Keyboard

I bought myself a nice keyboard. Generally speaking, you don't really need a keyboard and mouse for operating the mediacenter, but sometimes... There's a couple of things I like about this keyboard. For one, it has built-in mouse functionality. So you can operate it from the couch on your lap, without having to locate a mouse and a suitable surface first. The 10 meter range is a must for this as well, I found my desktop keyboard and mouse did not cover the less than four meters between couch and mediacenter. There's no numeric keypad, keeping the keyboard small and easy to store in the living room. Finally, the price is acceptable: 60 US dollars. The unit is MCE certified and has 16 multimedia hotkeys along the top. Let's see how that works with MediaPortal!

Remotes

A Media Center PC is operated from the couch and therefore you need a remote. Remotes come in all shapes and sizes. Most remotes only send a one-way signal to your home theatre equipment, but Windows Vista is inspiring the introduction of several interesting two-way remotes. The Ricavision Sideshow Remote is an example. The 2.5" color screen is what catches the eye, but what's really new is that the display shows information from the Media Center PC. So this will enable you to select music from the harddrive without switching your tv on! This device was announced in December and is supposed to cost about US$ 200, but I haven't seen it actually for sale yet.

The functionality is based on the Sideshow feature of Windows Vista. The remote will show and control any gadget that you prefer to include in the Sideshow bar. The question is of course how this functionality will transfer to other HTPC front-end software packages than Vista MCE. And how this will integrate into multi functional remotes like the Logitech Harmony.

My personal preference would still be two separate devices. One "simple" remote with buttons that you can feel and operate blindfolded. And a more sophisticated, touch screen operated, PDA type remote that shows the Media Center user interface. Finally the keyboard and mouse will serve as a backup only.

Now, the simple remote should be as simple as possible. I think there should be a minimum set of buttons and that the software user interface should be designed such that it's fully operable with this minimum set of commands.
The minimum set of buttons is:
- On and off buttons that will not only operate the mediacenter pc but also the receiver, tv set, etc.
- The standard buttons for play, pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, previous and next. I don't think the "record" button is particularly useful anymore. You'll often see that commands like "forward" and "next", or "play" and "pause" are combined in a single buttons. I think that should be outlawed
- Channel + and -
- Volume + and -
- Arrow buttons that will shift the focus on screen from one item to the next
- An "OK" button that will select the highlighted item
- A "menu" button that will show all options for the highlighted item
- A "back" button that will get you back to the previous screen without selecting anything
- The 0-9 buttons are optional. These clutter up the remote and I don't see a real need. Selecting channels with numbers is out-dated. And while the number buttons can be used for text message style editing of text, I don't see that as particularly user friendly either.
- Nice-to-have is a "home" button that will get you back to the start screen from wherever you are in the user interface.
- Another nice-to-have is a couple of multifunctional buttons, that are specific to your hardware setup or your preferences as a user. These buttons should be next to a display that shows what the actual functionality of these buttons is.

Under the hood

HTPC components:
- Greenpower HTPC case GL-1c with VFD display
- ASUS P4S533MX micro ATX mother board,
533MHz FSB, AGP4x, 3x PCI, Ultra DMA133
- 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 CPU, 533MHz FSB
- Zalman CNPS5700D Cu CPU cooler (without the air duct)
- 512MB memory, PC2700
- 250GB Samsung Spinpoint SP2514 hard drive , 7200rpm
- Coolermaster PSU 400W
- Lite-on DVD ROM drive
- XP Home Edition SP2 operating system
- Hauppauge PVR350 analog TV card
- ASUS V9520 Magik T videocard, chipset NVidia GeForce FX5200 (128 MB)
- Creative SB Audigy Platinum sound card
- Logitech Harmony 655 remote
- MCE USB infrared receiver
- BTC 9029URF III keyboard

Evolution

The first mediacenter that entered my living room - October 2003 - was merely intended as an MP3 player. I had heard of this new invention called "time shifting" so I bought a Hauppauge TV card as well. The PVR-350 came with hardware encoding and a remote. Another use that I could think of was digitizing my LPs, so that's why I got a Soundblaster Audigy Platinum.

All of this was mounted in a Lian-Li desktop case. It fitted full size PCI cards and two 5.25" front slots. It was a full size desktop model, not a sleek small little gadget. I never really understood why people care so much for ultra small barebone cases for their media centers. Small means less options for heat dissipation, more heat means more noise. My advice if you're on a budget: buy a big ugly case and put it away in a cabinet. You only look at the case when you put a DVD in anyway.

For watching tv, the PVR-350 was delivered with the WinTV2000 application. It was pretty decent and, as advertised, it could pause and resume live tv! Not before long I discovered that the remote could be tweaked by editing a remote.ini text file. I spent hours mapping shortcut keys of many applications to keys on the remote.

I also developed a couple of HTML pages that could launch these applications, again using shortcut keys. The Hauppauge remote itself was very basic, so I exchanged that for a universal remote by Sony. So far, I'd been using three separate remotes for tv, receiver an mediacenter. Obviously that makes watching TV quite an operation. But the Sony remote had a nice option to direct the volume signals to the receiver, even while the other buttons still operated the mediacenter. So at least I could get by with one remote most of the time.

From the start, I used a Zalman CPU cooler. Over time, I changed the cheap case fans with more state-of-the-art Pabst fans. And, although the power supply was advertised as "low noise" it was rattling disturbingly through my music. So I took the fan out and replaced it as well. And when the harddrive was up for expansion, I switched from a Maxtor Diamond Plus to the Samsung Spinpoint. It does make a difference!

Another nuissance from the early days was that the analog audio out created a big burst of noise at every change of channel. It was so bad I used to swap channels with the receiver on mute. That only stopped when I changed my good old Pioneer stereo receiver to a digital Marantz AV receiver. The Marantz receiver also marked the entry of surround sound in my living room. Now, sound from every corner of the room is nice, and some special effects in dvd's work really well. But what makes 5.1 sound worthwhile is the center speaker. Having the actors or the news reader talk from a place near the tv makes speach much easier to understand. I watch tv in the Circle Surround II mode, but I still prefer my music in plain and simple stereo.

The last major change was the case. I ran into this GreenPower case that would look really nice with the receiver, plus it has a VFD display and would fit a more silent power supply. And voilà, that's the setup at the time I started this weblog.