Planning HTPC and Amahi... Critics please comment.. :)

[rednus]

Hi All, I am planning to build a PC for my home theatre and also as a Amahi HDA with specs below... wanted to run past you specialists once...

PC Components:
CFI A7879 Mini-ITX NAS/Server Case - 4 Hot Swap Bays & 1 2.5" bay - 200w psu - £98.40
Asus AT5IONT-I Atom D525 Nvidia ION Motherboard - £124.49
Kingston 1GB Module DDR3 1066Mhz CL7 - £10x2 = £20
Hitachi Deskstar 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB - £40.84 X4 = 163.36
Any 20 to 30 GB SSD for OS installation - not decided
And a PCI express SATA II add on card as the mother board has only two ports
And an external USB DVD writer and Blu-ray reader drive - £39.99

Software:
Fedora 12 as main OS
Amahi Server
XBMC for media centre

Drive partitions:
/media/Movies
/media/TV Shows
/media/Music
/media/Photos
/media/Downloads/Windows
/media/Downloads/Linux
/media/Downloads/Other
/media/Personal

Let me know your thoughts...

Few questions though:
- I have a 8GB usb drive, can I install fedora and amahi on it? Is it suggested? I dont want to spend 50quid on ssd.. i could another TB with that...
- Do I need to have a swap partition?
- Disc pooling is it suggested? I want to mount all drives on /media with folders being pooled..
- Do I need to make partitions on HDD's or can I create 1 partition for 1TB?
- I want to add a IR receiver to control XBMC - is it possible?
- Also any one know any good PCIe SATA-II 4 or more port card... no raid required...

More questions to come..

Thanks a lot in advance...
rednus

[nephster]

Why not wait a little while and then get one of the new Zacate-based mothereboards?
See http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mother ... s-preview/

The ASUS one for example has 5 SATA ports (plus 1xe-sata!) so no add-in card needed. You could pop a TV tuner in as well in the pci-e slot.

I've been using Fedora 14 on my server box - Amahi seems pretty much ready to go on it apart from the apps. Greyhole works a treat since it was updated in January.

Has proper Blu-Ray playback in Linux been cracked? I know you can rip to lossless MKV fairly easily and then play via XBMC - is that your plan?

Also, for 100 quid more (25 per drive) you will double your storage by getting 2GB drives. Surely worth it? Admittedly they are 5400 rather than 7200 but fairly immaterial for storage drives.

[rednus]

Why not wait a little while and then get one of the new Zacate-based mothereboards?
See http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mother ... s-preview/

The ASUS one for example has 5 SATA ports (plus 1xe-sata!) so no add-in card needed. You could pop a TV tuner in as well in the pci-e slot.

I've been using Fedora 14 on my server box - Amahi seems pretty much ready to go on it apart from the apps. Greyhole works a treat since it was updated in January.

Has proper Blu-Ray playback in Linux been cracked? I know you can rip to lossless MKV fairly easily and then play via XBMC - is that your plan?

Also, for 100 quid more (25 per drive) you will double your storage by getting 2GB drives. Surely worth it? Admittedly they are 5400 rather than 7200 but fairly immaterial for storage drives.

Hi nephster, thanks for the tip on Zacate boards.. it really look good... do you have any idea on date and price.. i searched the net.. but cant find any info..

I am not sure the diff between f14 and f12... but I think I will have to give it a try and see...

regarding blu-ray playback.. i have been trying to get info... there is no official blu-ray playback facility but I found some other stuff which enables playback of blu-rays..

I have started with one 1TB 7200 drive.. may be I will add more 2TB or 3TB drives in future... but thats the budget I have for now..

thanks for your help...

[nephster]

I would *imagine* the AMD boards would be comparatively priced with current Atom/Ion boards, depending on the spec. This is what they are directly competing against.

I'm a newbie to Linux but I found F14, on casual inspection, to be far more polished than F12. F12 is now end-of-life so I would compare it to installing XP on a new Windows build...

[rednus]

All,

I have now completed the build.. the asus motherboard arrived just 2 days ago..

I have installed F14 dvd and Amahi.. the functionality of Amahi looks ok.. but I have other problems..

A bit of background.. The pc is connected to Yamaha amp and inturn to Panasonic projector via HDMI... And I have installed XBMC as described in the wiki..

1. I have installed ATI drivers from RPMFusion but the display is not full screen.. there is about 20cm black border on all sides.
2. Whenever system reboots, the refresh frequency is reset to 30hz.. which flickers a lot.. If I change it to 60hz it looks ok..
3. I have added the xmbcuser as described in the wiki.. but it does not login to xbmc session.. waits for a second and comes back to gdm from login again..

Main problem.. most of the apps that I want are in Beta.. like vnc and others.. or apps like DLNA are paid only.. there is no trial at all.. what if I buy them and dont like them? And cant try the beta apps without paying 7.99 per month.. I am a bit disappointed both on fedora and amahi..

[sabat]

When I originally wrote the xbmc howto I aimed it at f12, I might have to do some revising. However I am assuming the problem is the xbmc user, either you used a different name than the one suggested, or put in the wrong one in the startup files. I'll fire up my old amahi box tonight and take a look, I don't normally run it anymore. XBMC on amahi worked pretty well for me in the past, but I got a bit fed up with fedora myself, I'm waiting for the amahi for ubuntu/debian to finish.

[rbmattis]

I'm interested in doing something similar albeit with a Lian Li mini itx tower, H67 mobo, core i3-2100T, radeon 5570-based setup.

Given my challenges merely getting my Zacate/win7-based notebook to play nicely with XBMC, my amplifier and HDTV I'm reticent to start another "project" until more of the kinks between amahi/xbmc get worked out.

I realize a lot of the blame can be assigned to AMD, but the fragmentation issues make it quite tricky...

[rednus]

All, after a lot of frustation.. I have just ordered a Nvidia GF 210 add-on card for 23quid to resolve the graphics issue. I will use this card until AMD/ATI comes up with better drivers for Linux.

Hopefully the nvidia card will get me going for a little while..

And from the recent alpha zero announcement of amahi on ubuntu.. I am desperately waiting for this to be released for public.. my experience with fedora was not much fruitful...

one last thing desperately in need is the official blu-ray playback on linux..

[ard7110]

Hi Rednus,

just wondering if there has been any updates (driver or software) allowing you to use the on-board graphics?

her indoors has agreed to some upgrading and it was my intention of running a 24/7 low powered zacate system to cover both the server side and the htpc