Money’s no object? Then nip out and spend three grand or so on a brand spanking new media centre PC to grace the finest of living rooms. But if your budget is tight, worry not. It is easy to build a perfectly acceptable media centre PC on a low budget. All you need to do is to utilise one of those spare PCs kicking around the garage that you were going to throw-out or sell on eBay.
Better still, assign your current PC to media centre duties and use this as an excuse to upgrade to the latest gear. And if you’re one of those rare individuals that doesn’t have a spare PC gathering dust, point your browser at eBay and see if you can pick-up a bargain for a half-decent PC.
See what other bits and pieces you can utilise to give your spare PC a bit more grunt. Memory and disk drives are what you are after – see if you can cannibalise some other spare computers that might be lying about. If your PC’s disk’s capacity is only a few GB, nip out to a computer store and buy a new one - $70 or so will buy you an 80GB drive – ample for what you will need.
You’ll need to connect your PC to your TV. This is easy if you have a LCD or Plasma TV because these TVs will support VGA and maybe HDMI too. The easiest option is to use VGA – and for most purposes this will be perfectly acceptable. Your computer hardware store will have a VGA cable for a few bucks if you don’t have one. If your TV supports HDMI and your PC has a DVI plug – even better. HDMI and DVI are compatible for video (but not sound). HDMI to DVI cables cost about $30. If you don’t have a LCD or Plasma TV then you’ve got a bit more work to do. S-Video is probably the best way to go if your TV supports this interface. Get an S-Video card for your PC, although I haven’t tried this myself so do your research first.
Having connected your PC to the TV, you are going to need sound. Some PCs have an on-board sound card and usually it is simply a matter of plugging this into your amplifier. For about $3 you can buy a Y adapter for connecting the 3/8 inch jack socket on your sound card to a pair of RCA plugs – this should be sufficient for most people. And if your PC does not have a sound card don’t worry – a sound card can be picked for as little as $18.
If you want to record TV shows on your media centre, pop-in a TV card for about $100. But since your main computer is likely to be a higher specification machine, it might be better to pop the TV card in this machine and stream your recorded TV shows to the media centre PC.
The final hardware component is the keyboard and mouse. Of course you could simply use a desktop keyboard and mouse, but you’ll soon get hacked-off getting up from the sofa every time you want to play some media. PC remote controls work after a fashion – but they are a pain to use at times. The best solution is to get a wireless keyboard. Shintaro does a cracking wireless keyboard for as little as $63.
After you’ve got the computer wired-up to the TV and the sound amplifier you need to consider media centre software. This is the easiest bit of all – download Windows Media Player from Microsoft (or iTunes from Apple) free of charge and base your media centre on this tried and tested program.
Not only does Windows Media Player work well - it should do, it’s been around for a long time - but it is a “light” and efficient program. Windows Media Payer plays music and movies, supports internet radio, and the visualisations in full screen mode look stunning on a LCD TV when you are playing music.
There are two issues that you’ll need to address with the suggested budget configuration – the computer might look ugly and it will certainly emit a bit of noise. Use some imagination and see if you can hide the computer if it is an eyesore. There is not much you can do about the noise (which comes from the PC’s power supply fan, the case fan and processor fan) without spending serious dollars. But remember that proper “living room friendly” PC cases cost from $300 upwards – almost certainly more than your PC is worth. The ideal solution is to locate the PC in a cupboard (VGA cables can be up to 15 metres long). This will address the ugliness and noise, and the keyboard uses radio signals so does not need line-of-site.
I’d expect media centre types to be chuckling at the prospect of a Windows Media Player centric media centre.
But remember that the premise of this article is to cobble-together a media centre on a low budget. Listening to music, watching recorded TV shows, showing the family snaps on the telly and the like doesn’t need a fancy media centre PC. For many people, getting started with the sort of configuration proposed in this article is a good way to cut their teeth on media centres.
There is nothing wrong with a Pentium PIII running Windows 2000, with 512MB of memory running Windows Media Player. And once you’ve got the rig set-up, have fun lounging on the sofa messing about with YouTube, browsing the newspapers, listening to your ripped music, watching recorded TV shows and MSNing your buddies.
Recycle a Spare PC for Media Centre Duties
