It's been awhile since I've posted and a lot has changed at work and at home. I recently had a birthday and as a birthday gift to myself I decided to start an HTPC project. HTPC, for those who don't know, stands for Home Theater Personal Computer. It's basically a computer that works along with other components of your home theater. I currently have a Sony 57" front projection HDTV (KDP-57WS655), a Denon AV receiver (AVR-2805), Aperion Audio speaker system comprised of a center channel, two towers w/built-in subwoofers, and two surround channel speakers. I also have a Pioneer Elite progressive scan DVD player (DV-45A), and DirecTV. I used to run my DirecTV through a series 2 Tivo, however I got tired of the crappy video quality and the inability to record in HD. My friend Eous has a hacked DirecTV Tivo that can record HD, but that was not an option for me as I live in an apartment and we get our DirecTV from shared dishes on the building. Since they don't have the capability to receive HD signals, it's OTA HD or nothing. Luckily, we live close enough to most of the major TV station towers to actually receive plenty of over-the-air HD channels. The only one that's hard to get sometimes is NBC, since the tower is in San Jose (45 miles from my Oakland apartment).

Choosing the hardware proved to be the most time-consuming task of the entire project. The first thing I needed to do was figure out what software I was going to use, and therefore what operating system. I was leaning heavily towards MythTV early on. I knew a few people who were actively using it, and the fact that it ran on Linux made it appealing since it meant I could use the box for more than just record shows. The fact that it ran on Linux also brought a downside to MythTV, since Linux has been notoriously picky when it came to the video card you could use. I must have read through a half dozen compatibility pages before Eous sent over this link to a Windows-based HTPC application. It was called Media Portal. http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/

Now the biggest draw to a Windows-based HTPC was the vast hardware support Windows has over Linux. MythTV had a much larger user base, and was more mature, but I felt one of the reasons for doing this project in the first place was to give me something fun to do. I could always switch over to MythTV if I chose my hardware wisely, should MediaPortal prove to be too buggy. I would later learn that MP was written so well that I may never have the opportunity to try out MythTV, but it's nice to have choices. =)

<--To Be Continued-->