After years of fantasizing about a PC in my living room to replace/compliment my existing AV equipment, my dreams are finally coming true.
Thanks to hardware donations from family members and pulls from my previous builds, I have a decent starting point for this project. Oh yeah, and this site deserves credit too otherwise all I'd have is a board with bloated vcore caps and a bunch of misc. parts.
So before I begin buying/assembling parts I'm interested in find out who else has built an HTPC and what kind of software/hardware it's running on. Your opinions on what I was planning would be awesome too.
Current parts on hand are:
MSI-7125 socket 939
Athlon X2 4400
2GB Ram
Radeon 5450 (1gb)
250GB HD
Sabrent Wireless G PCI card
DVD/CD writer (it's a few years old now and I'm not sure of the speed but it should suffice for backing up dvds/cds)
Components on my wish list:
IOGEAR GKM561R Black 2.4GHz Wireless HTPC Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel ($49.99 w/Promo Code until oct. 22)
ASUS Black 8X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Drive Model BC-08B1LT/BLK/B/ASUS - OEM
SilverStone Lascala LC17B Black Aluminum Desktop Case
Total Cost including shipping/taxes $317.22
The part I'm hung up on what I need to buy to also make this thing a PVR/DVR. I've looked at tuner cards but I'm not sure if they are right choice atm. Tv stations aren't being forced to broadcast digitally OTA until Aug. 31, 2011 and not many have volunteered to start already. I'm probably going to stick with my satellite provider regardless but it would be nice to be able to record other shows to watch later through the PC.
Thanks to hardware donations from family members and pulls from my previous builds, I have a decent starting point for this project. Oh yeah, and this site deserves credit too otherwise all I'd have is a board with bloated vcore caps and a bunch of misc. parts.
So before I begin buying/assembling parts I'm interested in find out who else has built an HTPC and what kind of software/hardware it's running on. Your opinions on what I was planning would be awesome too.
Current parts on hand are:
MSI-7125 socket 939
Athlon X2 4400
2GB Ram
Radeon 5450 (1gb)
250GB HD
Sabrent Wireless G PCI card
DVD/CD writer (it's a few years old now and I'm not sure of the speed but it should suffice for backing up dvds/cds)
Components on my wish list:
IOGEAR GKM561R Black 2.4GHz Wireless HTPC Multimedia Keyboard with Laser Trackball and Scroll Wheel ($49.99 w/Promo Code until oct. 22)
ASUS Black 8X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Drive Model BC-08B1LT/BLK/B/ASUS - OEM
SilverStone Lascala LC17B Black Aluminum Desktop Case
Total Cost including shipping/taxes $317.22
The part I'm hung up on what I need to buy to also make this thing a PVR/DVR. I've looked at tuner cards but I'm not sure if they are right choice atm. Tv stations aren't being forced to broadcast digitally OTA until Aug. 31, 2011 and not many have volunteered to start already. I'm probably going to stick with my satellite provider regardless but it would be nice to be able to record other shows to watch later through the PC.
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