Legit Reviews

Bonus Points to the Person who can Figure out where the Title Comes From. This is a little Pet Project I have been planning for a while.

Pictures and synopsis to come this weekend.
Until then I'll leave you guessing

Specs

1X16GB Mtron 7000 Pro SSD (SLC) (Own)
2X1TB SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (ETA Wednesday)
1X PROMISE FastTrak TX4310 PCI SATA II Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10 JBOD (4 Connections) (ETA Wednesday)
1 X MSI Industrial 945GM2 Core 2 Duo Mobile Mini-ITX Mainboard = DELIVERED
1 X T2500 Intel Processor (ETA Wednesday)
1X Morex Venus 668B Case - Black = DELIVERED
1X ASUS Xonar D2X Sound Card (ETA Wednesday)
2 X 1GB Ultra Low Profile PC2-5300 DDR2 (OWN)
1X 2 to 1 Flexible PCI Riser = DELIVERED
1X 5.25" to 3.5" Adapter Brackets (ETA Wednesday)
1X DVD-RW Lite-ON (OWN)

Going to be Running either XBMC or MythBuntu as a DVD Machine. It's only function is to play DVDs at HD Quality. Box will contain over 254 Discs of both Movies and TV Shows. H.264 File Format will be used. OS will be Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.10

Case can hold up to 5 HDDs (Box physically could do 6, 4 on the Controller, 2 on the board)
1 HDD in the FDD Slot
1 on each of the two 5.25" Slots with Brackets
2 in the designation bays for HDDS

Video Connection is VGA, Audio Connection is Toslink from Sound Card to Reciever

Display is 32in Samsung LCD (720p)

ETA of Case - Monday/Tuesday
ETA of Hard Drive, Sound Card, and Raid Card Tuesday/Wednesday
Case to be Wired on Thursday

To-Do
Research best Raid mode - RAID1 (Since Rips are 1-2GB per DVD, 2.4 for TV DVDs, 500 or so DVDs should fit per 1TB Disk)
Research NetFlix Streaming on Linux No Support in XBMC on MythTV, will wait for Linux Support via Web
Research Online Radio (Pandora and Last.fm) Pandora No, Last.fm Yes in XBMC
Research Ripping by Chapter for TV Series Handbrake, select Correct Chapter
Rip all DVDs - In Progress
Custom Splash Screen (Beaker Special Image)
Download 8.10 Ubuntu, 8.10 Mythbuntu Decided on XBMC
Research ISO Playing in XBMC Decided on MKV

Decided
XBMC
Ripping to MKVs
Addition of DVD-RW (So I can use box as dedicated Ripper)

Estimated Complete Online Date January 2nd 2009

your going to be bottle necking your drives significantly by going with a PCI raid card. why not a higher quality sound card like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829270003 ive heard good things about it and it works in linux.

Speakers aren't good enough to hear a difference, the card was free from a friend. And I have a script that will shuttle the wanted file to the SSD for optimal performance

And I don't have anything but PCI in this rig, and I'm not updating the board. I actually achieved better benchmarks on PCI Controller card, than the onboard controller of the mobo, so no worries. Raid is for data redundancy not speed.

oh, ok. thats a pretty nifty script there. whats it written in and how many lines is it?

Winamp has some pretty good online radio built in to it thru shoutcast, and its free.

This is a Linux Box

As far as online radio goes i strongly suggest di.fm, I listen to them almost 24/7 to thier house, chill, and trance. I swap between them depending on what I am doing and what mood im in. LOL But as far as best raid, for what you have and what its going to be doing and if you can afford it, raid 5 at the very least. It doesnt have have the best I/O performance, but you at least get space with redundancy. The best I think you can do is Raid 10 IMHO. 4 drive minimum.

I use Pandora and Last FM, just have to find the plugins. Plus there is a plugin for the Squeezebox, so I can use that to stream to the computer. Working with Mythbuntu right now. Not sure I'm a fan of it. Formatting the TB Drive to EXT3 right now so I don't have to mount the drive every time I want to use it.

i use pandora and last.fm too and songbird in windows

You can add a NTFS to fstab so it automounts in ubuntu at least. Should work exactly the same in mythbuntu...can't wait to see some pics

Too lazy, and Myth is not the way to go. Looking at LinuxMCE and Elisa

XBMC? doesnt have tv support though...

Don't need TV support just DVD, and it doesn't full screen correctly on Intel Hardware

Updated thread with new Mobo and CPUs. Anyone recommend a good PCI-E Sound Card? Dolby Digital is a must with a coax output. Incase your wondering I'm going all out

Looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006

I will take optical though, as it appears only real high end cards of coax

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271001 but its not PCIe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006 but it needs to be plugged into your PSU Edit: doesn't have coax, but it does have optical

martini161 wrote:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829271001 but its not PCIe
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006 but it needs to be plugged into your PSU Edit: doesn't have coax, but it does have optical

Has to be PCIE, the raid card is taking the PCI slot

That other needs power really? I'd rather not go that route. If its optical that's fine. I'm gonna be powering 1 SSD, and to SATAs, with only a 200W PSU. I would like to keep the Power Usage Low. I gotta hook up the Power Reader to the DVD while playing. It'd be cool to have it lower than the power consumption on that.

And martini161, thanks for all the quick answers

it only needs power because i dont think PCIe1x pins provides much power at all, so it wont take much power at all

Okay, I'll have to wait till I get the case (I think today) to see if I have the right connectors.

After seeing that http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132005 works perfectly (expect for SPDIF), in Ubuntu, I splurged and bought it. I can do some leg work to get the SPDIF working.