I just built a new computer to use as a Viewing Station

Two weeks ago I assembled a new PC to use as my front room viewing computer.  I assembled this out of some new parts and some parts that I had laying around.  What excites me most in this new computer is how powerful and inexpensive the processor is.  I used an Intel Celeron G530 processor for this build, this is the first Intel chip I have purchased in many years, all of my other systems run AMD processors.
  The Celeron G530 is the younger sibling to  the i3 and the Pentium G600 series processors.  It has 2MB of cache versus 3 on it's bigger siblings, it is also clocked lower at 2.4GHz.  With dual cores and on chip video this processor easily powers my video station.


Here is a list of the parts that I purchased and also the parts I reused from previous systems.  If you don't have parts laying around you would need to purchase these so I'll put a value on the used parts to give you an idea of cost.

parts purchased
~$51                    Intel G530 CPU 2.40 GHZ 2M CACHE 2.4 2 LGA 1155 Processor

~59 - $30 rebate  ECS H61H2-M2 Socket 1155/ Intel H61 Motherboard

~$50                    Patriot Memory Sector5 G Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800

~$21                    Lite-On 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Drive

sub total = $181 - 30 rebate = $151

used parts found and reused

$50                     XION ATX Mid Tower Computer Case w/500 Watt Power Supply

$60                     Western Digital 160 GB Caviar SATA Hard Drive

$120                   Microsoft WINDOWS 7


sub total of re-used parts $230

Total of $381

For around the same price you could buy an off the shelf system that is equivalent or better than this system, an example is this G620 system at Amazon, HP Pavilion Slimline s5-1110 Desktop Computer - Black for $440. The advantage to building your own is that upgrading later to different processors, motherboards, video etc is much easier than in a branded computer.

This post was not meant as a guide to how to build your own system, there are many good guides available on the web.  My main point to this post is how good and how inexpensive the new Celeron G530 processor is.  If you want to build your own system and have some questions leave me a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

What do I do with my tuners now that I no longer record shows on the computer?

  I have 2 tuner boxes and 3 tuner cards.  I have the SiliconDust HDHomeRun Dual High Definition Digital Television HDHR3-US (Black), and a Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Tuner Cable Card TV Tuner.  I use these tuners for watching live TV or for recording a show that I want to watch right away.
  Last night I setup a recording for The Big Bang Theory and we watched it about 15 minutes after the show started as this let us fast forward through the commercials.  So, I still need and want the tuners just not for all of my recording needs.
  If you don't watch The Big Bang Theory I recommend that you download the first season and give it a try, this is my favorite show being aired now.  You can use Google or any torrent search engine to find a torrent with all of season one in one torrent.  See my post about downloading TV episodes for more details.

I no longer record my television shows on the computer

  I still watch them on the computer I just no longer record them there.  Instead of scheduling and recording all of my shows with my tuners I download the shows as bit torrents from the web.  The shows tend to be available the day after they aired, they are high quality and the commercials have been cut out of them.
   Another advantage of downloading verses recording the shows is that the download file tends to be about a quarter the size of the recorded show.  I freed up nearly a terabyte of space on my Windows Home Server by downloading all of the back episodes and deleting my recordings for my series.
  To find bit torrents of your favorite shows you can use torrent search engines or you can use Google.   There is a great guide to setting up your Windows Media Center environment and downloading your shows called Eliminate Cable available from AssassinHTPC.  There were a couple of ideas listed in this guide that I've started using.

My Home Video System is working super well, I am thrilled

  For video playback I now use a computer at each television.  These computers connect to my Windows Home Server to pull or stream video.  The neat thing about this setup is that I can start watching a movie on one computer, stop the playback, move to the other computer and resume watching at the spot I stopped.
  I'm not doing anything special to make this room to room move work, I'm just using one source for all of my video and Windows Media Center (which is in all versions of Windows 7 except basic).  Windows Media Center (also known as WMC) writes a little file to the location where the video file is located noting where you stopped playback.
  Last night we were watching Jungle Book 2 in the front room.  Stopped the movie, moved upstairs to get ready for bed and continued playback.  The cable company wants to charge quite a bit for a DVR that can do this and Windows can do it for free.

Just added a cable card tuner to my Media Center setup

  I bought the Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Tuner Cable Card TV Tuner from Amazon.  The installation was fairly simple although I did have to call Time Warner and work with them for about half an hour to get it registered on their system.
  The cable card feature on this allows it to work like the DVR that I rent from Time Warner.  I can see the encrypted channels that my Silicon Dust HD HomeRun cannot see.  It is not perfect however as many channels are broadcast on an on demand basis, the technology for this is called Switched Digital Video or SDV.  SDV is used for the channels that have few viewers, unfortunately for me BBC HD is included in that list. To get the SDV channels your tuner needs to send a signal to Time Warner to send the channel.  The Hauppauge cannot send the signal but it does work with a tuning adapter to notify Time Warner that you want to watch an SDV channel.
  I picked up a tuning adapter from Time Warner, there was not cost, unfortunately the one I got is not currently supported by Hauppauge so I am still out some channels.
  The picture on my HD channels is great, just as good as my DVR if not better.  I am really enjoying this new cablecard tuner setup.  I do wish that this was a network device like the HD HomeRun so that I could share the tuners on multiple computers.  Silicon Dust makes a new version of the HD HomeRun that is cablecard and network capable, the cost has kept me from buying it so far.
  More details soon.

Silicon Dust HDHomeRun

For Christmas I bought myself an HDHomerun. This is a network connected dual tuner that works with many software products including Windows Media Center.
The HDHomerun is ethernet attached and as many computers as you like can use it to tune in and watch or record digital television. With two tuners two computers can each use one tuner or one computer could use both tuners at the same time.
The HDHomerun has required quite a bit of configuration but nothing technical. I've had to configure many of the digital cable channels but Silicon Dust offers great instructions and tech support to help in this process.
One of the issues that I have with the HDHomerun is that once you do all your configs for the channels you have to repeat them for every computer. I wish there was some way to move the config file from one computer to another.
Over all I am very happy with the HDHomerun and would recommend it to someone who is not afraid of some configuration work.

Back on Media Center Again

We moved the DVR back to the family room and I've setup a Media Center PC in our bedroom. While I'm not loving the selection of channels, many of our favorites are not available, we are loving watching downloaded video and some Media Center recorded shows.
I've installed the Silicon Dust HDHomerun and so far am pleased with it. It's been fun to work with and configure to get all the channels possible. I still don't quite have it setup completely but am probably 95% done.
Part of the issue that I have with my Media Center is that I don't want to leave the computer in the bedroom running all the time. I have a computer in my office that runs 7X24. I configure recordings from the HDHomerun on the office computer and then daily I power up the bedroom computer and move the recordings over.
The issue that comes up with this setup is that if I see a commercial for a show that I want to record I have to either try to remember it and schedule it when I get on the office computer or run to the office and schedule it right away. Remote access to the office computer would be cumbersome as it's awkward to use a wireless keyboard while sitting in bed ten feet from the television screen.
Media Center is not the perfect solution that I would like it to be but it's pretty good and I'm having fun playing with it.