3. The Components, Continued

High definition DVD drives cost too much for inclusion in a low-cost Media PC. So we chose a Plextor PX-716-SA SATA DVD burner/player. Again, taking advantage of SATA cabling.

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150MCE for standard TV

AverMedia AVerTVHD MCE 180 for HDTV

Though our primary tests involved using the HDMI connector on the Asus motherboard, we included two cards to support standard and high definition video. We chose two old familiar TV tuner cards for our build, because they’re tried and true, but also quite inexpensive. For standard television, we picked the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150MCE, and for HDTV, we picked the AverMedia AVerTVHD MCE 180. That also took care of all our open PCI slots, too!

We stuck with our favorite wireless keyboard, the affordable and usable XGene 2.4 GHz wireless deck with integrated trackball, as well as with the affordable and ubiquitous Microsoft MCE remote.

Normally, we’d spend a fair amount of time obsessing over the choice of graphics card, with special emphasis on passively cooled models to keep overall noise levels down - and important consideration for any media PC. But this time, we deliberately decided to let the motherboard handle the graphics, as well as the sound, which they did reasonably well with no added cooling necessary, either. As an added benefit, this proved to be one of the fastest installs we’ve ever experienced for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, mostly because once we installed the motherboard driver CD, we had pretty much completely updated the system. It was our first time ever into the Device Manager after an OS install when we didn’t see at least one "unknown device" in the resulting device and driver list therein.