Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Building a Media
Center System
In ThIs chaPTEr
We admit it. We're audio/video Luddites. When the receiver in our 15-year-old
home audio system failed a few years ago, we didn't bother to replace it. We
have a Panasonic 27” analog television, basic $10/month analog cable TV ser-
vice with only the broadcast channels, and no satellite receiver.
Determining Functional Requirements
Hardware Design Criteria
Component Considerations
Building the Media Center System
Installing Software
Final Words
We rent movies and TV series from Netflix, borrow them from the public li-
brary or friends, or buy the DVD sets. (As we write this, we've just gotten
around to renting
The Sopranos
. It's new to us.…) We sometimes watch local
TV news, sports, and weather in real time, but that's about it. We've even given
up watching PBS because of the intrusive begging and increasingly common
commercials.
Gotcha
One problem with depending on
DVDs is that DVD releases are unpre-
dictable. For example, we rented and
watched season 1 of Crossing Jordan
soon after the DVD set was released
in 2008. Alas, we then learned that
the remaining five seasons haven't
been released on DVD and probably
never will be because of music licens-
ing issues. Oh, well.
We had a similar problem with the
fine British comedy-drama Cold
Feet, starring the delightful Helen
Baxendale. After we'd rented and
watched the first three series, we real-
ized belatedly that Netflix didn't have
series four and five. We immediately
tried to buy those, only to learn that
series four and five had never been
released for the US market and were
unavailable for purchase.
If there's something we really want to see, we usually just buy the DVD set or
wait until it's available from Netflix. A few times a year, when we don't want
to wait for the DVD release, we record the program on our DVD recorder. The
last time we watched a prime-time network television episode live was some-
time in the 20th century. We've never bothered watching TV online, because
the programs available on Hulu and the network websites contain embedded
commercials that can't be skipped. If we can't watch something without com-
mercials, we simply refuse to watch it.
So, why do we need a media center system? We don't, at least if you define
a media center system as incorporating PVR/DVR (personal/digital video re-
corder) functions. In fact, we built a very capable PVR/DVR media center sys-
tem for the first edition of this topic. After we verified that everything worked
as it should, we found that we never used the system to record programs. We
turned it off. It gathered dust, and eventually we salvaged its parts for other
systems. There was nothing wrong with that system, mind you. It worked per-
fectly. We simply had no need for its recording capabilities. For the second
edition of this topic, we built another capable PVR/DVR media center system,
this one with multiple analog and digital tuner cards. Once again, we turned it
on, tested it and found it did everything expected of it, and then turned it off
when we realized that we weren't using it.
Amazon had one used copy of series
four, but in Region 2 format, which
is incompatible with our equipment.
Arrrggggh. If we weren't law abiding,
we might have installed a good Bit-
Torrent client and visited Pirate Bay.
But there's much more to a media center system than just recording TV pro-
grams. The first sentence of Wikipedia's HTPC entry is a pretty good working
definition:
