Building Home Media and Entertainment Library

How many times you misplaced your favorite movie or audio disc when you want to watch or listen it? How many minutes do you need to find your favorite DVD among hundreds other DVDs?

Imagine you could scroll your movie collection and watch you favorite HD Movies, listen to you favorite songs, viewing your photos all from your big LCD / Plasma screen at your living room or your bed room. The same media library could also be accessed from your notebook or desktop without the need of duplication. All centralized and easier to maintain.

If those are things you have have in mind for your next home media and entertainment library - here are what you need:

1. HD TV with minimum 720p (HD Ready) resolution. 
2. Receiver and multi channel (5.1 or more) speaker system.
3. Wireless N router. Wireless G is too slow to stream your HD movies.
4. HD Media player. There are plenty of option out there. Find the one suitable for you. At minimum it has to support wireless N, HDMI v1.3, Component, and as many format as possible. 
5. Network Attached Storage with multiple bay for storing your media - movie, photos, and music files.
6. Desktop computer or notebook with adequate power to manage those media files - post processing your photos, converting you movie format etc.

Some important aspect you need to consider when building your Home Media and Entertainment Library  are:

1. Security - who could access the content (e.g. adult content).
2. Capacity and scalability - especially when deciding which NAS is suitable for your library. There are option to have one, two, and even eight bays NAS. From 2TB to 16TB (Raid 0) capacity.
3. Backup strategy - even when you have a RAID 5 NAS you still need a backup system.
4. Throughput performance - router and NAS has different throughput capabilities. Choose the one suitable for your content. Streaming 720p or 1080p would need fastest router and NAS you could afford.
5. Lastly, you need have basic knowledge in file management and networking.

Here is an example of Home Media and Entertainment Library - as part of Home Network.

The key component are as follow:
a. D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router
b. AC Ryan PlayON! HD media player
c. QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo 4-bays NAS
d. D-Link DNS-323 2-bays NAS
e. ZyXEL Wireless N Bridge 

Using 4 bays NAS in RAID 5 (allows 1 disk failure scenario) we could install up to 6 TB capacity. 1 TB equal to 215 DVD quality movies or 128 HD movies or 130 thousands 8MP photos.

Using 2 bays NAS in JBOD configuration we could install up to 4 TB. JBOD however does not provide data protection against single point of failure on the hard disk.

AC Ryan latest firmware supports YAMJ (Yet Another Movie Jukebox) that allow us to scan movie directories and generate indexed HTML with movie covers and other information as you see above.

Happy building your home media and entertainment network!

Upgrading Photo Editing and Gaming PC

My main PC that I use for doing photo editing and playing some games occasionally feels getting slower even after I refreshed the OS using Windows 7 Ultimate. The system is not as responsive as expected when running heavy photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Light Room 2.6 or latest games such as NFS Shift and COD Modern Warfare 2. The one and a half years old CPU - AMD Athlon X2 5200+ (dual cores) processor - seems need to be replaced with faster CPU. Yes - I have been using AMD CPU since I remember building my own PC. Why not Intel? Well - cost is one thing. AMD has much lower price range for about the same performance. In my opinion it has better price / performance ration compare to Intel. Another consideration is off course I want to support the only company who could keep Intel in-check. I cannot imagine world with just one processor manufacturer who will decide whatever price for its product. My choice - after reading some reviews and considering the price - is AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition - the fastest quad cores Desktop PC Processor from AMD. At least for now - as AMD is planning to release its 6 cores very soon.


Replacing a CPU is quite straight forward - take off the CPU cooler, remove the old CPU, put the new one and lastly put back the cooler. However since the new CPU is going to be hotter than the old one - a more powerful CPU cooler is required. There are many options available - those gigantic CPU cooler. My choice is Cooler Master V8 CPU air cooler. Why this one? Well - I like the look.


Forgot to mentioned - one need to disconnect all cables connected to the mother board before replacing CPU and take the mother board out from the PC casing. Otherwise it is impossible.

I enjoyed taking picture - so I did not waste the opportunity to snap some interesting view from the inside of my PC before I have to put back in again. Here are some of those pictures. 


The main components that makes this PC are: Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H mother board, AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition with
Cooler Master V8 CPU air cooler, XFX nVidia 9600 GT graphic card, 4GB OCZ DDR 2 PC2-8500 Reaper / 1066 MHz memory, AeroCool 700 watts 80 Plus Bronze power supply
Zalman ZM-MFC2 Multi Fan Controller, and Antec P160 aluminium case.

The mother board is already more than one and half years old - and this is one thing great about using AMD platform. Its supportability of its socket is longer than Intel. The current mother board supports AM2, AM2+ and latest AM3 socket. Intel on the other side has at least 3 different sockets - incl. LGA775/1156/1366.


The CPU is currently the AMD's best and latest. It is the second generation of Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. It consumes less than the first generation (125 W vs 140W). The standard clock is @ 3400 MHz - and could be potentially over clocked (OC) up to 4300 MHz. It is considered the same groups as Intel i5-670 and Core 2 Quad Q9550. Please refer to Tom's Hardware - Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart.


The V8 CPU cooler from Cooler Master is one of the heaviest CPU cooler. The official website states the weight is 865g. However the way Cooler Master design the metal retainer plate on the back of the mother board and secured by four bolts gives me assurance on the stability of the unit mounted on the mother board. More important for CPU cooler - besides its look :) - is its cooling effectiveness and its noise level. The V8 is excellent on both sides. Do not waste your time to use the stock CPU cooler from AMD - as it is very loud. Like having a propeller plane inside your casing. Installing the V8 on the Gigabyte was little bit tricky - especially on the part where I have to move the plastic push pin - instead of screw - to secure the heat sink retainer. It took me a while to figure out how to unplug the push pins that secured the retainer. At around 1000 rpm at idle the V8's fan is far quieter than AMD stock CPU cooler and it does the job well to keep the idle the 965 BE CPU @ 38C. 

The one and half years old XFX nVidia 9600 GT is an excellent card. It is now considered as mid-range - somewhere in between ATI HD 5570 and 5670. It is the same league as nVidia GT 240. Please refer to Tom's Hardware - Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart.


Using Zalman ZM-MFC2 Multi Fan Controller - I could adjust the optimum speed of two main 120 mm fans at ~ 900 rpm making it super quite. The idle power consumption is ~ 114 watts as indicated by the Zalman Controller. Not so bad for a fastest AMD Quad Core computer running with two harddisks and considerably fast nVidia GPU card.