Last weekend, we finally decided to order the components for and build a new home theater PC (HTPC) for running MythTV (DVR software). We really have a need for two computers to perform this function: one for the home theater on the third floor and the other for the family room that we’re setting up in our sun room, but we decided to start with building just one and see how it works out before buying the parts for a second.

Ideally, we would have preferred to run all of the AV cables from the server in our basement straight to the televisions (eliminating the need for the frontend PCs like the one we just built), but our TVs were just too spread out and fishing wires through the walls of our nearly 100-year-old home presented too great of a challenge, so we had to give up on that idea. A couple of weeks ago, we found a feasible solution for wireless networking that we decided to go with for streaming the video recordings from the MythTV backend server in our basement to a frontend PC located nearer to the TVs, but we still needed the frontend PC(s) to make it all work. And that’s what we built last weekend.

Here’s a picture and the specs for the new computer we built:

• CPU - Intel Pentium E2200 2.2 GHz Allendale Dual-Core
• Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H with on-board:
  • nVidia GeForce 7100 graphics chipset with HDMI out
  • gigabit ethernet
  • 8-channel surround sound output
• System Memory – 1 GB
• Storage – SYBA SD-CF-2IDE-U IDE to Compact Flash Adapter and 4GB Compact Flash Card
• Power Supply – Antec earthwatts EA340
• Case – Silverstone Silver Micro ATX GD02S HTPC Case

The computer is actually pretty low spec, but there are a couple of cool things about it. First, it’s housed in a case that’s meant for home theater PCs, so it looks less like a computer and more like a stereo component. Even though the plan is to not have it be visible, this should make it blend in with the rest of our AV equipment a lot better. Second, we used a 4GB compact flash card in place of a hard drive, which cuts down on heat and noise … and it turned out to be a bit cheaper too. Since we’re running a trimmed down Linux install, we really didn’t need that much space and this provides a neat, solid-state alternative that the computer doesn’t even have to know about since the adapter plugs in just like any ordinary IDE hard drive.

Assembling the components was pretty straight-forward. The only challenge we really ran into was getting the button on the case for the DVD drive to line up with the button on the drive itself. We wound up super-gluing another piece of plastic to the case to make it work better. It wasn’t a big deal, but it would have been nice if the case had been designed to work with a larger selection of DVD drives. As far as the software install, on this and all of our other Linux computers, we run the Gentoo distribution of Linux, which has always worked pretty well for us. With this build, though, we had trouble getting the LiveCD to work and wound up having to install off of the system restore disk to get support for some of the hardware components – like the SATA DVD drive – which we thought was pretty weak. The difficulty we had with Gentoo on this build will definitely make us consider a different distribution next time around.

So far, though, we’ve been testing the new PC out on the third floor (in the home theater we’re using as a family room until our furniture for the sun room arrives) and it’s been working pretty well. We still need to tweak a couple things with the boot loader (GRUB is giving us error 25 randomly on start-up), set up a remote control to work with it so we don’t have to be tied to the keyboard, and get it moved into the cabinet with all of the other components. For now, though, it’s up and running … and we’re really enjoying being able to watch all of our favorite television programs without all of the skipping!

We think we’ve finally found a feasible solution for getting a network connection to our home theater on the third floor of our house … without fishing cat-5 cable through our walls!

So, here’s the situation: we have a Linux server located in our basement that we use mostly as a file server and the back-end of our MythTV DVR system. The server is located in the basement primarily to keep the noise and heat out of our living spaces, but also because we’d eventually like to locate a service panel for structured wiring (home network, video, audio, etc.) in this room next to our electrical service panel, so it seems logical to to co-locate the server with the rest of our network equipment.

Now the challenge: to watch the television recorded by MythTV in our home theater on the third floor, we need to be able to stream the recorded video files from the server in the basement to a PC with a network connection that will be physically located nearer to the television (and connected to it via standard audio/video cables). Since some of the content we record will be in HD format (once we get the HD antenna up and running again), we need a fairly speedy network connection. Our first choice would be to have a wired connection, but that means running cables up three floors, most likely through insulated walls, which won’t be a small task. So, we’ve been exploring wireless alternatives, with limited success.

This weekend, though, we tried something that appears to solve the dilemma. The Netgear WNHDEB111 HD/Gaming 5 GHz Wireless-N Networking Kit comes with two access points/bridges. One gets plugged in to the router in the basement via a network cable and the other gets plugged in to the MythTV front-end PC in the home theater, also with a network cable. They communicate with each other over a wireless 802.11n network (that’s configured with the touch of a button) … and, so far, they seem really quick. We were able to stream two non-HD recordings and download a 2GB file over the wireless-N network at the same time without the playback skipping or stopping (something that wouldn’t be possible on our wireless-G network). The data speeds we calculated indicate that it should be able to handle transmitting an HD recording (approximately 10 GB per hour) without a problem. Although the network speed is somewhat slowed down when we place the access point for the home theater on the third floor, we get a really fast connection when it’s located in our second floor office and running cat-5 network cable from the office to the home theater on the third floor is no big deal, so we think we’ve found a winner.

Since we moved in to our house last September, we’ve been trying to figure out how to set up our network to deliver HD content to televisions and computers throughout our house (using the open source MythTV DVR software). In our previous home, we were able to run the whole bundle of wires (audio cables, video cables, coax, etc.) from our MythTV server through the drop ceiling in our basement to all of the rooms we needed to access. This house, however, is presenting a much greater challenge. Our computers and televisions are spread out over three floors without a single drop ceiling in the house.

We’ve realized it’s probably going to be too great of a challenge to run the full bundle of cables to every television in the house, so we’ll probably have to switch to a setup where we have separate client PCs near the televisions so that all we’ll have to run is network cable to provide a way for the clients to talk to the server (conveniently located in our basement). Even running just Ethernet cable, though, is no easy task, so we’ve been looking at other options.

Our first attempt at setting up the network was to run everything over wireless. It’s great for surfing the web, but even non-HD television skips. So, this weekend, we were at Best Buy and saw the Netgear Powerline HD network adapters that promise to provide a network over a home electrical system that runs at 200 mbps, capable of streaming HD content. We were both pretty skeptical, but thought we’d give it a try since it sounded like the perfect solution to our problems.

The adapters are easy enough to set up: one gets plugged in to an electrical outlet near the cable modem & router, with a network cable connecting it to the router. The other gets plugged into an outlet near the computer with a network cable connecting it to the computer. It takes about a minute, but the two eventually boot up and the blue light comes on, indicating they’ve “found” each other. Since setting them up, though, we’ve run a bunch of tests and been rather disappointed in the performance overall. On average, it appears to operate much more slowly than our (802.11g) wireless network and we weren’t able to achieve anything near 200 mbps unless we had both units plugged in to the same outlet (which of course isn’t practical). We aren’t sure if the poor performance is due to our wiring situation or if it’s typical for them to perform slowly, but even moving the two to outlets that are physically no more than 6 feet apart and clearly on the same circuit degraded the performance dramatically.

I think it’s fair to say that the power line adapters would perform fine for surfing the web, but come no where near performing well enough to transmit HD content from our basement computer to the television in the attic. So, it looks like they’ll be going back to Best Buy and we’ll continue to look for a way to snake Ethernet cable throughout our house.