Intel Atom Media Centre (again)

The Intel Atom Media Center seems to be working well with the Hauppauge Dual Tuner PCI card. It seems to have enough CPU to be able to record 2 channels while playing back a previously recorded programme. Indeed, looking at the performance of the machine shows that this is only using around 15% of the CPU. Overall, the unit is pretty quiet and uses only about 35-40W.

I am using a Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to stream TV (Freeview not HD) over WiFi to my TV. The Media Extender outputs 1080i format and is connected via HDMI to the TV. This essentially means that the extender is upscaling the image for display - the unit includes a DVD player as well as the Media Extender (this enables the playback of DVDs which cannot otherwise by played by the extender. The unit works reasonably well, but is a little short of horsepower - this shows up most of the animated Media Center user interface. You can customise the user interface not to use animation, if you want. This improves the responsiveness of the unit.

While this works technically, it isn't a great solution. It is far too expensive. The Linksys DMA-2200 retails for around £200 which makes it more expensive than an Xbox-360 which also plays DVDs and works as a Media Extender (it plays games too and is £40 cheaper!). The only advantage that the DMA-2200 over the Xbox-360 is that it is quiet. Then once you add in the cost of the Media Center, it all gets a bit ridiculous.

Since the Media Center is on all the time (to "hoover up" those TV programmes), I have decided to use it as a Print Server too. It would be really neat to see the Media Center capability built into Windows Home Server (you know the one that provides backup, file serving and remote access. This would mean taking all of the "Services" that should be running all of the time and combining them to run on a single (highly efficient) hardware platform.

Hauppauge Nova TV PCI Card

I built an Intel Atom based box a few months ago. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on it and used the Media Center functionality to record TV programmes off Freeview. You will find the original post here.

Up until now I have been using a Hauppauge Dual Tuner USB stick, but decided to upgrade to a PCI card. The USB stick solution works well, but it isn't a particularly elegant solution. I like using this computer to record programmes since it uses such lower power (around 30W) and can be left on all the time.

The main challenge is that the mini-ITX case that I am using has space for only one PCI card and this card is positioned parallel to the motherboard so requires a right angle PCI extender. I used a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card. This provides dual Freeview tuners. The card is half length card (which is just fits in the mini-ITX case). I was a little confused since the image on the outside of the box clearly shows a full-length PCI card (see the image above). Compare this image to the image of the actual card installed into the unit shown below.

Even with a half-length card it is a tight squeeze to get all of this into a single box. As always, when the space is tight, it can be fiddly to get all of the cables installed and ensure that none of the fans are fowled. The main issue that I can see is that the PCI card lies very close (maybe 3-5mm) to the fan on the motherboard - there is only one fan on this motherboard and that is on the graphics chip. However, there aren't any major components on the PCI card that further reduce the clearance. You can see this on the image to the above.

The hard drive is then installed on top of this card, so there really isn't a lot of space inside this case (it is a Noah 3988 case).

Over the next couple of days, I will install the relevant drivers and get this unit back up and running. Hopefully, the lack of clearance over the fan will not cause any major issues.

Realtek audio card on the Intel Atom motherboard

Well, again here's an example of another great piece of design that completely threw the end user, i.e. me!

When I built my Intel Atom based machine, I had some issues with the audio drivers. I was a bit surprised. I installed Vista Ultimate first and then used the CD that came with the motherboard. This even seemed to contain drivers intended specifically for Vista. The graphics drivers worked a treat and the overall performance of the machine improved as I commented on in a previous blog. However, the audio continued to prove a problem.

Every time I fired up the Media Center software, it would fail to display any live television. It would display an error message stating "No audio device found". Even the audio icon in the system tray seemed to display that it had a problem. I assumed that it was a problelm with the drivers and re-installed them from the CD. No luck. So I reverted to the Realtek site and downloaded a fresh set of drivers. But same problem.

I was stumped and decided to plug in a set of speakers just to check what was going on. Guess what? A dialog box appeared on the screen as soon as I plugged the speakers in! "New audio device" found! Well, I suppose that a set of speakers counts as an "audio device", but it wasn't obvious.

Again, I have to admire the engineer that designed this. It was a great idea. But it just didn't work - all it needed was a better error message and it would have counted as being real cool! As it is, it is just another one of those things that threw me.

Intel Atom DG945GCLF Motherboard

Just built a mini ITX PC using one of these motherboards. The motherboard has one of the Intel Atom processor onboard (230 clocked at 1.6Ghz). Probably the most remarkable thing about this processor is its power consumption of around 5W. The motherboard does have a fan, but it is on the graphics processor and not the CPU.

The motherboard was bought from Tranquil in the UK and set me back £42 (excluding VAT and delivery). I fitted it into a Noah 3988 case with a 500GB 7200rpm SATA drive, 1GB RAM and a slimline format CD/DVD drive. It is powered by an external power block and DC-DC board.

This combination is very quiet and produces so little heat that I could probably disconnect the fan in the case, leaving just the fan on the graphics processor.

I installed Vista Ultimate onto the machine. It installs without any issues and the CD that is supplied with the motherboard contains all the relevant drivers. The CD even recognise that it was installing on a Vista machine. The aero UI on Vista came up first time with the drivers on the CD. The network also installed without any issues. The audio took a little more fiddling with to get it to work.

The screen capture above shows the performance figures that I got out of the machine once I had installed the drivers from the CD enclosed with the motherboard. There is a definite improvement in video performance with these drivers - the graphics increased from 2.0 to 4.2 and the gaming graphics increased from 2.4 to 2.8.

When running Vista, this unit is pulling between 30-40W (most of the time it runs at about 33W). Exactly the same configuration with a D201GLY2A motherboard (Intel Celeron processor running at 1.2GHz) pulls about 40 - 50W (averaging around 45W). Because the Intel Atom is generating less heat, I unplugged the internal case fan. In hindsight, this was pretty pointless - it saves about 1.5-2W and makes very little audible difference to the running of the unit.

With this configuration, this unit is pretty quiet and would make an ideal candidate for a small format Vista Media Center. However, the motherboard's very limited video output capability (a single VGA connector) probably limits it's use in this department. Personally, I have been using the Linksys DMA-2200 Media Extender to connect to my TV via HDMI. So the lack of video connectivity is less of an issue.

I have a Hauppauge Dual Tuner TV USB stick that I will put into this machine and test out in the next few days.