So, I’ve decided a Media PC is the next project of mine. I just purchased a motherboard and video card to handle the HD side of things.
Here are the current specs:
The only thing missing is the Blu-Ray player that currently costs $85, a little too far above my budget.
The greatest part of this build is how it integrates with my original PC. I have sound going from two PC’s to one set of speakers. To accomplish this setup, I have set up two male-to-male 3.5mm speaker wires to a Y-splitter that essentially combines those two male plugs into one. From there, I have a female-to-female coupler that joins the male end of the Y-splitter to the male end of the speakers. The other great integration is the use of Synergy, a keyboard/mouse/clipboard sharing software so I can use my main keyboard and mouse to use both my PC and the new Media PC.
If you want to give your shot at a Media Center, I recommend the strategy of sticking with Windows, either XP Media Center Edition 2005 or Vista Home Premium/Ultimate. Although I have heard good things about setting up Media Centers on Linux with such software as MythTV, it’s hard to find a capture card that will work correctly in Linux. The WinTV-HVR-950 I have requires major driver modifications in Linux to play correctly with the DVR software.
The other reason is that Vista’s Media Center just makes it so easy to watch and record shows right out of the box. The WebGuide 4.0 is a free scheduler software for recording of shows and integrates right into Media Center. You can also add plugins to Media Center for numerous things.
Here’s what’s been going on for Imagine It Productions/Steve Yardumian.
- I just finished a job for Cutting Edge Glass & Metal with a few people from Taylor. This is the most recent Web Design job I’ve done. Pretty simple, but it was huge for the client.
- Putting a computer build together for a client in Harrisburg. It’s a regular deal with a few extras like a TV Tuner and Wireless N card.
- Fixing up a friend of a friend’s computer with a new Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 and an OS re-install.
- Found a great deal online for 250GB SATA Hard Drives for $30 each. Bought 6. 1 for a present, 1 for extra, and 4 for pre-builts I’m working on.
- Building 4 computers right now. Specs are AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB Hard Drive, DVD Burner w/ Lightscribe.
- Trying to get rid of two 19″ widescreen monitors and two 22″ widescreen monitors hopefully on eBay.
- Working on the business plan for The Final Edge and hopefully becoming an LLC in January.
- Putting together a media PC for watching and recording shows in HD. Should be a fun thing to put together.
- I now have a “COMMAND STATION” in my room which is just so awesome.
So, for now I’m signing off. If you got anything, you know where to find me.
In my last post, I introduced a review from Custom PC about Windows 7. In turn, I also accosted one of the worst operating systems right now, Windows Vista. I recently built a computer this week that taught both the owner and I a lesson on why Vista isn’t so bad.
We all know about the drawbacks, UAC et al, but there are a few good things to be had here. The build we did included a Blu-Ray player. We started with Windows XP 64-bit (with 4GB of RAM), but soon found out it wouldn’t cut it.
- Better security
We all know this one. Vista is the most secure OS out there. Cool beans.
- Driver Database
A lot, and I mean a lot of drivers are now included in the default installation of Vista. This is great because now, most of us don’t have to go looking for a driver for network controllers on a different computer. There were at least 2 less drivers to install on Vista.
- Blu-Ray support
This is the kicker. Win XP does allow you to play Blu-Ray, but personally I haven’t gotten it working due to driver complications. With PowerDVD 8 basically having the market on Blu-Ray on 64-bit machines, they control what it works on, and what doesn’t. XP 64-bit looks like Win Server 2003 to the PowerDVD Blu-Ray Advisor which tells you about what you are missing in order to play Blu-Ray Discs. With this mistake, it fails. In Vista, however, drivers aren’t a problem, and the BR Advisor sees everything fine.
That’s just a taste of why I thought Vista did better in this instance. Here’s the application: XP is getting old, and 64-bit is the future. Soon, vendors won’t fully support XP, which means we’ll be left with Vista and the new OS, Windows 7. Each of these will become mainly 64-bit, so vendors will have to get with it, and release software that’s compatible (I’m looking at you, WinDVD).
In fact, being stuck at 3GB of RAM (and 1 more outside of the machine at the moment) is no longer any fun, and I’m considering the upgrade to 64-bit in the coming months. Here’s my choice, now. Vista or XP? With these facts above, and many others out there, I’m considering Vista even more these days, even with its incompatibility with many of my programs. Of course, I will do extensive testing to see what works and what doesn’t, and even find workarounds. The point is, I, myself, am slowly warming up to the new OS. What gives?
“Windows 7,” the successor to the less-than-popular Windows Vista has promised a lot of upgrades. And, by upgrades I mean a lot of common sense that didn’t make it into Vista. One to note, covered by the UK hosted Custom PC, is that Windows 7 will no longer need dedicated graphics to render its higher end graphical capabilities like the Windows Aero interface. This means no more “Windows-whatever capable” stickers that are bordering on false advertising. The specifics can be found at Custom PC’s site. The low down is that a new interface created by Microsoft, aptly named WARP, will handle the graphics on the CPU, with even an 800MHz CPU being able to accommodate.
This bodes well for everyone since a good graphics card is no longer required for the OS, but mostly just for games. This could possibly mean that Windows 7 could run on hardware that Windows Vista can’t run on. ‘Tis a weird world Microsoft has “created.”
I have found more of the deals today. Tiger Direct had a Barebones kit selling for $125, a deal you can’t pass up when you build computers, so I got 4. This kit represents the least expensive line that will be available at Final Edge Computing, the Intra 100.
Final Edge Computing is going online soon, as well. I need to shore up a few last minute things for the LLC and the tax situation, as well as UPS shipping. Once that is said and done, I should be online. As the date nears, I’ll be putting together a short bulletin list of the things we’ll be offering and services that are going up. Stay tuned…
