I've been hankering for a better solution to playing music and DivX movies in my living room so I've finally embarked on a Home Media PC project. I just want to play my music and video collection; I'm not getting into TV recording. I want something small and quiet. I could have gone the dedicated playback device route but I really like to have an open platform to play with. I'm also trying to do it on the cheap.
My intention is to have a small silent box attached to my TV/stereo. Into that, I'm going to plug a large external hard disk which has my media collection. I want to control this box from another PC to play music and videos. No streaming from a server. No need for a DVD-ROM drive. No LCD. No keyboard. No mouse. Well, that's the hope.
So, for starters, I've bought a VIA EPIA SP 13000 mini-itx board along with 512Mb RAM and a fanless external 80 watt power supply (£264). I've been watching mini-itx for quite a while and this new board just seems to hit a sweet spot for functionality and size. I was tempted to go with the 800MHz fanless board but got concerned it wouldn't have enough power. There's a problem with the Windows DivX drivers not using the onboard MPEG 4 hardware decoder so it does it all in the CPU and 800MHz isn't quite enough.
At first, I hooked up a DVD drive and a regular power supply while I loaded up Windows Professional but now I've been able to get rid of those components. The system as it stands just consists of the motherboard hooked up to an old 40Mb 3.5" disk drive powered by the external PSU.
Problem 1: It's got one small noisy fan.
The 4cm fan on the CPU heat sink is too noisy. It's gotta go. Tranquil PC uses this motherboard and solved the problem with a very slick heatpipe solution. Unfortunately, I haven't found any off-the-shelf heatpipe solutions yet. I'm thinking of fitting a Zalman northbridge cooler and then just have a large slow case fan.
Problem 2: I need a case and a power button.
Rather than buy a case, I'm planning on entering the spirit of mini-itx and use some kind of retro junk for a case. Not sure what yet. I also need to find a power switch 'cause at the moment I have to short the power pins to turn the thing on!
Problem 3: USB WiFi problems.
I can't get my Netgear MA111 USB WiFi device to work with it. It's odd as it finds the SSID and has a good signal but it just can't ping anything or find the DHCP server. Arrgghhh.
Problem 4: Remote control music good; remote control video bad.
I got the system into my living on a long Ethernet cable and hooked it to the TV and stereo. I can use Remote Desktop to play music on the stereo but I haven't found a way I could use it to play video on the TV. If I hook up a keyboard and mouse to the machine and use the TV as the monitor, I can get a nice picture. I just haven't figured out how I can control it remotely.
Problem 5: Audio crackles.
There are crackles in the audio. Not sure what it is. I've more or less assumed I'll have to get a high-grade external USB D/A device of some kind. It's on my toy list anyway. I don't expect onboard audio to be good enough.