7 August 2006, 10:12 in

My home theatre PC

Over a year ago I built a home theatre PC. I never mentioned it before so I thought I’d write about it. It’s pretty cool but to be truthful it hasn’t really seen a lot of use.

Housed inside the black Coolermaster home-theatre PC case is a modest system consisting of an AMD Sempron 2200+ CPU, 512MB DDR400 RAM, a 200GB HDD, onboard GF4MX VGA, and onboard sound. It has a cordless keyboard and mouse, and two Logitech cordless gamepads to use as input devices. The TV out on the onboard graphics (S-Video out) is connected to the Yamaha receiver, as is the sound (via a 3.5mm stereo jack which splits into two RCAs). So it’s pretty much just a normal PC that sits in my lounge, with a different case, and it uses the TV as a monitor and the sound comes through the Acoustic Energy speakers.

I use it for playing old arcade games (such as Puzzle Bobble and 1942) via the MAME emulator, and also to play Sega Genesis games (using wgens) and SNES games (using Snes9X) and so on. It’s also good for watching movies in PC-formats such as DivX or XviD, and playing MP3s.

Currently it runs Windows XP at a low widescreen resolution. I want to set up some nice front end software and have been playing around with that. Contenders include Media Portal (free open-source Windows/DirectX based front-end), MythTV (free, runs on Linux), or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

I’d also like to get a remote control so that it can be operated quickly and easily, without having to drag out the keyboard and mouse. I will probably end up getting a TV-tuner card, and they pretty much all come bundled with remotes. This will also allow me to record TV shows to the hard disk (not that I watch much TV).

The sound is not currently hooked up for 5.1 output but I’ll do that soon. I have a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS which is currently in my old PC, that I may put in. It all depends on how many PCI slots are available (I have to check).

Pics coming soon!

  1. Medien Krabbe recommends:

    http://store.niveusmedia.com/s.nl/it.I/id.14/.f?sc=2&category=23

    ‘nuff said.


    — medien krabbe    Sep 3, 12:07 am    #
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