Building the HTPC, part IV

It's done. I actually stayed up until 4:00 am Saturday morning configuring it. I placed it on the rack and connected it to the tv and the amplifier and it just worked. At first I disconnected the coax that connects the wall socket and the cable tuner box and from the back of the box and connected it to the computer. This allowed the computer's tuner to receive channels up to 99 but none of the digital channels. Yesterday I put it back the way it was and then used three cables with RCA connectors to connect the left and right audio outputs and the composite video output on the cable box to the corresponding jacks on the computer's tuner card. The Media Center remote came with an IR emitter (what I earlier referred to as an IR Blaster) which allows the computer to control the cable box. I'll eventually end up splitting the coax from the wall so that one side will connect directly to the computer, thus allowing it to record two analog channels, or one analog and one digital, at the same time, or allow me to watch one while it records the other.

There was one other snag I encountered while setting up the system. Since I'm using SATA drives instead of IDE, the Windows installer wasn't able to work with those drives without using a separate driver. Fortunately, it has the ability to load such a driver during installation but it requires that the driver be on a floppy disk. I still have a floppy drive so I was able to get past it. Once Windows was installed, the floppy drive was no longer necessary.

I'm using a program called LCD Smartie to drive the VFD on the front of the case. It's amazingly flexible and I've just barely started playing with its capabilities. One thing it can do is interface with Motherboard Monitor which is what I'm using to monitor the temperature of the computer. So far it doesn't appear to be running much, if any, hotter than it was when I was using it as my desktop system.

There are a few more tweaks I'll probably perform but as of now the system is basically done and in place. It has replaced my DVD player which I'll probably move to the bedroom and connect to the tv there. I dunno how often we'll use it, though.

If anyone out there is planning on building their own home theater PC, especially if you are planning on using Windows Media Center Edition as your OS, a very good resource is The Green Button, named after the large green button on the Media Center remote control that launches the Media Center software.