Its a cruel fact of technology that computers quickly become obsolete. I hate having computers i can’t do anything with, so i decided to make make use of some random tech I had laying around and build an HD media center.
I have a larger media center downstairs made up of “new” technology, so the two systems need to play nicely with each other. Since it’s in my bedroom it should be able to play the part of alarm clock, and it needs to play my iTunes purchases, Hulu, Netflix and other such things.
Sadly because of the way it’s set up, this system will not play DVD’s or blurays, but its not my only TV so i’ll live, and I plan to fix these issues in the future.
This is what I came up with. (Please forgive my iPhone 3G camera quality)
The only thing i bought for this project was the mounting bracket for the monitor. The price tags are to illustrate how much spent money has not been doomed to a recycle bin.
Here’s the list:
Most of the hardware is housed in the box on the floor. It was one of those white pressboard closet shelfs you can buy at Home Depot. I used two pieces instead of three because i want lots of ventilation, the system is supposed to sleep not shut down.
Anyone that has owned a MBP knows that they get hell fire hot when on for more then a hour, so i’ve positioned its vent upward, and the Ikea glass shelf is pulled away from the wall to allow it to vent into the room. I did my best to keep as much heat producing hardware out of the box.
Add a power strip and snazzy cool running LED lights and you have an ok looking (if not bland) computer compartment. After this picture was taken i added the usb hub and hard drive.
I mentioned a TV Tuner. That’s not in the box, i routed a usb cable up through the wall so the tuner and antenna could be stuffed inside the TV mounting bracket. That gave the best signal with little chance of disturbance should i need to mess with the computer.
The software for this setup had to play nicely with the downstairs TV and the iPhone and had to do everything i wanted it to do while still letting the system sleep. So here’s what i’ve got.
)With all the desktop icons and such turned off, and a 1 minute rotation of a huge number HD desktop images, whenever i’m not watching something, switching programs, or waiting for the computer to sleep im presented with a great big picture frame.
A keyboard and mouse are cumbersome when it comes to a TV. So i took the same approach i took downstairs:
It shouldn’t be any surprise that good media center software comes with iPhone remote control apps. They were all under $5 and worth every cent.
I watch real time vitals (CPU activity, temps, ect) for all my computers via iStat. Because it’s not logical to have vitals displayed on screen i grabbed the iPhone version of iStat, i bought a remote vitals monitor. Heres the List.
Air mouse pro allows for quick application switching, mouse and keyboard, and with “Wake from ethernet” activated the computer can sleep when i’m not watching anything but can be woken up from iPod.
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