replacing Sky box, DVD/ BR with a mini PC/ XBMC etc

Looking in the window of a CeX store I noticed a teeny tiny PC from Lenovo:

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/t ... ries-tiny/


And 'smart' tv sticks have been around for a while, it got me thinking... Which is always dangerous.

Has anyone built something yet? I was thinking external Blue-Ray drive, SSD box and a DVB stick or internal satellite/freeview card

I mean, look at the size of these things!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DVB-T-Mini-US ... 51b5cec047

I can then run XBMC on Android or Linux with the one box consigning the Sky box, BR player and old multi region DVD player to the recycling centre/ car boot sale. The HDMI in the surround amp can take care of the connections with even less leads hanging around and a nice wireless remote/keyboard/mouse combo.

The only issues I can think of are HDCP between the 'box' and the TV - ??

For a start you need a DVB-T2 receiver to get any HD material. The tuners on most of these sticks seem to be uniformly dreadful and layout very poor for RF / interference etc. I haven't seen any T2 sticks around, but I guess they must exist.

I had a media centre PC a while ago and it was ghastly, slow, unresponsive and had very odd MPEG decode artifacts, unreliable handling of aspect ratios and audio formats. Things like MPEG deblocking, de-ringing and mosquito noise reduction are completely absent. While the CE stuff is bulky it generally works! Most blu-rays can be hacked to do multiregion DVD as simply as ever.

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For the past year we've just been using a Raspberry Pi running OpenElec attached to a monitor instead of a TV - we had long since stopped watching "live" broadcast TV anyhow.

I'm really pleased with the setup, it's perfect for our needs; the screen is on a nice bracket which means it folds back into an alcove cupboard when not wanted, the Rpi is attached to the back of the screen so there's virtually no clutter (though I do have reasonable 2.1 speakers attached - can't stand the rubbish sound of many of today's TVs)...

We use a smallish logitech combined cordless keyboard with touchpad to control it, although you can also use a smartphone as a remote - older Blackberry phones with real volume, mute/skip back/fwd/pause buttons are good.

Most of what we watch is either directly from youtube or downloaded from iPlayer etc on my PC for later viewing and just shared via SMB, works fine.

Having said all that... if you're into TV/films in a bigger way than that and want to watch streaming services, physical BluRay / DVD and the rest, you will definitely want something with more puff than the raspberry pi to base your setup on. Kodi (was XBMC) is still a good choice though...

I was looking at one of these the other day too... just to watch streamed stuff. Watching thread with interest.

There are HD sticks for about £8 and have found a few tutorials on modern HTPC builds, 'green' PCs and silent fanless PCs.

It all may be hot air as I've just found my old Acer L320

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... cer%20l320

its from 2007 but is reasonably modern enough to have DVI, sataII, minpci express etc. Only 2gb Ram but it has room for a BR player and SSD and/or large HDD

Theres a slot to replace the TV card (it might be DVB) so thats sorted, and 6 USB ports for extras like a wireless kb.

Watching blu-ray is a must though so that will be the last bit.

If I remember correctly, its already running Linux too.

Just got to be aware of compatibility issues, drivers etc.

Another neat alternative is an MHL stick sitting on the HDMI. It's a handy one for my monitor for streaming.

I'm no great fan of PCs for video if viewed on a big screen. Software decoding on the CPU is usually pretty poor on things like de-interlacing, using line-based rather than any decent frame-based approach. It's fine for a small screen, but above 32" or so it's noticeable to me. There again some STBs (TVOnics for example) have decoding problems with bad de-interlace artifacts.

Yes, I remember doing a crash course in video on 90" to 14' screens via an 'interpolator' and at the time £100k deinterlacer (which could be found on a $10 chip a few years later). The first DVI connections showing pixel for pixel images barely a foot wide and so on. That was 15 years ago so non of it is relevant now, but the memories of 'jaggies' and 'combing' will never leave me...

So I am very fussy about what it looks like at the other end.

Its just an idea to replace the soon to be redundant Sky box really so the mind wandered on and the BD player and DVD player came under the spotlight.


In 2007, Aldi did a monster Tevion entertainment PC with a blu-ray player and satellite/ freeview card. It just couldnt cope with a 42" screen so it had to go back. It was a real shame.

Back to sifting the internet chaff.

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I've been using an "old" pc as a media centre PC for some years; I basically made up a PC from the parts I upgraded in a new case with some very quiet fans, the whole thing is inaudible from more than a foot away.

For music I bought a 2TB hard drive onto which I copied all my CDs, uncompressed as WAV files and use http://www.jriver.com/ to play them lossless to a USB DAC. This set up easily equalled the £1,500 CD player I had previously and I dare say a better USB DAC could improve on it; there are some very highly regarded ones available now: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/. There's an Android and Iphone app for JRiver that allows you to control it remotely via Wi-Fi: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... &hl=en and it works very well. JRiver can do video stuff, but to be honest I've never really tried it out.

I don't watch a great deal of television, but I used to have a Huappauge TV tuner card some years ago, which was OK, but where I live now there's no TV signal so I watch everything on iPlayer and 4OD and I use a cheap wireless keyboard: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Rii-mini-X1-2 ... 20f2a24597.

For TV/Video it's definitely not as faff free as dedicated media player, but if you have an old PC kicking around, or you find one in a skip , it's a cheap way to try it out.

For music I love having all my music accessible on one box without thousands of CDs cluttering up the room and no loss of sound quality.

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I use an all in one PC hung on the wall from 4 years back. It nvidia ion based and performs well in all area but I use win 8.1 with MCE.
Unfortunately it is dvb-t and I cannot find dvb-t2 or s2 mini-pcie cards to replace it.

It's fine but it is a 22ish " screen.


Today though I would build an modern low end CPU as the igp or a nvidia 750 should be pretty good with all the offloading and decoding and a low profile PCI t2 or s2 are easier to find. Hdcp and sound over HDMI is there too.

Can test a hauppague S2 card out over christmas possibly.

Depends how much you want to not spend.

Still watching intently from point of view of high end 50" plasma.....