My Media Center Died, Time For A New One
hardware, linux, mac, personal, software, windows Add comments
I have blogged about it before, I have a HTPC (home theatre pc) running in my living room, hooked to my TV. I started off with MythTV, but settled on Window Media Center 2005.
When I first built the Media Center machine, I had basic cable, with no DVR, so I let the media center handle all of that. Now I have Verizon FIOS with HD, and one of their HD DVR Boxes, and I rarely use my media center pc, but its always nice to be able to flip the input over to it and watch youtube and browse the web. I also like the fact that I can download all sorts of movies and tv from the darkside of the web and watch them on the tv. That was a huge plus.
For a while now, the Media Center has been acting funny. I built it on a shoe string budget with some questionable parts I had laying around, so I didn’t expect it to live forever. The other day it stopped working all together.
Today I took it apart to see what the problem was. After some investigation, I found the cheap power supply was dead, and it took the mother board/processor with it. FAIL!
Well, here I am at a cross roads. Before it was a matter of software, now I need new hardware. What do you think I should build or buy?
The main things I’m looking for in a HTPC
- Ability to browse the web
- Watch Videos I download form the internet, mostly divX files
- Small form factor
- Doesn’t really look like a computer
- Blu-ray is a bonus
Should I build another Window xp MCE machine, Windows Vista Ultimate, mac Mini, apple TV, myth TV? I don’t even know where to start.
I’ll blog my research as I go. Lets see what you think I should do.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
MythTV 0.21 with SiliconDust HDHomeRun network dual tuner. If you don’t have a ethernet port close to your tv, try Linksys WGA600N Wireless N Game Adapter. Pair it up with Dlink DIR-655 wireless N router. Seems like a better solution than pulling cable from the living room to the office; plus you can locate you tv and MythTV box anywhere. I like the ethernet rj45 game adapter idea better since wireless pci adapter support in Linux is still spotty. I have a channel master 4228 Over the Air HDTV UHF antenna: it rocks; pulls in stations from up to 70 miles away. My mythtv pc AMD 5600+ X2, ASUS M2N-VM DVI Mobo (no video card needed; built in Nvidia 7050, i think there are Nvidia8200 based Asus mobos out now that are even better), 4gig PC2-6400 memory, Silent CPU Fan, Quiet Seagate 250GB SATA2 HD, Quiet Antec Designer-500 PC Case. Ordered parts from eWiz.com, zipzoomfly.com and newegg.com.
Froogle.com usually finds the best prices for each component. Using Gentoo 2.6.25. Your tv should have a vga or DVI port since built in video does not have hdtv out; otherwise get a PCI X16 video card with HDTV out.