Pulp Free

Isn’t there a saying somewhere similar to “you can never have enough stuff”? I think that could probably be related to storage as well. And by storage I mean a place to put your digital keepsakes. A digital attic of sorts. It wasn’t too long ago that I ventured into building an upgraded Windows Home Server. I actually never got around to writing about the build process that included 20 hot-swap bays and enough noise to remind you that a server was hanging out in your basement datacenter. That build (now that I look back on it) was finished around July of 2009 – almost 18 months ago and even with 8TB available, I’ve now used most of that up!

Then came along Microsoft’s announcement that Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender was being removed from WHSV2 and seemingly overnight the support for this fantastic OS simply vanished… (Of course, not without a lot of angry supporters sharing their sadness…)

I thought I could overlook some of the misgivings I had based on my own experiences with WHS. While having Drive Extender made having a hodgepodge of drives in my 20-bay case feasible, data redundancy was pretty expensive and a failure of one drive usually wrecked havoc on the overall stability of the system. If one drive started experiencing I/O errors, bad sectors, or controller disconnects, the system would freeze-up and complain non-stop until it was recovered. Knowing that the failure rate of drives in reality were more common than I felt comfortable with, I was always on edge when I needed to perform any sort of OS updates or hardware maintenance. I’ve had more than my fair share of Western Digital’s Caviar Green and Blue drives replaced under warranty. Even moving 1 TB of data around is time consuming and prone to exposing errors.

What to do, what to do. I definitely have the technical know-how to white box out a new server and put some hard drives in it. Previously my main 8TB Windows 2008 R2 file server was just that. 4 2TB hard drives in RAID 0 shared out to the network kept everything running smoothly. That storage system with a performance peak of 220 MB/s was perfectly suited to how I was using it especially since it was fast enough to fill my gigabit Ethernet network as well as local IO-intensive efforts. However, expanding it past 4 hard drives wasn’t easy unless I stayed entirely in the OS for software RAID instead of using the motherboard RAID option.

Did I mention my New Year’s resolution to simplify, simplify, simplify? So it came down to the following requirements:

• Provides an easy way to expand both the disk volumes and the hardware while maintaining all-around performance
• It just has to work. I don’t want to be the engineer, architect, and system support person anymore. I want to be a user…
• Simplify.
• Cost – but I knew for a robust solution I would now have to costs to deal with… But I wasn’t going to pay NetApp prices for a SOHO system…

So what does that get me in reality? Well, I’m always going to be involved in the nuts and bolts, I clearly don’t want to maintain the system. If I continue to stick with a Windows file server, there’s always the patching and maintenance of the system. I also find myself putting other applications on the system… Usually VMware or a secondary media encoding engine. Eventually those start sapping CPU and memory from the primary purpose of simply serving files. (Granted – some of those performance issues are self-inflicted!)

Second option of course is instead of running a Windows-based file server, head on over to the Linux world and build out a white-box NAS OS install. That brings FreeNAS, OpenFiler, or just Linux on it’s own into the picture. Perhaps an all-in-one Groupware system like ClearOS? I’ve dabbled with all of those and found that they worked okay – but not plug-it-in simple. I’m already running VMware ESXi for my OS playground. I don’t want the overhead of maintaining another system for my day-to-day storage efforts.

That left me with choosing the NAS path directly from a vendor. This time a dedicated NAS hardware solution. During each of my previous storage builds, a dedicated NAS was always an option. I usually dismissed that option as too expensive for my expected performance requirements, too slow (if I chose a less expensive components), or simply more fun to build out a white box solution. I soon had servers all over the place that were later consolidated as VMs,but it seemed to be getting a little out of hand. In the end, the overhead of maintaining those servers finally caught up with me with unavailability, hardware flakiness, and solution complication – not to mention noise and nowadays, power consumption.

I will say that no home or small-business technology fan should head out into the unknowns of storage options without spending at least a few hours at the SmallNetBuilder Web site. While for this effort I mostly hung out in their NAS sections, they have sections for networking, security, media, and more. Take your pick of the top rated devices and you probably won’t go wrong. Netgear, Thecus, QNAP, Buffalo, Synology, and the likes of Drobo and others. 18 months ago when I was evaluating hardware NAS devices, Thecus was at the top of my list… After revisiting this path, a new contender happened to come along at just the right time.

Meet the Synology DS1511+.

The DS1511+ and I crossed paths while reading a quick technology update on Engadget’s Web site. The announcement of a NAS device capable of 15TB of storage, RAID5 capable along with (the most important part) up to 197 MB/s read speeds and 165 MB/s write speeds.

Yes, please.

A quick read-through of Synology’s press release and product pages had me practically foaming at the mouth. For the last month since I found out about this upgraded version of Synology’s DS1010+ NAS device, I did nothing but investigate every Web site review, forum review, and online retailer for information. However, it’s relatively new to be sure. Very few retailers had the system in stock. A few devices seemed to be available on eBay, but I didn’t want to go that route. I was hoping that Newegg would be able to take care of me – but alas, they weren’t yet carrying it in stock. (Newegg now has it available…) Based on a some good feedback on Synology’s own user forums, the online vendor Excaliberpc.com actually had some decent prices on the DS1511+ and better yet – a combo deal with an added 5-bay extender DX510. I debated for sure – back and forth. Once I start researching and planning – it’s really not a matter of if, but when. I eventually pulled the trigger.

Delivery, strangely enough, was a drop ship directly from Synology instead of from Excaliberpc.com – arriving right on time January 12th, 2010. To be fair, this isn’t going to be an unboxing review… There are plenty of those around by now – but I was pleasantly surprised by the double-box shipping, the packaging itself, and the simplicity of the setup. According to the specs, each of the small black units are sized at 157mm X 248mm X 233mm (about 6 1/8″ x 9 3/4″ x 9 1/4″) and fit wonderfully side by side or stacked on top of each other (the eSATA cable is long enough to do either.)

Next up was to populate the drive bays. I chose to pick up an additional set of hard disks to fill DS1511+ for a number of reasons.

• If I used the 2TB (x5) drives already in use in my current system, I wouldn’t have a backup in case one of those drives failed during re-purposing.
• Even though I now had 10 bays to populate (5 with the DS1511+ and 5 with the DX510) – I didn’t want to start out limiting my capacity with my existing 1TB drives. Those 1TB drives have were also the Western Digital Green drives and have been spinning non-stop for 18 months. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve replaced my fair share of those drives and have found over time they’re not really the right balance of performance and energy savings I was looking for.
• I wanted to make sure whatever drives I was going to use were on the supported hardware list.

That being said, 5 new HITACHI Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330 drives were ordered up from Newegg and in Newegg fashion, they arrived the next day after I ordered them! (And then simply sat in the “datacenter” for 6 days waiting for the DS1511+.)

I actually purchased 5 HITACHI Deskstar HD32000 IDK/7K drives a year ago and they’ve been fantastic. All of those drives have worked out of the box without errors and the performance has been great. Both are supported by the DS1511+ without modification (whereas the Western Digital drives have a lot of write-ups around Load/Unload Cycle Counts and the currently available 2TB Samsung HD204UI is having smartctl issues and isn’t even listed on the Synology supported drives list). While I’m a definitely a fan of finding the lowest $/MB, sometimes it really does make sense to pay a little bit more for a drive.

The setup of the DS1511+ after it was plugged in and attached to the network was relatively painless. While a DVD is included to help with the process, I proceeded to the Synology support Web site and fetched the newest installers. It does seem odd that a Windows or Mac application needs to be installed to find the DS1511+ on your network to upload the firmware/OS. But no matter, really – it works and you’re not required to keep the application around for continued use.

Next up I built out a 5-disk Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) volume giving me 7.15 TB of useable space after provisioning. Since these were new drives I definitely chose the disk check as part of the build. The volume was available for use about 14 hours later with no errors found. Then it was just a matter of kicking off the copying of 6TB of files.

In terms of performance, the DS1511+ has lived up to it’s claims without issue. I was able to saturate my gigabit network and sustain it for the length of the transfer. I did try and get the link aggregation working in order to take advantage of the dual gigabit ports and higher potential network throughput. However, even though my Dell PowerConnect 2716 states it supports IEEE 802.3ad (LACP) LAG, the Synology failed to connect and then my network decided to puke on itself with all my devices going offline. Oops. I’d love to have this eventually start working as multiple sources on the Internet state that it “should” work including a few posts in a QNAP forum. However, some of those same sites were from 2005 and we all know how “standards” work out. I’m not in the market for a new gigabit switch so a single port will have to suffice for now until I can get some playtime in my network closet. Now that all of my data has been replicated and backed up, the initial benefit for having LAG implemented for moving that much data has been taken care of. While I do have dual CAT6 run to each room in our house, I’m not installing two NICs in each PC to take advantage of the additional speed. That functionality will stay with my two other servers already configured for dual NIC teaming.

Now with a third copy of my original data sitting snug on the DS1511+, it was time to start disassembling the primary and backup servers and harvesting those drives. That meant the 4 2TB Hitachi drives from one and a 5th backup 2TB drive out of the WHS backup server were fair game. All 5 of those drives fit nicely into the DX510 and with it’s eSATA connection snugly connected to the DS1511+, all drives showed up ready for use. Volume 2 in SHR format provided an additional 7.15TB of space and was ready for use again after 14 hours or so. Technically I could have created a 10-drive SHR volume for a contiguous 14.3 TB of space, but I wasn’t ready to have all drives in a volume relying on a single parity drive just yet. (Now that DSM 3.1 is in beta, you can have an SHR volume using 2 drives for parity which might have made going with a single volume a less risky decision…)

Finishing up I moved two of my largest file shares to the DX510 which worked out pretty nicely at a 50/50 split for storage. Mind you moving 3TB even locally still took a bit of time keeping in mind those shares are actually taken offline during the move. The DSM actually makes moving shares between volumes pretty easy by simply editing the shared folder and choosing a different volume location. If I had really needed those files usable I could have created a second temporary shared folder and copied the files through the DSM file manager.

If you’ve read the specs on the DS1511+ you’ll see that it only comes with 1GB of memory. It’s labeled as non-removable but the motherboard does allow for a second stick of memory to be added. Supported memory is listed as DDR2-800 (or PC2-6400) and long and behold, I somehow had a 2GB stick of memory sitting in my used parts bin. Nice! The DS1511+ recognized it without issue. Rough initial calculations haven’t show any real change in performance but the memory should come in handy if I decide to run any of the included applications or install any of my own packages at a later time.

Another nice feature is that the Synology DS1511+ works with a fair number of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). I originally had two running, one for my servers (an APC Back-UPS XS 1500 LCD) and a second one just for my network and phone systems (an APC Back-UPS RS 1000). I’m now using the smaller 1000VA unit’s USB connection to feed the Synology status information and to help gracefully shut down the DS1511+ as needed.

Now that all my data is tucked away, it was time to give back a little love to my backup solutions. My primary Windows 2008 R2 file server has now 5 new Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB drives in a RAID0 configuration. As expected, one of the five drives was DOA and has started the 2-week RMA process with Newegg. At essentially $70 a drive they were just too good to pass up knowing that they are performing backup duties to begin with. While the motherboard actually accepts 6 SATA drives, only 4 of them can be configured together in the Intel Matrix RAID profiles. I skipped that and just threw them together with Window’s own striped volume management. Bummer than 5 2TB drives only comes out to 9TB of provisioned space! Performance was actually pretty dismal configured either with 4 drives on the Intel Matrix or with just the Windows OS handling the RAID. Whereas before with the Hitachi drives I was getting close to 220 MB/s, these green drives were topping out at 120 MB/s even with an added 5th drive… meh. With a single drive testing at close to 90 MB/s, clearly those drives aren’t happy in a RAID 0 configuration.

With the backup server now complete and a fresh data backup sync of the DS1511+ underway, I used 4 of the remaining 9 1TB drives from the original WHS backup server to upgrade my Dell T310 2TB server to 4TB. I’ve been running this server for the last 6 months as a VMware ESX 4.1 instance so not content to simply backup my VMs and swap the drives out, I moved to VMware ESXi at the same time. A few different nuances from ESX to get used to but that new instance is now up and running with ESXi 4.1 running on a USB thumbdrive with the new 4 1TB drives in RAID0 configured as 4 virtual disks. (I don’t even want to get into the goofiness of ESXi when a 2TB volume is available during the install. Supposedly ESXi knows better than me how I want to configure that storage).

Now that you know about my VMware ESX/ESXi server, it’s probably safe to say that before I started pulling all of those backup drives out of my Windows Home Server environment, I created a new Windows Home Server V1 virtual instance on VMware. I thin-provisioned 4 100GB drives and reset all of my backup clients to use the new instance. Funny that under VMware I’m now getting close to 100 MB/s drive performance in the virtual instance whereas I topped out usually at close to 56 MB/s on bare-metal. (I’ll admit there are probably many reasons for that, drives, motherboard, RAID controllers, PCI bandwidth, etc.) WHS is now used exclusively for client backups and as an external RDP gateway.

That pretty much wraps up the story of my most recent love affair with my Synology DS1511+. I did happen to catch a quick video review from CNET on my TiVo that showed the DS1511+ as an editors choice award. I concur – a Pulp Free Choice Award! There’s clearly a lot more that I could talk about – installing my own apps via bootstrap/IPKG or the other DSM functions. Perhaps I’ll save those and more for a follow-up post once the DS1511+ and I get a bit more acquainted with each other.

Synology DS1511+ quick stats:

• 165.91 MB/sec Writing, 197.8 MB/sec Reading
• Windows ADS and ACL support
• iSCSI Support as Virtualization Solution
• Scale up to 15 Drives with Synology DX510
• Expandable RAM Size (up to 3GB)
• 2 LAN with Failover and Link Aggregation Support
• Hot-swappable Hard Drive Design

Current storage systems hardware stats:

PulpStation – Synology DS1511+ w/DX510 Expansion

• 10 2TB hard drives, 2 volumes, SHR (RAID5) 14.3TB usable storage
• 3GB RAM

Trumpet – Asus Windows 2008 R2 Standard File Server

• 5 2TB hard drives, 1 volume, RAID0, 9.1TB usable storage
• Core2Duo Dual-core, 1.86GHz, 4GB RAM

Trombone – Dell PowerEdge T310 VMware ESXi 4.1

• 4 1TB hard drives, Perc 6/i RAID0, 3.64TB usable storage
• Xeon X3440 Quad-core, 2.53GHz, 24GB RAM

I’m a digital pack rat. Well – mostly. My “junk” is really pretty organized – I just have a lot of it. Last November I upgraded my primary storage system to 4 TB and it’s done pretty well for me… hovering around 3 TB used. My secondary backup server carried the replaced 500 GB drives and it was handling its duty pretty well. Mostly. Last week some of those backup drives started complaining about disconnecting from the system and then finally just disappeared altogether. During this time I’ve been using Windows Home Server to perform backups of all of my laptops, desktops, media centers and virtual images… And quite well at that. Now I’m presented with my next hobby project – some out of necessity – part out of playtime. I’m going to try out consolidating my storage into a new storage server that I’ve planned to be expandable for quite some time. When all is said and done – I should be looking at about 13+ TB of available storage that will include backups.

I’ve now ordered up and should see next week the following rolling into my personal datacenter…

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor Model ADH5050DOBOX – Retail – Item #: N82E16819103298
• SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card – Retail – Item #: N82E16815121009
• BYTECC 18″ Sata and Slim Sata Power 7+6pin Cable, for Sata Slim OD Model SATA-XP118 – Retail – Item #: N82E16812270183
• Sony Optiarc Slim Combo Black SATA Model CRX890S-10 – OEM – Item #: N82E16827118018
• NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case – Retail – Item #: N82E16811219021
• Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM – Item #: N82E16822136317
• OCZ Reaper HPC 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ2RPR10664GK – Retail – Item #: N82E16820227289
• ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard – Retail – Item #: N82E16813131324
• CORSAIR CMPSU-620HX 620W ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Compatible … – Retail – Item #: N82E16817139002

When I’m all finished up I’ll actually have a left over computer – which is usually what you should be using for a Microsoft Windows Home Server in the first place… But alas – with one bad backup system and the primary not touchable, this will be a migration effort. I’ll chronicle up the efforts here similar to how I managed through my HTPC build (which is still working out quite nicely!)

Be sure to keep an eye on these other great forum posts for similiar builds… (This case is just awesome no matter what you put in it…) – AVS Forum and Extreme Systems.

To quote one of the all time famous lines from TopGear’s Jeremy Clarkson:

“How hard can it be?”

Now really – I’ve had my personal HTPC humming along nicely for about 5 months now. I’ve been blown away by:

• Very low noise
• Fantastically smooth 24 fps 1080p HDTV playback
• Vista Media Center (don’t use it all that much – but for the Olympics it was pretty nice…)
• HDMI goodness

So happy in fact that a few months back I sold off my Sony STR DE-945 Dolby Digital Receiver on Craigs list and turned around and purchased the new Sony STR-DG920 7.1 HDMI fully loaded receiver. I wanted to be sure to get the Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and while I was at it DTS-HD for good measure. Really – those formats are needed since some of the new Blu-ray movies have decided to leave off plain-jane Dolby Digital for some reason…

Problem is, no matter what I do with drivers or software updates or configurations – my GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard will just not pass-through the newer audio formats. The control panel will only show Dolby Digital and DTS as options for “supported formats”.

I’d love to think that my tried and true forum thread on this topic would be of assistance… but after some 126 pages of somewhat random and unorganized thoughts – I can’t get a definitive answer on if it’s even supposed to work!

So since you’re here reading this and you happen to come across an answer to this totally frustrating situation – please come back and share with me how you got it to work.

And yes… I could go purchase the new ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe or perhaps a new video card… But that’s defeating the purpose of this fantastic motherboard and low noise requirements… And of course – $$$!

So if you:

1. Have this motherboard
2. Are running Windows XP or Vista
3. Have HDMI connected to your audio receiver (doesn’t have to be a Sony)
4. Are getting your PC to pass the new Blu-ray audio formats

Please share your configurations!

Thanks,

_frustrated

It's now been about a week since all of my HTPC parts arrived and I suppose it's time to divulge a little bit of my day-in-the-life drama of experiences. I do enjoy a bit of computer building as a hobby. Some might call me a computer geek in that I have a basement full of computers. Difference between most is that I actually "use" them on a daily basis so they actually need to work. However, just as many of you know – when you're building items from scratch – there's always gotchas along the way. I was hoping that the decision to build an HTPC rather than simply buying a PS3 would deliver a few days of fun, but a lot more days with just watching great movies and easing my media collection congestion. I think this actually worked out well and for the most part, the technology is available to get pretty good 1080p Hi-Def, Blu-ray and HD DVD out of a computer and into your living room for a reasonable amount of cash (or credit…). Include very little hassle or noise and you get to share in my experience so far…

 So what exactly is in my HTPC? Here we go… (And of course, my opinions to go with each of them…)

CPU – AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
	A fairly recent CPU from AMD that has actually worked out quite well so far. Low wattage should translate into lower heat (which of course, should translate into less noise). I ran some quick and dirty CPU benchmark tests against the other computers in my arsenal and it holds its own. Basically faster on some tests and slower on others. (Hmmm… maybe I'll make another post about Pulp Free benchmarks!) However, the CPU shouldn't be doing a whole lot here for just playing back HDTV. While I put together benchmarks for my own amusement, playback of Blu-ay or HD DVD usually averaged around 20% or so. Since those are my target formats, I'm quite happy. When you toss in other formats like MKV where FFDShow is hammering the system, I did hit much higher numbers… Sometimes to the point of pretty ugly hiccups. I found a way to have it drive both cores and it became playable again… But keep in mind, I'm trying to stay somewhat mainstream here. I'll goof around with other formats once the basics are down. In this case – check. We're good to go. (And by the way, we're talking 1080p with 5.1 Dolby Digital as the format of reference.)
Memory – OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
	Not much to say here. They went into the system just fine and haven't had any issues. Pretty nice heat spreaders on them but I'm not over-clocking here so… One thing to notice what that they only fired up to 667 instead of 1066. However, I think that's related to my CPU clock speed more than the memory. To be fair, I picked these up without much research as they were carrying a $50 mail in rebate that made them cheaper than most of the other NewEgg memory fare. Might dig a little deeper into performance at a later time – but memory performance never seemed to be the bottleneck worth looking into so far…
Optical Drive – LG GGC-H20L 16X Blu-ray/HD DVD drive
	Blu-ray and HD DVD work as advertised. Pretty quiet drive for the most part when watching movies. It's only when you fire up a data disc that it's starts really making some racket. I'd say mostly for data CDs when it's spinning up to 52x read speeds. When I played back regular DVD videos it stayed pretty relaxed (although who really watches DVDs when you have HD!) Nice to have SATA as an interface here… Just click and go. Notable disappointments here have been echoed everyplace else. The software (Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3 OEM) that comes with it will play back your movies without an issue. As long as you don't mind only 2-channel audio. Blah. C'mon! And there's no way at all to "purchase" and upgrade for the 7.3 OEM version to get full digital audio. You can purchase an upgrade to version 8 but you'll lose HD DVD support. (They say you can run both at the same time… but they still overlap a bit). However, either by design or mistake – Dolby Digital 5.1 still played back for HD DVD videos. It was only Blu-ray discs that down sampled (either for AC3 or DTS audio tracks). DVDs still played back in Dolby Digital (haven't tested for DTS on DVD yet…) So there's definitely a compromise if your media collection is made up of Blu-ray.
Hard Drive – Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM
	Extremely dull. C'mon – it's a hard drive! Happened to be the same model that I purchased a year ago for my 2TB media server… Just $60 cheaper! All 5 drives are now doing well. I'm able to get an average of 85 MB/second which is way more than I need for HD playback. Heck, in my system, most of the media is on the media server in the basement… The drive is mostly for the OS. It's also quiet enough not to notice the seeks and scans. I have the feeling that the Automatic Acoustic Management isn't enabled so there's probably room for improvement there. Even without it, it's no louder than the HD TiVo next to it… And it's never bothered me.
HTPC Case – Antec Aluminum Veris Fusion Black 430 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case with IR receiver
	Already plenty of reviews for the Antec Fusion V2 case – from the good and the bad. I'm going on the record as saying I love this case. It's beautiful and blends in with the rest of my home theater equipment. Installation was a breeze with the motherboard, hard drive and optical drive. I'll admit I'm not a cabling freak and if you poked your head into the side of the case you'd say I was a novice… It just isn't as important to me. It works and you're not going to see it. I'm not over-clocking so heat flow isn't an issue either. I will say that the hard drive really doesn't have any air flow around it… It's segmented in it's own compartment but it has plenty of room around it (enough for a second drive). The only goofy part (as also mentioned by others) is the LCD display. The software that comes with it (VFD or something) works okay. You'll want to scrap it and just grab the real iMON software from Soundgraph (current version is iMON_7_20_0502). It has all of the drivers and software baked into a much larger software offering. I was really, REALLY hoping that the two XBOX360 remotes that I have (one that came with the XBOX360 and the other that came with the HD DVD drive) would work with the built-in IR sensor. Nope. No-go. Only an MCE remote works with it. I was fooled into thinking that since the XBOX 360 had settings on it to use either remote type, so would this… Nada. I made a second purchase from NewEgg for a Microsoft A9O-00007 WinXP Media Center Infrared Remote Control and it worked great (in Vista Media Center). I believe there's some options to try and get it to work with other software components than just VMC – so I'll be checking into that as I go along. I just don't want to drop in the included IR receiver to get such functionality to work… A bit more on the LCD – some people have complained about the viewing of it – but you can dial down the contrast and it still looks great. The newer version of the software actually fixes the ability to change fonts. When you're playing back DVDs or MP3 files – the name of the media scrolls back and you really can see it from 6-8 feet away (I'm with Arial Bold right now… but will get some other cooler fonts in there to check it out). The dancing EQ works great with Vista Media Center or Winamp… I couldn't be happier with it. There was a catch around using the IR to turn on and off the computer with the remote. Essentially there are two power switch wires to hook up from the case to the motherboard. In reality you're supposed to take on plug and insert it back into the LCD and then daisy-chain that connection to the motherboard. I'll probably work that part out in the future as I'm currently only using the plug from the front-panel switch. I'd need to disassemble the entire front plate to get to the connections. Why they made it so hard and not installed from the factory this way remains a mystery for sure. Last part about the case is that it really is quiet. I have the two side fans on low (they have a internal fan switch for low, medium, and high) and the CPU at idle is still showing 30c & 26c for the CPU and 10c for the core. Once I get some Cacti graphs trending fan speed and temperature settings, I'll have a better idea about load conditions. I was actually rather hesitant to spend more money on the case than the motherboard, memory & CPU – but once it's done – it's done. And you will enjoy the look and usability of this case far past the time you pay the credit card bill. Main factors in this case decision was looks number one, and silence number two. Both exceeding my expectations.
Motherboard – GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD
	This was my first Gigabyte motherboard and I've been pleased with it so far. Being an Asus fan with a few motherboards, I chose this one primarily for the built in HDTV/HDMI/HDCP graphics card and the AMD chipset. Both combined have kept it a cool case while still providing great 1080p HD playback and decent 3D performance. (I'm a sucker for 3D screen savers and what not… Heck, even full screen Winamp Visualizations played back without a problem…) I didn't have any add-in cards to install so the whole setup was relatively simple. SATA hard drive and optical drive eased those connections. CPU, cooler and memory went in fine as well. A few points of caution (or wisdom…) Be sure to update your BIOS but remember to reset it to defaults when you're finished. I knew about the need to setup the BIOS first to use HDMI (the default is to output to DVI). Basically chicken or the egg – you need to use a DVI/VGA monitor before you can see the BIOS screens to enable HDMI. If you only have HDMI you'll never see… well – you get the idea. The problem I ran into was that I set it to HDMI, restarted, all worked well… Then updated the BIOS. HDMI still worked on reboot, but would stop working at random. Sometimes even restarting wouldn't work. Pulling and replacing the cables didn't always work either. When I did go back into the BIOS the video out was set back to DVI. Odd that it would "work" with HDMI (HDMI and DVI share the same components so you can only choose one or the other with your second display being VGA). Being frustrated and thinking my efforts for this motherboard were dashed – I set it back to HDMI and haven't had those random issues again. Audio over HDMI also caused me a few headaches. The drivers were all installed and showing up but failed to enable. No matter what I did I couldn't choose HDMI as an audio output. I could use the RealTech optical out to my receiver but I really wanted audio over HDMI to work. My expectations were to hook up all HDMI to the TV and the use the digital out from the TV to my receiver (My several years old receiver only has two optical inputs that will accept multi-channel audio… I have 3 sources!) Come to find out that revisiting the BIOS for the HDMI/DVI issue I described earlier fixed this same issue as well. Whew! Now I can switch between optical audio and HDMI by using the Sound control panel (it would be nice to output to both… but oh well!) That brings me to my last and somewhat painful issue. If I don't have my TV turned to the HDMI/PC input when the computer is booting… Or if I switch input selection when the computer is already turned on, I lose picture. At first I thought this was related to the screen saver putting the TV into sleep mode or some other logical explanation… But I can repeat the problem by switching to a different input as well. The only solution is to get up and pull the HDMI cable out of the back of the TV or computer and to plug it back in. Then it works… Until I switch inputs again. AGH! I know others have seen this issue so it's really the last issue I need to resolve. (Some say that the latest BIOS or video drivers fixed the issue for them… but it hasn't for me…) All in all, for a $90 motherboard (half the cost of my previous purchase – an ASUS P5B Deluxe, it's been rock solid. For an HTPC Mini-ATX board, it just "works" (minus the HDMI blanking issues). This seems to be the first of a new line of integrated motherboards that perform very well for the lost entry cost. Who would have thought that all of these features could be had for such a low cost? Even with additional features not being used like RAID and over-clocking – I've very happy with this selection as well.
Television Stand - Whalen Brown Cherry TV Stand
	This is really more around preference than anything else. I've looked around over the past few years to find my "perfect" stand for televisions and audio/video equipment. An "entertainment center" for the new millennium. With have a big real-projection television for years the only options were whole wall units costing thousands of dollars. The whole effort around this updated home theater was to lighten and thin out the bulkiness of such a setup… to blend in. More in a sense of space than in a visual perspective (really – how do you "hide" such equipment if you're using it every day?). My first thought (and still a possibility) was to simply install the TV on the wall… The crown jewels of any flat panel install. Classy in every way… Until you think about a few things. Availability of even mounting it on the wall (plaster walls and offset studs on an outer-facing wall), cord management, and the need to still have access to your audio/video equipment. Second thought was to find a nice stand to house a receiver, HD TiVo, XBOX 360, Wii, and an HTPC (with external hard drive). Those criteria were easy enough to find… Almost any stand can do that. But add the need to have a center channel speaker to blend in to the mix and the options to start to drop out pretty quickly. Queue the Best Buy experience (my love/hate relationship continues). Even though were purchased our TV at Best Buy, the selection of TV stands all missed the mark. Until, out of the corner of my eye, I found the Whalen Brown Cherry TV Stand. Not only did it have three-tier shelving, it included a mounting arm for flat-panels up to 60 inches (and up to 150 pounds). This soon became my reference selection to compare other stands and eventually became our choice. The solid cherry wood posts along with black glass and wooden shelves really look great with the black steel frame. Cable management is included and it's absolutely a solid piece of furniture when fully assembled. (Be sure NOT to tighten up the screws and bolts until you're almost finished!) Even though this is an HTPC review, the whole experience lends itself to our home theater efforts. Why go through the bother of assembling all of this equipment and effort if you're just going to make it look like a college dorm room? This stand is just the chocolate fudge icing on a great home theater – tying all of the pieces together to make it an enjoyable experience.
Blu-ray & HD DVD Playback Software – Cyberlink PowerDVD
	As mentioned earlier, the software that came with my Blu-ray/HD DVD drive really comes crippled. Fine if you're on a laptop or desktop without surround sound, but for a HTPC Home Theater setup you're really screwing your customers – especially without an upgrade path if I want to give you some dollars. Because of my need to have both HD formats available (isn't that why I purchased the LG dual format drive in the first place?) – I took a look at Corel's WinDVD 9 Plus as a player. Its story that it still supports both Blu-ray and HD DVD was something that sealed the deal for my dollars. (PowerDVD 8 dropped support for HD DVD. I did try the HD DVD hack but it killed the player each time I put an HD DVD video in and I haven't had the chance to troubleshoot…) Since WinDVD 9 has a trial (but not for HD media) I handed over $80 (a discount is included if you run the trial) and proceeded to try out t he glory of both formats. To my astonishment, green pixel corruption all over the place. Checkerboard flickers frequent enough in my viewing that there was no way to ignore it. (I might be able to… if I conned myself into it – but the Mrs. would have mentioned it as "why are those green things showing up… You spent how much on this new TV and computer to have green things on the screen?") I hunted for answers. Driver issues? I was running the latest Catalyst drives from ATI – 8.6. Then I saw this in the notes: Setting the desktop resolution to 1600×1200 or greater may result in green pixel corruption being noticed when playing certain games. This issue maybe noticed when using a system running Windows Vista and containing an ATI Radeon HD 2600 or HD 2400 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-31150 I couldn't find topic number 737-31150 anywhere… but it sounds like a diagnosis. Since that issue was only under "Known Issues Under the Windows Vista Operating System" – I reluctantly dropped back and installed Windows XP Media Center 2005. After a few hours of that mess, installing the latest patches and drivers, I fired up my recently purchased WinDVD 9. Green pixels. AGH!!! Installed the OEM version of PowerDVD and in all of it's glorious audio deprivation, no green pixels. Perfect Blu-ray & HD DVD video playback. Not a hardware issue – but a software issue. (Sounds like my life in Enterprise Infrastructure! Oh wait… I work in software now! Doh!) Well – it could be a hardware AND software issue – but I could care less. I'm spending dollars for something that works so that WinDVD software is going back for a refund and I'm sticking with WinDVD. (Both version 7.3 & 8 it seems, however…) So I'm back to Vista Ultimate with Vista Media Center and Cyberlink for now… And it's working!

So that's my wrap up and first impressions of my first real HTPC. Granted, my XBOX 360 did quite well as a Media Center Extender so most of the "infrastructure" was already in place. Networking, media center components, audio, etc weren't an issue. Stemming from the arrival of our new flat-panel TV, it was a fun effort to bring an HTPC into the mix and to finish up a decent media viewing package.

With this last piece, I'm pretty wrapped up in terms of home theater changes for a while. It's true – we've called this room in our house "The Media Lounge" from the first day we moved in. It's where we watch movies and where I really get to listen to music at decent volumes. Curious about what else was already in place before the HTPC came along?

• Sony STR DE-945 550-watt Dolby Digital Receiver
• Paradigm Mini Monitor Main, (2) V2 (Front), (2) V1 (Rear)
• Paradigm 12" Powered Subwoofer PS-1200
• Paradigm Center Channel CC-370
• HD TiVo with 500 GB "My DVR" Expander
• Microsoft XBOX 360
• Nintendo Wii
• Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR4 52" LCD
• Berkline Powered Leather Home Theater Stadium Seats
• Media Server with 2 TB online storage
• Backup Server with 2 TB backup storage
• Dell PowerConnect 2716 16-port gigabit router with CAT6 in-wall connections

For some assistance, there's already a great number of resources available on the Internet. Be sure to check these places out:

• AVS Forum – The Official Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H RS780 mATX Thread
• Coding Horror – Building Your Own Home Theater PC (Reread this AFTER I picked up the motherboard… The comments are always as good as the articles since Jeff Atwood has great readership)
• Ars Technica – Ars System Guide: HTPC edition
• (More to come as I stumble across them… the GIGABYTE motherboard is pretty popular…)

Now it's time to go hide some more wires and perhaps convince C to allow my to run the speaker wires in the walls as well…