Hardware HTPC: H.256, 4K, and 10bit

[trumpet-205]

Don't get costly RAM (like G.Skill), there's no huge benefit in it anyway. Just get a normal branded RAM (1333MHz should be fine) and you can spare quite some bucks.

That would've been true if this is an Intel build, Intel doesn't benefit from faster RAM since its memory controller is far superior to AMD one.

Anyway, OP, that is looking good. Notice you didn't include the DVD drive.

 

[raulpica]

That would've been true if this is an Intel build, Intel doesn't benefit from faster RAM since its memory controller is far superior to AMD one.

Anyway, OP, that is looking good. Notice you didn't include the DVD drive.

Oh, that might be right. I don't ever do AMD builds since there's no reason to do one I'd always go with Intel.

 

[Rydian]

Well "faster" RAM is actually more bandwidth. Being bandwidth-starved is not something that happens to the average person, it's only when dealing with huge sets of data to be parsed (HD video filter editing, 3D rendering, etc.) that it could become an issue... but in most cases with the average machine, other components would net a better performance boost.

 

[mrtofu]

deleted

 

[trumpet-205]

Update: It turns out I can just use my old PC w/ i3 sandy bridge, GTS250. I'm going to use that as my HTPC instead of building one.

Now for HTPC software:
Should I use XBMC, Plex, or other? Or just browse for my files via windows file manager?

I tried XBMC and it has too many menus. It has some nice plugins though (sportsdevil) but I dislike navigating through the menus.
Plex is nice since I can stream to multiple devices (Roku, nexus 7, phone). But my anime mkv won't display subtitles for some reason.

Okay, but do you still need HDMI connection? You said that GTS250 doesn't have HDMI port.

Two reasons why Plex is not showing subtitles, either it doesn't support soft sub (subtitles separate from video), or that it only supports basic subtitles (no complex one such as SSA, commonly used in Anime fansub).

I don't suppose a simply player like VLC is okay for you?

 

[mrtofu]

deleted

 

[ILuvGames]

You could always convert the 10bit anime encodes to 8bit. After searching the internet (as an anime fan myself with a Nexus 7 tablet that struggles with 10bit encodes), I found this to be very useful to me (mkv files only) :-

I created a new text file and copied this into it :-

@echo off
setlocal

FOR /f "delims=" %%i IN ('dir /b *.mkv') DO call :recode "%%i"
goto :done

:recode
set oldfile=%1
echo %oldfile% | find /i "[8bit]" > nul:
if not errorlevel 1 goto :eof
set newfile=%oldfile:.mkv= [8bit].mkv%
if exist %newfile% goto :eof
echo %oldfile%
set tmpfile=%oldfile:.mkv=.tmp.mkv%
if exist %tmpfile% del /f /q %tmpfile%
x264 --preset faster --tune animation --crf 18 -o %tmpfile% %oldfile%
mkvmerge -o %newfile% -D %oldfile% %tmpfile%
if exist %tmpfile% del /f /q %tmpfile%
goto :eof

:done
endlocal

I renamed the .txt extension to .bat (making it an executable batch file).

I downloaded the latest mkvextract gui2 and mkvtoolnix (I used the portable version) and placed them in the same place as the batch file (because I find it easier having them in one place as I may want to remove/change/remux audio and subtitle streams before I run the conversion). I also downloaded the '8bit' x264.exe package. I have three batch files (each with different encoding speeds) but (if you chose to you this method) yours may be named differently of course but your files/folder should look something like the attachment.

Place a 10bit anime mkv file into the folder (it can only process one mkv at a time), run the batch file and wait.

It uses a (nearly lossless) CRF factor of 18 and gave me very good copies. You can change the bit where it says '--preset faster' to '--preset fast' or '--preset medium' if you wish but (other than conversion speed and outputted file size) I found little/no noticible quality difference at that CRF level. If it is too slow to convert for you, you can change the CRF to a more acceptable 20 or 21 and still get fairly good copies.

Sorry if my post looks a bit of a mess but I hope you or anyone else finds it as useful as I did.