Нет, я не планирую на продажу, но удача, если вы сами!

I’m not going to be using it for gaming either, just watching and recording HDTV from DVD, Satellite or downloads. So, I’m glad you have confirmed the hardware is up to the task, as I have been considering beefing it up a bit but this would not only be a waste of money but potentially make things hotter and more noisy!

Have you considered adding a CAM and SmartCard in order to access premium channels?

Thanks again for a great blog.

Glad you’ve found the blog handy.

Your friend is right were you looking at playing games. The on board chipsets don’t really have the horsepower to cope with modern games in all their 3D loveliness. However that wasn’t an aim of the HTPC.

The specific chipset on the board I use offers HD decoding - basically the graphics chipset can decode the H.264 video that HD uses within the hardware itself, rather than leaving it to the main CPU and a bit of software. Because it’s designed for a specific job it does it very well, so I’ve never had any problem with HD material. A faster processor/RAM isn’t really needed as the Mediaportal interface doesn’t tax things too much and playing music/movies/photos is all pretty low-tech. A CPU helps with numbercrunching but none of that goes on in the media pc to any great extent.

As to stuff I’d do differently - nothing immediately springs to mind - apart from perhaps my TV. It’s pre-HDMI so I couldn’t use that software and also getting the image centered was a bit of a faff (having to use Powerstrip and so on) - a more recent TV may well be of some use. I’d also be using wired networking at home rather than Wireless, as watching tv on a second PC can be a bit jumpy and HD has no hope.

I am building a similar system and have found your blog really useful. So much so that I am looking at getting the same motherboard and processor that you have been using.

My friend warned me of using an on board graphics card. How has yours been performing? Does it chug with HD at all? If so, do you think a faster processer and a bit more ram would help or would you advise getting a dedicated video card?

If you were building this system again now, would you use all the same parts or are there any lessons learned that you could pass on?

Thanks,
Adam

Andy