Media center hardware selection

Media center are for geeks is the common attitude, and maybe that is true as selecting the hardware, building it and most importantly installing and maintaining the software is quite chore. However there are hardly alternatives if you want to view video content in all different formats that you can find on the internet.

If you plan to pay for all your bluray's and dvd's then it is probably better to forget about a media center pc. In that case just run to the store and pick up a sony ps3, but only if you have a tv/beamer with a hdmi input. My "old" plasma screen does not have hdmi input, i have to make due with component video (ypbpr). The ps3 supports that but it will not upscale dvd content to 720p not will it display bluray with 720. No no as hollywood is scared that you could copy the good stuff, you only get 480p output from your hd stuff.

So if you have "old" equipment without hdmi input and you want to view HD content that you did not pay for, there is really one option left : The pc media center.

What do you need :

A nice looking box to put the pc in ; you do not want to have a midi tower next to your nice looking flatscreen tv now do you ? These hifi like boxes can be quite expensive. There are a few reasonable priced ones, i can recommend the following :

Lian li pc-c35 : Nice slim line case, only supports low profile cards
Thermaltake bach : Nice big size full atx media case, support standard hardware

Keep in mind that with the lian you have to get a uAtx board preferably with onboard video because of the very low profile of this case. The lian does come with a powersupply and looks like a high end dvd player.

Selecting the motherboard :



We are looking for an all in one solution, video, sound, hdmi on just one board. Currently the one to recommend is the gigabyte ga-ma69gm-s2h amd board. This is one of the very few boards that comes with a component video out ! Also very important is the onboard sound chip which supports DTS connect. DTS connect allows us to play back the 5.1 wmapro sound that is in many of the hd movies that you can find on the internet.

Wmapro is the sound standard of hidef wmv files. Only a few select receivers can understand that audio stream. The soundchip on the S2H board will convert the wmapro 5.1 stream into a DTS 5.1 stream and output it through spdif to your receiver. This is one of the very few boards where you do not have to run ac3filter to get decent spdif output !

The board also has a x1250 chipset from amd, which allows us to have smooth 720p and 1080p output (with some special software, read it in the next installment of the media center series on this blog).

Remote control :


This one is very simple : The microsoft remote control for media centers is not too expensive and works without any setup hassle !

Cpu And memory :

This is the simple part, as we plan to run vista mce we need 2gb 800mhz ddr2 memory. This is very cheap at the moment. For out cpu any amd x2 from the 3800+ to the 6000+ will do. No need to go overboard, the x2-3800+ is already enough.

Now we have the box, the board, and the components. Only thing left to choose is a harddisk and a dvd reader. Any will do of course, but i recommend a quiet seagate perpendicular drive.

Next in media centers : software selection and setup.