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Building a Media Center PC

I semi have one. Its mainly just used for network storage and a few other services but I recently installed boxee on it.

As far as programs that will let you make great use of your htpc on you tv boxee is a great choice imo. It searches your network and many different places on the web for content such as youtube, hulu, and netflix. Althought for netflix you need to have it running on either OS X or Windows, as microsoft does not support silverlight on linux.

I have boxee running on Ubuntu with a old amd chip, 1g of ram, and a $30 vid card, and its more than enought. I don't know how well those specs would hold up if I had to run win7 or something on it though.
 
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as microsoft does not support silverlight on linux.

what happened to moonlight?

/off topic


i suppose you could say i have an htpc - i mean i have a pc that i mainly use for media consumption
i built it in to a shelf (haven't done a power button yet, plus need to attach the hd, so no pics online yet) and it's hooked up to a projector on top of the shelf
 
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Does that video card support HDTV? I've seen a few mini boxes that are $200-300 that I may use instead of building a shuttle PC from scratch.

PS. I love Arch, use it all the time. No dependencies and barebones ftw.

If by HDTV you mean resolutions >= 1080p then yes. Also note that you dont need one that has a HDMI port. Most come with a DVI port, which is the exact same as HDMI just without audio. So you can use a DVI to HDMI cord which are available for ~$5.

Nice to see someone else who has used Arch :D

what happened to moonlight?

Moonlight doesn't work for netflix as it doesn't have the DRM built into it that netflix requires... I really wish it did :(
 
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I may hold out on Google TV, we'll see how it performs.

Yea there are a lot of interesting set top boxes coming out soon: google tv, the boxee box, and even a new apple tv. If you have to buy something new then your safe bet is to wait until they are all out and find out which one is your best option. Unless of course you have a bunch of space computer parts/old computer not in use then you can just put boxee on it and your good to go.
 
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