Ten,Tips,for,Building,Your,Own technology Ten Tips for Building Your Own Media Center Computer
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With new faster processers, bigger hard drivesand new larger LCD televisions building a media center computer hasbecome more and more practical. A media center computer can recordmultiple television shows at one time, can organize all your music andpictures and can also be used as a normal computer. They are definitelyvery cool. However, before you decide to build your own media centerhere are ten quick tips... 1. Consider building a machine with a dual core or quad core processor.The multiple processing threads will be very useful when recordingmultiple programs and watching a program at the same time. A fast multicore processor is a must if you plan on watching and recording hidefinition TV. 2. Don't skimp on the RAM. A good media center will have at least 2GBof ram and should probably have up to 4GB. The ram will help keepthings moving quickly while you are recording programs. 3. You can never have enough hard drive space. With high definition TVbecoming more of a standard you are going to want to consider havinglarge amounts of hard drive space on your machine. I wouldn't build amachine that had less than a terabyte of hard drive space. 4. To increase performance considering using a raid configuration foryour hard drives. Using raid zero along with high speed SATA harddrives can help you improve video performance and can prevent recordingerrors. 5. Get good TV tuner cards with built in hardware encoding. Tuner cardswith MPEG hardware encoding will take a load off your processor whenthey record tv shows, this will help ensure that you won't get anyskipping or problems in your recorded output. I use Hauppauge cards inmy machine and they work great. 6. Invest in a good decoding program. The software decoder softwareoffered by Nvidia does a good job on my media center. However, I testedfour or five different ones before I found one that operated the way Iwanted with my hardware configuration. Be prepared to test somedifferent options before you settle on the one that will work best foryou. 7. Don't forget to order the remote control. A media center without aremote control is a travesty. These computers are designed to operatedwhile you sit back on your couch. The remotes don't cost that much andthey work great. 8. Buy the best video card that you can afford. The better the videocard that you have the less chances you have that you will haveproblems with playback. Before you buy your video card also make sureto check the list of Media Center approved cards. If the card isn't onthere you might want to avoid it. Also make sure that you buy a videocard that has a high definition output that matches your TV (either DVIor HDMI are the best). 9. Get a good audio card that is capable of feeding source audio toyour receiver or your speakers. If you plan on outputting 5.1 or 7.1data from DVD's you are going to want to make sure that the sound cardthat you pick has an optical or digital coax output. You might alsoconsider buying a card that will convert all the sounds used on yourcomputer into a 5.1 or 7.1 digital audio feed. 10. Be prepared to play with your configuration and build.Unfortunately, building a media center is not an exact science andthere is usually quite a bit of tinkering involved in getting a stablefully functional system. If you aren't comfortable playing with thesettings and the drivers to get things to work you might considerbuying a prebuilt media center and have someone else do the testing andconfiguring for you. I have been running windows XP media center edition for quite a whilenow and I love it. I have built two different media centers and theyhave both been a blast. Try it for yourself and see. Article Tags: Media Center Computer, Hard Drive Space, Media Center, Center Computer, Hard Drives, Hard Drive, Drive Space, Video Card, Make Sure
Ten,Tips,for,Building,Your,Own