Building my first HTPC

Wharfedale EVO 4.2 Speakers
JBL flip type functionality using XBMC?

Its been several months and overall happy with the purchase. Looking at some minor tweaks and wanted suggestions.

In a lot of parties, there is a need for playing the music off someone's phone either through youtube or through an app like saavn or their own music. Whats the best way to achieve it?

I currently use the XBMC iphone remote app, wherein searching in youtube and playing is very cumbersome.

I used XBMC Constellation and has an inbuilt youtube search option which is nice and close to what i want.

Ideally, I dont want to buy a JBL flip like device and would rather use software to play it off my htpc. Any suggestions?
 
In a lot of parties, there is a need for playing the music off someone's phone either through youtube or through an app like saavn or their own music. Whats the best way to achieve it?
Click to expand...

This is tircky, you need to understand, Android does not allow it by nature to get the audio data of other application, like saavan you mentioned or Pandora or Spotify for that matter. To achieve this you need to root your device. Once that is done its a piece of cake as XBMC 13 Gotham now supports both UPnP and Airplay. All you need is an Android app like AirAudio (AirPlay) OR ALL Stream. Just run XBMC on your system connected to your audio equipment. Play song on any media like Saavan on your phone, then open Airplay on your Android and you will see XBMC listed there against UPnP and Airplay both. Just select either and your song playing on saavan will now will be playing on your XBMC.

Just one thing Airplay is paid app so it would allow only a minute of streaming then it will start giving irritation beeps in between the songs. So you have to purchase it to fully utilize it. But its one ultimate piece of app if you ask me. This was one app I actually was proud to pay for and purchase it, since I already had rooted my HTC One ..... :)
 
sam9s said:
Just one thing Airplay is paid app so it would allow only a minute of streaming then it will start giving irritation beeps in between the songs. So you have to purchase it to fully utilize it. But its one ultimate piece of app if you ask me. This was one app I actually was proud to pay for and purchase it, since I already had rooted my HTC One ..... :)
Click to expand...
I am using iphone as my remote. But I have airvideo, will check if I can use that for this purpose.
 
sud98 said:
Mine came to the following
Buy Online COOLER MASTER Mini 210 Slim microATX MIN-210-KKR300 Cabinet in India...........
Click to expand...

Sud,

Sometime back I picked up the following combination as an assembled pc from this very same seller
Assembled HTPC Media Player Compact PC Computer Barebone KIT | eBay

However have not had much luck with streaming HD BD rips.
Running XBMC on Linux mint 16.
The video is jagged and color is not as good as when the same clip is streamed via my Samsung Blu Ray player.

Does yours play totally flicker free and smooth ?

Currently use mine only for music,viewing photos,skype etc.. (my wife and daughter use the photos part )

I've had lot of problems with the AMD Radeon card , lots of tweaks to even get the audio pass through HDMI. I guess an Intel based one would not have these issues.

Just wanted to check if anyone else with a similar config are having audio/video issues. Also cannot get 5.1 audio to pass through via this hardware + XBMC on Mint combo.
Thinking of junking the whole thing and getting a new assembled one with a dedicated graphics card. But this time don't want to end up penny wise and pound foolish.
 
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Junk mint if you want to stick with linux for XBMC use OpenELEC, plain and simple ...
That bare bone kit your mentioned has E350N which is a pretty decent piece of hardware and should play XBMC Openelec with 5.1 passthrough pretty fine ...

Your hardware is not at fault, your OS/Software is .....
 
Last edited:
sam9s said:
Junk mint if you want to stick with linux for XBMC use OpenELEC, plain and simple ...
That bare bone kit your mentioned has E350N which is a pretty decent piece of hardware and should play XBMC Openelec with 5.1 passthrough pretty fine ...

Your hardware is not at fault, your OS/Software is .....
Click to expand...

Sam,

Last evening I wiped out mint and installed OpenELEC.
All video playback issues now resolved, it is passing through 5.1 audio as well. Thanks for that.
Am with the default Confluence skin for now.

Only thing next is to try to get the colorscheme right. When I google up on this I see people complaining that with XBMC colors appear to be washed out. In my case it is the reverse :D.

Output via the Blu Ray player has proper natural skin tone colors, whereas here its harsh. Also the clarity is sharper playing the same movie via a BRP vs XBMC. I wonder if this will improve if one has a dedicated graphics card. By clarity I mean slightly grainy. This difference is not visible on the TV but only on the Projector.
I guess this could also be because the BRP does an excellent job of 4K upscaling.

-Fillmore
 
You missed the thanks button ... ;-) ...kidding pleasure to be of some assistance ... :)
 
I am planning to build my first HTPC :yahoo:; I was going through the discussions in this thread, looks like I'm in the right place, thank you.
Below my situation:
I do have a high-end desktop which I built couple of years back, with i7 processor (Intel Core i7-2600K) and Asus mobo with 16GB RAM and 2TB HDDs, (No Graphic Card yet; running fine on inbuild Intel HD Graphics 3000). I have to buy a Blu ray drive as I have only DVD drive in my pc. My question is that; can I replace my Samsung blu ray player , if I add a decent blu-ray drive and set this up with required softwares and tools like XBMC and video upscaling plugins etc.. I do have some Blu ray discs, but I also have lots of HD video rips; so thinking towards HTPC way.

Which is the best Blu-ray drive for desktop?
Do I need to buy a dedicated graphic card (I'm on inbuild Intel HD Graphics 3000; and my motherboard has an HDMI out)
Will the blu-ray disc playback match the quality of my Samsung blu ray player?
Can I play 3D blu ray disc? (I have a 3D capable TV)

I've to use this PC for my work/ browsing purposes also, so I believe that XBMC and other server capabiliites can install on top of Windows 7, or dual boot?

I'm reading instuctions, researching on the procedures to make this PC to HTPC, I need your suggestions and guidance, please help,

Many thanks!
 
Hi, Your system is an overkill for an HTPC, but you would be using it for other activities as well, so I guess thats ok. You can certainly have a BD Drive in your HTPC and can play bluray disks, even 3D as well. The Best bluray drive? well thats a tough question, dont quote me on this but in my experience ASUS drives for me have turned out to be pretty decent. I have an LG one as well, but that was bought from US.

Can you replace your samsung bluray player??,, that seriously depends on how much are you willing to sacrifice the ease of access and playability of a dedicated BD player was compared to a Windows based BD drive. You have to boot the PC, then run the application, (assuming you have purchased one) then play. Its not just pop and play, like is with DB player. I also have a samsung BDplayer and I prefer it over my HTPC for BD playback. HTPC is all for downloaded content.

PQ for both would be more or less same as far as I know. Hope that answers all your questions .. :)
 
One of his suggestions is to use SSD.

I am not really sure if this is necessary esp. if one uses Openelec. I currently run Openelec off a 8 GB flash drive. The speeds that I get are quite good from boot as well as from standby.

Does buying a SSD at nearly 3k (64 GB) really make sense?
 
sud98 said:
One of his suggestions is to use SSD.

I am not really sure if this is necessary esp. if one uses Openelec. I currently run Openelec off a 8 GB flash drive. The speeds that I get are quite good from boot as well as from standby.

Does buying a SSD at nearly 3k (64 GB) really make sense?
Click to expand...

I use a SSD in a fanless music-pc (as it came free with the barebones system). But for a HTPC I think it is not required with the cost being the factor and yes if you use a Openelec on a USB stick I think there is no need for any SSD. The booting time difference I have seen in my SSD pc and a HTPC with a normal HDD is hardly few seconds. The major difference as per the net reviews is that the SSD will help in loading the apps faster compared to normal HDD. But for HTPC purpose I do not think you will load any heavy apps apart from XBMC or some other jukebox software.
 
While my HTPC has been working fine, the couch potato in me is looking at ways to reduce my trips to start the same.

While the Cooler master doesnt have a remote option, I was think of using a 12v trigger to switch on the htpc. My Emotiva UMC 1 does have a trigger option which I use to switch on the amp. Can I use a similar wire to switch on the HTPC?

Has anyone tried this and can give pointers?
 
Why not use, Wake on Lan for switching on HTPC, make sure you have Hibernate option enabled, also WOL works better on Ethernet connection so if you HTPC is on wifi you might find it difficult to get it work. Once WOL is enabled you just need an Android app to wake it up once you are in same network.

You need to enable WOL in XBMC/Kodi/openELEC and also enable it on the ethernet card. Another thing is not all hardware support WOL so you have to see if your ethernet card supports it. Mine does both my HTPC and my Regular Desktop. HTPC I dont have the need to wake remotely as that is only used when I have to view a movie in my HT.
My desktop PC is something that I regularly use, but I am on my laptop mostly, so I use WOL from my laptop to wake my desktop and then take RDP of the same, that enables me to work on my desktop while sitting on my laptop ....:):)
 
sam9s said:
Why not use, Wake on Lan for switching on HTPC, make sure you have Hibernate option enabled, also WOL works better on Ethernet connection so if you HTPC is on wifi you might find it difficult to get it work. Once WOL is enabled you just need an Android app to wake it up once you are in same network.

You need to enable WOL in XBMC/Kodi/openELEC and also enable it on the ethernet card. Another thing is not all hardware support WOL so you have to see if your ethernet card supports it. Mine does both my HTPC and my Regular Desktop. HTPC I dont have the need to wake remotely as that is only used when I have to view a movie in my HT.
My desktop PC is something that I regularly use, but I am on my laptop mostly, so I use WOL from my laptop to wake my desktop and then take RDP of the same, that enables me to work on my desktop while sitting on my laptop ....:):)
Click to expand...

I have never been able to get WOL for the HTPC. While it works fine for the NAS, it doesnt somehow work for the pc.
 
sam9s said:
This is tircky, you need to understand, Android does not allow it by nature to get the audio data of other application, like saavan you mentioned or Pandora or Spotify for that matter. To achieve this you need to root your device. Once that is done its a piece of cake as XBMC 13 Gotham now supports both UPnP and Airplay. All you need is an Android app like AirAudio (AirPlay) OR ALL Stream. Just run XBMC on your system connected to your audio equipment. Play song on any media like Saavan on your phone, then open Airplay on your Android and you will see XBMC listed there against UPnP and Airplay both. Just select either and your song playing on saavan will now will be playing on your XBMC.
Click to expand...

Finally got this working. I struggled a lot to make it work and then realised my home n/w was the issue as I had a double NAT and it took some debugging to solve it and still get all my stuff to work. Air Audio is great and works really well on my rooted S4. So for videos I cast using yatse and for audio using air audio.

A side benefit was resolving the double NAT also helped in auto discovery of kodi and also allowing sleep and wakeup through remote :)
 
Guys I need a media player to play files (only downloaded ones of 1080p with DTS on my external hdd). This is my only use.
Kindly suggest if i need to go for a HTPC or any blue ray player. Or any standalong Media player as available on ebay for as low as 3000rs.
please suggest.
 
You can try out Asus O!Play Mini. I have it and it supports almost all files and also has capability to pass through audio to AVR. It also supports Dolby TrueHD and other DTS formats.
 
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