MediaCenter PC for the living room

[- Bobb -]

It might be HP, but same company these days ...
" HP Pavilion Media Center TV PC "
anyone have one of these in the living room. I saw one yesterday - with RCA
jacks, DTV inputs etc and wondering if anyone has .... hooked up cameras / a
VCR and recorded to DVD's . I was thinking would be nice to convert old VHS
tapes to video as well as use as media PC.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per - Bobb -:

I went a little further:

- Set up PC running Windows Home Server in a closet off the
rec room - where the soil stack runs.

- Pulled Ethernet to several rooms where we watch TV using
the soil stack and crawl space as the cable highway.

- Started running an application called "SageTV" (basically
MS Media Center for people who want more control) on the
server

- Put one of these little guys http://tinyurl.com/cswoco under
each TV (draws 7 watts, no moving parts, totally silent)

- Ripped all my DVDs to the server

Now I have more recorded TV than I could watch in 10 lifetimes
and instant access to any of our DVDs from any room in the house
- and if I watch 10 minutes of something in, say, the kitchen and
close it... when I open it up in the rec room the next day it
picks up right where I left off.

It's not what I'd call a turnkey system - OTOH, it's not a
part-time job like some.... maybe something less than a hobby...
but definitely requiring some willingness to cope with technical
issues.

I blew a little short of two grand on the whole thing - and it's
way overkill. Could be done for under a thousand dollars as
long as one pulls their own cable.
--
PeteCresswell