I Want My Closet Form Factor, Media Server PC
By Alexander Grundner |
February 20th, 2006
Comments (19)
The other day I wrote a post disappointed that Intel had not leveraged Viiv to power a new segment device I called a Closest Form Factor PC. The inspiration for the CFF PC came from two sources, really: showcase Digital Homes of the future & Steve Makofsky’s idea of converting his Media Center PC into a home server and then shoving it into the closet.
As expected, Steve went ahead and built his “Media Center Server” over the weekend and rightly placed it in the same closest that holds all his home’s structured wiring (FYI, these days most home builders typically place structured wiring boxes in a master bedroom’s closet for security and convenience reasons). Steve’s modest server consists of a converted server tower enclosure, stocked with a terabyte of storage in a RAID 5 array, one WinTV tuner card, and a newly installed version of Windows XP Media Center Edition that ended up requiring him to download 53 updates from Microsoft Update to get 100% operational (Ouch).
Now Steve says, “[I can host] all of my photos, MP3’s, videos and recorded TV content, that I can easily stream to the Xbox in the theater, to the TiVo in the living room (photos and music), to any laptop around the house and to the networked DVD player upstairs. I might even go ahead and install Bonjour for Windows on it to see how the macs like it. Not only was I able to eliminate 1 of the computers in the house, I now have a home theater that my wife can use.”
All this is very cool, but I’m sure Steve isn’t the only person who has done this, or dreamt of buying such a machine off the shelf. I wonder what the market would be for such a super computer? It seems to me like the next logical step in the evolution of Digital Home products, and it’s one that is already being used in showcase homes today, as previously mentioned.
I think the trick to making such a product successful would be to design a PC that easily manageable (i.e. quick access doors – no screws), upgradeable (i.e. quickly be able to insert new hard drives, memory chips, PCI/TV Tuner cards – possibly new server blades?), quiet, but at the same time not take up too much space in the area that its stored. And since we’re building a wishlist here, why not make the enclosure water and fire proof to protect the contents from any unforeseen disasters.
My guess a product like this might cost some big money if fully loaded, but an entry level version should cost just a little more than what typical desktop, TV tuner equipped MCE PC sells for at the local Best Buy, in my humble opinion. Lastly, this product makes perfect sense for two reasons: (1) Intel wants you use their multi-core CPU chips in conjunction with their Viiv PC platform to power networked devices around the home, and (2) because Microsoft wants MCE to be the “hub” operating system to enable and manage the various connected devices and computers, as well as, stream live and pre-recorded TV feeds for whole-home entertainment.
Side note: I stumbled across a couple industrial PC server chassis by Modular Industrial Solutions that fall somewhat within the lines of the type of enclosure I’m suggesting (though not perfect) — see 4U, 6U Chassis. And the prototype media server attached is from OrigenAE, model S210.
UPDATE (2/21): I just realized the above concept might not happen at all unless several things change:
- CableCARD enabled Viiv/Vista MCE PCs must be certified by CableLabs
- The Viiv platform and certified Vista MCE compatible hardware may not be available to the general public. FYI, I’ve requested info on this but no Microsoft representatives have responded.
- If the above two points remain true, we will only be able to buy a media server Viiv/Vista MCE PC from an Intel Viiv OEM partner if they decide to build such a product.
So what now? If all goes to hell, it might be time to migrate… but what other software product will give us cable and satellite support?
UPDATE (2/22): New details about “Viiv ready” hardware compatiblity are starting to trickle out.
UPDATE (3/1): It appears that VoodooPC will be introducing an 8TB MCE Server PC when Vista launches.
February 20th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I don’t see this idea being profitable for most. As an option offered by a smaller OEM or home integrator I can see it working very nice. The average consumer isn’t going to go to Best Buy and a purchase a rackmount server.
BTW, few of the Silverstone HTPC Cases have detachable rackmount ears. They are also rather simple to fab depending on your case of choice and mechanical know how.
Also, part of the concept of Windows XP Media Center Edition has always been being able to use Windows as normal and use the Media Center functionality too.
I personally find the idea of a Living Room/Desktop form factor server more appealing. One great thing about the Living Room form factor is that you can go purchase a CD, pop it directly in the drive in your living room and rip it there. Or, they take it to their desktop, and do the same. Both of these locations the person is generally in several times a day. Then access that from anywhere else. I think you’ll find that being in front of the machine is more appealing to the consumer market then ripping to a machine across the network that is the in closet.
Chris
February 20th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
You wouldn’t think consumers would be buying Network Attached Storages (NAS) servers from Best Buy and CompUSA either, but they are. And at Fry’s Electronics’ retail stores, Buffalo’s 1TB & 1.6 TB TeraStations are hot sellers from what the sales people have told me.
And just to be clear, if there’s any confusion. I’m not suggesting that people dump their MCE desktop/laptop/set-top PCs, but the option to have a main central server powered up 24/7 sounds like an interesting proposition.
February 20th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
We have a model designed for CI that is rackmountable or can be used in a Home Theater/Living Room
http://si.2partsfusion.com/dms-804.htm
February 20th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Actually I think the number of consumer purchasing NAS is a lot lower then you might think.
External storage solutions (USB, 1394) still rule in the home, as will they continue too.
There is a very small market that would be interested in purchasing something like a rackmount HTPC. I’m not saying there isn’t a market for NAS and rackmount HTPCs, but most companies are not going to invest highly in a solution like you describe above because it simply would not push enough units to be profitable.
For a machine that is quickly upgradable, just use external TV Tuner (WinTV-PVR-USB2) and external hard drives (USB, Firewire) [or SATA, it's hot swapable, I think]. memory doesn’t need upgraded enough in consumer based PCs to worry about hot swapping. Blades again would cost to much, and considering the amount of time consumers use a PC for then purchase a new one, not worth producing.
I’m not sure if you have ever looked at the prices for blades, but they get up there really fast. We were looking at some the other day from HP. It was a single 2.8GHz Xeon (which was like a $220 processor if purchased alone), 1GB RAM (REG PC2-3200, of course in your application this RAM would not be used), then NICs (5 all together), and then the drive controller. The price? $2200. I don’t care what you change about the specs, you can’t make a blade cheap. Oh, that doesn’t include storage or even the enclosure. The enclosure for them was a 6U rackmount, at the bargin price of $1500.
Blade isn’t going to work just yet for the consumer market.
Chris
February 20th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Blades aren’t critical, but if we can see a new product segment taking shape to cover the needs I mentioned, enclosure manufactures can creatively produce such products at reasonable prices — case in point: OrigenAE S210 Monster HTPC Enclosure. FYI, This case has 12 hard drive bays!
Note: I just switched the image in the original post for this one (I forgot about this prototype - Doh!).
February 20th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Thanks for switching the image.. I was hoping that wasn’t your vision before! When does this baby come out?!?!
February 20th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
What is my other $5000 going towards? R&D? Only one HD Tuner? HDD space is nice (for lots of SD recording, if that’s your thing).. The remote.. eh, why not the 890? Case and design looks great, but the price is as overweight as the OS…
February 20th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I believe the prototype should be in production towards the end of the year. (I have my fingers crossed.) If it’s not out around that time, I’ll try in get in contact with someone at the company to find out its progress.
February 20th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
http://www.controltools.com/Wall%20Mount.htm
There are wallmount PC form-factors (have been used for security/control market for some time).
Heat/clearance around fans, and noise can be an issues (depending on hardware & closet-type and location).
Would love to see OnQ, Leviton and others provide motherboard mounting-brackets…this would allow the PC board to go directly in the structured wiring enclosure. (Some home automation controllers such as HAI already do this).
–>Tom
February 20th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I agree with your hypothisis completely. I actually have been looking at this type of option for over a year but the tech is finally catching up. Sure you could do it now if you have lots of money but its not affordable or friendly enough to the average consumer.
Im actually working to start my own structured wiring business in the next year and this is the direction I want to take my company. I see home moving toward a office approach where there is a server room with massive storage and home theater equipment that can be called up by any room in the house. I would build a CFF pc and have mini ITX client in every room so you could stream everything over Cat5 and have HD and fully DD surround.
This is an interesting topic you start and i enjoy your columns.
February 20th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
There is a market for a true client / server home AV solution. The Microsoft solution is ok but its still not plug and play and too confusing for everyone. Personally, I think the Linux NAS solutions running solid UPnP servers with clients on the other end are pretty compelling solutions but nowhere near true plug and play that is needed for this category to go anyplace.
March 5th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
The hard part is getting a truly structured and distributed system in place that allows you to really distribute your media.
I approached this project successfully last year. Here was what I was after.
The overall goal was to have 1 device for each function. For example, I like Tivo, I think Tivo is better then any darn media PC ever built. My wife likes Tivo and can use it well. We’re keeping Tivo.
But I don’t want a Tivo for EVERY BEDROOM and I sure as heck don’t want multiple Tivo’s transferring data over the wireless network (stutter stutter stutter) so I decided to build a system that allows me to send and receive all relevant A/V signals from ANY room in the house to ANY OTHER room in the house.
The scenario is like this: Think of a Tivo in the living room next to a TV. How do you get that exact same experience in every other room of the house?
My answer was to run two bundled A/V cables (2 RG-6/2 Cat5e/1 Cat 6 per strand) from each location to my media closet. This all terminates it a rack so now, from the media closet, I can receive and send a signal to each room.
The Tivo is then plugged into the ‘input’ segment and the TV -next- to the Tivo is plugged into the ‘output’ segment. So this yields a ‘Home Run’ system where everything is perfectly centralized. We then did the same thing for our other rooms (some having an input and an output, others having output only).
Now that every room is sending and receiving I just had to tie them together to complete the puzzle. We do this with an Autopatch 1YDM which gives 8 inputs and 8 outputs of hi bandwidth capacity on four tiers. Sounds like nonsense but lets look at this, we can now send composite video (3 levels) and digital audio (1 level ) in and out of this machine.
Think of the Autopatch as an old 1930’s telephone switchboard, it allows you to map any input to any number of outputs, all at the same time. This means I can have Tivo on input one and digitally switch it to outputs 1,2 and 3. At the same time my Media PC can be on input 2 and be switched to outputs 4 and 5. A simple command over RS-232 and I can dynamically reconfigure the entire thing on the fly.
Lets review, we now have the ability for the Tivo in the living room to send its signal to every output device in the house. We can easily add inputs and outputs to the system to enable this functionality for our DVD players, media PC’s etc. But how do we control all of this??
The first step was to install a simple IR repeater block. 2 pairs on a Cat5e and we can now send and recieve IR data to every room in the house. Connect up IR blasters and receivers and now my wife can carry her Tivo remote with her and have it function in any room in the house!
The last step in this madness was to make it easy to control the switching process, asking the Missus to log into Hyperterminal and type “SI0O345″ was a bit much. What I’ve done here is used the an application called Girder to map some arbitrary IR signals to Serial port commands.
What sends these IR commands? I picked a Phillips Pronto for now. The user logic works like this:
Screen 1 : Select what room you are in
Screen 2 : Select what you want to do in this room
Once you select on Screen 2 the arbitrary IR signal is sent to the IR receiver in whatever room you are in, Girder in the media closet picks it up, maps it to the output command and issues the switch data to the autopatch. Result? A 100% Wife Compatible dynamic content switching system.
Sounds like overkill but its great and best part of all, its future proof. For example, we recently remodelled the house and I relocated the Tivo from the living room to the media closet and the media pc from the office to the media closet. I then got rid of my ‘input’ segments and converted all of my ‘outputs’ to Component video (was composite). At the same time I did the digital audio upgrade and started pushing PCM around over RG-6 instead of unbalanced, un-amped line data. I fully anticipate future changes that I hopefully will be able to accomodate.
As a nice to have we also ran gigabit ethernet over 1 of the Cat6 cables to each room so that when ‘IP convergence’ arrives we have a backbone to support it.
If anyone wants more info let me know, a few people have taken some of my tips and done the same thing with great results! Nothing beats having the same thing on in every room of the house and being able to modify your home A/V configuration with the press of a button!! Some old photos are here : http://www.siberian.org/gallery2/v/…/distributedav/
I still need to do a formal writeup on my wiki, I’ll get to it someday!
Current project is to add a MythTV box into the system with multiple front-ends running on one piece of hardware. This will allow my family to watch different DVD’s from the same Media PC on different outputs anywhere in the house as well as listen to their own music whereever they are.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Amazing! Your setup sounds awesome. I just think it’s a little over the top for the average Joe to accomplish, though. Your last paragraph touches one one of my concerns: multiple user access. How are you planning on setting up MythTV front-ends to accomplish this? Any particular hardware you have in mind?
March 6th, 2006 at 9:49 am
That autopatch sounds like the killer component in the system. Love it and your use of it! I would like to see a complete parts menu for the IR blasters and a system schematic. Did you build one?
March 7th, 2006 at 2:13 am
My media PC has a Hauppage 350 card, a Delta Dio 24/96 Digital audio card, onboard digital audio and svid coming off my nvidia card.
My plan is to use the Hauppage and the Delta Dio for one ‘user’ and the onboard digital audio and nvidia card for my second ‘user’.
I’ll then run two instances of mythfrontend on the machine, each binding to one or the other user but sharing a common database. Each will be configured to respond to a different set of IR codes via LIRC (or Girder events if I keep my XP box in the system). That will give me two ‘users’. Bonus, the Hauppage card decodes MPEG streams so CPU usage will drop enough to support the dual clients.
This will only work until I finish my component upgrade since the Hauppage card doesn’t output Component signals, only SDTV and SVideo. No sweat though, I’ll just replace it with a DVI PCI video card.
Its not that over the top really. Once you learn to use a punch down tool and crimper its pretty straightforward.
March 7th, 2006 at 2:23 am
IR is standard off the shelf Xantec stuff. My pick is
http://www.hometech.com/infrared/blocks.html#XA-79144
How this works for me is I take 2 pair of cat5e (4 wires) from each room. These enter the closet and terminate in a standard 8 wire telco bridge:
I then route the ‘input signal’ back into the telco bridge. Now whenever I get input from the rooms it enters the bridge and is passed to all other bridge circuits, the only one that is connected is the IR amp. This then amps the signal over 12v and pushes it out to its emitter which is terminated back in the block. This signal is then pushed through the block to all attached remote emitters.
Voila, anything that comes in enters the IR block and is routed back out to all rooms. Every remote works everywhere. The 10 port amp is overkill, I didn’t know what I was doing when I built it so I overbuilt rather then have to drive back to sunnyvale to return it.
In the above pic you can see the far right of the flat rectangular green circuit board connects the input (bottom) and the output (top) of the IR amp.
This was a bit of a bear to comprehend the first time I did it but the guys at HomeTech Solutions really helped me understand the logic of it.
March 7th, 2006 at 2:36 am
Another item i am working on is taking an HP T5700 embedded desktop thin client and using it as my AutoPatch control. This is a small device that runs a 1GHz Crusoe processor with 256megs of RAM and 256 megs of flash disk space. No fan, totally silent, low power draw but a good amount of computing power.
The user workflow here is like this. When you plug in the VGA instead of having a login prompt you have a menu that says :
Current IP Address: 0.0.0.0
0) System Settings (network etc)
1) View current installed components
2) View current install outputs
3) Add new component
4) Add new output
5) Create new IR map
1-4 are obvious but item 5 will initiate a small wizard that first shows all inputs, you select one. Then it shows all outputs, you select one. It then prompts you to press the button on the remote that you want to initiate that switching action and it will save the setting.
This will allow ‘the common folk’ to keep this system up to date without having to use 3rd party tools etc. In essence it creates a self-contained media switching system that is nearly plug and play ready.
Once that works I’ll expose the UI over a web browser as well so it can be updated from any PC in the house very easily.
Thats the vision at least
I have linux running embedded so its really just a matter of putting the pieces together but here is the real power:
8×8 AutoPatch on Ebay - < $100
HP T5700 on Ebay - < $400
So for $500 you get a complete control system for a dynamically switched 8×8 high bandwidth matrix. Thats unheard of.Not that I am an installer but it shows what can be done with off the shelf (used!) hardware and some creativity.
John-
April 25th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Speaking of servers through the pro CE market, S1Digital just released one.
“S1Digital LLC, a builder of premium home entertainment solutions announced the launch of the S1Digital Media Center Server Edition. Aimed at custom installers and dealers, the Server offers a rack mountable, high performance Media Center that will fit in with existing or new home theater installations.”
“We’ve had enormous demand for a rack mountable Media Center from custom installers,”
“Custom installers and resellers should contact sales@s1digital.com directly.”
Sounds like S1 is seeing the integrator market too.
More Info.
http://www.s1digital.com/Media_Cent…tion_p/mcse.htm
Chris
April 25th, 2006 at 10:32 am
I ended up racking my Antec media center on a sidemount in my garage so it takes up minimal space. But its a total hack mount job, I took a shelf with an edge and use it to trap the pc against the wall. Looks nice though!
On related news, JJPlus just released a linux embedded box that is super nice and well priced ($249). I’m going to be integrating this with a switcher control package with IR control. Anyone interested in experimenting with it?
The idea here is that you can take this box at $249, some linux packages, an IR input device and a ~$100 autopatch from ebay and create an 8×8 component video/digital audio switcher. So for under $400 or so you get a fully realized system, just add cables!
John-