jameswharris

HTPC Advice Wanted

I want to build my own Home Theater PC (HTPC) but I have a number of decisions to make that I hope readers can advise me on. I want to build a low-cost HTPC that also uses as little energy as possible, especially since I will need to leave the machine on 24×7. The demands of a HTPC can be high, so I’m worried that a green low-powered chip might compromise the project. I’ve read reviews of a Polywell Mini-ITX HTPC with a N330 Atom dual processor combined with an NVIDIA ION chipset, using just 23-30w of electricity, but is it powerful enough to do the job? And is onboard graphics good enough, or will I need a discrete graphics card? Finally, I’d like my custom HTPC to replace several machines connected to my 52” Samsung DLP HDTV:

LG Blu-ray player
Pioneer CD/SACD player
Toshiba DVD recorder
Yamaha 5.1 receiver/amp
Roku SoundBridge M1001 media extender

I doubt I can find an internal Blu-Ray optical drive for my HTPC that can replace my SACD player, so it might be time to give up on that technology. I never bought more than a dozen SACDs anyway, but I will miss them.

I want my HTPC to do:

Record over-the-air HD broadcasts
Offer an elegant program guide to work with the DVR
Burn DVDs from shows recorded with DVR
Play Blu-Ray and DVD movies
Stream video from Netflix and Amazon
Stream video from Youtube, Hulu, Boxee, etc.
Stream music from Rhapsody, Lala, Pandora, etc.
Play music CDs
Use the Internet in my den while sitting in my La-Z-Boy
Store 200 GB of digital media
Be my digital photo librarian and slide projector
Be my home file and backup server
Run everything from one remote

Question 1: Can a sound card replace an standalone receiver?

Is it even possible for a HTPC to replace my Yamaha receiver? My current system has Infinity main and center speakers, and Bose for the rear channels. I never bought a subwoofer. I’m wondering if I could replace my receiver and speakers with some decent PC speakers or an amplified sound bar? I’m not a audiophile by any measure, but I like good sound.

Question 2: What benefits will I get from a more expensive chip?

I’m happy now Windows Media Center is working on my AMD 64 X2 4200+ chip, but would things be much better with a higher powered chip? For $50-75 I could get a very nice AMD chip. For $100 I can get a low end Intel Core 2 Duo, or even a AMD X4 chip. For more than double that I could get a high performance, low watt Intel mobile processor or i5. What HTPC features benefit from a more expensive chip?

Question 3: Will onboard graphics be good enough or will I need a good graphics card?

In terms of power consumption and cost, it would be great to live with the graphics built into the motherboard. I want to watch Internet TV, so how much does the graphics card affect the quality of Hulu and other streaming video sites? I’m not a big video game fan, but if I could play games hooked up to my big TV that might be fun. What’s a good green graphics card?

Question 4: Would I be better off buying or building?

Are there any good HTPC makers that sell systems within the price range of building my own? It’s a shame Dell can’t sell a Zino with a Blu-Ray player, 1GB drive and dual tuner TV card for $499. I wouldn’t mind buying a HTPC if it was priced well and came with a warranty, but I’m figuring to get the features I want, at the price I’m willing to pay, will require building it myself.

Question 5: Is there any reason not to base my system on Windows Media Center?

I’ve been happy with Windows Media Center in Windows 7 for TV recording, so is there any reason to consider another media center application? I was disappointed that Windows Media Center needed hours to burn a DVD of a 1 hour TV show it had recorded. Can other media center apps do it much faster? I’m not sure that Windows Media Center handles large listings of recorded TV shows or MP3 albums very well. What’s the best program for handling large libraries of media?

Question 6: How does Hulu and other TV streaming sites look on a large HDTV screen?

I’m worrying about buying a decent video card to stream Hulu TV, but will that investment pay off? Does TV streamed through Hulu look good on a big TV screen? I’ll be very disappointed if I buy a video card and Hulu isn’t worth watching.

JWH – 12/28/9

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 and Terk HDTVa Antenna Pro

My wife gave me and my computer a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 TV tuner card and a Terk HDTVa antenna for Christmas. I had to do a lot of research before I gave Santa my wish list, but I must have been a very good boy this year because that research paid off perfectly. I want to build a HTPC for my den, but I thought I’d experiment first by adding over-the-air TV to my computer. My previous TV tuner card experience consisted of working with an ATI HD-Wonder card on three different computers over the last three years. What I learned by playing with that TV tuner card is making TV work on a computer leads to high blood pressure and a desire to seek the simple life. And I’ve found many a blogger that confirmed this lesson.

I was very worried that Santa would bring me another lump of coal, but I got a cool toy instead! I knew it helped to have a computer and graphics card with a certain level of oomph and I was worried my old HP Pavillion a6000n with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and NVIDEA GeForce 8500 GT graphic card lacked the horsepower. I kept reading Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s over and over, looking for clues and advice, and finally figured I needed a tuner card with a PCIe connector to increase the bandwidth between the card and computer. I was going to go with their highly rated AVertTV HD Duet, but after comparing the buyer’s comments at Amazon with it and the Hauppauge 1250, I decided to go with the cheaper card.

Both cards are designed to be simple, tuning either over-the-air TV or clearQAM cable signals. Make sure you have a PCIe slot free if you buy this type of card. Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s actually seem to prefer USB tuners, but I was afraid to try them because of poor bandwidth issues with my old PCI based card.

I made a very lucky guess because I popped the 1250 in my PC running Windows 7 Professional and the 1250 was recognized and installed automatically. In fact Windows Media Center did such an excellent job of configuring the card that I decided not to install the Hauppauge media center software or even try out any of the other media center applications, like XBMC, Boxee, SageTV or MythTV. I’ll save that research for when I build my den HTPC.

The Terk HDTVa antenna also worked out well. We have two local channels here in Memphis that still transmit on VHF that causes lots of trouble for indoor antenna users. I tried the Terk without amplification and couldn’t tune in channels 5 and 13, but the Terk tuned them in great after plugging in its amplifier.

The bundled Hauppauge remote did not work out of the box with Windows Media Center, but I went to the install CD and manually ran IR32.exe and bingo the remote was recognized. I would love to find a way to get this remote to work with other Windows programs. I’d like to be able to sit in my reading chair and change music from across the room. I’d especially love to be able to remote control Lala.com. However, this brings up another issue for dealing with building a HTPC, and that’s the user interface and how visible it is from across the room.

Even sitting right at the computer with mouse in hand, getting to a particular TV show, photograph, film or song takes a lot of clicking. Windows Media Center works hard to help, offering many ways to search. I was delighted by searching for albums by their release year. I also liked searching through my music by album cover. However, with over 1200+ CDs, it’s hard to find a particular CD. This isn’t an Achilles heel of Windows Media Center, but a central problem of all media managers. Try finding a song from 1200+ CDs in iTunes with a remote from across the room.

The ultimate solution is either to have voice commands like in Star Trek, or have a handheld controller like those from Sonos or remote control programs that work with the iPhone or iPod touch. Having a touch screen UI on the remote is the way to go now.

One thing I immediately liked about Windows Media Center is it allowed me to list only my preferred TV channels in my guide. I mainly watch PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC and extremely rarely CW and FOX. I blocked another dozen plus local channels, and I may block CW and FOX. This makes my onscreen guide very easy to read. However, I haven’t found out how to make it jump to a particular time and day. It will take me awhile to explore the depths of Windows Media Center. From reviews I’ve read, Windows Media Center is a great program, but some of the other media center applications offer tremendous customization (but with steep learning curves).

Windows Media Center is like a super Windows Media Player, with a UI that scales up with big lettering for watching on a TV set. When I build my HTPC for the den, and start using it from across the room, while sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a remote in hand, I’ll know then whether Windows Media Center succeeds or not. I gave up cable TV to save money and have a very simple TV lifestyle, so any solution I keep must be frustration free.

And any HTPC I build must be simple to use too, and so far Windows Media Center and the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 fits the bill. Right now I have a Blu-Ray player, DVD-recorder and CD/SACD player in my den setup, along with a receiver/amp. I’d love to build a HTPC that replaced all four boxes so all I had was the HDTV and HTPC. That would save electricity, reduce my pile of remotes, and may make my TV watching more simplistic. As I get older, simple often means elegant.

My goal for having a TV tuner in my home office PC is so I can record the news and documentaries and watch them while checking email and web surfing. Setting up recordings was a snap with Windows Media Center The image quality is excellent for HD broadcasts, so I might even start watching short shows like The Big Bang Theory at my computer too. I doubt I’d want to watch movies or hour dramas while seated at the computer. And if I don’t like watching TV at all on my computer screen I’ll yank out the 1250 card and put it into a new HTPC box for the den.

JWH – 12/25/9

Mommy, I’ve Gotta Go To Number 3, Bad

Now that my friends and I are in our fifties I’m amazed that the differences between the sexes remain so baffling and mysterious, and still such a huge topic of conversation. A lady friend reminded me of this recently when she asked, “Don’t men feel romantic like women do?” She had gone through a bad divorce and was gearing up to reenter the battle of the sexes, and I think she was wary of being fooled again. She leaned over and whispered embarrassedly, “You know, when a man is inside a women, when they’re having sex, don’t men feel a psychic bond with women?”

I told her I couldn’t answer for all men but I said it helps to picture men in simple terms. “Remember when we were kids, and we needed to go to the bathroom?”

“Yes,” she replied surprised by the change of subjects.

“You’d say, ‘Mommy, I’ve got to go to number 1’ or ‘number 2.’”

“Yeah,” she said giving me an odd look.

“Well, sex for men is number 3.”

“That’s disgusting. That’s the most horribly unromantic thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t think it’s true.”

“Okay, think back to all your boyfriends and husbands. How often did they want to have sex and how often did you want to have sex?”

She open her mouth to argue back immediately, and then paused, “OK, I can see what you mean.”

I’m reading a book called Why Women Have Sex by Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss and it makes it abundantly clear that women are complicated, giving 237 reasons why women have sex. As a male, I found it very informative, because it explained 237 reasons why I seldom got laid.

Why Women Have Sex feels like a freshman survey textbook, and reading it suggests that both men, and women, will need graduate work, if not a doctorate before they will understand female sexuality. There is no need to write a book about why men have sex. Their physiology programs them to reproduce. They feel this programming as a strong biological urge that requires release. Thus, the reference to number 3.

My lady friend complained about science intruding into the topic. “What about romance?”

“Some men are romantic and some are not,” I replied. “But I don’t think it’s connected to sex, but I’m not sure.” I went on to explain a story in the book Why Women Have Sex, which illustrates my point.

I can’t remember the exact details, but the book described a small mammal that came in two species. One was monogamous and one was not. Scientists eventually found a chemical in the monogamous species that wasn’t in the other. They injected the chemical into the life-long bachelor species, and they became monogamous.

All I can tell my friend is maybe some men have a romantic gene and others don’t. If women ever get an over-the-counter test for the monogamy hormone, guys we’re in trouble. And what if science creates a monogamy pill? Will men have to take their faithful drug every evening when their mates take their birth control pill?

I’ve talked to a number of women about this conversation and they all dislike it. They don’t like science analyzing human nature. One lady said she wanted men to be like my blogging friend Carl. I was amazed at this because it was many months ago when a few women in the office read Carl’s comments to one of my blogs and they all immediately loved his romantic ways. Evidently romantic guys are memorable. Notice that my lady friend above never asked why men wanted sex, she just wanted to know if men were romantic like women. If fact, she implied she didn’t want to believe that men were unromantic.

I’m reading Why Women Have Sex because women’s sexual urges are baffling, not as simple as going to number 3. If women were like men, we’d all be mating like Bonobos. If men were romantic like women, wouldn’t the world be very different? That might be the answer to my friend.

Women should be reading this book more than men because it explains why women love and hate men. But time and again my lady friends are repelled by the details I relay to them from the book. So I’ll suggest another topic for Meston and Buss. They should write a book about why women hate scientific inquiries into romance. Whenever I talk to a woman about relationships and suggest there might be a biological basis, most women get annoyed. It’s anti-romantic.

I know its terrible to generalize like this, but it does appear to be a common attitude among the women I know. One lady friend gave me a clue though. She said science might explain animal biology, but it can’t explain human behavior. I wonder if this is a religious bias. Are humans divine and unexplainable by research, and animals are lowly aspects of the physical world that can be explained. It makes me wonder if romance and religion have similar biological causes, and for some people it’s territory that scientists shouldn’t explore.

JWH – 12/22/9

Reviewing Science Fiction Books With Statistics

Before the Internet if you wanted to find a rip-roaring science fiction novel to read you’d flip through the books at your favorite bookstore and hope to stumble upon the next mind-blowing sci-fi novel to change your life. Or you’d ask your best buds about which books knocked them into orbit. True fans subscribed to science fiction magazines and fanzines, reading all the reviews so as to maintain their status as the Sci-Fi guru at their local Slan shack.

Back in the 1980s I wondered if there was a better way, and developed a statistical system that I wrote about for a fanzine Lan’s Lantern. I describe the process at my Classics of Science Fiction website. When the world wide web came along I put my lists online, and eventually revised them three times. The latest list, Classics of Science Fiction by Rank, is now several years old.

Today I discovered SFFMeta.com, a site created by Eric Bouchard, that also applies statistics to the task of finding a great science fictional read. Think of it as Rotten Tomatoes for science fiction, fantasy and horror books. SFFMeta is the newest in a succession of websites that use statistics for identifying the best science fiction books. An early endeavor was Tristrom Cooke’s The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List, which is now maintained by a new list maker. Years later came Sci-Fi Lists Top Science Fiction, an excellent polling type site from the land down under. I wish their creators would take credit and write about developing their systems.

Each statistician of reading has come up with a different method for identifying good reads. All of us look for ways to cash in on the wisdom of crowds theory. Bouchard’s site is built on the idea that collectively, a group of current book reviewers, will spot the best reads. I love his simple and elegant web design. And it will be one that will evolve with wisdom over time.

Bouchard assembles lists of reviewed books from online reviewing sites. This produces worthy information now, but not deep enough to show wisdom just yet. In other words, his samples are too small. Rotten Tomatoes gets over a hundred reviewers for each film, but SFFMeta is limited by surveying a much smaller industry, and many books on his list have just 1 review.

SFFMeta’s 90 day lists are a helpful indicator now, but their all-time best books are iffy. It might take SFFMeta 5-15 years to gather the data using their methods to show inherent wisdom in identifying all-time classics because they have to wait for old books to be reviewed in new editions. And be reviewed in numbers more significant than new books.

Their best lists now are the 2008 and 2007 summary lists. Statistically, it would be wonderful if we could compare them to sales figures, and other annual best lists, because it would further reinforce the wisdom of crowds concept. I’m looking forward to the 2009 list.

I made my lists before the Internet was well known, and I had to combine the wisdom of fan polls with the wisdom of cross-tabbing critic’s recommended reading lists, along with award lists, and other criteria. We came up with 28 lists, and to get on the final list, a book had to be on at least 7 of those 28 lists.

If SFFMeta could find more reviewers and up their green cutoff to 5 reviewers their accuracy would improve dramatically I think. It would also help if they could factor in other indicators besides reviewers – such as sales numbers, awards and nominations, Google citation numbers, and critical articles, foreign editions, audio book editions, for instance.

SFFMeta also faces the problem that most of their cited reviewers are either overly kind, generous, or just plain hate to trash a book. One positive review can get a book on the list, but it takes three reviews to get a highlighted green score. Because their site is new, their 90 day list has only two green highlighted titles. Their all-time list covers 100 books, with all getting the green rating, and one book having 14 reviews. Statistically that’s better than the 90 day list, but not good enough for identifying true classics.

As their database of reviewed books grow, I’d like to see SFFMeta allow the viewer to manipulate the lists – for example, to see a 90 day list made of books getting more than 3 reviews, or more than 5, etc. You can eyeball this now, but their programmer is obviously talented enough to do this for us. I hope SFFMeta can find many more review sites too. Here is their current list. Print reviewers, I encourage you to reprint your reviews on the web if possible.

Bookmarks Magazine collects statistics on books via reviewers too, but uses print reviewers. In their annual best of the year grid. Their standout books will have 7 or more reviews, and the best of the best will have 12 or more, from the reviewers they use. This illustrates why writers lust after reviews – any kind of attention helps. There are so many books published that it’s hard for most books to get noticed at all, and for some to get noticed by several reviewers is a triumph.

SFFMeta is a dream come true for genre writers because its results further emphasizes the best reviewed books. SFFMeta is also a positive force for book reviewers. Be sure and click the titles to drill down to where you can read the reviews. There’s a major amount of work that’s gone into this site and I hope it becomes a huge success. Hopefully, SFFMeta will bring more readers to the reviewers too, and that should help educate the audience for SF/F/H. It should promote the value of reviewers and maybe bring more into the field.

I’ve always dreamed of doing something more with my lists, but it’s so much damn work. The latest books on my site are three from 1992. I’d love to find enough lists to make it practical to identify books through 2000, but that will be hard. I have 28 lists now. If I could find 5-7 newer lists it would catch a lot of new books, but if I left the cutoff at 7 the final list would be far too long. I’d need to make the cutoff 8-10 lists, and that makes it even harder for new titles to get listed. My system has it’s limits. It tends to recognize the very best of the very best of older books in the bell of the curve, dropping older titles that are being forgotten, and making it very hard for newer titles to be recognized.

If I used a 10 list cutoff, my current list would be 116 books. If I use 11 lists, I’d get 94 books. By using 7 lists, I get 193 books, far too many to be a real Top 100 SF Books, but look what gets left off (scroll down to #94 and see). The Top 100 Sci-Fi Books site have a great overlap with my list and they do have a few newer titles. When SFFMeta collects enough reviews and start matching those two lists it will be a powerful system with a lot of built in wisdom.

SFFMeta, if it becomes popular, should help sell books. I watch way more little movies after the advent of Rotten Tomatoes. I was overwhelmingly surprised by how many unknown authors (to me) I saw listed on SFFMeta. For old SF farts, stuck in the 1950s science fiction world of Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov triumvirate, it’s quite a revelation. Using the wisdom of crowds should push book reviewing into a new paradigm, but it will make it even harder for a new writer to break in. One book review will sell books, but now buyers will expect books to be positively reviewed from a database of reviewers. This could become a dangerous trend.

Books have always competed in a survival of the fittest competition, but now the internet will push that competition to newer heights. My Classics of Science Fiction web site gets on average 92 hits a day – not that many, but it builds up over time for people looking for a list of SF books to read. I’ve gotten lots of emails over the years from people telling me they use my list to find new books to try out. This helps maintain fans for these older books. SFFMeta will also create a momentum for popular new titles, and hopefully it will help find new readers for the genre by helping them to discover exciting books.

Will the wisdom of crowds increase the number of overall readers though? Harry Potter books certainly got more kids to read for pleasure, but I’ve often heard kids say they couldn’t find anything exciting after HP, and gave up reading. It’s hard to find books to love, so systems that identify top reads should create new bookworms. Let’s hope so. Be sure and add SFFMeta to your Blogroll.

JWH – 12/20/9

The Battle of the eBook Readers

For a couple years now the Amazon Kindle has been the standard for ebook reading, even though the Sony Reader has been around longer and many people find it just as good. Now, the Barnes & Noble Nook has come out – so we have the Big Three of ebook readers, even though there are other ebook readers available, and more being planned. I have no intention of trying to review them, or compare their technology, PC World does a good job here. I’ve owned a number of ebook readers, including the Kindle, but I’ve sold or given them away. So far they haven’t quite lived up to my expectations. The trouble is, I again want to own an ebook reader.

My first impulse is to buy a Kindle 2 because I’d like to have its text-to-speech feature, and because I buy a lot of books from Amazon. Then I happened to read, “Sony rolls out EPUB content, makes B&N nook transition easy and international.” By using the EPUB standard, Barnes & Noble and Sony have made Amazon look like Apple promoting it’s proprietary AAC song format over the standard MP3 song. Amazon created a nice music business attacking Apple by marketing MP3 songs and this is what Sony and B&N are doing to Amazon by promoting the open EPUB format. Sony is even abandoning its proprietary format and switching to EPUB which makes it compete better against the B&N and Amazon at the same time. Great strategic move.

If you bought an ebook reader, you’d want buy books from any bookstore, right? Televisions can tune any channel, but imagine having to buy a different TV set for each station in town. That’s sort of how ebook readers work now. For each online ebook store, there’s an ebook reader they promote. Another sign that the open EPUB format is really the emerging standard is some public libraries are now lending books in this format.

Look at eReader.com, an online store that only sells ebooks, they promote the eSlick Reader. Oddly enough, this site is owned by Barnes & Noble, so it appears B&N are promoting two competing ebook readers – I bet that will change soon! This site has been around for awhile and also provides the free eReader software for a bunch of existing computing devices to let folks read ebooks on any digital devices they already own, like computers, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, including the popular iPhone.

If you visit the Sony Reader Store you won’t see any mention that the B&N Nook can read their books for sale, nor does the B&N Nook site promote selling their books to Sony Reader owners. Behind the scenes, EPUB ebook users are finding ways to load books from both stores on their favorite device. This leaves the Kindle kind of lonely by itself. Fictionwise, another general ebook online storefront, promotes the eSlick reader too, but works to get their books on any device they legally can. When you purchase a book it goes into your library, but when you go to download it, you are given a long list of supported file formats, including the Kindle and EPUB. Fictionwise even has a Fictionwise Kindle eBookstore. So even though the Kindle is proprietary, being the horse out front of the pack means it gets a lot of support.

See how confusing it is to decide which ebook reader to buy? To make the issue even more complicated, go read David Pogue’s “Should e-Books Be Copy Protected?” The MP3 song is very easy to steal and share, but there are now plenty of legal sites selling the unprotected MP3 song. Would it be possible for all online bookstores to sell the same unprotected EPUB formatted book that could be read on any ebook reader? Maybe in a few years, but right now book publishers are too scared to sell unprotected ebook files, so the protected EPUB format is emerging as the standard now.

Deciding which ebook reader to buy now means aligning with a particular bookstore, or finding one that works with many different bookstores. Some ebook readers are expensive because they come with broadband cell phones built into them to easily purchase books from the proprietary bookstore that markets them. I’d rather have a cheaper ebook reader that works like a MP3 player and use my computer to buy books and be my file librarian. That way I wouldn’t be tied to any bookstore.

I have an iPod Nano and touch, Microsoft Zune and Sansa Clip all loaded with audiobooks that I buy from Audible.com. I never feel the need to buy an audiobook when I’m away from home. I always run out of battery juice before books. I’ve never run out of books away from home because my devices all hold so many. Ebook readers can hold thousands of books, so I don’t see the need to spend money for instant access. Besides, it’s just a way to tie the device to one bookseller.

If there was a Kindle 3 for $150 without the wireless, I buy it because of the text-to-speech feature. Otherwise, I’d probably like the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, that uses EPUB, but it costs a little too much right now, even at Amazon’s $189 price. I also wished the Sony Reader Pocket Edition had a 6” screen. It would still be much smaller than Kindle and full size Sony Reader. The smaller screen means more page turning, but many reviewers love it because it’s so easy to carry around. I was always afraid to carry my Kindle 1 away from home. That brings up another factor. It hurts far less to lose a $150 reader than one that costs $300.

The reason why I want to get another ebook reader is because I want to read science fiction magazines. The top four print magazines have been available for a couple years now for ebook readers, and I’m hoping the emerging online magazines will start offering EPUB editions too. The ebook reader might increase readership for the dying short story market.

One plus to the ebook readers that have wireless/broadband connections is they make provisions for reading blogs. I bought a netbook hoping it would be a great portable RSS reader, but it hasn’t worked out. The form factor isn’t very book like. I’m hoping that RSS software for reading blogs will migrate onto ebook readers too. iTunes manages podcasts for iPods, so why can’t software manage blogs for ebook readers?

However, what’s really emerging is bookworms love ebook readers for consuming books. Ebook readers are really perfect for fiction reading, and especially for people who love to read fiction in quantity on the cheap. And this is great – it saves trees and the environment. Because libraries are starting to lend EPUB books, and because there are about a million out of print books available for ebook readers, and because there are many online stores selling ebooks cheaper than print books, bookworms really benefit from owning an ebook reader. I think the time for ebook readers have finally arrived and I have to get back in the game again.

JWH – 12/19/9