My New Media Center PC

I got a new Acer at Tiger Direct. It was just a cheapo, but it is more than adequate for my Media Center. It is running Windows Vista, and I added on 2 digital tuners and a 750 GB secondary SATA drive for tv recording and media storage.

19" LCD (this came with the PC, but it is upstairs in my office now)
Embedded high-definition audio with 7.1-channel audio support
Two external speakers
VGA, DVI-D, headphones, microphone and six audio ports
Interface Ports
RJ-45 LAN
VGA
Headphones
Microphone
DVI-D
FireWire® (IEEE 1394)
Two PS/2®
Six audio
Eight USB 2.0 (four front, four back)
Communications
Gigabit LAN
V.92 modem
Bunch of Included Software
NTI Media Maker™
Six 3.5" drive bays (two external, four internal)
Two 5.25" drive bays
One PCI Express® 2.0 x1
One PCI Express® 2.0 x16
Two PCI v2.3
USB mouse and multimedia English keyboard
250 watt power supply

The secondary drive is so that all the recording/deleting of tv and other media takes place on a drive other than the one where the operating system resides. This will help keep the PC quick and responsive. Also in the "keep the PC quick and responsive" department - the PC will be locked down for program installation: no apps will be installed to the PC besides what is already there, with a few minor exceptions.

The two tv tuners allow me to record two shows at once.

My plan for revenge against the cable company – part 1

Intro

My cable bill is $125 a month.  Ridiculous.  That includes road runner and hd cable.  It also includes that lovely $8/month fee for the dvr.  Over the lifetime of that dvr I’m pretty sure I have paid for it about 5 times.  My plan is to set myself up with an alternative to cable, perfect it, and get as many other people as I can to do the same thing.  My first goal is to keep Time Warner Cable from making $1250 a year from me.  After that, I will start preaching and hopefully converting other people as well.

My plan:

1. Get an over-the-air digital antenna, to receive local channels (including all the major networks, and HDTV) for free.
2. Build my own DVR,  possibly with Windows Media Center.
3. Watch “cable channels” such as Comedy Central and Food Network over the Internet.
4. Cancel my cable, except the road runner part so that I can still do #3.
5. Research other options for Internet.

Part 1

Most people (including me until not long ago) don’t realize that tv stations all over the place are broadcasting over-the-air (OTA) HD signals, and that the quality of those signals can be better than what you can get over cable or satellite (because these OTA signals don’t use all the lossy compression that cable and satellite signals do).  Buying a UHF digital antenna will allow you to pickup these signals, for free.

So, I bought a UHF digital antenna.  Specifically I got the Philips PHDTV1 Silver Sensor indoor antenna from Amazon.com, I connected it to my tv and it works great!  Now of course I’m not receiving MTV and Comedy Central with this – instead I just get whatever signals are broadcast in my geographic location.  In my case those are FOX/HD, CBS/HD, NBC/HD, ABC/HD, PBS/HD, CW/HD, WRDC/HD, and some spanish channels.  Sweet!

Part 1 accomplished.

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