[Mini-ITX] A6-3500 (3x2.1Ghz/2.4Ghz) + HD6530D

(2012-05-20 22:31)noobius Wrote:  I also thought the wireless adapter (150 mbps) may be a bit on the slow side?? Thanks in advance!

If he is using wireless adapter on his his HTPC, it's possible that the wireless signal is weak. I don't think there is anything wrong with his new HTPC other than weak wireless signal......

I'm not sure about XBMC, but in media player I can increase buffer....

The picture looks great- no tearing or pixilation, the movie pauses about a dozen times and buffers for about 10 seconds...

Was the My book live NAS a bad choice for storage? My thinking was that if I were to have multiple HTPC's it would be nice to have all my media on a single drive. Do most of you have an external drive connected directly to your HTPC?

(2012-05-21 23:10)noobius Wrote:  Do most of you have an external drive connected directly to your HTPC?

Mosf of my blu-ray files are ISO, because I enjoy watching movie in full 1080P with menu and bitstreaming HD audio. All my movies are stores in several USB 3.0 drives. The drives are very tiny, and it power by a single USB cable. It's very convenience, and it fit in my pocket too......

I have 300mbps wireless dongle for Internet streaming (Netflix and Vudu HD) only......no buffering.......

(2012-05-21 23:10)noobius Wrote:  The picture looks great- no tearing or pixilation, the movie pauses about a dozen times and buffers for about 10 seconds...

That is what I thought when you said buffering.....

(2012-05-21 23:10)noobius Wrote:  The picture looks great- no tearing or pixilation, the movie pauses about a dozen times and buffers for about 10 seconds...

Was the My book live NAS a bad choice for storage? My thinking was that if I were to have multiple HTPC's it would be nice to have all my media on a single drive. Do most of you have an external drive connected directly to your HTPC?

Definitely the wifi.

It's not that it can't work, lots of people get successful setups that way. However, wifi is a common failure point when streaming media.

Is your NAS box connected directly to your router, or is it on wifi as well?

Personally, my system has all my drives internally. The case noted in the op officially holds three, but you can cram two more in under the proper drive bays. Double sided foam tape is your friend - secure and vibration dampening! That said, I'd actually recommend the NAS route myself, as it eliminates a host of other issues: heat, limited physical space, etc.

But, to make an NAS box shine, it must have a wired connection to your network, and ideally your htpc should too. If you must have the htpc wireless, and you do have your NAS box wired, there are steps. You can take to get a better signal to your HTPC. Elevate your router, minimize obstructions (walls may be unavoidable, but have as few objects in the path as possible), definitely don't have electrical appliances in between the two (particularly things with motors, microwaves, refrigerators, etc.

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Is your NAS box connected directly to your router, or is it on wifi as well?
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The NAS box is connected directly to the router. The htpc will have to be wireless so I'll work on speeding up my wifi. Thanks for all the great advice, it's much appreciated!

(2012-05-22 21:43)noobius Wrote:  Is your NAS box connected directly to your router, or is it on wifi as well?


The NAS box is connected directly to the router. The htpc will have to be wireless so I'll work on speeding up my wifi. Thanks for all the great advice, it's much appreciated!

Sorry to say that the bottleneck is your WiFi....it might be fine with network and internet streaming 720P video, but streaming ripped blu-ray in 1080P will be troublesome....

For wireless option, you might have better luck with these-

-Netgear XAVB5001 Powerline

-Linksys Refurbished E4200-RM + Linksys Refurbished WET610N

The Ethernet over your household wiring adapters bluray linked are pretty cool, I've been eyeballing those setups for a while to ditch wifi for all my non-portable devices. Can't run cat5 everywhere as I rent. They're pretty pricy, but open up your whole home.

You CAN make wifi work in some situations, though. Another idea to help that is to look at picking up a pci wifi adapter with an external antenna, you can get substantially better reception than the little USB plugs.

And/or consider a simultaneous dual band N setup, where your machine communicates with the router on both 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz at the same time. You get (ideally) twice the bandwidth, and as your signals are traveling over two greatly different frequencies, it can mitigate interference issues

But, there's always a risk with wifi that it's just not going to work out for you in the end, no matter what you do, because large 1080p files with full audio really tax your available bandwidth.

Moved to own thread

Merkoss, please create your own HTPC thread. thx

Hello everbody , I'm very new here and very new to HTPC. Anyhow , i am a #6-#7 user from eskros " which group do you belong " thread. Read through the thread which lead me to this thread. So my question and concerns are i see the parts list on page 1 , but if i dont know how to put it all together do anybody have a step-by-step guide on putting it all together ? When i buy the parts how do i put together ?