{"id":647,"date":"2011-06-12T06:52:34","date_gmt":"2011-06-12T11:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/?p=647"},"modified":"2011-06-12T06:52:34","modified_gmt":"2011-06-12T11:52:34","slug":"finding-htpc-components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/?p=647","title":{"rendered":"Finding HTPC Components"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Coding Horror recently ran an article called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codinghorror.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/revisiting-the-home-theater-pc.html\">Revisiting the Home Theater PC<\/a>, in which Jeff Atwood runs through the components he used to build an HTPC.  I was pretty excited to see this because, as far as I can tell from the MythTV site, other than a Mac Mini, these systems are all over the map.  I was having a hard time figuring out what to use.  Here&#8217;s what I wanted in my first HTPC:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Quiet<\/li>\n<li>Low power (<= 25 watts idle)<\/li>\n<li>Play 1080p video<\/li>\n<li>2 tuner HDTV ATSC capture<\/li>\n<li>hard drive of at least 500 GB (I&#8217;ll add a NAS later)<\/li>\n<li>DVD Drive<\/li>\n<li>HDMI output to TV<\/li>\n<li>Audio output to stereo<\/li>\n<li>Mythbuntu (no Windows)<\/li>\n<li>wired Ethernet 100 or 1,000 MB<\/li>\n<li>wireless keyboard w\/ mouse (preferably a trackball)<\/li>\n<li>wireless remote<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Optional: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Case that looks like A\/V or stereo component rather than PC<\/li>\n<li>writable Blu-Ray drive<\/li>\n<li>Fanless<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I picked out all the components at Newegg, but wasn&#8217;t sure if the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 would fit.  While I was trying to figure that out, the hard drive sold out.  That&#8217;s when I found out there weren&#8217;t any comparable options in the 2.5&#8243; form factor.  The case Jeff uses only takes that size.  By the time I switched cases, I had to swap some other components and soon had no idea how much noise the system would kick out.<br \/>\nTo get a sounding board, I went to two local HiFi and Video stores.  These guys do custom installations and home theaters and provide support for their systems.  Both of them wouldn&#8217;t touch this market because the PC&#8217;s aren&#8217;t reliable enough and they&#8217;d get killed by the support requirements.  The second shop recommended a local PC shop.  Clearly HTPC&#8217;s are still in the computer domain and the integration of the computer and TV is going about as well as the US adoption of the metric system.<br \/>\nTalking to the HiFi guys left me feeling like I was on my own, but Dave Wang at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lynkcomputer.com\/\">Lynk Computer<\/a> was familiar with what I wanted to do.  He was able to tell me that the changes I made would probably make more noise that I would be happy with.  I left him my requirements, Jeff&#8217;s article and the components I picked out and he&#8217;s going to spec out a system for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coding Horror recently ran an article called Revisiting the Home Theater PC, in which Jeff Atwood runs through the components he used to build an HTPC. I was pretty excited to see this because, as far as I can tell from the MythTV site, other than a Mac Mini, these systems are all over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familytidings.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}