Revision as of 09:55, 16 March 2009

My HTPC Project

[My HTPC Project web page.|http://mathey.nicolas.free.fr/HTPC/]

My story

5 years ago, I built a MediaPC to be able to record Sat and DVB-T channels, but also read DVD and Divx. I'm using Debian Etch as core system and VDR for the rest. As specials components, the system includes two DVB-s card (with one hardware decoding included), USB Terratec DVB-T, and ATI Remote Wonder (I played a while to get this one running perfectly). I let this Media Box to my parents, 3 years ago and now I'm missing this kind of DIY Entertainment PC, and I decided to build a new one to plug in to my Samsung HD Ready LCD.

I read a lot of article, and especially spent time on [www.homemedia.fr] website (and its forum), a very interesting french website about HTPC. After that I decided to buy my hardware (see below) and try to go first on MediPortal appliance software. The problem was, as I'm not very good in Micro$oft tweaking, that Windows didn't find my SATA 2 HDD or something like that. I gave up and went back to *nix based system.

I went around LinuxMCE because of the all-in-one scheme: Media player, TV, PVR, Telephony (I already played a lot with Asterisk), Alarm, etc. Unfortunately, Kubuntu 7.10/LinuxMCE 0710 were not compatible with the chipset of my mother board, so I went directly to Kubuntu 8.10 and will now try/test LinuxMCE 810 in the same time to see if I can do something of my specific hardware.

Hardware

• Case: Zalman HD160 Plus Black, with iMon LCD and pad
• MB: Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H, socket 775, Ge9400, HDMI
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 (2.80 GHz), socket 775
• RAM: OCZ Gold Kit Dual Channel DDR2, 2 x 1 Go
• HDD 1: Samsung Spinpoint F1, 1 To, 7200 rpm, buffer 32 Mo, SATA II
• HDD 2: Seagate Barracuda , 360 Go, 7200 rpm, buffer 16 Mo, IDE
• Reader/Burner: LG GGC-H20L, BD & HD-DVD Reader
• DVB-S2: Digital Everywhere FloppyDTV S2 + PowerCam PRO
• FXS/O card: Digium TDM 421
• CPU Fan: Noctura NH-U9B
• Case Fans: Noctura NF-R8, 8 cm, 7 to 17 dB
• Power: Corsair Modular HX520W

LinuxMCE 810 Works Around

GA-E7AUM-DS2H

Not compatible with 710 but is with 810. Using the NVIDIA 180.x and ALSA 1.19+ drivers, both Graphics Acceleration and sound over HDMI are working perfectly.

Preparing LinuxMCE installation over HDMI

We'll need to install latest NVidia drivers and Alsa 1.19 to be able have sound over the HDMI cable.

NVIDIA Drivers

Make sure that you do not install 177 NVIDIA drivers included in Kubuntu 810 during/after install or delete them before following instructions below

• Download drivers from Nvidia website
• sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` xserver-xorg-dev
• sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
• sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop
• sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.29-pkg1.run
• sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start

Enjoy the new display!

Sound over HDMI

• Download Alsa 1.0.19+
• cd alsa-1.0.19
• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install
• vim ~/.asoundrc

pcm.!default {
 type hw
 card 0
 device 3
}

• alsamixer --> umute IEC958
• sudo reboot

Digital Everywhere FloppyDTV S2

Actually not officially support on Linux. Some patches are available from [1]. They will be officially present in the main kernel release starting 2.6.29. As Linux MCE 810 will be based on 2.6.28, I'll have to recompile the kernel.