• a hidden (e.g. stealthed) Blu-ray drive: the LG GGC-H20 internal Ssta drive.
• a 2x20 VFD display: the Matrix Orbital VK20425
• a Griffin Powermate for controlling software
• an IR receiver: the USBUIRT
• a half dozen or so indicators and
• some push button switches to control software

After some research I decided to use FrontPanelExpress and their design software. I assembled all of the parts and disassembled the NSK2400 front panel which consisted of a silver plastic front plate which was screwed (with at least a half dozen screws) into a black mounting plate. This was, in turn, attached to the case with tabs on the bottom and three mounting screws accessible from inside the case. I realized that my best option was to keep the black mounting plate and simply (?) replace the front plate.

I did some rough measurements and made a rough design with the free Front Panel Designer software and figured that it would cost under $100 for this replacement front plate - which was within my budget. In actuality, I slightly underestimated its final $135 price, but I was close.

The hardest part was figuring out to make the eject button available if the drive was hidden. Added to the design that the LG Blu-ray drive was sufficiently expensive that I didn’t want to modify it; only the front panel. I finally decided on a design which had the shiny metal part of a 3AG fuse (0.25 inch in diameter) attached to a washer behind the panel, all of which was held in place by the drive pressing from the real of the front panel. I also needed the emergency eject pinhole to be available as well.

I measured and measured, and measured, and... measured. First from the left, then from the right, next using metric and then English units. I measured from the front and from the back as well. Finally I was satisfied and sent it off to FrontPanelExpress; it arrived a few weeks later as shown here:

The replacement front panel for my HTPC.

To be continued...

It worked!

The bios screen came up and it went through various checks etc, then the "cannot boot from HDD" showed up, which wasn't unexpected as I hadn't yet installed it (the operating system that is, not the HDD)!

I then inserted my brand new shiney copy of Vista and restarted the machine, following the bios checks it asked me where I wanted to install the operating system so I told it, I then answered a few questions to let it know where in the world I was, what keyboard config I wanted etc and after what seemed like an eternity the Vista welcome screen appeared.

I then loaded the mobo drivers, followed by the case drivers and my lcd screen sprung into action for the first time :D

Once it had restarted I shut it down again and fitted the TV card, restarted, loaded the drivers and I was away once more, I then shut down for the last time on this session, fitted the wireless card (I am temporarily using a pci card untill I have everything how I want it as I need internet access and my USB wireless adaptor hasn't arrived yet) re-started and it found vistas own drivers for the wireless card, I then put in my network key and low and behold I was surfing the net :)

The next thing to do was download all the windows updates, whilst this was doing what it had to do, I noticed the screen was scrolling through the latest news headlines a feature I was not expecting.

Once all the updates had finished, I decided to shut down for the evening and have a well earned rest and a nice cold beer whilst feeling quite pleased with myself for getting it up and running. I know the hard work is still to come, deciding on and installing the software and codecs I will need, but, hey ho, one job at a time...

I can hear all the Microsoft haters screaming foul, but when you really sit down and use these pieces of software, the more you seem to want an easy and intuitve experience. And I hate myself for saying this, but I seem to be find those qualities in Windows Media Center and Vista Media Center.

And for the Linux nuts in the audience, if you actually gave it a chance you'd see what your missing.

Speedfan was really the only software alternative and works really good once you get all the settings right.

Here's a link to a forum post with a guide for Speedfan: www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=41049

One can run Speedfan or any other program as a Windows service using the program NT Wrapper. Make sure to set Speedfan to run minimized on startup and disable minimize on close.

Speedfan isn't visible when running as a service which I really like but it makes it difficult to change it's settings since you have to stop the service and run Speedfan manually and then start the service again after exiting. As always AutoIt comes to the rescue and I use the script below to change Speedfan's settings easily:

RunWait(@ComSpec & " /C " & "net stop Speedfan2")
$PID = Run("C:\Program Files\Speedfan\Speedfan.exe")
ProcessWaitClose($PID)
RunWait(@ComSpec & " /C " & "net start Speedfan2")

The fans:

Scythe 120mm Case Fan 310 - 1200 rpm, DFS122512L-PWM

The nice thing about this fan is that it got the PWM-connection. And the motherboard I ordered just happends to have two fan-headers both with PWM (4pin)
I'm going to replace the to fans that's delivered with the Fusion since the word out on the streets tells me they're no good.. ..well, they are not bad, they're just a bit on the noisy side when it comes to being "whisper-quiet"  They will be put to good use thou, I'm going to shift some components around in my other PC's when I'm done putting this together..

The TV-tuner:

Pinnacle PCTV Tuner Kit for Windows Vista

I bought this a few weeks ago, and I got it working in MediaPortal.. ..sort off. The picture lags and stutter, and I don't know exactly where the problem lies. Either it's hardware, or maybe reseption? We'll see on the new PC if it works better, or else I have to find an alternative, and that probably going to be a dual tuner PCI card or something the likes. On the bright side, a MCE-remote, IR-reciever and IR-blaster was included in the package and I got it for almost half the prize, so it's not a complete waste..

I think that should cover it..

I've started to recieve the parts, I'll try for an update tomorrow or friday.. ..cheers!

Microsoft Vista Premium Retail

The reasons for choosing retail over OEM is that it's not bound to the motherboard and you can switch between 32-bit and 64-bit. I'll try Ubuntu at some point, maybe in dual-boot, but I just think it still is easier to set up a HTPC in Windows.  The price on the retail-versions has come a long way down after I bought my OEM version in september last year. But it was still the priceiest single item on my shopping list, the Antec Fusion cost about 3/4 of the Vista. I almost feel cheated..

MediaPortal

This is a freeware alternative to Windows Media Centre. It has some good features, like you can have a computer anywhere in the house that function as a TVserver and the it can stream TV to other PC's in the house. They are currently working on a complete makeover of the software that looks promising, I haven't tried the beta yet (running their "old" software on my current setup) but as soon as I got my new PC up and running, I'm going to take a shot at it..

• Freeware
• Has lots of great plugins
• Has a large community
• Hopefully it will run more smoothly than on my current setup.

Cyberlinks PowerDVD Deluxe/Ultra

I need the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) decoder to be able to watch our terrestial TV here in Norway, plus it's a good player that offers hardware decoding. Since I havn't read all there is to read on the topic I don't know if I could have solved it in another way, but I can't be missing the mark by too much going this way.

AnyDVD / AnyDVD HD

I'm not sure f I need this yet. I've just bought a DVD, "Home Improvement - season 4", and because only the first three seasons is found here in europe (zone 2) I had to order it from the US. I have had another DVD-code hack on my PC, but it didn't cooperate with my Virtual-CD software that well so I'll be looking out for something else, and AnyDVD has got some fine reviews. But it still is a bit on the pricey side though..

I'll also have some programs to ripp CD's and DVD's with, but that's later. I got to get it up and running as a TV-set-top-box. Because in October they will turn off the analouge terrestial signal and only send digital. And that's one of the reason I build this box..

..and that reminds me, I forgot some of the hardware I'll be putting in the PC..

However, storing and creating your own memories and media in HD is a real technology gap at the moment and definatly not mainstream ... yet. For example if you shoot a video clip with a standard digital camcorder you could fill a DVD with 2 hours of video, given that a dvd is 4 gigabytes of data. DVD resolution is 480p which means there are 480 horizontal lines progressivly on the screen at any one time to build the image, HD resolution is 1080p so there are 1080 lines of data on the screen at the same time. So if you have twice the amount of lines they'll need to be twice as long to maintain the correct aspect ratio of the image. Which means HD will need four times the amount of data as DVD quality. So now your 2 hours of film in HD will require 16GB of space not 4GB.

So what does this mean to you? Well firstly you really don't have an option of burning to disc that can hold 16GB of movie because HD/bluray burners are just too expensive at the moment and secondly for your computer to edit a HD film needs 4x more processing time and storage space to edit a HD movie. So if any of you have edited standard move you'll know that it can take a long time to convert frames and do some tasks, no different in HD, only that it takes >4 times longer to edit.

If you already have a HD camcorder then you should be aware that you may have paid extra for something you'll likely not be able to use for a while and even though the software you get with a camcorder can burn a movie on to a DVD you will be creating a movie  which can be produced by a standard camcorder $100-$500 cheaper.

Its a real technology gap at the moment and I would tell most people to either wait or buy a standard camcorder for now because you'll probably find when the technology is available that can utilse HD movies there will be much better camera available. However there are people that can connect a laptop or a PC to their HDTV in this case and only this case can you enjoy your raw HD media on your HDTV. Either that or buy a massive external drive to hold the RAW format movie until there is a consumer friendly way to burn discs at full quality.

Hope this was helpful, leave a comment,

This was the first time I have really had a tinker with the Windows Media Center range of Operating systems that Microsoft produce and I went in with few expectations, apart from wanting at least as comparable an experience in terms of functionality and flexibility as I have enjoyed with MediaPortal.

The first thing that struck me was how fickle Windows Media Center 2005 was, even with all the roll ups (essentially what Microsoft call Service Packs for Media Center OS) installed. Wikipedia sums up the 'capabilities' of WMC 2005:

'Media Center originally had a limitation of 1 analog tuner, but was raised to 2 analog tuners with Media Center 2005. With Update Rollup 1 for Media Center 2005, support for a digital tuner was added, but an analog tuner must still be present for the digital tuner to function. With Rollup 2, up to 4 TV tuners can be configured (2 analog and 2 HDTV). All the tuners must use the same source, for example they must all be off an aerial or a set-top box using the same guide data, you cannot mix Sky Digital and DVB-T for example.'

XP Media Center really shows its age here - I do not watch any analogue transmissions, so for a Media Center to require a legacy piece of hardware just to be able to access DVB (digital) seems preposterous. But that was not the worst thing! Windows Media Center 2005 is not capable of pulling EPG data OTA (over-the-air) instead requiring an overly elaborate system that relies on a permanent, always on Internet connection. This also raises some privacy concerns as 'anonymous' data, which is not entirely anonymous as Microsoft asks for your postcode during set up, is fed back to Microsoft which can include recording / watching trends and general EPG usage. Hitherto my media center system has not been networked. Considering it is in the opposite corner of my house, and I do not stream my recordings or have formal media shares, I never felt the need to network it. It was nice to just have a static, secure system without any security programs or periodic updates - now security monitoring of my media center has been added to my list of digital chores.

None the less, I was determined to give it a fair go, so I added a wifi adaptor, added some plug-ins and configured everything. After spending eight hours getting everything working, playing around and testing... I went back to my custom build. Not all the problems can be put squarely at Microsoft's feet however. Elonex declared bankruptcy shortly after launching this range and the malicious part of me can see why, if this mediacenter is the sum total of their expertise.

Whilst the case looked rather nice from the outside, the hardware and the design of the internals is what really lets it down. The only element Elonex got right was the noise (or lack thereof) - the media center barely gives out a murmur when idle due to only a since fan which is housed inside the power supply. It runs at 690rpm, which draws air over the CPU heatsink (which has four heat pipes) and directly out the side of the case. However, I stressed 'at idle' before for a reason. When the media center does anything the incredibly noisy hard drive starts very audibly clicking and crunching away and it completely lets the machine down.

However that's not the worst thing about this mediacenter. Due to the fact that there is only one very slow fan the airflow in the case is restricted to circulating around the motherboard tray, the processor then out the power supply. The harddrive and PCI / AGP cards are completely neglected. This point was slammed home when the harddrive consistently reported temperatures of high 50s to 62 degrees Celsius!!! Worse still, when I idled the system, that heat didn't dissipate. The hard drive is locked into place with a pretentious plastic locking mechanism which neither improves the accessibility of the drive bay nor decreases the vibrations from the drive. There is no thermal (or thermally viable) contact between the hard drive and the case and as such, the hard drive is left smouldering away with no way to cool down predictably with next to no drop in temperature. There is a valid point that maintaining electronic components at a set temperature prolongs their life by avoiding constantly repeating thermal differentials (i.e. heating and cooling) however the fact remains that 60+ degrees centigrade is far too hot for a hard drive. Although my brief research on this did not yield any definitive threshold, most sources agree that 50-55 degrees Centigrade is about the absolute maximum recommended operating temperature.

Couple this practically zero thermal conduction with a lack of airflow and you have a recipie for a very short hard drive life. Even worse, this thermal issue was not limited to HDD, the south-bridge and GFX heatsinks were equally poorly cooled and get unpleasantly hot to the touch.

Worst of all, it is just slow. CpuID and the BIOS disagreed with each other about the exact Intel processor that powers the system. I believe it to be either an Intel Pentium 4 530 (at 3.06Ghz) or a Celeron D 345. There is no way the much older Athlon 2600+ processor with the same RAM should be out performing this setup and yet it does so without breaking a sweat.

All in all, very disappointing. A remarkable demonstration of technical ignorance on the part of Elonex. But hey, I didn't pay for it and now I have an extra DVB-T tuner back in my original, self built machine.

Design (cosmetic) : 8/10 - Pleasing, with a nice Hi-fi look.

Design (technical) : 2/10 - Poor components poorly arranged.

Cooling : 6/10 - Great CPU and powersupply cooling, but everything else is woefully neglected.

Acoustics : 6/10 - Silent until it has to touch the harddrive, still a good effort though

Connectivity : 8/10 - Lots of connectors for digital Audio and Video

Capacity : 5/10 - 200Gb harddrive with a portion taken for recovery. I wouldn't trust it though and by modern standards it is rather anemic.

Overall : 2/10 - Great for free, if I paid anything for it I would have been annoyed.

Still some parts to add, then I will tidy up the cables.

läs mer om htpc

Then I found that with the mini Ninja the Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 will not fit in slots 1 and 2 so I have used 3 and 4, hope this won't cause me problems furthur down the line!

Next up, I fitted the Ninja and like others found the mounting bracket rather tight, but found that fitting it to the board whilst still out of the case worked a treat, still tight, but got there in the end with no damage to any components:) again I didn't fit the stock fan that came with the Ninja, I fitted another golf ball fan, had to raise it up slightly so as to miss the mounting clips that fix the Ninja to the MB.

The Pioneer BDR-202 was a cinch to fit as the drive bay just lifts out, 8 screws later and it was back in, fitted and connected up.

That was it for a bit as I am still waiting for my HDD to arrive so couldn't fit that for obvious reasons, all being well I will carry on tomorrow.

The case:

Antec - Fusion Black 430 1x5.25" bay

• Dimensions: Width: Height: Depth:
• Available in black and silver
• Aluminium front bezel
• Volume-knob, two-lines display and IR-reciever in front
• 1x FireWire, 2xUSB and mic+headset on the front
• Rubber grommet for the HD's for silent operation
• Two 120mm fans for quiet cooling
• PSU rated at 430 watt with 80 % and better efficiency.
• Separate chambers design (much like the Antech P18x and the likes)

The CPU-cooler:

Scythe - "Ninja Mini" for socket 478, 775, 754, 939, 940 and AM2.

• Shorter than the original Ninja (though equaly wide). It will just fit the Antec Fusion.
• Hopefully it will cool the CPU without a fan (the exhaust-fans in the Fusion will be right beside it.)

The North-bridge-cooler:

Thermalright HR-05/IFX Chipset Cooler - Retail

• Heat-pipe design
• Has mounting for optional 80mm fan (though I plan on running it passive)

The mobo:

Gigabyte - mATX AMD AM2+ 780G 4xDDR2 - GA-MA78GM-S2H

• Supports AM2 and AM2+ CPU's
• Sports the new IGP from AMD/ATI: 780G
• 780G equals almost an ATI HD3400 in performance
• VGA, DVI and HDMI ports at the back
• 6 Sata, 8 Usb and 2 firewire
• Seems to be a popular board for HTPC building.

The CPU:

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W

• Dual Core
• Energy efficient, only 45 W
• Cheap

The RAM sticks:

Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 800 (PC2 6400)

• Cheap, an it works (hopefully)

The HD:

Western Digital - 2.5" Scorpio 160GB 8MB 5400rpm - WD1600BEVS
Shop: Newegg Review: SilentPCReview.com (review of the 120 GB model)

• It's a notebook drive, so the power it draws are almost half of that of a normal 3.5" drive.
• Less power = less heat = less fan noise
• It's quiet, but reasonably quick.
• And I plan on suspend it to quiet the drive even more.

The DVD-drive:

LG - DVD+RW 20x8x SATA Black Retail - GH20NS10

• Sata
• The posts from club.cdfreaks.com suggest that it performs quite well as a burner
• I plan on swapping this out for a Bluray/HD-DVD reader/writer later on.

The keyboard:

Microsoft IR Wireless Mini Keyboard - Black 83 Normal Keys 33 Function Keys

• Double function: Keyboard and remote
• Cheap, and I even got a hold of an open-box item for about half price!
• I've got the norwegian layout, since I'm.. ..norwegian..

Min granne har precis skaffat htpc. Jaha, vad är det? Det var rena grekiskan för mig. Men tydligen så är det en form av hemmabio, berättade han. Åh, så roligt sa jag, då kommer jag komma över ofta till dig och titta på hemmabio. Mmm... svarade han bara då, haha.

This will free up the second PCI slot on the motherboard for the second TV card.

From searches around the web, it seems the difference between version 1.0 and 1.1 is the 1.1 has a bigger heatsink on the Northbridge; which may help to solve some of the issues that people have been having with the  rev 1.0 board.

The top picture is my rev 1.0 board, the bottom picture is the newer rev 1.1 board