Home Theatre PC: Part 1

Introduction
Every geek, at some point, wants to build an htpc. Htpcs are all about Technological Convergence - and TC is in our blood.
What do we want to do with the thing? Well, imagine this: while lying on the sofa, watching a dvd, you think "I've seen that actress somewhere before...". You press pause on the remote, and load up firefox using the wireless keyboard, browe to imdb, find the info you want and continue watching the dvd. All without leaving your seat.

Plus, the ability to pause live TV, record shows to DVD - you know, the PVR-thing. Also, as if that wasn't enough, being able to play mame, Quake4 or EVE Online.

All of that, in one box. Do it right and it even looks like a part of your hi-fi.

The Plan
The Plan is to build myself a decent system, with a graphics capability which allows me to play recent videogames, a big enough harddrive to record TV shows and films on the fly using a good TV Tuner card, and burn them to disc using a DVD-RW drive.

The machine will run Linux as its main OS, using mythtv, mame and native versions of software (with wine as a solution for non-native Windows apps).

I plan to use a Universal Learning Remote as my global controller. When detailed user input is required, I plan to use a wireless keyboard/mouse, and for gaming use a game controller and/or joystick.

I have an LCD TV with a 2.1 speaker system to plug it into.

Components
I went with a pretty sleek case - no use having an HTPC if it doesn't look like part of the hi-fi. Regarding processing power, I went with a dual core processor, and a good but mid-range video card. An important part of an HTPC is the video/TV capture card, and in my case I went with a card only after making sure of good Linux support (still to be seen to be believed). I took a little bit of a conservative path where RAM and Storage is concerned, since these two are most easily upgraded. Lastly I added a good Universal Learning Remote, for great couching!

Here is the listing:

• Case: Black SilverStone LC16M w/ VFD
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ AM2 @ 2GHz
• Video: Inno3D GeForce 8600GT 256Mb 128-bit DDR3 PCI-Ex16 w/ DualLink DVI and HDTV
• TV Tuner: Hauppauge Nova-T-500 Dual DVBT SD/HD Tuner
• Memory: Corsair 1Gb PC-4200 DDR2
• Storage: Samsung 300Gb HD300LJ HDD
• Remote: Logitech Harmony 525 Advanced Universal Remote
• Power: Zalman ZM360B-APS 360W Ultra Quiet ATX Power Supply
• CPU Cooling: Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu Heatsink w/ Fan
• DVD: Pioneer DVR-212 18X SATA DVD Burner
• Motherboard: ABIT KN9 ATX w/ nForce 4 Ultra, HT2000, Dual DDR2 800, PCI-Ex16, SATAII 300 RAID, GbE LAN, USB2.0, 8-Ch Audio

While waiting for the stuff to arrive, I also went out and looked for a suitable game controller, and found the Saitek P2600 Rumblepad. We have a wireless bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo at work which nobody uses - this has cleverly been scooped up by yours truly...

Next post: pictures of the parts, assembly, etc. Stay tuned...
peace out.