HTPC Introduction
Hi,
This blog is going to take you through my experiences of building my first “media” (or htpc) pc.
What brought this on? Well, we’d been having a few problems with Sky (poor reception thanks to a tree) and decided that to be honest we could lose it and get freeview instead. Unfortunately, where we live, freeview would be nigh on impossible due to various factors also, however the engineer managed to move the dish a bit to get a better signal - it still points through the edge of the tree but the signal quality is higher now and the picture doesn’t break up!
He also mentioned freesat - this sounded good - still a reasonable range of channels, and you also get some HD content into the bargain. However, no Freesat PVR’s (the equivalent of Sky+ that we have come to know and love) exist yet, and will likely cost around the £300 mark when they do come out. A bit of research later and I worked out that in theory, a PC to do it would be possible, however as a bonus, we’d add music and movie playback, plus HD in the shape of BluRay / HD-DVD. So read on, to see how it all goes!
