Build a Homemade Media Center PC

DigitalDame2 writes "PC Magazine's Loyd Case explains how to build a Media Center PC of your own, how to choose the parts for a custom project, and tips for the Motherboard." I imagine you guys might have some other opinions on what parts and tools to use for the task...

do it yourself...

[whizzard]

...for over $2200? I realize it needs to have a lot of bells and whistles, but that seems excessive somehow.

$2,246 Is Too Much!

[gasmonso]

Depending on your needs, you can spend alot less than $2246. I have my pvr running on a Shuttle SS40g with a 1GHz Athlon/512MB RAM/200GB drive. Its been running for 3 years now without problems (knock on wood). If people need a pvr on the cheap, I would recommend buying a used lowend Shuttle PC or similar and save yourself the cash. You could probably get one on eBay for half the cost than this one.

http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]

maybe I'm just cheap....

[ChrisGilliard]

but $2,276 seems like a lot for a computer these days. If money is not an issue, sure go for it and get this system, but you can save on a lot of these areas. Like case for $120. That's a lot. $300+ for the cpu also seems too much. You can get a very nice CPU for $150 and under. I think you can even get a lowend dual core for that price if that's your thing. I'd stick with the 2 gB of RAM, because RAM is the most useful thing these days in my opinion. You don't need that hardrive though. You can get one for about $150 that has a similar capacity that you will probably NEVER fill. The sound card for over $100 is outragous. I use the one that came with my mother board and it sounds great. A $75 microsoft keyboard is redicoulas. You can get a wireless mouse/keyboard combo for less than that price. I want even get into the $125 for the OS. Just my $0.02.

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Re:I'd use Linux!

[Scorpion265]

My problem with using a linux box for a PVR is that it's VERY hard to get working with an HDTV. I still can't get it working at 720p or 1080i. Where as the MCE with the nvidia based drivers makes it easy to setup for a high def tv.

Re:On the other hand... MythTV

[poopie]

How good is MythPC?

You mean MythTV. It's very good, and it keeps getting better.

The people who complain either expect commercial-like support for a turnkey product, try to use poorly supported hardware without the technical ability to make it work, or they are not comfortable with Linux or debugging their own install and setup.

Re:I'd use Linux!

[grungebox]

If I was building a HTPC, I'd use Linux, 'cause it's highly customizable since you can strip it down the way you need it. I think Windows is totally inappropriate for HTPCs especially 'cause of all that DRM shit.

From the last point in your post it seems you have little to no experience in Windows-based HTPCs, given that your statement is based on exactly one piece of software: MCE. I can't think of one non-MCE piece of Windows PVR software that uses "all that DRM shit" on their files. Not one, and I've used most everything for Windows at one point or another except MCE. MediaPortal, GB-PVR, MeedioTV, BeyondTV, SageTV...none have DRM on their files. None. And they're all Windows-based.

Re:do it yourself...

[moon-monster]

I built our media center PC for much less than that. It uses an old athlon XP 1200+ which is more than adequate for the job. The system runs freevo on a free linux distribution, has only 256Mb of RAM, and a cheap video card that does TV-out (cost about £15) which looks fine on my non-HD TV. The whole thing was put together for about £150. Although, admittedly that doesn't include the storage -- that went in the server in the attic. But, 6 300Gb drives left me with 1.4Tb of usable RAID5 space and I'd have still had change out of $2200 to buy an upgrade my desktoop PC.

Re:do it yourself...

[xantho]

Any good tuner is going to have MPEG2 encoding support in hardware, so that's not too big a hit on the processor or memory. If you want to transcode live or something then you might need more horsepower, but MythTV can be configured to wait until there's not that much load on the system to do transcoding jobs or commercial removal jobs.

Re:On the other hand... MythTV

[mythosaz]

MythTV is great, but it still lacks some of the Wife Acceptance Factor that Media Center Edition has.

It is certainly more configurable and tweakable, but like the parent said, OUT OF THE BOX, MCE is highly polished and ready for the family. Adding four tuners to an MCE box is easy enough for mom and pop.

Re:Two hundred bucks?

[AeroIllini]

Go buy a TiVo.

Ok, and then I will happily put up with TiVo deciding for me how long I'm allowed to keep my shows, and showing me those lovely advertisements while I'm browsing the channel lineup, and not allowing me to record more than one show at a time, and suddenly forcing me to not skip commercials, and tying me down to a proprietary channel data service which could stop working the moment TiVo folds, and forcing me to comply with every whim and wish of the all-powerful entertainment industry regardless of legality or sanity.

Oh, and by the way, it also does not support playing my music collection in flac/ogg/mp3/aac/itunes/wav format, or playing DVDs on the same box, or playing MPEG-4 encoded videos, or emulating old games, or checking the weather in a built-in module, or allowing me to upload other videos to it, or allowing me to rip my DVDs for easy access, or playing recorded shows on multiple frontends, or storing the data on a dedicated machine instead of the built-in hard drive, or...

Seriously, if all you want is the Fisher-Price(tm) version of a PVR, by all means get a TiVo. The rest of us want functionality.

Re:Must be said!

[Bourbonium]

Absolutely. I did the same thing with less than $300 worth of hardware, a Knoppmyth CD and a little bit of time. I did a practice install first with a standard IDE disk to make all my mistakes on a scratch system, then built the final box with a 200Gb SATA drive. All I wanted was a DIY PVR, and this worked great.

OSS features

[el americano]

It's not as easy as you think to generalize all free software. Did you ever try to install Firefox? Was that a lot of work for you? It had tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking when I couldn't get the same from IE. Also, the open architectures are more extendable in the long run.

On the other hand, if you only want the features a company has chosen for you, and you've got extra cash lying around, knock yourself out. I hear Photoshop is pretty good.