htpc

If you're like most of us, your home entertainment system is actually a compilation of a bunch of subsystems. You've got your TV/PVR/DVD player in the living room. You've got a radio in the bedroom, a computer in the office, and of course a portable audio and/or video player for wandering the house and the streets of your fair city.

Maybe your TV is connected to your home network through a home theater PC or an Xbox 360 or other media center extender. But essentially most of us force our different systems to work together. FUZE Media Systems wants to sell you a better mousetrap. The company is promoting a new "whole-home" media center.

In this day and age you can pick up a desktop computer at the mall for a couple hundred dollars. Slap a TV tuner in it and you've got a home theater PC, or HTPC. But what if you want something that looks good in the living room, has a quiet fan, and can handle HDTV?

The folks at Missing Remote have put together an excellent guide for building an HTPC that you'd be proud to put next to your TV, all for under a grand.

Sony's Vaio TP1 is sort of the opposite of pretty much every other fancy media center PC on the market right now. It doesn't include CableCard or high definition optical discs.

The Vaio TP1 also doesn't look like anything else that sits by your television set. But that's okay, it doesn't really look like a computer either.

This little box was first unveiled by Sony at CES in January. Recently CNet noticed that it was shipping, even though there hadn't been any major announcement from the company.

Under the tiny hood lies a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 300GB hard drive. There's also a DVD burner, an ATSC/NTSC tuner, and HDMI/DVI/VGA outputs. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium and runs about $1600.

The folks behind the Linux LiveCD-based media center GeexBox have released version 1.1. It's been more than a year since hte last official release, but the devs have been pretty busy during that time.

GeeXboX is pretty much one of the easiest Linux distributions you'll ever find. It's built entirely to be used as a media center. So all you have to do is download the CD ISO and burn it to disc. Then reboot your computer with the CD in its drive. You'll be greeted with a complete media center capable of playing back audio, video and photos.

Version 1.1 supports playback of decrypted HD-DVD files. There's also support for more multimedia codecs, including propietary formats like Flash and Windows Media Video.

GeeXboX 1.2 and 2.0 are both in the works. Upcoming features will include 32 and 64 bit editions and support for native HDTV resolutions.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

Ever since I moved our tower PC from the office to the living room to serve as the home media center, I've been struck by just how loud the spinning fans are in your typical desktop. And that's one of the reasons the Moneaul 301B looks so attractive to me right now.

While most home theater PCs that come in a stylish case with a a quite cooling system will set you back thousands of dollars, the 301B starts at just $995. It sports:

• An AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 4400+ processor
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• 2GB RAM
• 250GB hard drive
• Dual layer DVD/CD Burner
• HDMI out
• A wireless keyboard and remote
• Liquid cooling
• Your usual USB 2.0/Ethernet/Firewire/audio/VGA and other inputs and outputs

Curiously absent is the mention of any TV tuners, but you can pick up a standard or ATSC tuner for under $100 these days. Adding CableCard functionality, on the other hand will set you back over $1000 and probably several days/weeks of your life that you'll never get back.

Alienware has launched its Hangar18 line of high end home theater PCs. Looks like we were off a few months on the timing, and about $1000 on the pricing when we first told you about Alienware's newest HTPCs last year.

The Hanger18 machines come loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core processores, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, and integrated NVIDIA graphics with support for 720p or 1080p HDMI out, as well as VGA, S-Video and analog outputs.

You'll also get a dual analog/HDTV tuner, and support for up to 4 tuners total. The base unit ships with 250GB of storage, but supports a max of 2TB. And of course there's all the usual goodies like 802.11b/g, firewire, and USB support. There's also an integrated 4-in-1 flash memory card reader.

Hangar18 units start at $1999, but you can easily trick this puppy out to eat a much larger chunk of your life's savings.

[via Dave Zatz]

Shuttle's X200M media PC picks up where the X100 left off, packing a lot of punch into a 12 inch wide PC meant to sit next to your television.

Priced between $1150 and $1800, the six pound computer includes 2GB of RAM, 750GB of storage, and includes 7.1 channel audio. You can also get an optional TV/Radio tuner and remote control.

The X200M runs Windows Vista Ultimate, which includes Media Center capabilities.

[via The New York Times]

In a fit of nostalgia, Mike Garcen over at Missing Remote took a trip down memory lane and wrote up a brief history of HTPC technology.

If you're a long time tinkerer, you've probably been finding ways to watch TV on your PC since the late 90s. I'll never forget the thrill of installing my first ATI All-in-Wonder card, only to realize that garbage in = garbage out. I didn't have cable at the time, and trying to encode digital video from bunny ears wasn't the smartest move I'd ever made.

Ironically, 8 years later I've just picked up an HDTV antenna in the hopes of recording over-the-air high definition signals with a PCI TV tuner.

Garcen also takes a look at some early HTPC cases, remote controls, and HDTV sets you may have had your eye on back in 1996.

Like sands through the hourglass, media center PC makers are starting to release home theater PCs that are capable of handling CableCards. In layman's terms, that means you'll be able to get high definition television from your cable company without ordering a separate cable box.

S1Digital is the latest company to enter the game. It ProLine and Home Series media center PCs will be able to support up to two digital cable tuners. Other options include HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray playback, 1080p HDMI output, and 7.1 channel sound.

Keep in mind, these are high end units that will make an $800 HD-capable Series3 TiVo look cheap.

Snapstream just pushed out a beta of BeyondTV 4.61. The big new feature? Support for the HDHomeRun. Why is that important? Because the HDHomeRun lets you record HD content in two ways.

First, it's got an ATSC over-the-air tuner. But you can also use it to record QAM unencrypted HD channels from your cable company. While most cable companies encrypt the majority of their channels, you can usually pick up your local network affiliates unencrypted. So BeyondTV 4.6.1 could let you record content from ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and the CW on your PC.

Setup isn't for the faint of heart. But Snapstream's got a set of instructions in their beta tester forum.

Let the early adopter wars begin. First, Velocity Micro announced that they're ready to ship the company's first CableCard ready home theater PC. Now Niveus says their CableCard PCs are ready to move.

That means consumers can now choose between high end media center PCs capable of recording high definition digital cable signals. Niveus is adding CableCard to several models, including the Rainier and Denali editions, as well as the Pro Series n9 and n7.

But lest you think Niveus just threw a couple of CableCard slots into its existing computers, the company actually requires you to purchase a separate set-top-box. The Niveus Digital Cable Receiver supports two CableCards and basically replaces your cable company box with a new box that's probably just as big and clunky looking. You can then pair it with a Niveus HTPC to record that sweet overpriced HD content.

Freevo, one of the older PVR software solutions, has pushed out a new revision, 1.7.0 (up from 1.6.0). Although it does offer some of the standard bug fixes that come with these kinds of releases, there are also a few new features bundled with it such as:

• A web interface which gives you access to media stored on the machine
• A "web remote"
• A new encodeserver which can compress videos in the background
• Built-in RSS client which can automatically download podcasts

As of right now, the official release is not reflected on the Freevo home page, but you can check out the forum post which contains details about the package. The new package can be downloaded from here.

Yesterday Brad pointed us to a nice guide which went into detail with regards to building the perfect HTPC. Well that's all fine and dandy, but what happens when you have two or more in your house and you want to start sharing content between them?

Sure, Microsoft has told us about their upcoming Home Server, but unfortunately it won't quite do what we are looking for, and we don't know the exact cost of these things yet. The simplest answer is centralized storage, or a NAS (network area storage).

We've covered plenty of how to build an home theater PC articles in the past, but I have to say ExtremeMHz has put together one of the most thoughtful, near-comprehensive articles on the subject I've ever seen.

The 8-page article covers everything from the benefits of using an HTPC rather than standard A/V equipment to choosing the right motherboard, case, hard drive, cooling solution etc.

There's also a pretty detailed discussion of software. While the author recommends Windows XP MCE 2005 (rather than Vista), he also discusses Media Portal, an open-source alternative, several MCE plugins including My Movies and Theatertek, and DVD ripping software.

This guide is a great place to start if you're looking to build your first HTPC, or you're looking to upgrade your PVR.

Okay, once you get over the sticker shock, what does that kind of money buy you? Well the FX series starts with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, two 500GB hard drives, a GeForce 7600GT video card, 7.1-channel audio, an HD-DVD drive, HDMI output, and two HD and two standard def TV tuners. A bluetooth keyboard and IR remote also come standard.

There's also a media server line that includes four 500GB hard drives in RAID storage, and 6 swappable drive bays. You can upgrade systems with extra hard drive storage or Blu-Ray burners. Both the FX series and the Media Server should be shipping within the next few weeks.

[via Electronista]