Introduction

The Media Center PC, or Home Theater PC (HTPC) as its often called, is the latest manifestation of AV-PC convergence.  There are dozens of articles on the web, as well as the occasional printed ones in magazines, which provide the reader with an idea and some direction on how to build their own.  However, this article describes the process in greater detail of a high-end Media Center PC, one that we’ll call the HDHTS – High Definition Home Theater Server. 

The following is the culmination of more than a year's worth of research, trial and error, formatting, reformatting, more research, dozens of phone calls, and possibly hundreds of emails.  We hope that it would provide some useful information in your quest of the Ultimate High Definition Home Theater Server.

Just like any design process, a project is primarily built based on three main constraints:  First and foremost, the budget.  One must consider the amount of financial resources that can be allocated to the project, as well as pre-existing resources which can be re-purposed in order to save both time and money.  Second, the requirements must be stated in plain English in order to fully articulate the needs of the project.  Lastly, the builder must also be considered.  Neophytes would have less skill and experience compared to expert h4x0rs, so the project’s goal must align with the available skill level.

For this HDHTS, the financial burden must be minimal.  Luckily, our lab is stocked with many parts obtained through ‘bartering’, not purchasing.  Although, there were still items which needed to be acquired, some of which were purchased, and others bartered.  On skill level, we are confident that our editors and techs combine to have 1337 skillz in the Windows world, therefore we are limiting ourselves to that platform.  Next are the requirements…

§          Must be easily controllable from the couch, 10 feet away from the TV

§          Must make use of TV’s 1080i capability with maximized quality

§          Must make use of receiver’s DD and DTS decoder

§          Must serve as an always-on file server

§          Must allow playback of YouTube and Google videos

§          Must be able to store all media (movies, music, photos, in several formats) in a fault-tolerant storage system

§          Must be able to record at least two TV shows using an EPG

§          Must be able to record in digital-cable quality (analog cable is far inferior in image quality)

§          Must be able to record HDTV programs if available (clear QAM)

§          Must be controllable from another PC on the network

§          Must allow simultaneous playback from other media center extenders on the network without performance loss

§          Must provide Karaoke playback with easy song selection and echo functions

§          Must be quiet

§          Must be black

Having stated these requirements, we can begin selecting components.  Determining hardware is usually the most time-consuming and expensive part of the process.  This may entail trial-and-error as some items may not work as advertised, or as anticipated.  The methodology for determining the components is simple - start with the most important requirements, then build around from there.  For this project, the key requirements are DVD playback quality, clear QAM HDTV recording, and maximized online media capacity...