Pre-configured HTPC roundup

While personally I'm happily tinkering around with individual pc components, the internet hardware stores provide pre-configured HTPCs as well. What can we learn from their hardware choices? A small round-up of the HTPC offerings in the dutch internet PC stores.

Judging from the amount of choice, Media Center PC's still don't account for a significant amount of computer sales. Compare that to the amount of choice in HTPC cases that's on offer and the conclusion must be that Media Center PC's are still the domain of DIY PC builders.

The bigger real-life stores offer nothing but disapointment. MyCom, Computerland as well as Media Markt have no Media Center PC's at all. Paradigit offers an OEM system from ASUS, the Aspire L5100-tv. This is pretty much an ordinary small form factor desktop with a tv card. It doesn't have a display or a remote control.


From the web stores, only very few carry pre-configured HTPC systems. Salland sticks out with a range of different systems. Their latest "Gold" model comes at a stunning 1031 euro and that's without operating system or a tv card! It's based on a 3 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4 motherboard. The case is a Zalman 160D. Fortunately Salland also offers more affordable "Silver" and "Bronze" models. Most are based on Intel the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E8200.


Informatique has a single configuration on offer called the Informatique inDigho-a HTPC. It's priced at 649 euros. Add a Floppy DTV card and the total is 804 euro for a complete system. It's based on a 2.3GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450e processor on an ASUS M3A78-EM motherboard. The case is the ever popular Antec Fusion.


Comptech has two systems on the website. Both run on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E processor. The CTW Media Center Deluxe has a Asrock K10N78HSLI mother board and a TopMedia case. It's priced at 579 euro, including Vista but excluding any tv cards.
The Media Center AMD is based on the MSI Media Live barebone with
nVidia C51PVG / MCP51 Chipset. The price of 699 euro is without a tv-card.



Without a doubt, QMotion is building the Rolls Royce under the dutch Media Center PCs with the DVB 400i. The folks at QMotion clearly want to market a piece of consumer electronics as opposed to a PC. The website lacks specifications like the type of motherboard and the size of the harddisk. What is clear is that this product is well thought through. It features a dual DVB tuner with a single CAM, and the manufacturer has developed an online service to help the user configure the tv channels. The case is a Origen AE S10V Black, the processor an unspecified Intel Dual Core. At 1849 euro it's not the cheapest though.

Server running

The home server is up and running for a couple of weeks now, so time for an update. I use Windows Home Server as the operating system. It's easy to use and helps with a couple of server essentials. The nice thing about WHS is that it manages the available harddisk space as a single large network drive. As a user you only see one network drive, regardless of how many physical drives the server has. Then for each individual share folder, you can set WHS up to duplicate the folder. The folders with this setting can always be recovered after a harddisk crash. Apart from that, WHS takes care of various types of remote access functionality. Unfortunately, my pc's with Windows XP Home edition can't be controlled remotely.

MediaPortal TV server is running and I have a working client on my desktop. Unfortunately the analogue cable signal appears to be too weak after the extensions I had to make to reach the home server, so I'll have to do some tweaking there. As a webinterface for the tv guide and scheduling of recordings, I use For the Record.
The server is running a couple of other web services. Whiist is taking care of the pictures and the links on the homeserver front page. Whiist has a very simple user interface and makes setting up a photo webpage incredibly simple.
For downloading goodies I gave up torrents and moved to usenet. The client I use is SABnzbd. It runs on the server and also provides a great webinterface, so I can manage my downloads from anywhere. It can even move the downloads to the proper folder based on the type of content.
WebGuide makes the full MP3 collection available through the internet. It offers streaming as well as downloads and has a very flashy user interface. As a minor hurdle, it's based completely off the Windows Media Player library, which isn't very easy to maintain.

My weather in MediaPortal

Since a transfer to MediaPortal 1.0 requires a fresh new install, I'm revisiting a lot of settings that I haven't touched in a while. Among which the maps for My Weather. With many websites using unsupported formats for their weather maps, finding images that My Weather can display is a challenge. For instance, the .png files that are used by the dutch KNMI website and many other weather sites are not supported. But I found a number of close matches:

Satellite: http://www.sat24.com/images.php?country=nl
Temperature: http://www.teleweer.nl/common/data/nl_middag2.gif
UV Index: http://www.knmi.nl/waarschuwingen_en_verwachtingen/images/zonkracht/zonkracht_kaartje_dag0.gif
Winds: http://db.eurad.uni-koeln.de/prognose/data/aktuell/sto_cen_1h_movd0.gif
Humidity: http://icons-pe.wunderground.com/data/640x480/2xeu_rh.gif
Precipitation: http://www3.buienradar.nl/images.aspx?jaar=-3&soort=sp-loop

This also gave me an opportunity to make my first ever contribution to the MediaPortal wiki.