How to Build a Home Theater PC

Since this particular HTPC is designed to connect to your clients' already-existing home theater system, there&'s no need to spec out speakers, video displays, receivers/amplifiers, or input devices like cable boxes/satellite receivers.

However, there is one small glitch to overcome if you take on this project. Connecting an HTPC to a TV is much more complicated that hooking it up to a computer monitor. While there are hundreds of combinations of pixel size and frequency choices for a computer display, there are only a scant few a television can accept. So before you hook up an HTPC to a TV, you must be certain you&'ve set up the video output properly.

Ingredients

Here are the components you'll need, and the specific products I recommend:

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Five Steps to Building the Home Theater PC

Step 1: Keeping the HTPC Cool and Quiet

For any computer, cooling is obviously important, but for a home theater PC, it&'s critical. Proper planning a must—especially since many home PCs are often dropped into racks with limited ventilation. In addition to keeping the HTPC cool, you&'ll also want to keep it quiet. The last thing your client wants to hear is the annoying whine of fans while they're trying to watch a movie.

For both of these reasons, I recommend using 120-mm fans in your case/power supply where possible. The Seasonic S12-500 deploys a 120-mm fan, and it also has an exceptionally efficient power supply. This will allow the computer to move the same amount of air (measured in cubic feet of air moved per minute) through the case, but with much lower noise output. Those larger fans are moving slower.

Additionally, since a high-speed processor can pour out heat like a small space heater, you want to make certain you&'ve got an excellent heat sink/fan combination. For the HTPC, I recommend the Thermalright XP-90C. Compared with the stock Intel heat sink/fan combo, this will give you much lower processor temps and much lower noise output.

Step 2: Maxing-Out the Audio/Video

Since the desired output from this home theater PC is the highest quality audio and video, some of your decisions will be based on your clients' already-existing equipment. For instance, if your client has a large-screen TV, the inputs you have available will influence your output choices from the HTPC. However, if they have a recent model TV with DVI inputs, it&'s as simple as hooking up a DVI cable and setting the proper output type: 480, 720 or 1080.

But if your client has component inputs on their TV, then this process becomes a bit more complicated. In this case, you&'ll need a cable adapter to convert the output from the video card (DVI) to the three-cable component video signal accepted by your clients' TV.

For audio output, I recommend you use the motherboard&'s digital output (either optical or coaxial), thus bypassing any chance of extraneous noise (such as RF) from the PC affecting the audio output. This will also allow your clients' receiver to receive and properly decode the multi-channel Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital or Digital Theater System (DTS) tracks. These are digital, multi-channel audio formats. The HTPC will send the signals digitally to the receiver, which in turn will send the right sounds to the right speakers. Step 3: Get the Aesthetics Right

For gaming PCs, the “pimped out” look is coveted, but that can work against you on a HTPC. Here, a minimalist design is often the better choice. Because the HTPC will often be in direct sight of the viewers, you don&'t want overly-bright or flashy LED&'s to distract their attention. You&'ll also want something that will look elegant alongside your clients' stereo equipment, not just a mini-tower lying on its side.

As far as displays go, a front-facing fluorescent or LCD display is a good idea, such as the one included with my suggested case. This can allow you to get information from the HTPC should there be a connection problem to your clients' TV. Having a built-in LCD screen makes any troubleshooting easier, saving you from having to either pull the HTPC out of your rack, or needing to pull over a monitor. Also, in case you have connection problems, a built-in display is always the best choice, though it will be more expensive,

Step 4: Allow for Plenty of Storage

There is an old adage that data will expand to fill all available space. Of course, that was coined back in the day of 20-MB hard drives! Today, depending on the source, you should figure about 1 GB/hour for high-quality, standard-resolution video, and up to 10 GB/hour for high-definition content.

While hard-disk storage rates have increased dramatically in recent years, and while prices have plummeted, backup technologies have not kept pace. For instance, a 400-GB native hard drive costs a few hundred dollars, while a 400-GB native tape drive costs a few thousand.

For this project, I&'ve chosen a total of 1.6 TB of storage. Using the Intel Matrix RAID technology, this will give you the capability of using both RAID0 and RAID1 across the same physical drives. This gives you the ability to offer high-speed striped storage for your clients' recorded audio/video, as well as safer mirrored storage for the OS, software and configuration files. It&'s much easier to re-rip video files than it is to reinstall the OS and applications. And the mirrored RAID-1 volume will help your client survive a single drive failure with the OS intact.

You can always change the configuration of the drives slightly by putting the entire system into RAID1. Doing so will allow a drive failure with no loss of any data to either the OS or the recorded audio/video files. But it will decrease total storage space from 1.5 TB to 800 MB.

Step 5: Choosing the Right Remote Control

You&'ll want to ensure the remote control is one that&'s comfortable in your client's hand for extensive use. While this is a subjective and personal device choice, I recommend the Microsoft remote for initial control of the HTPC. However, chances are you may wish to offer a full-featured remote for control of the entire audio/video system.

An excellent choice is the Logitech Harmony series, which is actually configured via the Web. You essentially choose the equipment by brand and model number, and then the proper remote codes are downloaded to the remote.

If your client's HTPC is hooked to their TV, most likely they won&'t be sitting in front of it with a keyboard and mouse. While HD video will look great in High Definition, trying to manipulate a Windows desktop during viewing will become an exercise in futility. Accordingly, I recommended that you do software maintenance and updates with a PC remote-control software package. I specifically recommend Remotely Anywhere from 3am Labs. It&'s an excellent PC remote-control software package that lets you secure not only remote keyboard/video/mouse control, but also software transfer, remote reboots and updates.

Congratulations. You&'ve built a home theatre PC that will play both existing audio/video collections, as well as allowing your clients to record and play any audio/video content they record. The system has a large (and expandable) storage capacity, and it offers the ability to upgrade the software and/or capture cards to deal with any capture or codec requirements you or your clients might come across. Enjoy!

MICHAEL WROOBEL has been involved with computers since he was 13 years old, starting with an Altair 8080. Since then he has worked with just about every PC on the planet.