Dmitri's Bucket of Projects

What's an HTPC? It's short for Home Theater PC. It's a PC that would be part of your home theater system. It could do something as simple as play MP3s on your stereo, or much much more. I got the idea of a million places, bu most recently from my friend Rick, who recently mentioned the trials and tribulations of his experiences creating one. My goal, a programmable PVR (Personal Video Recorder) with TIVO like feaures that I can then burn to DVD or copy to another machine. I would also like to play MP3s, and occassionally MAME. I know that recording an audio video input on your PC is hardly a new thing, but it's the programmable aspect of it that is going to present the challenge. So let's list out goals for this project:

An HTPC that has the following attributes:

• I need to reuse as much of my existing PC as possible:


• AMD Athlon XP 1900+


• 512 MB RAM


• Western Digital 120 GB Speciall Edition hard drive w/ 8MB cache.


• Gainward Geforce 4 ti4400.


• ABIT KR7-RAID motherboard.


• Creative Labs Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card.


• Unknown network card.




• It must be as quiet as possible. True silence is probably too costly, but a loud PC does not make for an enjoyable entertainment experience.


• It must be stored in a case that will not look out of place with other home theater components.


• It must have a hand held remote for primary operation.


• It must be able to pause live TV without interfering with recording.


• It must be programmable.


• There can be no reoccuring monthly fee.


• I would like to run it using Windows Xp, and avoid buying MCE if possible.