We previously alluded to the fact that RAM’s publisher and I have diverging opinions on how a media center should best be implemented. With another month of contemplation and hard-fought screwdriver work behind us, we’ve clarified our thinking somewhat. Naturally, there are as many ways to build a media center as there are media center users, and the value that you’ll bring to this market above that of the tier-one OEMs is your ability to you customize a solution to each customer’s needs. Media Center boxes can come cheap or loaded, optimized for multimedia viewing, gaming, productivity—you name it. But the fact remains that the more low-end and generic your configuration, the more competition you’ll face and the less likely you’ll be to find your niche.

This is why RAM’s publisher, John Martinez, and I went after two considerably different yet still high-end implementations. John has a fat tower system in his basement stacked full of hard drives on which he keeps his years of accumulated media. His family room features a 50” Samsung plasma screen on the wall. Under this is a coffee table with his moderately high-performance home theater components on top of it and a sub-woofer below. Included in these items is the LAN-enabled Onkyo TH-NR801 receiver, which he’s about to discover is overkill now that he has a media center PC. John has a quiet, well-appointed home with fairly low foot traffic. Both of us want John to have a relatively simple configuration and user experience because, frankly, no one pays me to be his tech support monkey.

My situation is substantially different. I have young kids, so all electronic components (set-top, Xbox, Yamaha receiver, and so on) have to be hidden away in a built-in cabinet/bookshelf flanking the fireplace. The two door panels of this cabinet have had the wood sawed out and replaced with an IR-friendly mesh much like the dust mesh on speakers. This was essential so that my remotes would work without exposing my electronics to little fingers. At the same time, the design provides cool air flow, because before the mesh this cabinet got dangerously hot with a media center running. (I suggest finding one custom cabinet company in your area to partner with for furniture mods such as this.) I have a 42” LG LCD screen mounted above the mantle. Rather than trust all my data to one box, I maintain multiple hard drives in multiple systems. The Spousal Approval Factor (SAF) is a higher priority in my house than John’s, and since, for better or worse, I’m more of a geek than John, I want a platform with more file format flexibility.

I should point out that we’ve been working on and reworking both of these configurations more or less non-stop since late summer. John has been engaged in a high-def battle for over a year. If there was ever a doubt that media centers should be the domain of knowledgeable, creative, flexible system builders, our toils have dispelled it. This is tough work. There is no way a company like Best Buy, much less a remote entity such as Dell, could possibly hope to address the very personal, site-specific needs of this segment in a comprehensive manner.

We wanted to share our two configurations with you, not to crow about how cool our media centers are (although we’re pretty proud of the way they turned out) but to illustrate two very different media center implementations and how they were built for two different user profiles. These are meant to be idea builders to get you thinking about the issues and options you may face in crafting media center solutions for your clients.

Meet John’s Box

Case: Antec Overture
(www.antec.com)
The chassis is one of the hardest media center components to select for a living room setting. Both of us went through several options, including small form factor cubes. In the end, John settled on the Overture. Decked out in Antec’s hallmark piano black finish with brushed silver fascia, the Overture is a stunner—provided you’re careful to obtain drives with matching silver faceplates.

The ATX-compatible Overture comes with a 380W ATX12V PSU, which I suspect is actually underrated. Keep in mind that Intel’s base spec for the 900-series Prescott platform with high-end PCIe graphics is 350W, and you see that there’s plenty of juice here. Interestingly, the PSU is hidden under a shelf on which the two external 3.5” bays rest, greatly helping to minimize clutter. Antec also builds a 92 mm cooling fan into the rear behind the three internal HD bays and an 80 mm fan on the right side behind the two 5.25” external bays. Additionally, the top panel is slotted directly above the CPU and graphics slot—a rare and very intelligent addition.

I should mention here that John and I tried to find HTPC cases that met three criteria: small size, enough slots for a full media center configuration, and enough power for high-end components. Few of the microATX options had enough power, and none could fit a standard ATX PSU. None of the standard cubes supported more than two slots. And the “pizza box” cases only fit half-height card or needed risers, which again takes you back to two slots. The Antec Overture, while still larger than we originally wanted, emerged as one of the best compromise solution we could find on today’s market.

Motherboard: MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum
(www.msicomputer.com)
These days, it’s increasingly difficult to differentiate one motherboard from its 20 closest rivals, especially given a common chipset like Intel’s 915P. And I won’t say that MSI’s 915P implementation is a standout, unique design by any stretch, but it does have some features well-suited to John’s needs. Three PCI slots and only two x1 PCIe slots is a good mix for this media center system because the box is more likely to see legacy gear than cutting edge storage controllers and such. With SATA RAID on the South Bridge and discrete VIA RAID for two additional PATA connectors, John has way more storage flexibility here than necessary, but it’s a good fit for the Overture, and you never know where this system might be two years from now.

On-board support for 1394a, Azalia 7.1 audio (Realtek ALC861), and Gigabit Ethernet (Broadcom’s PCIe-based DBM5751) are all virtually mandatory for a media center PC these days. However, the kicker that really swayed John to MSI was the company’s auto-overclocking CoreCell chip, which has demonstrated its utility so many times in our in-house testing. Video encoding is a very processor-intensive task, so having a platform that can dynamically yet safely increase bus speeds when applications need them is a huge plus.

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 560J
(www.intel.com)
We came really close to going two other ways in John’s system. One was to simply go for the latest and greatest Intel platform, namely the 925XE with its 1,066 MHz bus along with a 3.46 GHz Extreme Edition chip. The other was the 3.8 GHz 570J. The speed gain to be had with the Extreme chip was very persuasive, but we ultimately pulled back because John couldn’t justify the platform’s price tag versus the amount of use he’d make of the higher speed bus and all that cache. Moreover, none of the 925XE boards are supporting PC2-667 memory yet. Because he opted for water cooling, John wasn’t concerned about the EE’s thermals, but most media center buyers should be since the chip is a bit of a voltage hog. The thing that really clinched it was the EE’s lack of an Execute Disable Bit, identical to AMD’s No-Execute code and compatible with the security enhancements in Window XP SP2 and thus Media Center Edition 2005.

That narrowed us down to a J-model Prescott chip. You need to be careful to get the J version for its Execute Disable Bit functionality. If all you cared about was frequency, you might mistakenly get the P4 520, which is 3.80 GHz but without the security protection. The highest-end chip always carries a steep price premium, so John felt that the first step down, the 3.60 GHz 560J, would be the most appropriate for his needs. He’s a video nut but not what you would call a wide-ranging power user, and 3.6 GHz will cover his multimedia requirements for quite some time.

“If you’re going to go with software-based TV encoding, you need the fastest processor and highest amount of memory you can,” advises Matt Davis, technology specialist, worldwide system builder channel for Microsoft. He’s the guy in charge of training all the channel MCE trainers around the world. “Our minimum requirements say 1.6 GHz, but if you’re going to go software encoding you should think about 3 GHz.”

Heatsink: Zalman Reserator 1
(www.zalmanusa.com)
Ah, to be free to display a magnificent piece of technological artwork such as the Reserator in one’s living room without the fear of a toddler steamrollering it. Alas, John has no such worries. His biggest concern is noise, and so the Reserator was a perfect fit. Its all but silent motor is sufficient to complement the convection working to cool the fluid within that gorgeous, extruded aluminum sculpture.

“Make sure that you keep your water cooling on the same level as the PC,” cautions Zalman technical marketing manager John Chiang. “The motor is no-noise, but it doesn’t have the power to push much water uphill. And be sure to keep the Reserator within five feet of the PC for the same reason.”

John did have to make one change to accommodate the Reserator. Previously, his home theater speakers sat on the ends of his coffee table under the plasma screen. In order not to obscure the screen, the Reserator needed to sit at the extreme right end of the table, which meant stacking components, including the PC, at the left end for balance. This bumped the speakers off the table, which then had to be mounted on floor stands another foot or so away.

Memory: 2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC2-4300
(www.kingston.com)
John is not an overclocker. All he cares about is good performance, stability, and effective customer support. In memory these days, there are two kinds of modules: those that meet these criteria and those that don’t. We have had an excellent relationship with Kingston over the years, and every occasion that has taken us to the company’s tech support has been resolved quickly and with complete satisfaction, both from channel and end-user perspectives.

Thus the choice of Kingston’s HyperX DDR2 (1.85V, CL3) was a no-brainer for this box. HyperX is Kingston’s premium line and one that we trust implicitly to keep an always-on, high-use box like the media center running at its peak.

Hard Drives:
2 x Hitachi Deskstar 7K400 400GB
(www.hitachigst.com)
SATA. 7,200 RPM. And a whoppin’ 400GB per drive. There’s not much else you could ask for in a hard drive bound for a box primarily meant for storing video recordings. Except perhaps two drives.

John elected to go with two drives as a simple way to segregate his audio and video collections. The audio drive is actually partitioned into two roughly 200GB halves so that audio content can go on one partition (D:) while the OS, applications, and the handfuls of data generated on this PC go on the other (C:). Because video consumes much more space, the other drive (E:) remains as one partition used exclusively for video file storage.

I should also note that, in the big scheme of things, 400GB is not a vast amount for video, nor is 200GB for high bitrate audio. This is simply a holding area for John’s most commonly accessed material, or that which he plans on watching in the near future. Most of his data ends up in a full tower system stacked with more drives down in the basement. While it’s true that he could stream practically everything from the basement via Gigabit Ethernet with no quality impairment, the current media center configuration serves to be slightly redundant in case of a problem as well as helping John to organize and prioritize his collection based on location within the LAN.

Optical Drive: LG GSA-5120D
(www.lge.com)
As John handles a lot of data from many sources, format compatibility was a key concern. Thus an LG burner emerged as the best of all worlds since most of the company’s DVD writers can write to +, -, and -RAM specs. The drive supports double-layer burning, up to 12X write-once speeds, and a 2MB cache with buffer underrun protection.

Note that the 5120D is an external model with both FireWire and USB 2.0 connections. For most people, an external burner would not make sense. However, John spends so much time on the road that he wanted a flexible burning solution that made as much sense in his suitcase as on his coffee table. Pulling out the burner doesn’t impact his wife’s media center experience because there’s a standard 16X black-faced MSI DVD-ROM in the PC. This configuration also comes in handy for doing disc-to-disc transfers. This unit’s only shortcoming is that it is beige, which clashes with John’s other coffee table components.

Display: Samsung HPN5039 50” HDTV Plasma Screen
(www.plasmavision.com)
As we covered recently in our cover story on large displays, Samsung is one of the three or four companies producing the highest grade of plasma panels. In order to accommodate both 1080i HDTV content as well as 1280 x 768 PC output, a screen with Samsung’s 1366 x 768 (WXGA) resolution was necessary. Features such as advanced video signal processing was a must, as was dual-tuner picture-in-picture/double screen capabilities for times when viewing two sources at once might be useful.

John went with plasma technology because the bulk of his use in this location is for home theater and PC-based video, and plasma has a softer, film-like look that LCD can’t match. Note also that multiple inputs were important since John connects to his Comcast HD set-top box via VGA, his media center PC via DVI, and he still wants the ability to tack on other devices as needed.

Graphics: MSI RX600XT-VTD128E
(www.msi.com.tw)
Many times, we get so wrapped up in either hyperbolizing the highest end of graphics technology or pumping the low end for its price advantage that we ignore the middle of the road. ATI’s X600 series fills in that middle ground with plenty of PCIe-based performance but without the steep price tag typical of gaming hardware. The X600 features memory bandwidth of 12 GB/sec, two programmable vertex shader pipes, and four 3D rendering pixel pipes. The chipset delivers twice the bandwidth of AGP 8X, not that we’re even close to needing all that headroom yet. Honestly, John could probably get by with an X300 for his needs here, but to be safe and because of driver support reasons, we went for the X600.

“Drivers are absolutely key when it comes to Media Center, ” cautions Microsoft’s Matt Davis. “You’ve got to have Media Center drivers, and specifically Media Center 2005 drivers if they’re available. This is not the place for system builders to be overly price conscious. A lot of guys are trying to get away with whatever they can, but you need to stick to higher-end components. The absolute minimum is a 64MB video card, and I would never recommend that. Always go with 128MB.”

MSI’s implementation here builds on 128MB of DDR memory, one VGA connector, one DVI, and one S-Video. Perks such as ATI’s VIDEOSOAP noise removal for captured video and FULLSTREAM de-blocking for WMV9, DivX, and Real Video streams are excellent in a media center setting, and you, the reseller, should be sure to illustrate these “throw-away” value adds to your clients. It’s not that everybody else doesn’t offer similar technology. It’s that nobody is demonstrating them as selling points, particularly in a media center context.

TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250
(www.hauppauge.com)
Hauppauge is probably the most famous, reputable name in PC TV tuners, and the 250 is the company’s must-have mainstream model. The card comes ready to handle analog signal TV tuning, recording, and timeshifting right out of the box. The retail version of this card comes with a remote and a bunch of software that immediately gets round files in an MCE configuration, so be sure you get the lower priced OEM version.

The value here is the excellent job this PCI card does with hardware-based MPEG-1/2 compression. I’ve tested a lot of tuner products, and Hauppauge consistently demonstrated better color reproduction and lower noise than most of its competitors as well as impressively low CPU impact thanks to its efficient hardware codec. This card is particularly well suited to MCE because Windows Media Video is essentially MPEG-2 with a security layer wrapped around it, so the buyer isn’t paying for a lot of unused circuitry built for other codecs.

Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX
(www.soundblaster.com)
One of the many problems John encountered along his media center journey was the inability to get his HD audio drivers to install properly. He happened to have an Audigy 2 NX laying around, so he installed the software and plugged it into his media center box’s USB 2.0 port. He then connected the optical SPDIF out port to his Onkyo receiver and was blown away by the resulting audio.

The Audigy 2 NX sports many of the same benefits as the desktop Audigy 2 ZS, including rare but valuable support for DVD-Audio, an on-board audio processor for better CPU efficiency, and some wicked cool surround optimization utilities. But even better for John’s purposes was the NX’s 102 dB signal-to-noise ratio, which trounces any integrated audio spec and guarantees a much more satisfying audiophile experience, particularly at higher volumes. John also likes that he can throw the NX in his travel bag in a pinch if he knows he’s headed somewhere with a surround speaker setup.

Note that the only way to get 7.1 audio out of this product is via the analog jacks, which aren’t directly compatible with the RCA ports found on most home receiver/amplifiers. (Yes, you can convert the cabling, but remember that you lose signal integrity with every analog conversion point.) There is presently no way in the consumer market to get 7.1 audio over a digital connection, so be careful how you market surround sound to a media center audience.

Wireless Desktop: Creative Desktop Wireless 8000
(www.creative.com)
I’m looking at Dell’s site right now and seeing that the company’s Dimension 8400 defaults to shipping with a wired mouse and keyboard. Why on earth would you ship wired peripherals with an operating system that centers around a 10-foot UI? Because Dell only ships MCE in tower boxes wholly unsuited to a tasteful family area and hopes to sell Media Center Extenders into that space which then link back to the tower.

Again, you can’t compete head-to-head against Dell. This is why we advocate planting the media center box in the living room and configuring such that it can also serve as a Web, gaming, and email machine—all things that can’t be done with an Extender.

Thus, since you’re putting a full-blown PC in the living room, you must have wireless peripherals. John selected Creative’s design because it smartly uses the 27 MHz frequency band, not the increasingly heavily congested 2.4 GHz frequencies. The keyboard is full-sized for maximum typing comfort, and the 800 dpi optical mouse is pleasingly slim. The bevy of media hotkeys was a plus, but to tell the truth, one of John’s key deciding criteria was that the set matched his other home theater components very well.

Remote Media in the House: Linksys WMCE54AG Extender
(www.linksys.com)
Like most of us, John has a TV in his master bedroom. He doesn’t want to worry about productivity applications on this screen—he can always grab a notebook for that. Neither does he need to worry about disc burning, archiving, or much of anything besides simply having a media center experience without the cost, complexity, and physical bulk of a media center PC. So an MCE Extender made perfect sense, and of the Extender vendors Linksys has proven itself time and again to be one of the friendliest toward the PC distribution channel.

While John had his living room retrofitted with RJ45 LAN ports, he didn’t do the same to the bedroom. Fortunately, the Linksys Extender supports both RJ45 as well as 802.11a and 802.11g, and John connects the Extender back to his dual-band router over 802.11a. Because his bedroom is close enough to the router to pull in a solid, strong signal, 5 GHz 802.11a offers a more reliable signal than 2.4 GHz 802.11g, especially given all the other competing 2.4 GHz traffic from within the house and surrounding neighbors. Another priority John had was making sure that his Extender featured encryption, and the WMCE54AG does offer up to 128-bit WEP. I didn’t ask why he wanted his MCE streams encrypted. Some questions are better left alone.

The Linksys Extender sets up in about two minutes, and it looks exactly like MCE 2005 on-screen, only some of the functions (disc burning, etc.) that wouldn’t pertain to a set-top box are absent. Output options include composite, component, S-Video, RCA stereo, and optical SPDIF. The product ships also with an IR remote control.

Remote Media on the Road: Creative Zen Portable Media Center
(www.creative.com)
As fate would have it, I ended up with the Zen PMC and John got the Archos AV480. It wasn’t until after prolonged use and experimenting that we finally realized that a swap was in order. John doesn’t want to hassle with manually converting files, manual synching, or manual anything. He just wants a way to set up a sync profile and let Windows Media Player 10 monitor his TV, video, picture, and music files. Whenever he makes a change on the media center PC, that change should automatically happen in the portable media player so that whenever he sets foot outside his house, the MCE experience he enjoys on his couch goes with him.

The Zen PMC features a comparatively spacious 3.8” color display, a five-hour battery life for video playback, and the most intuitive controls of any portable media player I’ve seen. After years of trying to cram a notebook onto the drop-down tray in coach class flights, John was ready to sacrifice a few inches of screen estate for comfort and privacy. What about not being able to play DVDs? That’s the beauty of MCE and Windows Media Player 10. Any subscription music and movie content John downloads from the likes of Napster and CinemaNow automatically sync to the PMC. Nice!

Media Center Platform: Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
(www.microsoft.com)
No surprises here. For convenience and the easiest media center experience around, John went for MCE 2005. Without it, many of the benefits in the Extender and PMC platforms couldn’t happen. However, since we spent so much time on MCE in our last issue, we’ll move on.

Meet William’s Box

Case: Ahanix D4 (www.ahanix.com) and
Antec: NeoPower 480 (www.antec.com)
I nearly went for the Antec Overture. And I really wanted Ahanix’s newer, sexier D6, but all units had been allocated for sales. As fate would have it, though, the D4 turned out to be better for my needs. It measures over an inch taller than the D6, and that extra air space proved a huge asset for thermal management.

I should also mention that all of my home theater components are black, so an all-black aluminum unit like the D4 (which also comes in silver) is aesthetically better in my setting. Plus I also really dig the two-line, VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) on the front panel. This panel includes software hooks to data readouts from MCE (wasted in my case), Winamp, Motherboard Monitor 5 (which I use), and system information ranging from the computer’s name to a memory usage readout to email arrival. For the geek who appreciates a bit of bling, this is a sweet value-add.

I also ripped out the 350W power supply that came with the chassis and installed Antec’s new NeoPower 480. The NeoPower is Antec’s amazing new ATX12V 2.0 power supply design. With a 120 mm fan, the PSU is quieter than most, plus its voltage output is rock steady (yes, I tested the rails with a voltmeter). Best of all, while the ATX and ATX12V power cabling are hard-wired, every other power lead is modular. You simply plug in only the mesh-wrapped feeds you need. This keeps the system interior considerably tidier, and, more importantly, improves air flow. And if you want more Molex or SATA connectors, the NeoPower comes with extra connectors that simply clamp into the existing cables. Cool!

On top of standard ATX mobo compatibility, most HTPC cases cannot accept a standard ATX power supply or a Zalman 7000-series heatsink, so these are two more feathers in Ahanix’s cap. I like that the D4’s two 5.25” bays are stealthed behind a blank door, although the lack of a spring-loaded mechanism means manually opening the door every time you want to use an optical drive. Additionally, there are two 3.5” internal bays and two extremely quiet 60 mm exhaust fans at the back of the case that proved invaluable in my overall high-power configuration. I miss the Overture’s extreme drive bay capacity, but Ahanix makes amends elsewhere.

Motherboard: ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 “Bullhead” Reference
(www.ati.com)
I confess, I’d been all set to go with a 925XE and 3.46EE combo until receiving this reference board turned my head around. XPRESS 200 (RS480) is the graphics-integrated incarnation of ATI’s third-generation chipset built for AMD’s 939-pin platform. (The 200P, or RX480, has no graphics.) Looking at the board, I was immediately impressed with the bullet points: FireWire, independent PATA and SATA RAID, and VGA and DVI ports—a first for any IGP board I’ve seen. Then I set up the reviewer’s kit ATI had sent me (Athlon 64 3800+, 512MB of low latency OCZ memory, and X700 PCIe card), dove deep into the BIOS, and ran a slew of benchmark tests. The results were astounding.

For those of you who wondered how ATI could design such incredible graphics cards and such humdrum chipsets, I offer a one-word explanation: Intel. Intel granted ATI the right to develop for P4, and ATI had to tread carefully so as not to upset that relationship. But now reviewers are increasingly finding situations in which AMD has regained the performance advantage over Intel, and my guess is that ATI decided is was time to risk rocking the Intel boat in order to establish itself at the head of the chipset pack. After all, nobody rules the mainstream by being mainstream.

RS480 uses a 1 GHz HyperTransport bus, DDR memory, PCI Express, and is fully DirectX 9.0-compliant. Unlike Intel’s GMA 900, the RS480 will actually run DOOM III, although at unplayably low frame rates. At this writing, I haven’t yet picked up a copy of Half-Life 2, but initial reports online say that the RS480 will run the game above 20 fps, and Unreal Tournament 2004 chimes in at over 30 fps at 800 x 600. This is a huge achievement in the world of integrated graphics and one that has huge ramifications for those who want a PC-based living room gaming experience. And for my own purposes, since I’m constantly ripping apart PCs in my house to use this or that for testing, the RS480 is the ideal mobo platform since I can temporarily yank out my PCIe card and still have a fully functional media center left behind. Yes, I know consumers usually don’t care about this aspect.

However, graphics isn’t this board’s key selling point. After all, it’s more or less an X300 SE. ATI also implemented a long-awaited feature called SurroundView, which coordinates the two IGP and two PCIe-based output ports to enable one desktop spread across up to four monitors. I can’t see implementing this in a living room—although the thought of three plasmas running end-to-end on a wall makes me salivate uncontrollably—but don’t rule out media center possibilities in the corporate space, particularly if you’re using multiple tuners.

Bottom line: XPRESS 200 boards have a huge feature range, excellent display performance and flexibility, and, most importantly, some of the best benchmark numbers available on today’s market. The nForce4 looks to still have a small lead in general, but nForce4 has no integrated graphics, and ATI now wins hands-down on tweaking potential. For power users who want to push their media centers to the max in any and all occasions, this is the board platform to pick.
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