Your high-tech, Wi-Fi-equipped home just isn't complete without a wireless media center. With a wireless media center, you can use one computer to store and organize all of your music and video, and then stream that media wirelessly to any location in your home. With the right hardware, a wireless media center can also:
- Act as a TV tuner, allowing you to watch your favorite broadcast, satellite, or cable shows.
- Serve as a digital video recorder (DVR), recording shows onto a hard drive where they can be retrieved and watched later.
- Integrate with your TV and home entertainment system to provide an advanced, high-fidelity multimedia entertainment center.
Building a media center computer
Follow these steps to build a media center computer:
1. Select a modern processor with a speed greater than 2 GHz.
Try to stick with an Intel Pentium 4 or better, or AMD Athlon XP or better. If you prefer Macs, most modern PowerMacs, iMacs, or MacMinis with a G4 or better processor should be adequate.
2. Choose a case that is attractive and designed for quiet operation. You don't want to listen to noisy computer fans while you try to watch DVD movies.
3. Make sure that the power supply provides at least 300 watts of power. High-quality display adapters, hard drives, and TV tuner cards use a lot of power.
Several companies now offer fanless power supplies. A fanless power supply makes the computer a lot quieter.
4. Choose a motherboard with plenty of available PCI slots.
5. Choose a high-quality video card with lots of dedicated video memory and video outputs that is compatible with your TV monitor.
6. Install TV tuner cards for both analog and HDTV signals. Some TV tuner cards support both HD and analog signals, such as the ADS Tech Instant HDTV PCI card.
7. Select a high-quality sound card that supports 6.1 or 7.1 surround sound.
8. Connect the audio output on your sound card to the audio inputs on your home theater receiver to control the speakers.
Most electronics stores sell cables that connect the mini-jack outputs on your sound card to the RCA-style analog audio inputs on a home theater receiver.
Connecting a TV to the media center
To connect a TV to the media center, follow these steps:
1. Determine the type of input cable that your TV will accept.
2. Connect one of the following types of cables between the TV's video input and the computer's video output:
Component: These consist of three RCA-like connectors colored red, green, and blue and provide the best possible video quality.
S-Video: This connector (see Figure 1) is more common and provides a high quality image.
Composite: This yellow RCA-style connector (see Figure 1) provides good video quality, but is inferior to Component or S-Video.
S-Video connectors carry only video images, and no sound. S-Video is preferable to composite video because S-Video offers higher picture quality.
