Overview

My HTPC is in the family room and is used by everyone in the family.  It's quiet, disappears into the cabinet and is able to be used effectively by everyone in the family.  I have the HTPC housed in a very family room friendly Moneual 312 chassis (below the TV).  Live TV is provided by two DirecTV receivers.  The DirecTV receivers do not need to be visible to end-users but due to cabinet space and wiring they are stacked above the TV.  With the exception of the speakers all remaining hardware is well hidden.

The intent of this description of my HTPC system is not to provide a detailed guide to building a specific PC but to provide a complete system overview with some insight into the integration of the various hardware and software components.  I have found that the actual building of the HTPC (motherboard, memory, GPU, HDD, etc.) to run MediaPortal software is easier than configuring the system for end-user usability.  I spent much more time working out exactly how to integrate a well described IR remote control experience (including TV channel changing) than doing almost anything else.

System Connections

One of my design goals was to reduce complexity and improve reliability and end-user experience.  Early implementations included IR control of external devices but this was quickly replaced with more reliable IP controls.  A key element of this system is the Hauppauge HDPVRs that provide live TV video and audio streams for MediaPortal via USB.  Although the HDPVRs have built-in capabilities for recording and channel change events (commanded via IR) there is no use for these features in this architecture.  The HDPVRs are always on and only encode video and audio streams when the source is present (when the DirecTV receivers output signals).  While it might be nice to be able to switch the HDPVRs on and off when needed there is no means of doing so either via IR to the HDPVR or via USB.  The HDPVRs have been extremely reliable over a period of several years with only an occasional need to restart them (I believe the reasons for restart are not hardware related rather due to driver crashes).

All of my media (movies, pictures, and music) are stored on the Netgear ReadyNAS drives.  The 1TB internal HDD is used to store live TV recordings only.  Data transfer over the (1G) network is not an issue while streaming full HD (1080i) content and/or during presentation of slide shows or while browsing the media library using the MediaPortal user interface.

Note: One of the outstanding end-user issues I would like to have a solution for is that the TV (Vizio VX37L) is only able to be turned on by using the Harmony IR remote control.  Using the CouchPotato iPhone remote control does wake the PC but the TV does not respond by turning on when an RGB signal is present.

Integration Architecture

Several MediaPortal plugins provide the interface with hardware systems and data services.  In this section I provide a brief overview of the role of each of these plugins in the system.

IR Remote Control

The MessagePlugin provides all of the interface between the IR subsystem (VL Systems M.Play MX) and MediaPortal. Translation of button presses for proper control of MediaPortal is accomplished as follows:

1. Programming the Harmony 700 remote control to send VL Systems M.Play MX commands; use Logitech Harmony Remote Software.
2. Map each received IR command (from the VL Systems hardware) to Windows Messages using the VL Systems supplied M.Play MX software.  In order to have the M.Play MX software send windows messages I use a simple utility called SendMessage.exe.  For each remote control command a call to SendMessage.exe is made with appropriate parameters; most notably the LParam maps to what the MessagePlugin expects for each MediaPortal function.
3. Map received commands to MediaPortal functions using the MessagePlugin configuration (which has extensive flexibility to target commands to specific windows and functions within MediaPortal).

WiFi Remote Control

The iPhone app, CouchPotato, works very well and is straight-forward to setup.  You simply need to install the WiFiRemote plugin and startup the iPhone app.  If you have bonjour print services for Windows installed then your HTPC will show up on CouchPotato without further configuration (manual configuration is available without the need for bonjour).

DirecTV Control

Live TV channel change and DirecTV receiver power status is controlled using the DirecTV SHEF IP Control plugin.  The plugin works by listening to TV events from MediaPortal based on user actions.  When an event is detected that indicates a channel change or power state change for the DirecTV receiver then the appropriate command is sent to the proper DirecTV receiver (DirecTV receivers are mapped into the TV server using TV card ids via the connected Hauppauge HDPVR).

EPG Data

Electronic program guide data (TV guide) is populated using data received from the service provided by SchedulesDirect.org.  The SchedulesDirect plugin provides this service directly.  Setup includes configuring the SchedulesDirect plugin with SchedulesDirect.org user account access information as well as setting up a channel lineup via the SchedulesDirect.org website.

System Usability

On the whole we experience a high degree of reliability and performance with the MediaPortal HTPC system.  Prior to using this HTPC we used a ReplayTV DVR.  When I consider ReplayTV system freeze or crash events our experience with the MediaPortal HTPC system is comparable to that of using the ReplayTV (a commercial product).  Although, end-user experience with the ReplayTV was better when stability problems are factored out.

When end-user issues arise with the MediaPortal HTPC they are most often due to misuse of the Logitech Harmony remote control (the remote is out of sync with system state).  PC issues cause difficulty in use of the system much less frequently than remote control usage issues.  I attribute most of the non-remote control issues to stability of the Windows 7 OS, Hauppauge HDPVR drivers, and MediaPortal software; sometimes things just go wrong and we need to restart (a few times a month).  Disabling Windows OS automatic updates is a good idea that can maintain long term stability.