![\"The](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2511\/4121887281_2dd9e6baca.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI got a micro ATX form factor case for the project. The guts are as follows:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Sempron 140 processor<\/li>\n
- Gigabyte AM3 motherboard with HDMI output<\/li>\n
- Two 640 GB WD green hard drives<\/li>\n
- Samsung DVD-RW<\/li>\n
- Radeon 4200 onboard video card<\/li>\n
- Hauppauge 2250 dual ATSC\/QAM tuner card<\/li>\n
- 4 gb of unganged 800 mhz ram<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The hard drives use the onboard RAID controller to function as a RAID 1 configuration. I did this because I wanted a fairly robust storage solution for the house.<\/p>\n
The RAM was supposed to be 1033 mhz, but it was unstable at that clock, so I had to bump it down. I didn’t want to deal with returning it, and it seems plenty fast.<\/p>\n
The processor actually has two cores, that my motherboard was able to unlock, so while it is a Sempron 140 – it registers at post as an Athlon X2 4200+. <\/p>\n
The idea for this build was to use MythTV on ubuntu linux. I bought all my hardware with an eye for linux compatibility. That didn’t work out. I’m sure that if I really hacked on it, I could have gotten it all to work with linux, but I decided that it wouldn’t be up to rachel’s standards in the end. I had a copy of Windows 7 beta, so I thought I’d give it a try for the media center.<\/p>\n
It worked great! I had spent several hours trying to get linux working, but windows media center was up and running within 30 minutes. <\/p>\n
There were still a few software quirks to work out, however. <\/p>\n
The main thing I had to work out was the power settings. The system didn’t wake from sleep properly, so I had to configure everything to work as hibernate. I got lucky, as my motherboard supports waking from hibernate for windows scheduled events (like show recordings). I had a hard time getting the thing to go back to hibernation after it woke up for a recording. I eventually found this software (http:\/\/slicksolutions.eu\/mst.shtml) for configuring standby behavior with windows media center, and it works great.<\/p>\n
I also snagged a plugin to make hulu desktop a clickable item from within windows media center. There are several out there, and none seem to work quite right – so I’m still working on that. <\/p>\n
I had some trouble getting the sound to come across the HDMI because the settings in windows were strange. In the end, I didn’t really need to do anything – it just worked. The problem was that it doesn’t say that it’s a 5.1 signal unless one is actually being sent. This was mainly a problem in the windows media center speaker configuration thing, as it couldn’t tell I had 5 speakers for some reason. <\/p>\n
Windows media center is a very slick DVR solution. It has netflix watch it now included in it, and you can record things with all the power that you might find in a Tivo. I actually like the interface better in some spots. <\/p>\n
We have the capacity to record about 40 hours of HD stuff and have some room left over for music and photos. <\/p>\n
We can record two shows at once, which I am amazed that we actually do (I’m looking at you bones). <\/p>\n
Here are some (bad) pictures of the interface. <\/p>\n
![\"Watching](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2637\/4122660796_14ffa1b983.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Picking](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2751\/4121888543_48f59bf757.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Looking](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2508\/4121888985_e061f6da10.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Hulu\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2790\/4121889547_29897a285b.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Netflix\"](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2629\/4122662738_1b2fe8b8bf.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2705\/4121890395_8542dcbcd8.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2670\/4121890807_f204cfe35e.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"