James Quintin over at we got served one of my daily stops for WHS news has started a series of posts about his “ultimate HTPC build” and thought I’d share it.

The first post James goes over what his goals are, what he expects out of the system and what he plans on doing with the system. The second post James goes over his hardware choices for his HTPC build and how he set it up, as well as shares a few photos of the build.

Note that James is located across the pond (UK) and thus has different tuner card requirements than what we have here in the states, but all in all, the build is quite good, and looks to be a solid performing HD HTPC.

So head on over to we got served and check out James’ build.

- Josh

Image via Wikipedia

Motherboards:

- Asus A8n-VM CSM w/ Zalman 7700 HSF and AMD 3200+ 64 socket 939  		$50 for set or BO
- Foxconn WinFast 6100K8MB-RS w/ 3000+ AMD 64 socket 754 cooler master HSF  	$25 for set or BO
- Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2h socket AM2/AM2+  					$60 or BO

Video Cards:

- EVGA Geforce 6800GS PCIe 16x 256mb  	$35 or BO
- MSI Geforce 7900GS PCIe 16x 512mb	$65 or BO
- PNY Geforce 6600GT AGP 128mb		$20 or BO
- 2 x Generic Geforce 2MX AGP		$10/each or BO
- Zalman VF 700-CU video card cooling fan (bran new in box) $20 or BO
- Abratross Geforce 4200 AGP		$10 or BO

Hard Drives:

- 2 x 320gig Western Digital IDE $35/each or BO

- 2 x 5 1/2″ bay removable hard drive enclosures  $15/each or BO

Wifi Equipment:

- Proaxim Gold Orinoco 802.11 b/g PCMCIA card 842X-WD  $25 or BO

MISC:

- USB addon PCI card, 4 external 1 internal $10 or BO

- 2 x PCI sound card (Chaintech AV170 via CMI8768 chipset)  $15/each or BO

Memory:

- Corsair PC2700 2 x 256mb 333mhz CL2 $15 or BO

- Buffalo PC3200 2 x 256mb 400mhz CL2.5 $15 or BO

- Misc bag of ram, 25+ sticks of ram $10 or BO

DVD Drives:

- White DVD/DVD burner drive $10 or BO

- Black DVD/DVD burner Drive $10 or BO

- White DVD drive $5 or BO

Computer Case:

- APEVIA X-QPAC cube case w/ 350watt Antec Green PSU $50 or BOPictures:

Pictures of Parts for Sale

if you are interested post in comments or find me at
umdivx at the big G mail dot com ;)

So Richard says my site is “old and busted” and thus said he was going to take my link off of his blog roll from his site. I agree that content has been lacking on here for a while now, but honestly nothing has been going on recently that is really all that worth while to talk/write about. So to appease Richard I am updating my site and posting.

I haven’t been skiing, or snowmobiling or anything along those lines in a while so I guess I just have forgotten to update my site. However I did purchase a new car a little over a week ago. While browsing my usual Ford Focus forums, I came across a post that a kid in the MNFOCUS forum started a post saying he was looking for a used Focus with a 5-speed manual and well I had just that, and was contemplating on selling my Focus anyways. I sent the kid and PM, he responded, we met up so he could see the car and the rest is history.

A few days later I was looking for a Ford Fusion and on the way home from work I decided to stop by Freeway Ford and check out a used 2007 Ford Fusion they had. I got there and took it for a test drive right away and loved every minute of it. The car was fully loaded, heated leather seats, dvd navigation system w/ Sat radio and ipod hookup, power moon/sun roof, power windows, power seats, and my favorite feature, All-Wheel Drive.

So without direct concent from Jody (aka “the Wife”) I started the paper work and bought the car and drove it home that same night. At first Jody was pissed that I bought the car without her concent or without her being there but eventually she let it go, espcecially after I let her drive the car, even though she won’t admit it, I think she loves the car more than her truck.

So after the paper work was all finished up, I got the keys to my new (new to me) 2007 Ford Fusion and I couldn’t be happier. It is a great car, and I will admit way better than my “Riced out Focus”. Even though I will miss the Focus and miss having a manual transmission, I enjoy every minute with the Fusion, it is a great ride, smooth handling, and quiet to boot.

I haven’t taken any pictures of the new car yet but once the weather gets warmer and I have time to wash and wax her, I’ll throw up some pictures.

Another update (other than my new car) is that I have finally upgraded my HTPC, no more old ass Pentium4 and windows Media Center 2005. I upgraded the “guts” to my HTPC, upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate which contains Vista Media Center. So far I am really enjoying the new HTPC and its running 100% stable with full auto commercial skip and extending with Media Center Extenders.

I want to save another post to go more in depth on the HTPC upgrade so I will end here.

Until next time,

- Josh

This weekend, was one of the first weekends in a long ass time that I’ve had to actually sit down, watch some tv and just be lazy. Since the wife goes to be fairly early I tend to sit on the computer and puts, and well I was catching up on some RSS feeds I came across this post: Skipping Commercials with Media Center and right away I knew it was something I had to try myself.

So I spent the remainder of the evening (Friday Night) downloading, installing and testing out this feature within my HTPC running Windows Media Center 2005. I followed the wiki: Found HERE and in no time at all I had this up and running.

Once the app was installed, and up and running correctly, I was in love! No more using the remote to fast forward for each commercial, no more rewinding if the 30 second skip went too far into the show, just plain no more holding onto the remote during the tv show. I can now just hit play, set the remote down and NOT have to touch it for the remainder of the tv show.

So for anyone using Windows MCE I highly recommend checking out this app, yes ShowAnalyer does cost some money, but after seeing what auto skip can do, I’d gladly pay for it again without blinking and eye. Now if only my Comcast HD DVR could do the same thing I’d really be in heaven then.

enjoy!

- Josh

Sparked from this Article: Missing Remote Article

The article started to make me think, what do I really do with my HTPC? and what are the proportions of those tasks? For me first of for most is PVR/DVR. My HTPC is my primary dvr for my basement home theater setup. Though I do have a comcast HD DVR connected to my setup, I preffer the HTPC running MCE 2005 over the comcast DVR merely because the interface for the comcast box just sucks that bad.

I absolutely hate the comcast interface for their box’s. They are slow, clunky, and oh so not user friendly. Windows MCE interface is refined, and for once is actually a joy to use. It is easy to navigate, easy to set recordings and find recorded shows. All around the MCE interface is years ahead of what comcast does with their box’s. Though rumor has it that cocmast will be implementing the tivo software/interface on to their box’s, we’ll have to wait and see about that.

So #1 is PVR/DVR, yes I’ll agree with that, but one thing they didn’t mention or get into were (#10 does talk about media distribution but doesn’t get into the real advantages of what a media center extender can do) Media Center extenders. The topic of Media Center Extenders is on par with PVRing capabilities, and honestly go hand in hand. As you saw in my previous RANT , I despise paying huge amounts of hardware rental fee’s to Cable/Sat. MSO’s. That is why I love the idea of Media Center Extenders. Being able to have a central repository for recorded TV shows, Movies, Media, Music, Pictures, ect… and being able to share them with Any TV, PC, Laptop through out my home is HUGE!!!!

Sitting down after dinner and catching up on the latest Heroes episode, then starting to watch CSI or Journyman Monday nights, then being able to pause half way through an episode, shut down my equipment in the basement, go up stairs to my bedroom, turn on the tv there and continue were I left off would be the ideal setup. Being able to time shift, as well as place shift my tv shows enables me to not be restricted to sitting down stairs every time I want to watch a tv show I prevously recorded. Granted you need to have a cat5 drop or a 802.11A or N wireless setup to support the higher bandwidth needs for HD video, but in the end it is well worth it.

Later this month Linksys will be releasing their .V2 Media Center Extenders which will fully support Vista MCE. Previously the only MCE Extender that supported vista was the xbox 360. Earlier this month Microsoft released a 6th SKU for the 360, the Xbox 360 Arcade, which also supports the Media Center Extender functionality. So between the Linksys and Dlink Media Center Extenders and the 360 Arcade you basically can extend your PVR viewing to any tv in your home for under $300. Not bad if you ask me, specially the added benefits you get with MCE functions over what you’d see with the comcast DVR.

#2 is DVD Player, for me that is the Second most use feature of MCE in my Home Theater, however I take that one step further. I use a third party plug-in for MCE called My Movies.

With My Movies I am able to catalog ALL of my ripped DVD collection I have backed up on hard drives. I can see visually the entire collection, and on top of that My Movies allows me to load up third party DVD application called TheaterTek. With TheaterTek I take dvd playback further that what MCE can provide. With TheaterTek I can use FFDshow to post process the dvd video to further enhance the upscaling of the DVD, while at the same time getting a really slick, easy to use DVD app.

So far I use my HTPC for my primary DVR, as well as use it as an upscaling DVD juke box. #3 in the list is photo viewer. Though I do use MCE to show off photos of my Daughter when I have friends or family over that haven’t seen my Home Theater setup, I very rarely use that feature, but it is nice to have.

#4 is Media Library, this is another feature I use on a regular basis. I have quite a few tv shows, video podcasts, and other downloaded media content I watch. I love being able to view all of those videos in a nice, clean easy to use interface, and have them all cataloged and stored in a central location. Some of the media comes from Torrents, others Newsgroups, while lastly video podcasts. Since all the video come from different locations, it is definitely nice to store them in a central folder in MCE and know exactly where to go to watch them.

#5 is home automation, #6 is Gaming, #7 is Browse the Web, and #8 is High Def Player.

#5 I don’t do any at this point in time, and If I did I don’t think I’d use MCE to interface to control my home. I’d rather have a stand alone touch screen or tablet PC to do those tasks. #6 is gaming, I do use my HTPC to game, but not as much as I used to. The Missing Remote article shows a mame plugin for MCE, which is an awesome idea, however I just don’t use my setup for MAME games all that much. Maybe for an occasional NES or SNES but not really for MAME games. #7 I just don’t use my HTPC for web viewing other than downloading a driver but not for every day, regular web viewing. #8 even though I did buy the xbox 360 hd dvd addon drive for this intent, in the end I just gave up on it and chose to go with the stand alone HD DVD player.

#9 is place shifting, remote scheduling. With the advent of Webguide being release for free, I’ve taken more and more advantage of the remote scheduling features. Being able to remotely log into your HTPC via a web browser and viewing scheduled recordings and setting new recordings is just huge. Say I hear about a tv show at work and I want to make sure my HTPC records it and I want to schedule a recording before I forget about the name of the show, I can quickly log into my HTPC via my work pc or even better I can log in with my smartphone. Granted the smartphone doesn’t work as well, but in situation where I can’t quickly log into a pc and schedule a show, I can always do it from my phone.

#10 Distributed Video/Audio. Granted I did already talk about the advantages of Media Center Extenders and what they can do for you in a PVR/DVR situation. What I didn’t talk about was the ability to share all of you media files, photos, music, ect… through out your home. I’ve got a pretty extensive music collection, over 120gigs worth of music, being able to share that music, play lists, cover art, ect… through out my home is another huge advantage of media center extenders (aka distributed video/audio). Instead of having a PC at EVERY tv in your home, you can just have a dumbed down xbox 360 or a V2 extender and call it a day.

Lastly is bonus features of a HTPC. Being able to pull up weather reports, Adding plug-ins like My Movies, or other third party utilities like adding Netflix to your MCE interface is just another way of showing you the flexibility of what a HTPC can really do for you. Internet radio, Youtube, Pandora, online video rentals, ect… are all ways of utilizing PC centric content that normally would be used in a desktop environment can now be used and interacted in a home entertainment fashion. Moving away from a keyboard mouse to a remote to me is the holey grail of the HTPC and why I use it almost every day in one way or another.

In the end what you can do with a HTPC is limitless and really just depends on what you want to do with it.

- Josh