Not everybody wants to have a PC in their living room. Despite advances in design and power management, they're still noisy, overpowered boxes that aren't designed to sit under your TV. At least not yet. There is, however, an alternative to these wannabe Media Centers or Entertainment PCs, and it doesn't need to be quiet, because it's not meant for the living room. Consider building a Digital Media Server.
Like a Media Center, this is a PC system that's designed to receive and record TV programmes, play back video and handle your digital music and photo libraries. But rather than playing any of this media content back through its own monitor and speakers, it instead transmits them through a wired or wireless link to a small and silent set-top Digital Media Adapter (DMA) connected to your TV.
With this kind of arrangement, you don't even need a small form factor PC in the living room. A Media Server is a much more convenient solution. It can also prove cost effective, as you'll probably be able to upgrade an old PC for hundreds of dollars rather than blow thousands on a new one.
Before you think 'I don't have the construction skills or the money for a new PC', we've thought of a way around both of these problems. Over the next few months, we'll provide you with a step-by-step tutorial on building your very own Digital Media Server, or DMS.
We'll run through the practical steps of upgrading the hardware, connecting up the components and configuring the software you need to get it all working. Perhaps you've recently upgraded your home office PC and are still undecided about what to do with the old one.
In this SmartHouse project, we'll take an average PC system, splice in a few hardware extras and, by running a straightforward and inexpensive piece of software, turn it into a highly effective do-it-all box that's capable of distributing audio and video to one or more rooms in your home.
Our basic PC
As the basis of this project we used a PC with average specifications in all but processor terms, as our system is fitted with an Athlon 64 3000+. While this is ideal for a Digital Media Server, you can decode and play back video and music with a much less punchy processor. Here's the full specification of our PC:
Processor AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Memory 256MB PC3200 DDR
Graphics Radeon X300SE
Hard disk Maxtor 40GB IDE
DVD drive Sony 16x
Operating system Windows XP (upgraded to SP2)
Our media server will distribute music and movies. We're going to add quite a few extra components to upgrade the PC (pictured, right) to the level we need. This is what we're going to use, but other products with the same overall specification will do just as well.
How much will this cost me?
This project won't cost nearly as much as a typical Media Center PC, which usually offers little change from $2500. Here's a quick breakdown of hardware we've highlighted and the approximate costs involved.
This month, we're going to concentrate on upgrading a PC - adding extra memory to improve the performance, a digital tuner card for TV reception, integrated wireless and a DVD rewriter. This first part of our project should only cost you about $410. Let's get started...
Total Cost of project
Extra 256MB memory $50
Digital TV tuner card $160
802.11g wireless network card $80
DVD rewriter $120
200GB hard disk $160
ShowShifter PVR software $100
Digital Media Adaptor (ShowCenter 200) $600
Total $1270
EXTRA COMPONENTS
Fitting your media server out with the right kit
EXTRA MEMORY (RAM)
This will be specific to your particular PC. It could be anything from PC100 sticks to PC3200 modules, and either single data rate (SDR) or double data rate (DDR). If your PC is a well-known make, one easy way to find out what you need is to go to www.crucial.com. This memory supplier offers specialised online 'configurators' - so by entering the make and model of your PC, you can find out exactly the type of memory you need to upgrade it. With a bit of luck, there will be at least one spare memory slot on your PC's system board so you can just add an extra module, but if all slots are full you may need to remove what's already there and replace it with a new stick. Whichever way you do it, for this project we recommend you have a minimum of 512MB.
HARD DISK
Digital video is space hungry, so ideally you'll need to add a new, bigger hard disk to store TV programmes and films. In an older desktop PC, it's unlikely you'll have controllers for the new serial ATA (SATA) standard, so what you want is a parallel ATA IDE disk with a capacity of about 200GB. But any drive in the range 160-250GB will do, and names to look for are Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital. More on the hard
disk aspect of the upgrade next issue.
PVR SOFTWARE
This is the application that will handle TV display, recording of video files and compression of these files to the compact DivX standard so that they're ready for streaming. We're using ShowShifter, which we consider the best third party media front-end. It's not as pretty as Microsoft's Media Center, but it's designed specifically to handle the playback of all kinds of media files through simple controls, and crucially it includes a DivX video compressor.
DIGITAL TV TUNER
This processes the TV signal into a form you can view on your PC's screen and saves it as a file on your hard disk. You can currently buy analog or digital tuners, but we strongly recommend a digital card. The only reason you should go for an analog card is if you want to connect a separate Foxtel box to the tuner. And for better recordings, choose a card with a hardware MPEG encoder - this works independently of the PC, and means you won't get dropped frames. We're using a Black Gold Signature DVB-T card, but as long as the card you choose is compatible with the software we're using to compress the video files (before beaming them over the wireless link), you'll be fine. You can find a list of compatible cards at www.sh
owshifter.com/support/system.htm, including a good range of ATi and Hauppauge products.
WIRELESS NETWORK CARD (802.11G)
This provides the PC-end of the wireless network connection, so it can communicate with the Pinnacle Digital Media Player at the living room end. We've used a D-Link DWL-G520 here, but virtually any PCI- or USB-based adapter will do. The card must support the 802.11g wireless standard, as while the 802.11b standard can stream compressed video files like DivX across a wireless network, it does so at the limit of its performance, which causes the picture to stutter occasionally.
DVD REWRITER
Although you'll initially be saving recorded TV programmes and films on your hard disk, any digital content you decide to keep long-term is better archived on a DVD, thereby releasing space on your hard disk for new recordings. For this, you'll need a DVD rewriter. We've used a Sony DRU800A in our own PC, which is a 16-speed record, 4- speed rewrite and 16-speed read drive (16x4x16). This is a good drive, supporting dual-layer DVD+R/RW DVD-R/RW formats, but any rewriter with a similar specification should do the job.
DIGITAL MEDIA ADAPTER
Once TV has been recorded on to the Media Server, we'll need an adapter to access the content from a TV. For this, we're using Pinnacle's ShowCenter 200. It's designed to stream audio, photo and video files on a domestic TV and to link to media sources (in our case, the DMS PC we're building) via an 802.11g wireless link. The ShowCenter 200 comes complete with a remote control, so you can select and play back music and video files from your armchair without having to prime the DMS from its keyboard. It's a much better solution than having a PC in the living room.
