So, some time ago, I made my first run at an HTPC. For those of you that aren't familiar with the acronym, it stands for Home Theater PC. Back then, I was mostly looking for DVR capabilities, so I bought a tv tuner card to pipe in my cable connection. At the time, I was running Windows XP MCE (Media Center Edition), and my results were limited at best. I had an old HDTV, and I was using on-board graphics. MCE fought with my cable company over listings and channel lineups, and with the on-board graphics, it just wasn't worth the hassle. I scrapped the project and forgot about it.
Since then, I've been using my Playstation 3 for Netflix and playing my ripped DVD's. I haven't really had much luck with streaming my .avi's to my PS3, and so I've been copying them over via a usb drive. That gets old, fast. I'd been wanting a way to transfer my files to my PS3 via the network, without actually streaming. So, I'd started looking at things like Apple TV, Boxxee Box, and the Western Digital set top box.
About this time, I was visiting with a friend who gave me a spin around his Windows 7 Media Center HTPC. Wow. I have been missing out! The interface, right out of the box, is awesome. And to find out it comes standard in most versions of Windows 7 was even better. I went home that night and pulled it up on my Windows 7 Pro laptop. Immediately, I was hooked.
I started doing some reading, and finding all of the available plug-ins to make the experience even better. Shoutcast radio gives me all of those unique stations that you don't hear OTA. Media Center has Netflix built in, as well as some streaming tv, but there is also a free Hulu plugin. I found weather, sports, and news plugins. What about the user interface for viewing my content? I found a couple of beautiful plugins called Media Browser and Media Master. Does it get any better?? I point Media Master at my video directory, and it goes out to IMDB and a couple other sites to download all the meta data for all my movies. Box art, synopsis, ratings, backdrops, everything. Better yet, it was accurate. Out of 40 movies, I think there were 3 it had trouble finding the data for. The resolution was so simple. It told me to go to IMDB, find the movie I'm looking for, and enter the IMDB id number. It handled the rest from there.
So, now that I've got just about everything I want, what about having a PC tower sitting in my living room? It's not a huge deal, but I want things to look nice. Well, HTPC's have come a long way, and so have the cases. I found the above pictured case on sale at NewEgg for $79.99. It fits right in with my receiver and CD Changer perfectly. In addition to looking awesome, it has 5 internal 3.5" drive bays. I can easily load that thing up with 4 2TB Drives in a RAID 5, and still put in a fast boot drive. With the newer Western Digital green drives, heat is less of an issue than ever.
As if things couldn't get any better, the MCE remote that came with my old tv tuner card works flawlessly with Windows 7 Media Center. I really think I've found something to cover everything I want, and at a great price. Following are the full specs:
nMEDIA Black Aluminum HTPC Case
530watt Raidmax Modular Power Supply
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
2.5GHz Core 2 Quad
4GB Crucial RAM
74GB 10,000 Western Digital Raptor boot drive
4x 2TB Western Digital Green SATA Drives in RAID 5 for storage
Lite-On 4x Blu Ray Player
Radeon 4550 fanless video card with HDMI out (supports audio over HDMI)
And that's it. Best move I ever made. I'll be putting my old tv tuner card back in to see how much things have improved on the cable tv/dvr interface. Even if it doesn't work out, it is still worth it for all the other features it provides. I won't look back from this decision
So, tell me about your HTPC and how you use it!
