My Experiences with Building a Media Center PC with an Extender

[jimmyrules712]

Hey all, I don't usually see much posting going on here at the Mech about HTPC's (Home Theater PCs), in fact, I had to go to a different forum to get the help I needed, so for the good of all those interested, I'm going to post everything I learned in regard to building a media center PC with Windows Media Center Edition and using the XBOX360 as a media center extender.

For background, my AMD Athlon XP 2100 has been due for an upgrade (especially since a lightning strike took out my onboard audio and USB) and I've wanted to build a media center PC, because it just seemed cool.

My goal: I wanted a new PC for my bedroom, and a media center PC for my living room.

Initially I figured I would need two separate PCs for this, so I thought I would build my new one, and convert my old one into a media center (since I've been told you don't need a killer fast PC to do this). However, to my delight, I found out that if you have an XBOX 360, you can use it as a media center extender (if you are using Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition).

So now that I'm done with the background info, here’s what I had to buy.
1. CPU (AMD Athlon X2 3800)
2. Motherboard (Asus A8N5X)
3. Memory (1 GB of patriot DDR400)
4. Video card (Powercolor ATI X800GTO 256 mb) (if you are planning on hooking a TV up directly to your PC, instead of using an extender, then your video card must have video-out)
5. HD (Seagate 7200.10 320GB with 16mb Cache) + my old 160GB 8mb cache WD (remember, the more space you got, the more TV you can store)
6. Optical Drives (already had both of these, Samsung 48x/16x DVDRW, Sony DVD Player)
7. PSU (FSP 400W Dual Rail)
8. Case
(The stuff below here are the media center items that you would not need with a normal PC)
9. TV Tuner (Hauppauge PVR-500 (with 2 tuners))
10. Microsoft Media Remote for Windows XP Media Center Edition (You need this for the IR blasters it comes with)
11. Microsoft XBOX360 Universal Media Remote (for controlling my XBOX360)
12. Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005


Some quick info about what I purchased and why. For TV Tuners, Hauppauge is generally accepted to be the best, or one of the best brands for it, so I decided I wanted to get one of theirs. I went for the PVR-500 because the 500 has 2 tuners on the card, giving you the ability to record 2 different stations at the same time, or record 1 and watch a different one. If you don't care for this ability, the Hauppauge PVR-150 (for like $60) will work fine.

The installation process:
First I assembled my PC like you would any new PC, only difference was I also installed my TV tuner card. After assembly, I installed windows, once again, even though this was media center edition, it didn't look one hair different then installing with normal XP. In fact, I was worried that I had somehow been sent XP regular instead of media center edition!

After you get in windows, get all your drivers installed (including those for the TV tuner) and download all the MS updates, and get your anti-virus going, your ready for the Media stuff.

The first thing you need to do which caused me problems because I didn't know I needed to do it is install a MPEG-2 video decoder. Different ones give you a different level of quality, for now I'm using WinDVD7, which can be downloaded for a free 30-day trial, when the trial runs out I may see if I have any decent free options.

Once you install that, time to get dirty. First thing is that your digital TV box (not sure that the proper name is) that anyone with digital cable or satellite should have, has to be with the PC, whether it’s in your bedroom or wherever. If you’re going to use 2 tuners like with my PVR-500, you need 2 of these digital boxes with the PC. Get the box plugged in and connected to the input source, but the video/audio out goes to your TV tuner card. Now turn the box on and if it needs to load or something because it was just moved, let it.

Next, get out your MS media remote. Specifically, you need to get out the items pictured here.
The 2 little black cords are the IR blasters. Plug them both (or just one, if your only using 1 tuner) into the back of that USB receiver that also came with the remote, then plug the USB receiver into your PC. Now this part is important, you need to look at your digital box (es) and find the little eye that receives the remote control signal. If you can't find it, hold the remote that came with the box against the front of the box and press power while slowly moving it around, when the box response, you've found the spot or a spot close enough. Now pull the sticker thing off the back of one of the IR receivers and stick it on the front of the box over that spot. The idea is that this IR blaster is going to control your digital box by acting like a remote and sending a remote signal. If you’re using 2 boxes, one IR blaster must go on each of them.

From this point on everything should be mostly software, no more hardware to deal with.

Next, find the little green icon that starts the media functions. It should exist on in the start menu, on the quick launch menu, and maybe on the desktop. Clicking this should be the first thing you see that makes this windows version different then the others. From this point on windows will walk you through a series of setup steps, answer the questions as best as you can, and if you don't know an answer, guess; it's easy to go back and change your answer.

After all that is done you should be able to watch and control TV using your windows media remote.

If you're using an extender like the XBOX 360 to control your media PC from a different room:
After doing all of the above, you need to DL and run the software from here. It should walk you through the process, it’s not very hard. When all is said and done, you should be able to do everything on the Xbox that you could do on your media center PC (except record DVDs).

This is a pretty basic guide that should give you a good idea on what to expect, but probably won't be of a lot of help if you run into problems. If you do, ask questions here at PCmech, or you can do some googling, or you can check at the forum where I got a lot of info, thegreenbutton.com (although the people there all know A LOT about this subject, they don't have very many members and will not be NEAR as responsive to your questions as it is here at pcmech.)

[glc]

You could try the K-Lite codec pack - I believe the full version has the decoders you need without having to install PowerDVD or WinDVD.