HTPC Guide @ 2CPU.com

[Steve]

Just a quick post from me to tell you about a nice article over at 2CPU, all about creating a HTPC. I'm tempted to build one myself, so the guide caught my eye. Here's a snippet.

Once you have MCE2005 and all the appropriate drivers for your hardware installed, launch the Media Center application. It will instantly kick into configuration mode and I must say its wizard is the most impressive that I've encountered thus far. Once you've launched the wizard and you've danced past the EULA and privacy agreements it will confirm that you have an internet connection that is always available. It will even test connectivity for you. Once that's out of the way, it will have you configure your tuner(s) and television signal. It will ask you for a region, which defaults to the United States. After I flipped it to Canada and continued on it asked me if I wanted to let it automatically detect the type of television signal that I have, or if I'd like to select it manually.

I hit automatic and after a couple of seconds of looking for a set-top box it discovered that I just had standard cable connected to my capture card. That was that. The next request will be for your zip or postal code. Once you've set that, MCE2005 will go out and find a list of providers from your area. The only remaining things to configure after that are your display and speaker setup. It's relatively quick and painless.

Check out the full guide.

I fancy building an HTPC rig, so I'll be sure to give this a read.

[speedy_s]

Nice indepth review, but
I really wanted them to test the hiper media case. It is one of the thin-est case around. And it looks better than any other htpc case around. May be hexus can do a review of them?

But how would you connect sky to ur htpc? Without sky there is nothing else to watch apart from those lame bbc channels.

[Steve]

http://www.hipergroup.com/mediaspec.htm

That is a pretty swish case, shame Hiper's website is shocking. :\