blog好ã homecinema edition
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Tagged: ef, k-on
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Alright, it’s Month of Mio, so let’s get the obligatory K-On! reference that out of the way first so we can talk about what’s really important: how to enjoy our new bassist overlord in high def.
I guess a lot of people watch anime on their computers– I just can’t do that. I much rather enjoy anime on a big screen while I rest my ass on a comfy La-Z-Boy sofa. My current setup is a Samsung 650 series LCD connected to my MacBook. That in turn is connected to my media server via wireless, and it’s fast enough to serve up anything that I’ve tossed at it so far (though I have a wireless N network).
I’ve been through quite a few programs for OSX, and I’ve settled on Mplayer OSX Extended. It’s quite flexible, and it has handled almost all media that I’ve tossed at it. (Though it has some issues handling certain types of subtitle files.) If the gold standard is MPC Homecinema + CCCP, then Mplayer OSX Extended is about a 90/100. I also like the keybinds used, and in-file navigation is snappy and easy.
Other OSX Players:
Axel’s Spiral has come a long way, but it still uses the Quicktime backend, which I feel just isn’t as good or versatile as Mplayer’s.
Plex crashed a lot for me, and it was one of the least efficient players– it played files over the network the worst. The UI is pretty, but slow.
VLC has trouble with certain files. It also has one of the more user unfriendly UI’s.
On the Windows side, there’s really no reason to use anything other than CCCP with MPC Homecinema. They handled every format with grace. The DXVA acceleration is just the frosting on the cake– with Mplayer OSX, my Core 2 Macbook needs about 40% CPU utilization to process 720p h264 encodes. My Core 2 XP machine with a GeForce 9800GT and DXVA needs about 8% and handle almost a dozen 720p files simultaneously without audio sync loss. That’s just overkill. (But, of course, this machine is noisy as heck and why it isn’t in the living room.)
MPC Homecinema also has a pan and scan trick that I miss on the Mac side. It basically can squeeze and resize 4:3 content on the fly for 16:9 televisions. And it does it nicely. I have no idea why this would be important… I mean… no anime airs 4:3 first still, right? RIGHT?!
For DVDs, I have an Oppo 980 upscaling player. Watching DVDs from a computer is clunky, so I prefer to just use a normal DVD player. I used to have a Philips upscaling one, but I retired it to my home office when I got the Oppo. The one thing about the Oppo is that it is not forgiving to badly encoded DVDs. If the DVD has encoding artifacts or just poor encoding, you will see it in 1080i glory. Since there’s so little R1 anime Blu-Ray, I felt it was better just to go with a DVD player.
But the Macbook is showing its age, and I’m getting tired of connecting/disconnecting it whenever I need to use my laptop as– gasp– a laptop. It also starts getting hot and noisy when playing 1080p files, so I’ve started my search for a replacement. Ideally, I want something cheap and can handle 1080p without sweating and ramping up the fans to ludicrous speed.
I looked at Asus’s EEE Box, but even the new iteration seemed underpowered.
The I looked at Acer’s AspireRevo, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the poor review it got on internet browsing and YouTube (two other things I would use it for).
Stuff like cheap HPs or Dells just seem a bit too noisy. Plus, most of them don’t have processors better than the Core 2 in my Macbook or a graphics card that DXVA would work with.
Now I’m leaning towards getting a Mac Mini and dual boot XP, but that’s a fairly expensive option. So I wonder what my readers are doing and what works for them. Maybe I can get some ideas and finally reclaim my Macbook off of the home entertainment shelf.
51 Responses to “blog好ã homecinema edition”
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Acer AX1700 from BestBuy
Pentium Dual-Core 2.4 GHz, Nvidia Geforce G100, $479.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ol.....8044490195
I use MPlayer OSX Extended on my Macbook as well. It’s nice and it has handled everything I’ve thrown its way. My main gripes are at the interface level, specifically the way that if you click the ‘next’ button to skip to the next chapter and the video doesn’t have chapters, it skips to the end of the video and then immediately closes the video. Also when it finishes it automatically closes. And when you toggle between window and full screen or take a screenshot, it unpauses. More niggles than they are actual problems.
I’d be careful regarding a mac mini. It’s probably fine, but I recall them having extremely underpowered integrated graphics chips at one point and you might find that they flag a bit. Ditto the Apple TV, I think it’s still just a bit too underpowered.
Personally, my next PC-related purchase will probably be the components to build an actual HTPC.
I hear that the latest iteration of the mac mini use nVidia’s new embedded graphics solution, the 9400 I believe, instead of Intel’s so video performance is drastically better than any netbook. While netbooks using nVidia’s ION will be coming out soon, they will be hampered pretty badly by the Atom processor. The mac mini does sound like the logical choice, the Apple TV hasn’t made the jump to the 9400 yet (boxee is cool though). Are you looking at the entry level $500 model? The only issue is the video connection since it will not have a HDMI port and I’m starting to feel like I can’t live without HDMI now. Even my Dell XPS m1330 has a HDMI port. Come on Apple!
So when are your thoughts on K-On 6 going to be out? I’m dying to read them. Really, I can’t wait.
Pentium E5200 + Radeon HD 4830 + massive, slow-turning fans = smooth and quiet 1080p playback. It’s not very pretty; then again, it’s hidden away in a closet near the TV with just a unobtrusive flat HDMI cable snaking out. They do sell purpose-built HTPC cases, but considering the cost of most of those, you might as well get a Mac Mini.
It’s simple, build your own desktop PC. Anyone can build one; it’s literally just choosing the right parts for your budget and connecting the wires. My desktop was is $800ish as of now, with my newer video card. With the older video card that could still play any sort of 1080p HD video perfectly, the build was around $600ish. (Intel q6600 c2q, 4gb Gskill ram, Gigabyte p45 ud3p, Corsair 750w psu, HIS 4870 Radeon/XFX 8600gt Geforce, WD 500gb hdd, some cheap dvd burner and my own ghetto modded Antec 300 case) It was a lot of fun to build this machine. Though I wish my Samsung Touch of Color T220HD (22″ HDTV) was like the 40″and up version.. : |
Anyway, if you would love to take the easy dive into building your own, I (and anyone else knowledgeable here) would love to help you out. I have no problem with OSX, but I don’t like paying for the overpriced hardware to get it. (unless you try to do Hackintosh yourself, which I haven’t bothered trying yet..)
You can get a hold of me on the site linked to my name. Just look up my name and PM me.
moe, moe.. kyun~ :3
I looked at the specs for the machines mentioned above and my advice would be to stay away from anything with an Atom processor if you want to watch anything higher than 480 res. The Atom CPUs will always be the bottleneck for practically everything. The Mac mini has a Core 2 Duo in it and should technically be able to play COD 4 (like the new Macbook and Macbook Pros) so hi def video shouldn’t be an issue. How will you connect the sound to the TV? I may try a similar setup but the lack of HDMI on the mini will make the audio setup less elegant.
I can’t stand MPlayer (any version) because if you put even a moderate load on the processor, say leaving a couple of tabs with Flash open, A/V sync goes all over the place. Maxxing out one core (e.g. compiling) makes most anything completely unwatchable. And MPlayer’s internals are a huge twisted mess of cruft and hacks.
I keep on meaning to write a nice fast minimal player with a half decent video output (seriously, why does noone use shaders to do colorspace conversion? It’s not like it’s hard… Heck nothing but QT even does a proper DMA these days and even that I think was disabled recently) but I keep hating the UIs I program.
As for what to use w/ a TV, I would’ve recommend looking at something like Popcorn Hour or Western Digital’s thing, but thinking again I doubt they support styled subs. A used/refurbished Mac mini is probably your best option for quietness.
Like KOkun I’d recommend building your own HTPC. Avoid Dell and HP like the plague.
I’d build something based on a mATX motherboard with the AMD 780G chipset, which is really designed for this sort of thing and includes onboard graphics up to the task of 1080p output and HDMI output, so you don’t need a discreet graphics card. Couple it with an AMD X2 5050e and you’ve got a low power system that doesn’t need a lot of cooling at all. If you get a HTPC case that accepts 120mm fans stick some quiet fans in there, stick a passive heatsink on the CPU, and have the case fans ramp up in speed as the cpu temperature rises, and the loudest thing in the case is likely to be the hard drive.
What sort of audio setup do you have to go along with the Samsung 650?
Out of interest, have you tried the OSX build of XBMC. It used to be quite good on modded xboxes back in the day and I understand it’s had a lot more development since then.
I personally have a home-built core i7 PC hooked up to my XBR4 LCD TV. Like Jason, I dislike machine noise, so I used quiet components: Antec P182 case, Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 tower heatsink, 120 mm Noctua fans with voltage dividers, Enermax Modu82+ 625W quiet PSU, Western Digital GP drives, etc.
Provided cost isn’t too big of a concern and you don’t mind DIY, you can build a powerful and quiet system. I highly recommend silentpcreview.com if you’re interested, especially their reference / recommended articles.
I bought an EEE PC 1000H last October. You CAN watch 720p anime on it with subtitles. And some 1080p videos also work, but only without subtitles. CoreAVC is absolutely required for that though. Don’t even think it’s playable without it. Sometimes I connect it to the TV and that works at the same speeds as in normal laptop mode. So yes, it can play 720p on the TV. I still get some slowdown on it when there are more than three lines of subtitles but most of the time it’s pretty good. It’s also very good for Photoshop. I use it mostly for Internet, chatting and work. The only thing that I don’t use it for is gaming which it is terrible at. I noticed Windows XP works very fast on it. The battery life on this thing is something I can’t do without anymore. :)
Oh my god thank you for pointing me to MPlayer OSX Extended. For a while now I’ve been used NicePlayer (a QuickTime frontend) + Perian.
@ Chucky: Depends on the type of gaming you’re doing on the Eee PC 1000H. The thing works perfectly well with Melty Blood, Eternal Fighter Zero, even that side scolling Tomoyo game that Jason highlighted previously. I’m sure it’ll do ok for emulators and the like, although I haven’t tried those.
It’ll also do VERY basic 3D games, like dungeon side-scrollers of the visual novel breed. And while on that subject, it plays visual novels pretty well too. XD
Anyway, back on topic. If space is a premium and you want something that looks fairly nice, I’d suggest getting a motherboard/casing from Shuttle PC (www.shuttle.com) and just souping it up with decent parts. Noise MAY be an issue, and I’ve not tested one out in my living room before, but the deisgn is pretty good – the ones I’ve used are Gamecube like in looks, just wider and longer, and they have other form factors as well.
If you can afford to squeeze in a standard ATX casing, the sky’s the limit. XD You’d also have a wide range of noiseless cooling choices at your disposal.
If you’re lazy, just get that Mac Mini and be done with it. XD
I watch my anime on a crappy HP Pavillion with a 14″ screen. I really need a HDTV, as my household only has 3 small SDTV, and no anime airs in SD. Oh wait…
Might I suggest getting a (new, 9400m) Mac mini, and running Windows for MPC? (You do mention that you prefer its usability)
Even if that sounds a bit sacrilegious.
From an aesthetic point of view only, the Mac Mini will fit almost anywhere and disappear, unlike a tower, and with a wireless keyboard/mouse, you are completely untethered. That’s how my setup is; recently hooked it up to my Samsung 650 which is quite spectacular.
Hardware wise, I can’t be of help. My Mini is first gen and doesn’t have the Intel processor, so watching HD is impossible. (pretty much SD mkv’s are impossible, too, which means avi’s) An upgrade is coming and this post will be of use to me as well. With the economy the way it is, however, I have to pace myself. I’m hoping a memory upgrade will help for now.
It’s time for a HTPC build, with focus on solid cooling devices to cut down the sound. It’s going to be the best price/performance option (of course I don’t recommend going with a case over $200 unless one has $8k plus in other equipment).
… actually, the Mac mini is pretty reasonable. Yea, I’d say its a solid option, with a better OS, but I think more performance can be squeezed from an HTPC build for the price; likely a trivial amount of performance, but who knows.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/web.....nd%20sleek
get a HP Slimline PC, I have one of these for my TVs. Its very quiet and only sets you back about 400 dollars. Just make sure you upgrade it to a graphic card w/ HDMI. That and for a bit extra you might as well get the Blu-Ray option for 100 dollars more.
It’s significantly Much more Higher performance and cheaper than a Mac Mini just running XP.
*Now I’m leaning towards getting a Mac Mini and dual boot XP, but that’s a fairly expensive option. *
Almost exactly this, except I’m not dual-booting, I removed MacOS completely and just have Windows installed. This was done mostly to save HD space, since my only problem with my MacMini is the small HD (80GB).
It’s an older Mac Mini with a 1.83 Core2 Duo, but it’s more than enough to run even 1080p videos, though I stick mostly to 720p since that’s the native resolution for my HDTV.
I use a Wireless trackball as a “remote control” (http://www.saville-av-online.c.....RGUSWP.jpg), which works like a charm.
For software, I tried Windows Media Center, XBMC and a few other options, but still haven’t found anything as good as the traditional CCCP+MPC setup.
@jounin: I have an Aspire One with an Atom processor, and surprisingly it plays most 720p videos with just CCCP+MPC. The few videos that had some hiccups work flawlessly with CoreAVC, which costs only $15.
I’m a poor man, so usually i’d just jack in my laptop into a CRT-tv via S-video. I know, I’m like 50 years backwards. Somehow everything still looks spiffy, and I don’t really mind black borders, so I’m pretty good now.
But I swear, if I had the cash, there will be changes, mark my words.
You’ve saved my neck man. I’ve been using VCL for a long time, ever since my version of quicktime stopped playing sound on .AVI files for some reason. I always hated when I used MKV files in VCL, I always had to stop the video and set the subtitles. Recently, the software would outright refuse to play videos, forcing me to search for a version of the episode it will play. Well today, it refused to play both K-ON! episode 6 and Valkyria Chronicles episode 5. I couldn’t find alternate versions, so I was stuck with a video I couldn’t even watch.
You’re timing with this post couldn’t be more convenient! I tried both with MPlayer, and they actually worked and it even set the subtitles for me! Thank you man! VCL, you have been replaced!
h.264 at 1080p is generally a bitch to decode. I’ve tried to play it on a number of different systems; even my roommate’s media PC, a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 box (old, I know, but remember that the one thing the P4s did well was video encoding/decoding) struggles at higher bitrates. My laptop (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo+Geforce 8600M) does fine, even without using decode acceleration from the video card. With an increasing number of fansub groups pumping out 400MB h.264 subs, I’d invest in something with some oomph for a media system. I doubt a Mac Mini is going to cut it. I’d say the cheapest I’d be willing to go comfortably would be a self-built desktop PC with a low-end Core 2 processor and one of the cheaper NVidia graphics cards so that when the inevitable happens and we start being subjected to 700MB 1080p subs, you’ve got a little headroom.
$0.02.
I have to say… I think you have your setup done well for your present resources. I do the same, minus the Samsung panel (which I will have one day). The only problem I have with MPlayer OS X Extended is that it has issues with vertical subtitle text.
One of the new Mac Minis with the NVIDIA graphics processor (even though it’s integrated) should do your 1080p. What with the h264 decoding abilities of the NVIDIA setup, it should take the load off of the main processors and keep the processors from having to get too hot.
If you want a fancy frontend, on Mac and Linux you have MythTV and XBMC. I haven’t tried them in a while, so I can’t say how much or little tweaking it would take. MythTV uses MPlayer directly to display video. XBMC doesn’t use MPlayer, but uses the same libraries that give MPlayer its wide range of format support (things like softsubs are done at the application level, but I understand they were brought up to speed recently). XBMC also supports the Apple IR remote.
I’ll probably end up using a Mac Mini with XBMC, myself.
You HAVE to try Boxee for Mac (http://www.boxee.tv/). It’s the evolution of XBMC and it’s just perfect as a media center (running as a program for Mac OS X on a TV). Try it.
It has a weird black magic and plays every media perfect (mkv, avi, ogg, exotic subtitles, etc). But it does so much more. Just try it.
Folks suggesting Boxee, XBMC, etc.: it’d be a good suggestion with the caveat that you won’t be able to use hardware acceleration capabilities provided by your video card, since XBMX/Boxee doesn’t support that yet! (There’s a way around it [namely, shunting actual playback to another program], but it takes a bit of fiddling)
For hardware acceleration, the simplest way to get it once you have a proper video card is MPC + PowerDVD 8 or 9. All you really need is the codec from PD 8/9 so you can just use the trial. Of course, you should pay for it if you find it useful enough… right? RIGHT??? <_<;;
There is in fact one Atom chip that does perform decently, and that’s the Atom 330 (found only soldered to boards out there). The trick is that it’s actually dual-core, which is a little silly if you think about it… so don’t. Boards with Atom 330 on them are around $80-90, chip included of course. They also support 64bit OS and hyperthreading.
In terms of codec packs for Windows, I personally prefer the k-lite codec pack more than CCCP. It doesn’t cause my optical digital audio (SPDIF) to go screwy, and although for playback they’re about the same otherwise, it has some nice extras that help with encoding if you ever decide to rip your own videos.
As for 1080p videos, I don’t know how much lower you could go and get the same, but my i7 desktop can run 2 different 1080p h264 videos simultaneously (I didn’t care to try more since I only have two monitors) and not even hit 10% CPU usage. I know an i7 is pretty much overkill for most people, but if you want the extra power for multimedia editing or extreme (read: SUPER extreme) multitasking, then it’s pretty handy. You can put together your own for about $900 USD, but I think Dell has them in complete deals for the same price (I don’t really care for Dell, but hey, free warranty).
If you are trying to keep to the cheap end however and wanting to build a budget-friendly media center computer, be sure to get at least an Nvidia geforce 8 series graphics card or higher (an 8600GTS will cost about $40-50 USD), since the 8 series was the first released that nvidia built capable of fully offloading HD h264 decoding to the graphics card instead of loading down the processor (in addition to having full HDCP support….you’ll need that if you ever get a bluray drive)- I can say from personal experience they do it pretty well too.
Why not that Western Digital media player? 100$ and runs about everything you can toss at it.
Upload to USB Key, plug USB Key, watch…
This is what I’ve read, as I have not owned one. I want to, but I am lacking the television to plug an HDMI cable to.
Oh, and I’ve seen K-On 6 (first time I actually watch it this early), and am eagerly awaiting your rice comments… they are coming, right? Right?
I need to buy myself a bowl…
A mac? Seriously? Ugh… I guess I can forgive you, but there really is little excuse in this day and age to use one when there are so many better(and CHEAPER) PC and Notebook alternatives. Hell, I recommend the Asus G50V A1 or A2. When I bought it, it was about $1600, but I’ve heard the price has dropped to about $1300 already. The thing is a beast. From what I understand, it can run Crysis on some of the highest settings. I don’t know because I don’t own it, but I bought it to last me quite a while and I fully expect it will play Diablo III and Starctaft II when they come out, which is a requirement for me. The only slightly noisy part of it is the DVD player, but I don’t know if that problem exists on the BluRay side. Either way, this laptop is amazing and can most likely outperform whatever you have right now or are looking at. Even it’s speakers are loud and clear.
Unless you are heavily into media editing, there really is no excuse to buy another mac. Please Jason, get into the digital age.
As for K-On, yeah, I’m disappointed today’s post wasn’t about rice bowls.
I see I am not alone in this desire for 1080p from a small and “simple” device. I have narrowed it down to 3 options:
1) Popcorn Hour A110
2) Western Digital HD TV
3) Computer*
I’m a bit wary of subtitle support from both the WD HD TV and Popcorn Hour A110, they both claim to have it but it doubt it will ever be as robust as what you can do with a real computer. I think dedicated media player products are still a few years away from getting it right but the convenience of a small device is really really tempting and there’s also the possibility of firmware upgrades.
The WD HD TV is the cheapest option of the bunch but it’s subtitle support is still not 100% and I think is only available on the beta firmware. Plus the idea of constantly moving files to a usb stick to shove into the WD HDTV sounds a chore that would get old very quickly.
Leaving out those devices we’re left with the computer and I’m not satisfied with the performance and prices of computers. If you don’t mind building your own it looks like there’s great options out there. The AMD 780G chipset looks very promising as it supports MPEG-2, H.264/AVC and VC-1 decoding. Pair it up with a low power (the 45Watt) Athlon X2 and I think there’s a legitimate solution for all the HD media playing needs. You can read about it here.
Depending on how small or large you want the final product to be you can range from fairly cheap
to cheap, all which should end up cheaper than a mac mini.
You might also want to look into the codec CoreAVC for better use of multi-core processors for 1080p decoding in windows XP.
Put me solidly on the build side of the argument. As long as you spend a little time picking out the right hardware, you could even set it up as a dual-boot Hackintosh. That way you can still work out your unhealthy Mac desires when you want, but when you need it to actually do something, you boot it up as a real computer (I recommend installing the Windows 7 RC, as it’s legitmately free and way better than xp or Vista) and put it to work. You don’t need to throw an i7 processor in there, as a Core 2 Duo or Quad will work nicely (especially if you want it to be quiet and leave the Hackintosh option easily open). Also get a good mid-to-high-end GeForce or ATi card to offload some of the .H264 work, and you’re set. If size isn’t an issue, get a case with big fans that you can turn all the way down (all the Antec ‘Hundred cases or the CoolerMaster HAF cases work well for this, but are a bit pricey) so you get great airflow with little noise. Of course, you could always go liquid-cooled, but that’s a bit of overkill…
Another stone-ager here… I also like watching on the big screen from the comfort of my couch. Unfortunately, I just have a CRT TV. I use my Tivo Series 2 to actually watch, since it can play files over the network and does some kind of filtering/postprocessing so the signal looks nice. The Tivo is extremely picky about the format (note singular) it’s willing to play, which requires that I transcode everything before watching it. I use mencoder (from the mplayer package) to do this. I’ve set up a pair of configuration profiles, one for 4:3 and one for 16:9 aspect ratios, and on an Athlon64 it takes about 10-15 minutes to transcode a half-hour episode. Since it’s not real time, I don’t have to worry about the processor keeping up; it takes longer to transcode 1080p, but it plays back just fine (albeit dumbed down to 480i).
One catch is that since I’m watching on a CRT, I have to account for overscan; my configurations are set so they scale the image down so it fits fully on the screen and I can read the occasional karaoke that’s right up on the edge. Another is that I need to render softsubs at encode time, and mencoder’s ASS support is passable, so long as the subbers don’t get too fancy with the styles. Also, I don’t have a good automated way to deal with linked chapters yet (I’m an OP/ED watcher).
I was under the impression that DXVA was disabled in CCCP because it introduced quirks into subtitle handling. Your CPU numbers seem to indicate you have it working, but I’m wondering what you did to get that to work.
I’d also be careful about relying on DXVA too much because some 1080P anime encodes don’t work with current implementations. I don’t know if the Mac Mini has enough power to handle these encodes using straight CPU, given that I have played 1080P back on my brother’s 2ghz core 2 duo machine I suspect yes but I can’t say for sure (the encode tested didn’t have complicated karaoke, for example).
I’m a PC builder myself and while it gives you plenty of options, I’d like to remind the people advocating it that there are some parts of PC builds that can be really finicky depending on your hardware. The LGA775 heatsink mount used for most Intel CPUs comes to mind. I had to actually watch the installation video on Intel’s website because I couldn’t figure out how to seat it properly from the written instructions.
I just wanna say,
Yay! EF blu-ray!
Why use codec packs when you can install them yourself?
MPC HC SVN + ffdshow tryout SVN + Haali spliter/renderer > any lame codec pack
Sony 52″ Widescreen
h.264
Blu-ray
6G Ram
HP dv7
9800 GT
2.9Ghz
Gogo
I bought an eee PC 701 over a year ago, it’s small and portable and lets me watch anime on the go. Needs to be standard definition though.
I have a fairly new iMac (not the newest generation, but the one before that) and it plays anime beautifully, it only ever breaks a sweat when playing bluRay rips.
oh, i have two dell dimension 4100’s, one with ubuntu and dual-screen, the other with dual boot windows ME and xandros linux. Also needs to be standard definition video.
I’m currently running Mac Mini 2.0 core 2 duo with 2GB of Ram. Tried using Perian, VLC, Divx Player and even MPlayer OSX Extended. I had variant of working and some minor playback issue. Decided to download the latest MPlayer again, but it still had some problem playing the latest Hayate and Full Metal, so i decide to tweak the settings, specifically on the cache, after so every MKV file i threw at it seems to work fine. Still wish that CCCP comes up with their own mac codec. About the Western Digital WDTV, it goes well with a Big LCD TV, but it still has some problem with MKV so better wait if they ever upgrade to a newer firmware. My suggestion is either get a refurb Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM, or go get the New Mac Mini with the Nvdia video, your choice between loading it with Mplayer under OSX or load the latest Windows 7 RC.
I have a 160GB external HDD, which I use to move watch anime episodes on my PS3. 1080i on a 19-inch TV. It’s not much, but it’s definitely better than watching it on my laptop.
Once of the biggest disads is that the episode has to be either on mp4 or avi format, which means most of the time I don’t have access to the better-res mkv formats. But hey, it’s still better than watching it on my laptop. Sometimes.
Skyman747, I feel your pain. After my old power supply committed suicide and slagged half my comp I’ve had to make do with a frankenstein cobbled together out of parts that were obsolete back when they were new. And my monitor is actually better than my TV. Until I can afford something decent even SD h264 is pushing it and half the time it feels like I’d be better off manually converting the binary to images and hand drawing a flipbook. orz
I’d agree with everybody else — atom’s not powerful enough since there’s a lot of files that can’t be accelerated by hardware, so your best bet is probably a Mac Mini or build it yourself.
Alternatively, if you have a PS3, you can just use PS3 media server (http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/) to transcode anything your PC can play in software to your PS3 in real-time. I started using this after getting my PC out of the living room, and it plays as well as using CCCP (because it uses the codecs on my PC)… but if you don’t already have a PS3, I’d just put together a computer.
Since everybody already mentioned the setups they built/bought, I thought I’d throw my two yen in and mention some resources I use when shopping for parts.
First is research:
http://www.hardocp.com – probably the mecca of hardware reviews.
http://www.tomshardware.com – personally, I like the comparison charts they make across a bunch of cards
For buying:
http://www.newegg.com – I won’t lie, this is my one stop shop for parts.
http://www.pricewatch.com – If, for some reason, newegg doesn’t do it for you, you can compare the prices of various parts across a bunch of websites. It’s sort of like a metasearch for computer components. I haven’t used it in years though…
Good luck!
P.S. Mio faceplant is to moegasm as Kamina is to epic speeches.
Best solution I have found is to use Windows 7 Media Center w/ Remote + Nvidia Video Card w/ DXVA + CoreAVC w/ CUDA. You get a very nice looking UI along with Hardware Accelerated Decoding + Subtitles. And this can all be controlled through the MCE remote. So easy a caveman can used it. I’m looking at the Acer and Mac Mini as potential replacements for my current media center setup since they both use Nvidia video cards. My current media center setup still uses 1st rev. Athlon64’s. Luckily, the video card is doing most of the hard work.
This is the best tutorial I have found for setting up CoreAVC w/ CUDA. http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.ne.....ture-cuda/
“Upgrading” to an atom is not gonna cut it. Chances are your current macbook has more power than any atom processor, though even if it doesn’t I can guarantee you it won’t be anywhere near powerful enough to play 1080p videos well at all.
Ultimately just about any higher end core 2 duo or any quad core will do the job without any problems. You might be able to get away with a lower end core 2 duo, but from my experience, mine gives me hiccups in the video every once in a while depending on what it is, and considering from the sound of it you’re trying to futureproof yourself a little, so I’d recommend something a little bit more powerful.
I’d recommend anything with a score of 1400 or above on this chart:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
I have a similar set up. I have windows home server hosting all my media files, and trying to view them on my Macbook Pro running MPlayer OSX Extended with wireless N.
However, the smb performance is so erratic that playback on MPlayer OSX Extended is can get choppy. So my question is… did you do any tweaking to get the smb share performance that you need to play those files?
Thanks.
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To.....ystation-3
I’ll try this out when I get back from university later in the week. Aside from K-On, I wanna watch Valkyria Chronicles episodes in HD on my PS3.
Don’t know for the Apple side. For windows, MPC-HC + CCCP sure is the best way to handle all files. Add CoreAVC 1.9.5 with CUDA support and enable DXVA in MPC-HC, toss-in some filters and shaders and you’ve got a perfect image for all types of anime.
For windows, using a media center software sur is nice … if you’ve got a remote controller. And for this, MediaPortal is just perfect cause unless XBMC, it can use external player.
Personnally, i use a budget HTPC config with an old 26″ LCD samsung TV (VGA connected :D) with an old logitech media remote. Plan to upgrade for a B650 samsung series or B550 depending on my budget.
My advice, build an HTPC with windows 7, an Antec HTPC-case or silverstone, geforce 9400 mobo with an intel core 2 duo 5xxx or 7xxx passively cooled. One or two 12cm silent fans and a silent psu. MediaPortal + MCE remote.
Just do what I did; a Westinghouse 1080p LCD as main monitor on my PC (backed up by a 22″ LCD, with another 17″ LCD…).
But make sure you get one without/toggleable overscan compensation, or you’ll destroy it’s monitor-ability.
Jason, I am in the same boot as you with the newer macbook and using it on my hd tv… I however am running into space issues because of all the photos I take and videos I shoot. What I have investigated is taking my few external hard drives and daisychaining them into a mac mini. Taking the mini and pluging it into the wireless router, then sharing the drives remotely through the mini.
The next step is reorganizing the data on the shared external drives where I have individual ‘time machine’ folders for both the mini and macbook. Then consolidate my itunes and iphoto libraries onto the remote drives. All the while taking my dvi to hdmi cable from belkin and pluging it into the mini and my hd tv as it’s monitor. (note on this… the latest osx auto recognizes my hdtv with the belkin cable — HD itunes purchases rock.)
The tough spot for me is whether I wait until the next OSX version to debut. It should be coming out in the next couple months and will have drastic improvements for multi-core systems, media playback and remote hard drive compatibilities.
So what I am thinking is this:
1. Get all of my files organized then scavenge my older PC drives into firefire remote drives.
2. Buy a newer mac mini with dual core and nvidia chipset.
3. Pick up the new OSX.
4. Hook up the mini as a media-player, file storage organizer, network hard drive share sytem and resource to edit and order photos online through my tv.
5. Use my macbook for personal computing and entertainment instead of a somewhat mobile entertainment box and storage device.
Total cost for me (since I already own the drives, router, cables, tv and macbook) would be a newer mini $500 (refirb from apple in two months) and two firewire drive enclosures less than $80.
Thoughts anyone?
fit-PC2
http://fit-pc2.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
The greatest HTPC yet? I think so.
And imagine how even more awesome it will be when fitted with Corsair’s new ultra-fast SSDs!