BUILD YOUR OWN MEDIA CENTER
A PICTORIAL GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS
Written by bella
Special thanks go to Davis Hampson, Pantonius, GlenR, Chris Maddern for their editing assistance!
The guide comprises of the following sections:
Part 1: Budget and Research
Part 2: Building the Mediacenter
Part 3: Install Windows Mediacenter Operating System
Part 4: Make Back Ups
Part 5: Install Updates and Continue Building
Part 6: Install the Mediacenter Video Decoder and FFDshow
Part 7: Windows Media Center Setup
Part 8: Media Center Plug-ins
Part 9: Re-install Media Center
Part 10: Connect Your PC To Your TV
Part 11: Problem Solving
This guide is designed for beginners and has been kept as simple and easy to use as possible. It describes the path I have taken to successfully build a Media Center PC. It is been based entirely on my own experiences building my first Media Center PC from scratch and details the specific parts I used. If you are going to use different components such as CPU or AGP/PCIe cards, please refer to the manufacturer's guide and replace my text with theirs.
Photos and examples used in this guide are from the parts I used in my build and a few pics from my other PC.
This Media Center was build to a strict budget. With the MCE remote included the total cost came to $861.00 Aussie Dollars.
I hope my experience will help to answer any questions you may have and if you have ideas for additions or find any errors, please let me know or send me your contribution by PM or let's discuss it below - however I don't want to discuss which PC parts would have been better etc because it's too late now
In addition to the assistance provided by the people mentioned above, I would also like to thank the hundreds, if not thousands of members of this community for adding to my/our collective knowledge - without all this I would never have attempted this adventure!
bella
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Build Your Own Media Center
