1. Introduction

In 2005, in tandem with Mike Chin, Matt Wright, and Justin Korelc, I wrote a book for Wiley Publishing called Build the Ultimate Home Theater PC (ISBN: 0471755494). It helped me to advance from the status of interested media PC neophyte to experienced media PC veteran. As I completed this project, I found so-called TV tuner or TV capture cards to be among the most interesting of media PC components.

To get an idea of what a top-of-the-line Media Center PC could (or should) look and act like, I purchased a unit from German PC maker Hush Technologies. For a pretty princely price - just under $3,000 including several upgrades and add-ons - I got a completely silent, reasonably capable media PC that could use Windows Media Center 2005 to handle television, play DVDs, output music, and work as a regular PC to boot.

I also go a couple of surprises with my purchase. Figuring that Hush tested the configurations it offered for sale, I started out by ordering an AMD motherboard and processor combination (an Athlon 64 X2 3800+) as the foundation for my system. Here, I must point out I worked with a US Hush reseller and agent, Logic Supply, Inc., not directly with Hush itself.

After several delays on promised system delivery, the president of Logic Supply called me to explain that they couldn’t build a system around the AMD motherboard and processor that Hush required them to use, according to my specifications. It turns out that the slim profile case that Hush uses requires a PCI riser card, so that two PCI devices essentially get plugged into one PCI slot on the motherboard. This lets one or two PCI cards align in parallel to the motherboard, while maintaining a very low profile. Because I ordered a dual tuner Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE TV capture card, as well as a Radeon 9600XT graphics card, they couldn’t get those cards to work in combination with the required motherboard. It seems that the riser card introduced too much delay on circuit timings to enable the graphics card and both TV tuners to interact properly with the motherboard.

When I learned that my combination of components did work with an Intel processor (a Pentium 4 2.8 GHz Northwood 130 nm device) and a Gigabyte motherboard (Triton GA-81G1000P-G), I decided to switch to that architecture, despite the higher clock speed and heat output that this would entail. The unit arrived and it was gorgeous inside and out, so I immediately put it to work.

The Hush is a very attractive and completely silent PC, whose only moving parts are in its optical and hard disk drives.

A look inside a Hush PC shows cables precisely trimmed and arranged, and everything laid out cleanly and compactly: a visual treat!