My Home Theater PC Project

With all the playing around with the ATI Catalyst Drivers and the swap between Windows XP and Windows Vista, I was not sure whether it was wise to continue with the system software setup as it was currently. So, I decided to restart from scratch with a fresh installation of Windows Vista Business 32. I removed the previous system partition and created a new partition of the same size (20 GBytes). The installation of Vista is currently taking place. I will try to track all the steps I take, to keep a good logging of the installation process.

After the installation was completed, the first thing I did was to install the driver for the WLAN (Wireless Network). I used the installation CD supplied with the Belkin USB dongle I have. I hate those vendor supplied WLAN Utilities, so I removed the utility after installation and only kept the drivers for the USB dongle, havind Vista managing my network connections. Next thing was to connect to my home wireless network, which of course is secured by a network key. After supplying the system with the key, I left the system alone, because I had a meeting with friends scheduled.

While being left alone, Windows Update installed 51 updates, and 1 update failure. The system was waiting for a reboot, which I just did.

Next step is downloading motherboard drivers from the gigabyte site. I have downloaded the following drivers:

1. Realtek Function driver for Realtek Azalia audio chip (Including Microsoft UAA/HDMI Driver in English edition), Version R1.67
2. AMD Chipset Driver (include chipset\sata raid\vga driver), Version 8.452rc2
3. Realtek LAN Driver, Version 6.202.0125.2008
4. AMD RAID Driver, Version 3.1.1540.25

After unpacking these packages by running the executable files, the installation can start. By the way, Vista keeps on asking if the packages installed correctly or not, seems to be a symptom of the RAR expander, and can be ignored.

Installing items 1, 2, and 4 have to be followed by a reboot after each installation. I just launched the setup files in each package, without making any changes to the - whenever applicable - settings. Item 3 did not require a reboot, but I rebooted anyway

The get the graphics up to speed and get a proper resolution I installed the ATI Catalyst 8.3 drivers, after downloading from the ATI website. The installation needs some tweaking. First of all I do not need the Earthsim applications, so I deselected that one. Another thing you should be aware of is that ATI by default install Free Games stuff, which of course I do not need on my Media Portal machine. To disable the installation of the stuff I need to select Custom Install and uncheck the options as shown in the next picture:

Of course the system has o be rebooted after the installation. After the reboot I was able to set the resolution to my LCD screen currently attached to the system, which provided me with a bigger working area.

Next step was the installation of the FireDTV driver, by, after downloading it from the Digital Everywhere website, launching the setup. One important step in the installation is the selection of the driver I will need:

As I am going to run Media Portal, I need to install the BDA drivers.

Only one driver installation left, which is the remote control/LCD screen driver. The driver can be downloaded from the SoundGraph website. I decided to use the latest beta version of the driver 7.01.0204 2nd Beta, which according to several postings is stable. By the way, during the installation, I deselected the iMedian HD part of the installation, as I am not going to need that one.

As Device Manager shows now, all the necessary drivers have been installed. I went to the Windows Update site to assure that all the necessary updates were installed on the system, and of course, new updates were available, so I installed all available updates.

Before creating an image of the current installation, I had to change the workgroup, as the windows default workgroup is named "Workgroup", and that is not the one I am using on my home network. Changing the workgroup is an easy task, by clicking "change settings" in the System part of the control panel:

My home network is connected to a Windows Home Server machine, which is taking care of all the backups of my home PC's. To enable this backup facility the Home Server Connector software had to be installed from the Home Server. After completing this, I created an image of the system partition of my HTPC (meaning backup the C-drive).

By the way, by default Windows Vista puts your machine to sleep after one hour. For the time being I don't want this to happen, so in the Power Options I changed the option Sleep after 1 hour, into Sleep Never.

Not sure how quickly the remaining installation will continue, as I have to go on a business trip the coming week.

Of course on a Home Theater PC you don't want to have to supply username and password every time you start up the machine. So in order to establish that I enabled the auto-logon feature:

1. Start "netplwiz" from the start menu
2. In the window that comes up, uncheck the "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer".
3. Click "Apply"
4. A new dialog pops up in which to supply the username/password combination you want to auto-logon
5. Click OK and exit.

Job done!

First of all the test of my last post did not succeed, so still some work to do to enable me to record things when the system is in sleep mode. No time to investigate this further now.

I installed the latest - unofficial - release of the BIOS for my motherboard, hoping that it would resolve the Crossfire problem I encountered. I downloaded the F4D BIOS revision from Anandtech and installed it successfully. Switching the active graphics board to integrated graphics again and re-installed ATI Catalyst drivers (still version 8.3 as I am not aware of any more recent versions). Unfortunately Media Portal is still unstable with this set up. Switching on the TV will result in a crash. So, back to the PCI Express Graphics board.

The weather was nice, so I took my motor bike and got my self a Logitech Harmony 555 remote controller, to enable me to control my HTPC remotely. The Harmony comes with a nice configuration utility, and the utility is even familiar with the Antec Fusion II IR sensor.

I tweaked the power options to keep the system from going to sleep, and scheduled another recording - for testing purposes - during the night. This morning I quickly checked the recording, and it looks fine.

Despite my previous post, I decided to install Microsoft Windows Vista 32 on my HTPC. Installation went smoothly, running Windows Update revealed 48 updates to be downloaded and installed, so it took some time

Next I started the struggle with the graphics card(s). The Gigabyte BIOS switches to the graphics board in the PCI-Express slot when you put a board in there. It works, but it will not allow to enable crossfire to have both cards running..... It took some time to find out that I had to change the BIOS setting back to the motherboard graphics board and after reinstalling the ATI Catalyst 8.3 driver it worked, at least within Windows......

Of course because of the change to Vista I also had to reinstall Media Portal, TV Server, etc... TV Server found an amazing number of channels on my @Home Digital TV signal. Firing up Media Portal was the start of a problem that up until now is not resolved. For one or the other reason when I switch on the TV in Media Portal, Media Portal crashes. Up until now I did not find a solutions for this problem, so please post a comment when you have a solution. Switching the system back to the Radeon 3400 board only, solved the problem, but it is not the way the system was intended to run. Hopefully I will come up with a smart idea on how to resolve this issue tonight.....

Next thing was testing the recording function of TV Server. I set it up to record the detective serie Lewis tonight. The system went into sleep mode automatically after one hour of inactivity, so let's see whether it wakes up ontime . I will keep you posted.

Last Monday I installed the Club3D Radeon graphics card, as mentioned before I need this card for its TVout connection:

Also on Monday the floppyDTV card arrived:

Unwrapping it reveals the card and the Alphacrypt CAM module:

And built into the system it looks pretty crowded:

After building all the hardware together I also installed the Media Portal TV Server, following the installation guide on the Media Portal site. I'm using @home digital TV, and TV Server is not coming with the configuration file for @home. But google assisted me in retrieving the configuration file.

The weekend has passed with - besides a lot of other activities - installing all the Specific Drivers (using the Gigabyte supplied DVD, which did it's job perfectly well), the Antec Fusion front display driver (from the Antec supplied CD), Windows XP updates, the ATI Catalyst 8.3 driver, Daemon tools, codecs and Media Portal. I currently don't have a keyboard/mouse/monitor connected to my HTPC so I'm using the Windows XP Remote Desktop facility to install the software. I have encountered one problem, that is the installing Mdeia Portal latest snap shot was complaying about Visual C++ redist SP1 not being installed, so I had to download/install it from the Microsoft site. I alos installed McAfee to keep me virus free (I hope). In the mean time I also created the data partition and formatted it as a NTFS partition, to enable me to store all the necessary data.

Unfortunately it seems like DirectX is not able to run over remote desktop, so up until now I did not see the real Media Portal....

I will probably connect a mouse/keyboard/monitor tomorrow to continue the installation and testing of the machine. I also still have to install the Club3D card and the wireless LAN facility. And I am watching the post man for the FloppyDTV card.....

The next step was to unwrap the Antec Fusion v2:

I must say, it is an amazing looking casing. Removing the top cover lit by unscrewing the thumbscrew on the back, reveals the in-site:

The next step is to replace the Antec I/O panel: with the I/O Panel that came with the Gigabyte Motherboard: This one looks a lot better also

So, fitting the mainboard into the casing is a bit thight, but it fits, after replacing the Antec I/O Panel:

By the way, I did install the mainboard and all wiring before installing the cooler on the CPU:  The Ninja is taking up a lot of space in the casing, so it was installed last.

Up until now I did not install the ATI 3450 board, nor the wireless network card. After connecting power, a monitor, mouse and keyboard to the system I pressed the magic on button.......

The system booted, and by pressing DEL it brought me into the BIOS settings screen. In the BIOS setting - besides setting the time/date - nothing much had to be changed. To be honest, I forgot to write down exactly which changes I made. I put the Windows XP installation CD in the NEC DVD player and started installing the Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2. This went rather smoothly, without any major hickups. During the installation I created a 20 GByte system partition to install the OS on. This enables me to install another OS without loosing all the data on the HD when needed.

As all the necessary hardware to start building the system has arrived, the installation can start....

Step 1: Unwrap the motherboard:

Step 2: Unwrap the CPU:

AMD includes an impressive cooler with the CPU (which I am not going to use):

Step 3: Install the CPU on the motherboard, this is not a difficult job. Pull the lever at the right site of the CPU socket and pull it up to 90 degrees, so it opens up the holes for the processor pins. After aligning the gold arrow on the CPU with the arrow on the socket the CPU pops in automatically. While slightly pushing on the CPU return the lever in the original position and the CPU is installed:

Step 4: As the memory slots will be difficult to access after installation of the CPU cooler, I decided to install the two 1 Gbyte strips first. Gigabyte made this process easy by coloring the memory banks, put the strips in the same colored banks and we are up for two channel (which means fast) access to the memory:

Step 5: Unwrap the Scythe Ninja Mini cooler: As you can see the cooler comes with an impressive number of acessories and a fan. Most of the acessories will not be used, and also the fan is not needed in the Antec Fusion casing.

The Scythe Ninja Mini is an impressive piece of equipment:

Step 6: As the Scythe Ninja Mini cooler can be installed on Intel as well as AMD CPU's, Scythe provides a number of different acessories to attach it to the different CPU slots. So the first thing I have to do is install the proper bracket on the cooler. The bracket is installed with 4 philips type screws:

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