My Home Theater PC Project

Today I found out that there is an interesting thread on AVS Forum on the Gigabyte Motherboard. Amongst others it has links to the latest releases of the BIOS.

All the stuff I ordered from Cool-Prices has arrived today. The only thing missing is the floppyDTV card, but it is on its way from Austria to The Netherlands.

I have made some quick shots from the boxes (no shot from the NEC DVD Drive as I needed it for the setup of my Windows Home Server):

Hopefully it is all going to fit into the casing:

Now that the hardware has been ordered and is in the process of being delivered to my home address, it is time to think about and prepare the soft side of the story. I have decided - based on another thread on GoT - to run the system on Windows XP UK and Media Portal. So, I just ordered my Windows XP UK license. Luckely my kid is at school, so I can get cheap licenses from surfspot (a Dutch only thing).

First impression of the motherboard:

I have very good experience with cool-prices, so I decided to order the major stuff from them. Placed the order this morning, and received an email that everything is packed and shipped....

Unfortunately two items could not be delivered by cool-prices, so I had to look for another shop. The GigaByte motherboard is a very recent introduction, so is pretty hard to get in The Netherlands. This weekend I found out that Alternate had the motherboard in stock, so I decided to order it from them. Today the board arrived.

The other item that is hard to get - at a decent price - is the FloppyDTV stuff, so I decided to order it directly from the manufacturer in Austria: Digital Everywhere. This morning I received an email that the order is shipped with regular mail to my home address. No clue on how long it will take to get to me.

If everything goes as planned, I can start integrating the parts tomorrow....

This is the planned configuration for my new HTPC:

CPU	MD Athlon BE 2400
MEMORY	Kingston 2x1GB DDR2 PC6400 CL5
COOLER	Scythe Ninja Mini
MOTHERBOARD	Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H
GRAPHICS	Club3D Radeon 3450 256MB PCIe
HARDDISK	Samsung Spinpoint F1 750 GB
CASING	Antec Fusion 430 Silver/Black
DVD	NEC
DIGITAL TV	FloppyDTV-C, incl. CAM Module

Welcome to my blog on HTPC. I decided to built my own Home Theater PC, based on the experiences a friend of mine has, and on the amazing big topic on the forum of Tweakers. The latter is the place where I got most of my information with respect to HTPC construction. So, when you need info on HTPC construction certainly consult this thread (in Dutch only).