Brad Mackey's Guide to Building a HTPC

(aka How to Achieve Movie Watching Nirvana)

I've been kicking around the idea of having a computer hooked up to my TV for years. It wasn't until recently that I decided to pull the trigger and build my first HTPC. I'm now living in movie watching nirvana and I can't wait until I'm done ripping all my DVDs to the HTPC.

This is how I pulled it off.

PARTS

I have built quite a few computers over the years but never a compact HTPC. I hit up newegg.com and picked up the following items....

SilverStone GD05B HTPC Case

SilverStone Nightjar Power Supply

MSI 890GXM-G65 Motherboard

AMD Phenom II X6 Processor

Kingston 8GB Ram (4 sticks of 2GB)

ZOTAC GeForce GT240 Graphics Card

I had a 2TB Hard Drive and a BluRay drive sitting around so I used those as well. I also ended up buying a Scythe Big Shuriken CPU fan as the stock AMD Fan was way too loud.

Note: I still think the Shuriken is a bit noisy and someday plan to replace it with an even quieter fan.

SOFTWARE

When I set out to build this I had planned on using xbmc to run my HTPC. After putting the computer together and getting everything up and running I finally decided on just using Windows Media Center and Media Browser to run the HTPC.

There are two reasons for this.

1) Windows Media Center is built right into Windows 7 and does 90% of the stuff I want the HTPC to do right out of the box without any tinkering.

2) It is super easy to launch Windows Media Center from a cheap remote control like this one.

After deciding to go with Windows Media Center I had to find a way to make it look a bit nicer. Enter the Media Browser plugin for Windows Media Center.


Just look how nice that looks after installing the plugin. All my movies can be viewed in a very nice cover flow view which is easy to flip through. To watch any of them I just have to click on the video I want and away I go. Depending on how you rip your DVDs you can have the full DVD exactly as it is on the disc with menus and everything or you can just rip the movie and never mess with FBI warnings again. Of course I still have the problem of storing all my old DVDs but that is way better than having to get off the couch.

Next step.....
Figure out how to launch video games from the Media Browser menus.