HTPC with Arch and XBMC

kdar · 2010-02-19 05:08:00

Hi Everyone. Haven't been on those forums in long time... been really busy with school and what not....
Anyways... I planing to build HTPC and thinking about using Arch... since its fast and I could configure it the way I want. ( I plan to order parts pretty soon, maybe next week).

First, I have hardware compatibility question about Atom+Ion build. Will this work under Arch?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6813500027 (if I will use this or similar to this motherboard),

Two things which I really want to see from this set up (besides doing basic HTPC tasks... like watching movies and other things from XBMC):
*Boot into XBMC automatically (auto-log-in.. etc)
*Boot fast, very fast

What kind of DE or WM can I use in background of XBMC? OpenBox or maybe Xfce? (if I will want to check Internet or something like this from time to time.
I am guessing OpenBox can be faster for boot timing.

What kind of boot timing do you think can I get? How long would it take to start XBMC when I will try to turn on my HTPC? How fast can i make it?

Last edited by kdar (2010-02-19 05:09:19)

falconindy · 2010-02-19 06:51:27

I haven't spent much time trying to speed up my boot time, but there's some quick sysinit scripts floating around here that you might be interested in. Currently on the stock rc.sysinit, I'm looking at 30s from power on to xbmc. I'm sure I could get this down to 20-25s if I cared enough. The AHCI controller on my mobo takes a good 5-10 seconds on its own to scan the bus and find the HD. Lamesauce.

As for auto starting xbmc, use something like the following in your /etc/inittab:

x:5:respawn:/bin/su xbmc -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c startx >/dev/null 2>&1"

And make sure that near the top, "id:5:initdefault" is the uncommented and id:3 is commented.

jack.mitchell · 2010-02-19 12:35:03

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HO … Step_Guide

For linux compatibility look in the XBMC forums for the best hardware. The hardware should work on Arch as it does with any other distribution unless internal patches have been applied.

jdarnold · 2010-02-19 14:22:00

Personally, I wouldn't use Atom for an HTPC. Even the lowest powered AMD, like the 2650e, are better than the best Atom. See this review, which covers the 2 AMD chips found in the Dell Zino (which I lust after!):

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh … spx?i=3703

And don't forget to look at Boxee, altho its non-Ubuntu Linux support is weak:

http://boxee.tv

Bralkein · 2010-02-19 15:53:03

Hi kdar, in December I built a fanless Arch-based XBMC media centre using Intel Atom/nVidia ION. It is controlled simply by using a USB-IR remote control. I have been planning on writing about my experiences for a while, hopefully I can get something put together in a few days when I'm not so busy. If you want, I can PM you when I have something written.

To answer some of your questions:
* Atom + Ion works well under Arch. I have a ZOTAC mobo (ION ITX C if I remember correctly) with an Atom 230 and an external laptop-style power brick PSU. You will need to use the proprietary nVidia driver, but it is easy to set up and you get GPU-accelerated video decoding using VDPAU (which XBMC supports).
* Auto login is easy to achieve, see other posts for details.
* You don't need any WM with XBMC, you can just put "exec /usr/bin/xbmc" in the .xinitrc file and then XBMC will load with the startx command. I don't know if that's the recommended way, but it works well for me.
* Startup time is probably about 20 seconds from cold, but if you use suspend to RAM (which worked fine for me without any extra configuration) then start up time is a few seconds at most. My sister just leaves the thing on all the time, anyway, which isn't so bad because it's only 90W max power. Well you could tweak the startup time if you wanted to be very energy-efficient. But Arch is fast-booting anyway

Probably you have some further questions but if you can wait until I finish my write-up then hopefully that will give you a detailed understanding of what is involved.

PS. Originally it was to be a Boxee HTPC but I found that there were too many problems with Boxee and it was easier to get the same functionality by configuring XBMC properly. So I would recommend XBMC over Boxee, myself.

kdar · 2010-02-19 16:33:21

Sounds great, Bralkein.

So you have Atom 230? I am considering if I should buy 330 or 230. I would be very interested to read more about your experience with this.

I really like that I can put that thing in really compact case and have such small power foot print. And from many reviews, I am reading that it can play HD just fine, for which I will be using my HTPC too, no gaming.

Another question that I have is about viewing local channels and tv-tuner. Since some of those Zotac motherboards do not have PCIE slot (especially those with 90W external power supply, if I am correct). What can I use as TV tune? I would like to view just few local channels.

schuay · 2010-02-19 17:27:27

Atom 330 / Integrated Intel GFX + XBMC here, using PS3 controller over bluetooth instead of a remote.
Haven't tried playing full HD but your typical xvid/divx/whatever works just fine here, never had any slowdowns or stuttering.

(By the way, theres at least 2 big threads exactly on this topic and a wiki article, you might want to check for that next time before posting a new thread )

Bralkein · 2010-02-19 18:34:45

I got the 230 one because I was particularly interested in having a fanless setup, and I did not see any of the ZOTAC mobos available with both a power brick and an Atom 330. I guess the 330 uses a bit too much power for that. Even with just the 230, it does not feel slow or sluggish by any stretch of the imagination, it even seemed to play video perfectly well before I enabled the GPU-based decoding. With the GPU-based decoding enabled, I have had no problems with playback of any kind, although I have not performed any stress tests or anything like that. But the whole point of the ION platform thing is to have all the heavy lifting done by the graphics system, so really that's what would be expected.

As for free-to-air TV, I live in the UK so I guess things are probably a bit different from wherever you are in the US, but I just got a DVB-T USB tuner. There are many available with Linux support if you do the research, prices range from £15 ($23) upwards, which is less than a night out where I'm from, so no problem

The mini-ITX form factor boards & cases are indeed nice and tiny, in fact my new media centre is much smaller than my old DVD/VHS combi. The motherboard I got has plenty of USB ports available, really anything you could think of can be had in a USB version these days it seems so expansion does not look to be a problem, and all the extra bits are hidden round the back so it still looks very tidy from the front.

kdar · 2010-02-19 19:23:19

Sounds really nice. Maybe I would go with 230 too, since it is a little cheaper and fanless. They have 330 with power brick now, but it need to have fan.

What size of HardDrive do you use? I plan to use 1TB. You think it will be ok? (I am not sure if bigger HardDrives consume less power or not.. or its all the same)

@schuay. Thanks. I will check other posts too, see what I can find there.

***Another questions.
Can you play flash HD stuff from sites like Netflicks or Hulu? Somewhere I was reading that those systems have hard time playing them, or that HD video acceleration is not being applied for them (for streaming media).
Can you stream HD content?

Last edited by kdar (2010-02-19 19:46:21)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-19 05:08:00

HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#2 2010-02-19 06:51:27

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#3 2010-02-19 12:35:03

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#4 2010-02-19 14:22:00

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#5 2010-02-19 15:53:03

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#6 2010-02-19 16:33:21

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#7 2010-02-19 17:27:27

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#8 2010-02-19 18:34:45

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

#9 2010-02-19 19:23:19

Re: HTPC with Arch and XBMC

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