The MediaPC is the primary playback machine. It's connected to the HomeTheater and provides digital audio and HD video playback of a variety of media types. Also should play Half Life 2 at a decent framerate.

Hardware

Athlon 64 3000+, Thermalright XP120 heatsink, Panaflo 120mm fan, 1gb RAM, 120gb Seagate Barracuda, DFI LanParty? UT NF3 motherboard, fanless ATI Radeon 9800 pro, Plextor CDR/DVD-RW, Ahanix D4 case, Logitech cordless mouse/keyboard combo, Microsoft Media Center Remote, Antec 420 watt silent power supply.

Notes

In addition to the usual big fun, the DFI motherboard provides onboard digital audio, gigabit ethernet, and BIOS-level fan speed regulation.

The Good

This machine is stinky fast. 'nuff said. It's also very quiet at idle. The Thermalright headsink is absolutely huge and radiates plenty well - the CPU fan runs at minimum speed most of the time and is completely silent (for the first few minutes anyway, see below). The ATI card could heat a large room - I am a bit paranoid about it (again, see below), but fanless r0x0r. The remote control integration with Windows MCE is great. Navigation works very well and the ergos on the remote are top-notch (once I memorized which buttons do what, finding them by feel was second-nature).

The Bad:

Ahhh... The core is strong, but the peripherals are weak. The Logitech cordless stuff stinks - usable range is ~ 18" from the reciever. There's just too much dang RF noise is my guess. I'll have to look into alternatives. UPDATE I recently invested in the Logitech diNovo? Bluetooth keyboard/mouse/keypad combo. Pricy, but darn sexy and the Bluetooth range is great. The diNovo has it's own issues though - every so often, it forgets that it was paired with the machine and I have to pull out a regular corded mouse to do the re-pairing.

The Microsoft Media Center remote is great, but my MX-500? has problems with the d-pad - big bummer, it's the only remote the MX doesn't like. There's a dozen clones out there, I might try out one of the competition. For some reason, it doesn't deal with the repeat cycle on the MCE remote (IE - holding down a button to scroll).

The Ahanix case is also rather weak. It looks good on the outside, but there's a lot of poor design. The case fan is horribly inadequate, meaning the CPU and power supply fans are usually at full blast after only a few minutes of use. The drive cages are against eachother, so you're only able to screw the drives in on one side (leaving the CD drive rather loose), and the VFD data transfer is rather flaky (the display shows random digits every so often). The drive bay door is also poorly designed. It's flush with the top of the unit, so if you've got something on top of the case, there's no way to open it. It also doesn't sit perfectly straight (very noticeable).

The ATI card seems slightly glitchy when playing back video after it warms up (oddly enough, it has no problems with other graphics stuff, just Media Player). It doesn't seat too well in the case (not sure if that's the motherboard or card or case's fault) and I'm guessing something's breaking contact when it gets hot. The card was a refurb (the only way I could find it for less than $300), so maybe that was a refurb problem.

Total cost: $1200

Software

Windows Media Center Edition 2005

I'd intended to try out the 3 or 4 most popular media center solutions and settle on what I liked best, but Windows MCE just worked so well out of the box, I'll probably stick with it.

A word on power management

(from Dave Glover's awesome blog)

Well I always wondered what the difference was between the standby modes in the BIOS setup. S1 allows the system to standby but the fans keep running (noisy) and S3 (STR – Standby to RAM) turns the fans off and it blissfully and completely silent and it is also more energy efficient than S1 mode.

The less than good news is if you installed Windows XP (inc MCE) with the standby mode set to S1 and you want the system to operate in S3 then you need to reload the OS as there are system files and registry settings that you cant change after the installation.

Other requirements to run your system using S3 standby mode are:-

* Your Motherboard BIOS must include the option to wake via a USB device (The MCE remote in this case) * A registry hack that allows the MCE system to be wake up via the MCE Remote control. See http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=42&messageid=49101#bm76406.

-- ChrisWeiss - 11 Feb 2005