Vista + Media Center = Love Heart

jkruse — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:13:00 GMT

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 :)

Technorati Tags: vista, media center, diy

Media Center + Zune + Xbox 360 + Slingbox = :D

jkruse — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:59:00 GMT

Ok so this post isn't really related to UC at all, but what the hey ...

Over the Christmas/New Year period I finally got around to playing with my media setup at home (yep, I'm a geek alright). I now have the following hooked up and working nicely:

40" Sony Bravia HDTV
Media Centre PC (Vista Ultimate Edition)
Xbox 360

Xbox Live (Gears of War rocks)
Xbox 360 acting as a Media Centre Extender

Zune (yes I got a brown one - and I like it!)

Bose noise-cancelling headphones (I spend a lot of time on planes)

SlingBox Pro

So now I have an almost-perfect media experience wherever I am (actually that kind of is related to UC - where I also have all a perfect communications experience wherever I am!).

At home I can stream music, TV and movies to whatever room I am in; if I'm on a plane I have all of my music and most of my movies on my Zune (I used to have an iPod Mini then a Creative Zen Micro, but with the excellent screen and battery-life on the Zune I will never go back); and I can watch my TV at home from anywhere in the world via the SlingBox (handy when I'm in the USA and the rugby is on TV).

So my question is - what do you reckon I should do next?

I'll post some photos as soon as I find the charger for my camera!

Johann's Unified Communications : media centre

Vista + Media Center = Love Heart

Media Center + Zune + Xbox 360 + Slingbox = :D