birdtongchai Posted September 3, 2010 Report Share Posted September 3, 2010 Hi All! Sadly the first movie trading event planned for tomorrow was cancelled, but I am sure that there are plenty of people who are watching movies on an almost daily basis and are using or want to use their computer to watch movies. With this topic I want to help people setup their own private home theatre with the help of a simple computer and some software. We can meet every now and then on movie fan events and discuss problems with HTPC setups, share ideas, suggestions and swap a movie or 2.... First a short introduction.... What is HTPC? HTPC stands for: "Home Theatre PC" and pc stands for Personal Computer, but just keep things short and easy... HTPC.... A HTPC is a computer that is used primarily to watch movies and/or series. With current technological developments their isn't a lot of power needed to display the latest movies in the highest quality possible. What do I need? Not much... Any dualcore or Core 2 Duo processor is more than enough power to watch anything that is out there. If you have an older CPU, you can still watch most of what's out there, except the Blue Ray or HD-DVD releases. They usually ask for more CPU power. Unless.... you have a fast GPU. A GPU? what the ...? A GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit and is known as the videocard or graphics card. It is an expension card in your computer where your monitor plugs in. Modern GPU cards can display the latest HD (High-Definition) movies as Blue Ray and HD-DVD even with an older and slower processor. It's often smarter to put some money in a good GPU than to spend more on a fast processor (CPU). All this techno babbel... too many letters.... please recap? GPU - Graphic Processing Unit or your videocard... CPU - Central Processing Unit or your processor (The thingy under the rotating fan inside your computer case) Blue Ray - The successor of the plain old DVD. It can hold much more data than a regular dvd and uses this space to store video in higher quality HD-DVD - Was the competitor of Blue Ray but died a slow death about 2 years ago.... DVD - Digital Versatile Disk... Duh... the thingy you throw in your DVD Player... Ok. Well assuming you have a working computer, you need to hook it up to your TV Set. There are many ways to do this depending on the option your graphic card gives you. On modern setups you would like to use a HDMI cable to connect to your tv. This cable had been developed because the old regular cable (HDMI) wasn't able to send the newer high quality graphics to your TV. In order to use this cable your TV needs to be able to handle it as well. On slightly older TV's you can find a VGA or DVI input connector to connect your pc. If not of these connections are available you can use the red, white and yellow plugs. Bear in mind that the quality is significantly less than with the HDMI cable. If you have a nice and big monitor it can also be used to watch your movies. If you need any more help on connecting things together, please feel free to ask me or join the event.... Software... Here is where it gets interresting. What software do you need to playback movies? Well windows and mac are by default equipped to display movies. Sometimes you need additional software to display the movies properly. It happens that when you open a movie, you only hear audio. In this case, you need to install a so called "CODEC". They are widely available on the internet. The most famous one out there is KLite Codec Pack. http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm . After you install this all movies will playback perfectly on basically any computer. You can watch movies with windows media player or any player of your choice... If you have windows 7, you can also use Windows Media Center. This is a package that keeps track of which movies and TV shows you have. If you have a large collection like I have, you might want to consider some other option to keep track of your movies. My program of choice is XBMC. This program was originally designed for the XBox, but all xbox support has been dropped now. It's one of the most complete packages i have ever seen. In the past i have used MEEDIO, which now has been frozen since yahoo bought it and isn't doing anything with it (yet...) Meedio can do the same and more than XBMC and is more customizable, but the seperate plugins change and breakdown so often that i abandoned using it and switched to XBMC. Another player out there is Media Portal. It is also highly customizable and does what Meedio and XBMC do is a nice way. You however still have to configure and setup lots and lots of settings, parameters and stuff. My choice for XBMC was made due to the fact that you can have a complete and working setup that catalogs and plays all your movies, series, music, pictures, some extra games and weather information within 5 minutes. Hardly any configuration is necesary. I will add some screenshots of this program... Oh, best of all, it's open source so completely FREE! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted October 14, 2010 Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 we should revive the movie / htpc event. good info, what do you do hardware-wise? i'd imagine given the scale of your storage needs you're using RAID? how many enclosures, how big, and do you use a server separate from your HTPC? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chatty Posted October 14, 2010 Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 I have HDMI connection but my TV doesn't have HDMI plug in Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yamahacrasher Posted October 14, 2010 Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 I have HDMI connection but my TV doesn't have HDMI plug in Does your TV have a VGA connection then? If it's old LCD you might have it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 14, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 we should revive the movie / htpc event. good info, what do you do hardware-wise? i'd imagine given the scale of your storage needs you're using RAID? how many enclosures, how big, and do you use a server separate from your HTPC? Yes i agree.. I still want to meet up and exchange movies/shows and experiences... I am running a server with 9 harddrives in Raid 5 on a 3ware escalade 9500s12 controller. It can run 12 harddisks so i have a little extra space for future expansion. I am going to upgrade in a few months and will change my current 1Tbyte harddrives for 3Tb harddrives from WD... Right now the server is my only pc, but i am going to build a new htpc soon in a silverstone case with a MicroATX mainboard running a dualcore ATOM cpu. I am still thinking of running that machine with Wi-Fi (812-n) or go for the good old cable... I have a Gbit switch, so that's an option, just hate cables.... If there is enough interrest we can still meet up... If you're persoanlly interrested you're also welcome to have a look. Don't have to organise an entire event around it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crustyjuggler Posted October 14, 2010 Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 I like XMBC, I managed to hack it onto my old Apple TV. Since itunes doesn't even like me to fart without permission IT welcome relief. :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweetieBabie Posted October 14, 2010 Report Share Posted October 14, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PJack Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Hi All!Sadly the first movie trading event planned for tomorrow was cancelled, but I am sure that there are plenty of people who are watching movies on an almost daily basis and are using or want to use their computer to watch movies. With this topic I want to help people setup their own private home theatre with the help of a simple computer and some software. We can meet every now and then on movie fan events and discuss problems with HTPC setups, share ideas, suggestions and swap a movie or 2.... First a short introduction.... What is HTPC? HTPC stands for: "Home Theatre PC" and pc stands for Personal Computer, but just keep things short and easy... HTPC.... A HTPC is a computer that is used primarily to watch movies and/or series. With current technological developments their isn't a lot of power needed to display the latest movies in the highest quality possible. What do I need? Not much... Any dualcore or Core 2 Duo processor is more than enough power to watch anything that is out there. If you have an older CPU, you can still watch most of what's out there, except the Blue Ray or HD-DVD releases. They usually ask for more CPU power. Unless.... you have a fast GPU. A GPU? what the ...? A GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit and is known as the videocard or graphics card. It is an expension card in your computer where your monitor plugs in. Modern GPU cards can display the latest HD (High-Definition) movies as Blue Ray and HD-DVD even with an older and slower processor. It's often smarter to put some money in a good GPU than to spend more on a fast processor (CPU). All this techno babbel... too many letters.... please recap? GPU - Graphic Processing Unit or your videocard... CPU - Central Processing Unit or your processor (The thingy under the rotating fan inside your computer case) Blue Ray - The successor of the plain old DVD. It can hold much more data than a regular dvd and uses this space to store video in higher quality HD-DVD - Was the competitor of Blue Ray but died a slow death about 2 years ago.... DVD - Digital Versatile Disk... Duh... the thingy you throw in your DVD Player... Ok. Well assuming you have a working computer, you need to hook it up to your TV Set. There are many ways to do this depending on the option your graphic card gives you. On modern setups you would like to use a HDMI cable to connect to your tv. This cable had been developed because the old regular cable (HDMI) wasn't able to send the newer high quality graphics to your TV. In order to use this cable your TV needs to be able to handle it as well. On slightly older TV's you can find a VGA or DVI input connector to connect your pc. If not of these connections are available you can use the red, white and yellow plugs. Bear in mind that the quality is significantly less than with the HDMI cable. If you have a nice and big monitor it can also be used to watch your movies. If you need any more help on connecting things together, please feel free to ask me or join the event.... Software... Here is where it gets interresting. What software do you need to playback movies? Well windows and mac are by default equipped to display movies. Sometimes you need additional software to display the movies properly. It happens that when you open a movie, you only hear audio. In this case, you need to install a so called "CODEC". They are widely available on the internet. The most famous one out there is KLite Codec Pack. http://www.free-codecs.com/download/k_lite_codec_pack.htm . After you install this all movies will playback perfectly on basically any computer. You can watch movies with windows media player or any player of your choice... If you have windows 7, you can also use Windows Media Center. This is a package that keeps track of which movies and TV shows you have. If you have a large collection like I have, you might want to consider some other option to keep track of your movies. My program of choice is XBMC. This program was originally designed for the XBox, but all xbox support has been dropped now. It's one of the most complete packages i have ever seen. In the past i have used MEEDIO, which now has been frozen since yahoo bought it and isn't doing anything with it (yet...) Meedio can do the same and more than XBMC and is more customizable, but the seperate plugins change and breakdown so often that i abandoned using it and switched to XBMC. Another player out there is Media Portal. It is also highly customizable and does what Meedio and XBMC do is a nice way. You however still have to configure and setup lots and lots of settings, parameters and stuff. My choice for XBMC was made due to the fact that you can have a complete and working setup that catalogs and plays all your movies, series, music, pictures, some extra games and weather information within 5 minutes. Hardly any configuration is necesary. I will add some screenshots of this program... Oh, best of all, it's open source so completely FREE! excellent post. much appreciated and well communicated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Yes, it is more complicated that WD TV... But when you see it working on your tv/screen it just looks "WOW"... come and join the event and i'll demonstrate it to you... And setting it up, all from scratch can be done is less than 2 minutes... really not that complicated... I will add some screenshots later today to make my post more appealing to the eye,,,, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CiaranM Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Yes, it is more complicated that WD TV... But when you see it working on your tv/screen it just looks "WOW"... come and join the event and i'll demonstrate it to you... And setting it up, all from scratch can be done is less than 2 minutes... really not that complicated... I will add some screenshots later today to make my post more appealing to the eye,,,, would be much appreciated !!! i've just got myself a 1TB external drive ... do i need to buy a seperate media player to watch movies stored on this on my TV !!!! i haven't got any movies on it yet, but next time i see Beej i'm gonna have f**king loads !!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweetieBabie Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Impress me. I wanna see how HOLLYWOOD MOVIES work on your display. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beej Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Yes, it is more complicated that WD TV... But when you see it working on your tv/screen it just looks "WOW"... come and join the event and i'll demonstrate it to you... And setting it up, all from scratch can be done is less than 2 minutes... really not that complicated... I will add some screenshots later today to make my post more appealing to the eye,,,, would be much appreciated !!! i've just got myself a 1TB external drive ... do i need to buy a seperate media player to watch movies stored on this on my TV !!!! i haven't got any movies on it yet, but next time i see Beej i'm gonna have f**king loads !!!! I just bought me a Seagate Media Player, it cot 3,400 baht from Panthip, and its pretty fancy, just plugged my small hard drive full of movies/music into it and its looking pretty fresh on the TV.... it also connects to the internet via a LAN cable and streams youtube and all kinds of other **** that I'm too dumb to work out. Dump your hard drive off with me for 24hours and I'll fill it with all the movies/series I've got. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beej Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 If I can work out how to use it anyone can... http://www.seagate.com/www/products/home_entertainment/freeagent_theater_plus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin_2 Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Ya...I just had a buddy bring over a movie on flash drive (Magruber!). We put it in my Mac using a DivX player. Video worked but sound wasn't working. What to do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beej Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Ya...I just had a buddy bring over a movie on flash drive (Magruber!). We put it in my Mac using a DivX player. Video worked but sound wasn't working. What to do? Download VLC player and play everything through it, very solid movie player that can handle all files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin_2 Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Ya...I just had a buddy bring over a movie on flash drive (Magruber!). We put it in my Mac using a DivX player. Video worked but sound wasn't working. What to do? Download VLC player and play everything through it, very solid movie player that can handle all files. Googling your first three words as we speak! Cheers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SweetieBabie Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Mcgruber noooooooooooooooooo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoBeIt Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Download VLC player and play everything through it, very solid movie player that can handle all files. Yes, Ive been using that for more than a year now. And it can also handle some subtitle files which Window Media Player cannot. really handy program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin_2 Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Mcgruber noooooooooooooooooo! I think I'm gonna love it. I love stupid raunchy humor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Yes, it is more complicated that WD TV... But when you see it working on your tv/screen it just looks "WOW"... come and join the event and i'll demonstrate it to you... And setting it up, all from scratch can be done is less than 2 minutes... really not that complicated... I will add some screenshots later today to make my post more appealing to the eye,,,, would be much appreciated !!! i've just got myself a 1TB external drive ... do i need to buy a seperate media player to watch movies stored on this on my TV !!!! i haven't got any movies on it yet, but next time i see Beej i'm gonna have f**king loads !!!! No, you don't need a new computer. Everything works fine with your current one if it's not older than 3-4 years.... join the event, and you'll be an expert when you leave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 Ya...I just had a buddy bring over a movie on flash drive (Magruber!). We put it in my Mac using a DivX player. Video worked but sound wasn't working. What to do? I don't have experience with MAC, but i'm quite sure it's having difficulty with the audio because it's probably in AC-3 format... That's digital audio same as DTS but you need additional software (codecs) to have your computer play it back... For the pc a great package with all codecs you might need is "KLITE"... just google it... or try google with "codec pack for MAC" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 I want to grab your attention again on the XBMC program... It displays ALL movies, in any format... even blu ray and hd dvd, flv, mov, mp4, ogg, ANYTHING... If you watch a movie or a tv show you can with 1 click download the subtitle you want in multiple languages including thai.... if you listen to music you can watch/read or sing along with the lyrics because it also fetches that from the internet. Including with artist info, album info and other releases by the same artists...Now i know winamp and lots of other programs do that too, but it looks not even half as cool as XBMC does.... god i love to show it all to you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funky_house Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 sounds too complicated. WD TV LIVE HD works fine for me. hook with HDMI and all set. Yes, it is more complicated that WD TV... But when you see it working on your tv/screen it just looks "WOW"... come and join the event and i'll demonstrate it to you... And setting it up, all from scratch can be done is less than 2 minutes... really not that complicated... I will add some screenshots later today to make my post more appealing to the eye,,,, would be much appreciated !!! i've just got myself a 1TB external drive ... do i need to buy a seperate media player to watch movies stored on this on my TV !!!! i haven't got any movies on it yet, but next time i see Beej i'm gonna have f**king loads !!!! I just bought me a Seagate Media Player, it cot 3,400 baht from Panthip, and its pretty fancy, just plugged my small hard drive full of movies/music into it and its looking pretty fresh on the TV.... it also connects to the internet via a LAN cable and streams youtube and all kinds of other sh*t that I'm too dumb to work out. Dump your hard drive off with me for 24hours and I'll fill it with all the movies/series I've got. I bought one called a Tivx HD6600 media player, or something like that from Panthip. Came with 1TB Sata fully loaded with HD films and about a dozen live concerts. Am going back tomorrow to buy another fully loaded 1TB. Then I can just interchange them, (2 small screws). The box comes with a remote, HDMI, USB, RGB comp, and ethernet for internet firmware updates etc. I have set it up in several hotels to watch films. Easy peasy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoBeIt Posted October 15, 2010 Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 K-Lite Codec Pack 6.40 (Full) FileHippo.com is my fav place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdtongchai Posted October 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2010 anyone got an idea for a date when we can set the event to meet and share? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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