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[pjm1]

Hi, only joined today and have spent a lot of it reading through existing posts.  Big caveat: I haven't yet demo'd JR, partly because I don't yet have the kit to properly do so.  But, putting that to one, side the reason for wanting to move to JR is:

1. I have pretty full Sky+ (HD, movies, world package and BT Sport) which I'd like to escape (the cost of this would justify spending a lot on a new rig, which would only really be used as a HTPC)
2. My wife will want to use whatever we have so it has to be very user-friendly - e.g. remotes control is essential although we both use Samsung S3 phones, iPads etc. and control through them would be good
3. I'm a geek and like to tinker, so subject to #2, I'd love to have more flexibility
4. We currently have a fairly old set-up: DVD, CD, Sky+, HD-ready Panasonic plasma, Yamaha 5.1 DSP-A2 so this is an opportunity to change slightly, rip all of our CDs, DVDs to HDD and upgrade to Bluray at the same time - and replace 3 boxes with one (larger one)
5. UPSCALING!  As mentioned, most of our content is SD... I'm not expecting miracles, but it'd be nice to get better quality pictures from everything we have so far.  I love the Panasonic TV - lovely picture which obviously doesn't need quite as much hardcore upscaling as a Full HD set, but it'd be good to get better images from non HD sources

But, concerns when moving to JR:

1. I can do a limited test with my laptop by buying a USB DVB-S to see if we like JR, but that obviously requires me to spend £60-70 on a tuner box which will be wasted if I decide not to go for it
2. My wife finds Sky easy to use - a change will be ok as long as it's reliable and straightforward (for the viewer)
3. We will lose some Sky channels, which is a pain, but spending £70+/month is a fair bit!  Not being able to get BT Sport through satellite is probably the biggest bugbear (for me, at least)
4. I don't want to spend £1000-odd on a HTPC setup either for it to be wasted because I end up moving back or it needs substantial upgrading because I've got the wrong kit...

So, I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Silverstone Grandia GD07 Home Theatre Server Case - Black (SST-GD07B USB 3.0) - The GD08 is tempting as well, but not sure I need the extra space
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) - I know the PRO is better, but it is a bit more... this bit of kit could be deferred entirely till later but then I would lose fast start-up which may impact useability (esp for wife)?
Toshiba (7K3000.D) 3TB SATA 6GB/s 64MB Cache - OEM (DT01ACA300) HDD - thinking about this more, I'm guessing a slower spinning drive (WD Caviar Red) might be better?  Do I need to shy away from >2TB drives?
"Recon RX4" AMD FX-4 4130 Black 3.8GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Quad Core Value Gaming Bundle - Quad Core AMD Bulldozer FX-4 4100 3.80GHz (3.9GHz Turbo), Asrock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 DDR3 Motherboard, TeamGroup Elite 8GB 1600MHz... does this provide any remotely competent onboard GPU for moderate upscaling?  Bear in mind the upscaling improvements are one key driver for this move, although I only currently need to upscale SD content to HD-ready
MSI HD 7770 GHz Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - this could be optional/added later, subject to the above point
Antec Neo Eco C 450w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - should be enough
Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM / DVDRW SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) - don't think I need BR writing
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) - have Win8 on my laptop and don't like it... also have seen some issues reported
And a couple of DVB-S TV cards (well, one card and the "test" USB box already purchased)

Total cost including software is approx £900.  Seems like quite a bit so maybe I've gone overkill on some things.  Can obviously shave £150 by dropping/deferring the GPU and SSD.  Then again, I could easily up the cost of the HDD by £40 by replacing a 3TB with 2x2TBs as I know I'll end up needing more space.  Haven't really thought about RAID options on the HDD(s) yet... I'd obviously rather get 4x drives and do a proper RAID 5 setup.

We would mainly be watching broadcast TV - and a fair bit of that pre-recorded/time-shifted - netflix/other movie downloads and working our way through our DVD library again (and ripping them at the same time, obviously).  We'll also use it a fair bit for music - both CD (which would also be ripped, lossless) and internet radio.  Finally, I'll be using the BT Sport app to watch the rugby when it's on - shame I won't be able to record it though.  I take it there isn't a UK-subscription movie service that allows you to download and store the films, rather than stream?  Our internet connection is 4Mb on good days but can be pretty temperamental and sometimes drops way down.

Final point: I'm a big fan of DTS (not much content) and DD5.1 - the most my amp can push out.  I'm assuming JR will be able to dump the audio stream out through SPDIF/optical to my amp... and DVB-S2 offers DD5.1?  DVD and BR rips will, of course, be in full 5.1 or better.  I'm quite picky about good surround on movies etc.  Also, are there still EPG problems in the UK with DVB-S?  This is an absolute must-have and must be reliable for the missus!

Any thoughts?  Thanks in advance...

[6233638]

2. My wife will want to use whatever we have so it has to be very user-friendly - e.g. remotes control is essential although we both use Samsung S3 phones, iPads etc. and control through them would be good

JRemote on iOS works well with Media Center.

5. UPSCALING!  As mentioned, most of our content is SD... I'm not expecting miracles, but it'd be nice to get better quality pictures from everything we have so far.  I love the Panasonic TV - lovely picture which obviously doesn't need quite as much hardcore upscaling as a Full HD set, but it'd be good to get better images from non HD sources

As long as your TV accepts a 1:1 mapped signal from the PC, I would expect good results from Media Center using Red October HQ (madVR) upscaling.

We would mainly be watching broadcast TV - and a fair bit of that pre-recorded/time-shifted - netflix/other movie downloads and working our way through our DVD library again (and ripping them at the same time, obviously).  We'll also use it a fair bit for music - both CD (which would also be ripped, lossless) and internet radio.  Finally, I'll be using the BT Sport app to watch the rugby when it's on - shame I won't be able to record it though.  I take it there isn't a UK-subscription movie service that allows you to download and store the films, rather than stream?  Our internet connection is 4Mb on good days but can be pretty temperamental and sometimes drops way down.

I can't speak for how well JRiver handles TV recording, especially not in the UK, as I only use if for DVD/Blu-ray playback. I know that for some people, no matter the software, a HTPC just doesn't work for them for TV recording. Hopefully someone else here is in the UK with a TV tuner and can comment on it.

Final point: I'm a big fan of DTS (not much content) and DD5.1 - the most my amp can push out.  I'm assuming JR will be able to dump the audio stream out through SPDIF/optical to my amp.

Yes, Media Center can bitstream or decode DTS/Dolby. Ideally you would decode in the PC and send that over HDMI rather than bitstream though.


As for your PC spec, I would go with Intel instead of AMD - they're faster and use less energy.
I would personally prefer an Nvidia graphics card instead of AMD too.
Keep in mind that if you want to rip/play Blu-ray discs, MC does not decrypt them, and you will need a copy of AnyDVD HD.

[cfineman]

Two  follow on questions

1) why not bitstream? I figured twould be preferable for the avr to decode.
2) earlier posts seemed to indicate nvidia/cuda was required for madvr but this no longer seems to be the case. I see more people recommending AMD over nvidia these days. I've trusted nvidias drivers more in the past. Curious about your rational.

[6233638]

1) why not bitstream? I figured twould be preferable for the avr to decode.

You can't do any processing on the audio if you bitstream. This includes things like VideoClock which prevents audio sync errors. (at least any errors caused by the PC)

2) earlier posts seemed to indicate nvidia/cuda was required for madvr but this no longer seems to be the case. I see more people recommending AMD over nvidia these days. I've trusted nvidias drivers more in the past. Curious about your rational.

Either will work with madVR. I prefer Nvidia though.