Vista + Media Center = Love Heart

My after-hours pet project over the last week has been assembling a new Vista Media Center PC.

I decided against buying a pre-built machine and instead bought the components to assemble myself.

Antec Fusion case - absolutely awesome.  Excellent cooling, extremely quiet, and of course it doesn't look like a PC!

Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H motherboard and Intel Core Duo E6550 CPU.  Micro-ATX, super-fast, and has onboard HDMI video for 1080p HD output (important as I will be using this to drive my Bravia).

Zalman CNPS8000 ultra-quiet CPU fan - for when I start overclocking :)

Installing Vista Ultimate.  Insert the DVD, answer about 4 questions, and grab a coffee - Vista installs itself!

For full Media Center capabilities I have a Hauppage Nova-T-500 dual-tuner HDTV card (so I can watch one channel and simultaneously record another), a Media Center remote, and a Media Center wireless keyboard/mouse combo (pictured above).  I also signed up to IceTV for an Australian EPG listing.

Finished!

My lesson learnt was to always have an old key board lying around.  I didn't, and the wireless keyboard above needs drivers loaded - so I couldn't configure BIOS settings from boot as Windows (and therefore drivers) wasn't loaded yet.  Fortunately the computer store around the corner had one for $12 :)