Building a Complete Media Center with a Shuttle PC

Category: Computers & Internet - Hardware - Laptops, Servers, Peripherals, Etc. Tags: high definition , hdtv , hdmi , media center , shuttle

Wednesday July 15th, 2009

This past week we got a new 1080p HDMI HDTV 42''. Whoopty doo, it's about time right? Although I never spend much time in front of a TV, I finally realized that I had a great excuse to build a powerful media center PC that can access anything and everything on my network and bring it to the "big screen" in HD.

So without any hesitation I went ahead and ordered what I needed from Newegg, here's what I got:

The rest of the parts I already had which were:

4x1GB DDR2 Ram
Dlink USB Wireless Network Adaptor
diNovo Edge™ Wireless Keyboard (built in trackpad)

The parts from newegg arrived just 2 days later and I was ready to go, I can now virtually access anything and everything on my home network including movies, music, pictures. Not to mentioned have a full computer and internet capability at my finger tips. I installed boxee, which is an awesome platform/interface to browse through local, network, and online media. It does useful things like organize, and download covers, descriptions, ratings, and trailers for all your media on the fly. The pictures below show the process from beginning to end. Installing the components into the shuttle PC, then formatting it, and finally using it live with HDMI video and sound and having fun with boxee and google earth. I'll let the pictures explain the rest...