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Hi, Ben:

Thank you for the information. Do you have a dedicated HTPC for hometheater or just use a regular pc as a htpc? I need to decide which case to buy for the HTPC. It is really appreciate if you could provide some info for me.

Han



Sorry for the late reply, been out of town. Yes I have a PC completely dedicated to my HT only. I have a single 400G hdd in it mainly for recording TV and I encoded movies and store them on a "server" that has 500G of space on it... someday I may combine the two and leave it in the HT cabinet.

HTPC is a hobby, its definitely doable to the average person but you can get caught up spending time and money. I think the end result can't be touched by anything in its price range when you consider the quality of it's output combined with the features you get by having a PC in place of a standard DVD player, Cable box, etc.

With Vista on the horizon things will be changing even more. Cable Card support will allow us to record HD off cable (right now you have to use ATSC which is HD over the air with an antenna).

For anyone just getting into it, I would HIGHLY recomend getting Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to start with. If you feel the itch to try another front end you can do that but I've found that I prefer MCE 2005's own HTPC front end the best.

Tuners: I use the Haupauge PVR150 MCE's (two of em) and they work perfectly. I hear the new Nvidia tuner might have better picture quality but we're talking SDTV here so I can't believe it would be a huge difference plus it costs a lot more. That said SDTV thru my HTPC looks better than any SDTV I've seen on a traditional TV.

Cases: This is a lot of a personal choice combined with how much you are willing to spend. www.pcalchemy.com has a lot of really nice cases to choose from. I can't justify spending the cash right now so mine isn't anything special. Plus the rumor is to get a cable card with Vista you will have to buy a OEM computer that is certified. I'm hoping the uprising from various HTPC front end makers can change that (because I'd much prefer to build my own) but if not that means I may have to buy an entirely new PC next year when Vista comes out so I'm not spending any more money on my current box.

Then there is the fact that an Xbox/360 can be a front end for MCE 2005/Vista... basically which means you could make your main PC in your office be your MCE box, recording TV and holding your music, movies etc. Then use your Xbox (360 is ver2 of these 'extenders' and has more features then the first xbox did) to play that stuff back on your TV(s) via a network connection.

Remotes/Keyboards: Microsoft makes a very nice remote designed for use with MCE 2005. Its one of the better remotes I've seen... that said I replaced mine with a Harmony and love it. I also have the keyboard Microsoft made specifically for MCE 2005. It is a terrific keyboard, the only knock on it is the pointing device thats built on isn't all that great but I've gotten used to it so its usable now.

Everyone got all of that? Too bad cause thats just scratching the surface.

-Ben
HT v2.0
HT v1.0