so flexible (this is the ultimate advantage of the PC after all). You can add/update software -and- hardware. Bear that in mind from the start; you say you want to be ready for 'worst case', high-demand scenarios -- that would probably mean PCs.

A big question will be how you obtain 'live TV' (broadcast channels). Because of encryption, the typical ATSC tuner card won't be able to provide the bulk of cable channels. You'll probably require some sort of CableCARD kit (not cheap) to view/record TV on your computer. If you want to conduct multiple activities on the same computer, the number of tuners and drives will be a key concern. You can of course skip some of these requirements by simply using the 'cable box' for live TV viewing.

Processing power is less of an issue in most cases, as most cpus and graphics chips are now capable of transcoding even 1080 HD video fairly well. Again, if you envisage multiple concurrent tasks, then more cores may be a good idea.

A sector I don't quite understand is media extenders. I've set up a PS3 to watch videos fed to it from a Windows computer, and I presume what's happening is that the PC transcodes video files in real time to a plain vanilla video stream (MPEG2?) sent to and displayed by the PS3? I suppose it might be a good idea in cases when someone doesn't wish to proliferate too many PCs, heh.

 

[Ilmater]

Winterpool, thanks for your comments. I will be canceling my cable service (yes, it will be hard) and going to OTA content only. I live within 12 miles of all my local providers' towers (ABC, CBS, PCS, NBC, Fox, and CW), so I can get solid signals with a $12 antenna. I will have two tuner cards, one with dual tuners for up to 3 channels of viewing/recording at a time.

As for extenders, I know that the Xbox 360 will limit my file format options. In order to avoid transcoding, I'll have to encode all of my media in formats that the 360 can natively decode so that I can just stream the content directly to the 360 without any degradation. I know that's a pain, but like I said, it's $100 I could save by using my current computer with an Xbox 360. I have Windows 7 with Media Center functionality, so I'll be able to view recordings on both TVs and have a unified program guide for both that will tell me on one computer if I scheduled a program to record on the other computer.

My problem is, while the 360 doesn't provide as many format options as some other solutions, it does do EVERYTHING I want it to. It has a fairly nice-looking UI. It will automatically download screens to go with movies I have on my hard drive, it will download CD covers and display them automatically. The only other software solution I could find that offered all the functionality I want is SageTV, and while it's nice, it's fugly as hell. It's utilitarianism at its best.

But I've already looked into all that before, so my bigger concern is: do I need a 5670 over a 5570? Do I need DDR3 over DDR2? Do I need faster sequential reads from my hard drives (ie. RAID 0)? Do I need more cores - and I mean NEED?

I'd like to know what my limitations will be if I don't upgrade. With my current setup, will my computer be mostly unusable if I'm recording/watching 3 shows at the same time? If I try to encode a movie I rip into, for example, Divx, will I get hiccups when I'm trying to watch one TV?

 

[Winterpool]

I suspect to most of your questions, the answers will be 'no'. 1080 video is not so demanding that it would require latest-gen tech in virtually anything. If your only concerns, so far as computing demands, are video-related, then processing power will likely not be an issue (you don't need DDR3 or a Radeon HD 5670 etc). Your requirements instead will be to do with I/O bandwidth.

You seem sufficiently kitted out with tuners for your needs; I suppose what I'd pay attention to is the number and assignment of hard drives (obviously you want each hard drive to be doing only one thing, rather than simultaneously downloading / transcoding / viewing on the same disk). Also, if you're sending/receiving multiple video streams simultaneously through your network, this could be an issue with HD video and a limited wireless network (I expect you'll be using 802.11 wireless?).

I dunno if I'd employ RAID so much as assign different hard drives different tasks (hdd1 for downloading, hdd2 for encoding, hdd3 for viewing, etc). Of course that can turn into a pain in the arse, if one has to continually shuffle files between different drives, as they're completed.

I'm afraid I can't say much about the demands on a particular processor. I generally seek to avoid having a cpu undertake more than 1 high-load task at a time. Transcoding whilst browsing web sites would be fine, but coding one video into DivX, XviD, etc whilst simultaneously decoding another for viewing could be a lot of work, especially if it's HD video. Depending on the software you use, the graphics chip could end up doing most of the work, in which case even a moderate dualcore cpu might prove sufficient. Again, I suspect I/O would often prove the bottleneck before the cpu.

 

[Winterpool]

Giving it a little more thought, encoding any HD video is a very demanding task, which takes (if it's feature-length) an hour or more. Unless you can assign specific cores to specific tasks, one must presume that the system will assign as much processing power as possible to the encoding app. It seems highly possible that you'd experience less than altogether smooth video viewing if encoding at the same time.

I'm not sure how much more processing power would help, since encoding HD video is a long-duration task. Having more cores might help, but again what would matter is task prioritisation (we're getting into cpu / OS architecture stuff that I know almost nothing about, sorry).

Since you already own this Athlon II x2, I suppose the thing to do would be to run a test yourself: encoding a file whilst viewing something at the same time.

 

[Ilmater]

How much encoding work does the video card do? If it pitches in significantly, I might pick the 5670 over the 5570. I have to buy one, and the $15 price difference isn't an issue, but I'd prefer not to take up two slots.

 

[Winterpool]

For the popular encoding apps, the graphics chip contributes nothing (though of course many big decoders, ie video players, can take advantage of graphics hardware). That's one of the reasons I don't think getting the HD 5670 will help much in your case (though it will be a fair sight better at games).

I remember reading about some experimental encoding software that was able to use the graphics processor in AnandTech some time ago, but I've heard nothing since...

Ah, here it was -- used CUDA, so it was nVidia tech. Here's a review from last year of the shipping product. It can use many different video source formats, but only outputs to H.264 .mp4 files. It seemed to work smoothly on a computer undertaking other tasks (which makes sense since the graphics chip was doing most of the work). It also took 1/3 the time of the popular Handbrake software.