Testing out Media Center 2005

June 14, 2008 (Last Modified: June 15, 2008)

I’ve started a new personal project….setting up a Media Center Edition PC. I’ve got the OS software and have just purchased some new toys for my desktop at home to get started. This weekend I’m going to be attempting to get Windows XP MCE installed and do some test recordings. I’ll blog about my experiences, and if it is too problematic, I’ll put up an article of the steps I took to get it installed.

One thing of note is that I’m not going to have it connected to my TV right away. Instead, if it works out well, I’m going purchase a Linksys Media Center Extender instead of directly connecting my TV up to the desktop. So, I won’t be getting the Media Center remote for now. Perhaps if at some later date I get a nice computer case for media PCs (for example) and move the computer into the living room I’ll get a remote. The Linksys extender comes with it’s own remote and that will power the TV use of the Media Center. On the actual machine itself the mouse will do (in my study I don’t really have a need for a remote).

Yesterday my new hardware toys arrived: An ATI Wonder tuner card, a 200 GB SATA hard drive (for storage), a Pioneer DVD/RW+CD/RW drive, and a Zalman 400 Watt power supply (I need the new power supply as my desktop’s current one’s fan died). Last night I installed the tuner card, power supply and Pioneer drive to make sure they all worked (installed them under the Windows XP Professional OS that is currently running on the box).

The original plan was to install the MCE OS on my second EIDE hard drive I’ve had for a while, but I noticed that was only 12 GB in size last night….eeek. Then the current master EIDE Hard Drive in the box is only a 20 GB and I don’t want to loose that installed OS yet (just in case I want to switch back and I don’t want to spend all that time getting everything off the drive yet). So, today I’ll be making a trip to Microcenter Mall to pick up another hard drive. They have a real good deal on a EIDE Western Digital 120 GB for $30 (after mail in rebates, $90 out of pocket at purchase time).