Project HTPC

I recently bought a new TV since the old one didn't have a DVB-T receiver. Buying just the receiver was out of the question because that would leave me with an ancient TV and bad picture quality. HDMI was the only way to go so I decided to build a proper HTPC capable of HD video playback.

A year ago I found a really good deal on Travla C137 case. Now I was finally able to put it to good use. Deciding which motherboard to buy took some more research. In the end I decided to go for an ASUS AT5IONT-I since I already had two 1GB DDR3 SO-DIMM sticks lying around and the board had the best CPU/GPU combo. On top of that, I bought a Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB hard drive which fit nicely inside the case. Low power consuption and silent operation make this drive ideal for such projects. Of course a HTPC wouldn't be complete without a remote control! After some fiddling with the drivers I was able to make the old ATi Remote Wonder work and it does the job fine.

The last thing to do was to choose the OS. I was deciding between XBMC and Windows 7. A couple of my co-workers convinced me to try Win7 so I did. All I can say at the moment is "so far so good".

Photo: link

Mobile storage solution

My latest toy is a stylish external case Icy Box IB-250U-R used with a Western Digital Scorpio WD800VE 80GB hard drive. The disk drive is reasonably fast, starts-up almost instantly and doesn't make much noise. Infact, I could hardly tell the disk is working by sound alone. What I particularly like about these types of cases (looks and size aside) is that you don't need a power adapter. You do however need two available USB ports since the unit gets power from the second USB port (the HDD wouldn't start-up without it). You also get a practical leather wallet which is great for the case itself but isn't big enough to fit both USB cables as well. Initially I wanted to get a 4GB USB flash drive but I'm glad I didn't because the drive will also be used for system backups. All in all, I'm happy with it for now.