HTPCentric

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how to get your content into your HTPC.  What’s the point of having a ton of hard drive space only to have to go looking for disks every time you want to watch a movie.  And, while it’s not always easy, you’ll find it’s worth it to get your movies where you can find and watch them with your remote.

That being said, I found two great write ups this week on how to rip DVDs to your drives and how to convert these files to a format your HTPC can make use of.  Each method varies in it’s difficulty as well as its output so I encourage you to read everything you can before spending money on software.

The first article comes from the Hacking Windows 7 Media Center blog.  This site has some great articles and showing you how to rip DVDs using BitRipper is one of them.  It looks to be an easy process and one that shouldn’t take too long.

From the article:

BitRipper’s interface is minimalistic, showing you just what you need to get the job done. It doesn’t skimp on anything important though. You can still fine tune your encoding to suit your particular needs, whether it be high quality non-compressed transfers or something a little more compact.

Once you’ve got your disk inserted and BitRipper has detected it, you can select the track you wish to copy off the disk from the drop down box. This can be convenient for multi-episode content such as TV series. Typically, single part disks will be the longest track listed.

This is only a short quote from the post.  Read the whole thing for all the great info contained!

I found the next article through one of the best HTPC sources on the web:  Geektonic.  ZetaVu has written a guest post detailing a few different applications you can use to re-encode your files to pretty much any format you want.

From the article:

Now I have a few different types of video files to work with. Beyondtv records either mpg2 files, mpg transport streams (.tp files) or H.264 transport streams from the HD PVR.  In addition, I capture DV (avi) files from my camcorder and convert those to mpg2 files for making dvds. I also showsqueeze files to Divx or ipod H.264 using Beyondtv (for archiving or loading on my ipod) and make Xvid files with Autogk for archiving. (I go back and forth between Divx and Xvid, depending on what I do with that file). That in mind, I look at other software to edit and link files together (mostly removing commercials) convert formats, repair issues with recordings, and in the case of my home movies; capture, edit, transitions and titles. The bulk of these applications are freeware or open source, but I’ve listed some pay applications that I use as well. I think 90% of what I do can be done with freeware, and almost all can also be done on Linux as well as Windows (one of my goals is to eventually migrate everything to Ubuntu).

ZetaVu has written many guests posts for Geektonic and knows what he’s about.  Click here to read the whole write up.

Video ripping and file conversion are things that almost anyone who uses and HTPC has to deal with at some point.  I thank these gentlemen for sharing their knowledge and experience with the community. 

There are a ton of different configurations out there for building an HTPC.  The choice in parts is overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting into it.  Eventually I want to do another build and show it here, but until I can afford the parts I want for my next HTPC, I’ll do my best to share what other sites are showing.

GearLive is currently running a series on how to build an HTPC on a budget including how to get content to said PC.  They’ve set a budget of $1000 which is more than I spent so I’m sure that once the series is completed they’ll have a nice system.  It’ll be interesting to see what hardware they use and how it compares to how I might do it.

You can find the first post here, and from there follow the entire series. 

If you’re looking to jump into the HTPC arena, one of the first things you need to do is decide how.  Building a custom PC isn’t for everyone but if you’re a computer hobbyist, it’s your best option.  We’ll be covering OEM systems here but to me you can get a lot more bang for your buck if you build your own.

If you’ve never built a computer before, HTPC or not, you might need a little help.  Luckily for you the guys over at TweakTown have recently decided it was time to build an AMD based HTPC.  It’s a great article with lots of detail. 

From the article:

While 720p HD video content plays back relatively well, action-packed and even regular scenes in 1080p HD content struggle quite a lot - the GIGABYTE H971 Home Theater PC, which we reviewed back almost exactly two years ago (here), still impresses us ‘till this day with completely rock solid stability. But when it comes to current day video and audio, it is now sadly dated. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly fine for DVD playback and DVD quality audio, but now with Blu-ray HD audio from Dolby and DTS tracks out and in truck loads on Blu-ray discs, this HTPC has seen its day when it comes to high-end HTPC features.

Again, if an OEM system is for you then you probably don’t have a need to read the whole article.  At the same time I would say that if that’s the direction you’re thinking of going, you might want to read and find out easy it can be to build a custom system.  My current Media Center system was the first one I’d built from scratch and I had it done in less than a day.

Either way, take a look and I’m sure you’ll be impressed.

As always, if you have questions or comments, leave them here or send us a message on Twitter!