Windows 7 Home Theater PC (HTPC)
Advantages
- Can watch any online media source because users have access to the the latest browsers
- Can playback almost any video source
- Expandable storage by adding a hard drive or setting up home media server
- Capable of Blu-Ray playback with a Blu-Ray drive, decent video card and some third party software
- If the user has a tuner card Windows Media Center can be configured to be used as a DVR
Disadvantages
- Can be complex to setup and use
- A windows license can be expensive
- Third party Blu-Ray software can be expensive
- Not the easiest interface to use from the couch
Third Party Software
| Software Name | Features | Latest stable release date | Latest stable version | Cost USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TotalMedia Theatre 5 Platinum | DVD Playback (with upscaling), hardware acceleration (ATI Stream and nVidia Cuda), Blu-ray playback as well as many other video formats. | November 18, 2010 | 5.0.1.80 | $89.99 |
| AC3Filter | Allows playback of multi channel audio in Windows media player. | August 11, 2009 | 1.63b | Free |
| Haali Media Splitter | Allows playback of .mkv (Matroska) files. These are a common format of Torrent files. | August 8, 2010 | Unknown | Free |
| VLC | Plays back many different file types. A great fallback player if non of your other media players can playback a file. | August 27, 2010 | 1.1.4 | Free |
| uTorrent | Downloads torrents, this is a common way to get free video on the internet. Please do not download illegal content. | October 11, 2010 (uTorrent) | 2.0.4 | Free |
|
Adobe Flash Player |
Used mostly to playback video on web sites, such as Hulu and Youtube. | August 12, 2010 (Adobe) |
10.1.82 |
Free |
| iTunes | Great for podcasts and music management. | September 24, 2010 (Wikipedia) | 10.0.1 | Free |
| hulu Desktop | An application to view hulu on your desktop. | unknown | unknown | Free |
| Boxee | A multi purpose media player that will playback many different types of video and audio. It can also be extended to view video on Netflix, Revision3 and many other sites. | unknown | unknown | Free |
| AnyDVD HD | Rip DVD's or Blu-ray disks to your hard drive for later viewing. This will get rid of disk drive noise for users concerned with drive noise. Note that backing up copyrighted DVDs is illegal, don't do it. | August 30, 2010 | 6.6.8.3 | $64.89 |
| CoreAVC | The best h.264 decoder. Allows for great playback of h.264 and x.264 (the video format most torrents come in) video. It also supports nVidia Cuda hardware acceleration. | December 2009 | 2.0 | $9.95 |
Using the Desktop as an Interface
With a few tweaks the Windows 7 desktop makes a great home theater pc interface. The first step is to enlarge the desktop icons by changing the view to large. Secondly you can change your computers DPI settings so that everything in Windows appears larger. Once all of that's done you can setup high resolution icons for you desktop.
Large Desktop Icons
There are two options you can use to make your desktop icons appear larger, without reducing the screens resolution. The first step is to set the desktop view to Large icons. Once that's done you can additionally change the DPI to make the icons large. Note, that changing the DPI will also make the rest of Windows 7 larger too.
Setting desktop view to large icons
Before:
After:
Right click anywher on the desktop, select View and then click on Large icons.
Changing the DPI
Changing the DPI can help to make images and text bigger and thus easier to read from the couch.
Before:
After:
First, hit the Windows key on your keyboard or click on the Windows button and then type display and hit enter.
Set your DPI to 150%, this will make it much easier to read text from your couch.
Hit the Apply button and then click Log off now to apply the changes.
Adding application shortcuts to the Windows 7 desktop
Go to the start menu and click on All Programs.
Navigate to the program you want to create a shorcut for, right click on it and then click Send to > Desktop (create shortcut).
Adding Internet Shortcuts to the Desktop
Using the Internet Explorer browser, navigate to the site you want to create a shortcut for. Once you're on the desired site, drag the little icon at the left of the address bar to the desktop.
Don't worry about the ugly low resolution icon, we'll replace it later with a nicer looking high resolution icon.
Adding High Resolution Icons for HTPC Applications
Change Desktop Icons
Right click on the icon you want to change and click Properties.
Next, click on Change Icon.
Click the Browse button.
Navigate and find the icon you want and double click on it.
Click OK.
Click OK one more time and you'll have you new icon for your desktop.
Adding High Resolution Desktop Icons for Video Websites
Download High Resolution .ico Files
Below is a table of high resolution icons. If it doesn't contain the icons you need here is a site that can convert regular image files into icons.
| Website Name | Custom high resolution .ico (right click on the download link and click Save Target As...) | ico Resolution | Screen shot of the icon in use on the desktop. (Don't download these pictues, they're just regular picture files to give you a preview of what the icon will look like.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netflix.com | Netflix.ico | 256 x 256 |  |
| Youtube | Youtube.ico | 256 x 256 |  |
| Hulu | hulu.ico | 256 x 256 |  |
| Revision3 | revision3.ico | 256 x 256 |  |
| ThisWeekIn | thisweekin-logo.ico | 256 x 256 | |
| History Channel | historychannel.ico | 256 x 256 |  |
| South Park | south-park-logo.ico | 256 x 256 | |
| TV Land | tv-land-logo-2009.ico | 256 x 256 |
Change Desktop Icons
Right click on the icon you want to change and click Properties.
Next, click on Change Icon.
Click the Browse button.
Navigate and find the icon you want and double click on it.
Click OK.
Click OK one more time and you'll have you new icon for your desktop.
Disable startup and shutdown sounds
Startup and shutdown sounds can be annoying if you have your computer hooked up to a loud sound system.
Next, go to the Sounds tab.
Once in the sounds tab scroll down Program Events: until you see Windows Logoff and Windows Logon.
Select each of these and then select (None) from the Sounds: drop down box. Also, make sure to uncheck Play Windows Startup sound. Once this is done you can then click OK to finalize the changes.
Navigate to the Sound Section of the Control Panel
Click on the Windows button or hit the Windows key on your keyboard. Then type sound, under Control Panel click on the program called Sound.
Wireless input devices (remotes, keyboards and mice)
Using a mobile device as a mouse and keyboard
Using an iPhone as a keyboard and mouse
| Application Name | Last Updated | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Air Mouse Pro | Aug 04, 2010 | $1.99 |
Using an iPad as a keyboard and mouse
| Application Name | Last Updated | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Air Mouse Pro | June 9, 2010 | $2.99 |
Using an Android device as a keyboard and mouse
| Application Name | Last Updated | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| REMOTEDROID | June 9, 2010 | Free |
HTPC Hardware
Silent Video Cards
| Brand | Model | Chipset Manufacturer | GPU | Silent | HDMI | DVI | D-SUB | HDCP | NVIDIA CUDA | ATI Stream | PCI Slots Used | Number of Reviews on Newegg | Average Newegg review | Price on Newegg with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPARKLE | SFPX95GT1024U2H | NVIDIA | GeForce 9500 GT | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (NVIDIA) | No | 2 | 110 | 4/5 | $54.99 |
| PowerColor | AX5450 | ATI | Radeon HD 5450 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes (AMD) | 1 | 80 | 4/5 | $42.98 |
TV Tuner Cards
| Brand | Model | Interface | ATSC Tuner (Used for Over the Air Broadcast) | ClearQAM (Used for Unscrambled Digital Cable Channels) | Manufacturer Warranty Length | Number of Reviews on Newegg | Average Review on Newegg | Newegg Price with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hauppauge | 1196 | PCI-Express x1 | Yes | Yes | 2 Years | 192 | 4/5 | $57.55 |
| KWorld | UB435-Q | USB 2.0 | Yes | Yes | 1 Year | 440 | 4/5 | $29.99 |
Blu-Ray Drives
| Brand | Model | BD-ROM Read Speed | DVD ROM Read Speed | Write DVDs | Write CDs | Newegg Price with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LITE-ON | iHOS104-08 | 4X | 8X | No | No | $57.98 |
| ASUS | BR-04B2T | 4X | 8X | No | No | $63.98 |
| LITE-ON | iHES108-29 | 8X | 16X | No | No | $77.55 |
| SAMSUNG | SH-B123L | 12X | 16X | Yes | Yes | $69.99 |
| LITE-ON | iHES208-08 | 8X | 16X | Yes | No | $71.98 |
ATSC (Over the air Television) Antennas
| Brand | Model | Directional | Indoor | Outdoor | Built in Amplifier | UHF | VHF | Number of Reviews on Amazon | Average Review on Amazon | Price with Shipping on Amazon | Number of Reviews on Newegg | Average Review on Newegg | Price with Shipping on Newegg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terk Technology | HDTVi | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | 249 | 3.6/5 | $27.49 | 26 | 4/5 | $32.98 |
| RCA | ANT111 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | 92 | 3.9/5 | $9.69 | 0 | N/A | $14.68 |
Fanless Power Supplies
| Model | Brand | Max Watts | Warranty (years) | Newegg Review Average | Newegg Price with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZEN 400 | FSP Group | 400 | 3 | 4/5 |
$124.99 |
| SS-400FL Active PFC F3 | SeaSonic | 400 | 5 | 5/5 |
$144.18 |
| X-460 Fanless | SeaSonic | 460 | 5 | 4/5 |
$164.17 |
Network Attached Storage (NAS) / Media Server Options
Comparison of Home Media Servers
| Platform Name | Setup Difficulty | Single Drive Failure Redundancy | Two Drive Failure Redundancy | Redundancy Method | Drive Limit | Windows 7 networkable | Mac OS X networkable | Software Price | Hardware Price | Total Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Hard | Yes | Yes (with FlexRAID, Greyhole or RAID 6) | FlexRAID, GreyHole, Software RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10 | Hardware dependent | Yes | Yes | Free | ||
| Windows XP with RAID 5 hack | Medium | Yes | No | Software RAID 1, 5 | Hardware dependent | Yes | Yes | |||
| Windows Home Server | Medium | Yes | Yes (with FlexRAID) | "duplication" feature or FlexRAID | Hardware dependent | Yes | Yes | $94.99 | ||
| unRAID Plus | Unknown | Yes | No | UnRAID's Proprietary method | 6 | Unknown | Unknown | $69 | ||
| Drobo with DroboShare | Easy | Yes | No | BeyondRAID | 4 | Yes | Yes | Free | $562.18 (Amazon.com Price) | $562.18 |
| Drobo FS | Easy | Yes | Yes | BeyondRAID | 5 | Yes | Yes | Free | $651.76(Amazon.com Price) | $651.76 |
Home Server Hardware
Expansion Cards
| Brand | Model | Card Type | RAID Support | RAID Type | Internal SATA Ports | External SATA Ports | SATA Transfer Rate | IDE Ports | Number of Newegg reviews | Newegg average review | Quirks | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MASSCOOL | XWT-RC018 | PCI | No | N/A | 2 | 1 | 1.5 Gbps | 1 | 41 | 4/5 | None | $15.99 |
| VANTEC | UGT-IS100R | PCI Express | Yes | 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD and individual modes | 2 | 2 | 3.0 Gbps | 1 | 9 | 3/5 | None | $26.99 |
| VANTEC | UGT-ST310R | PCI | Yes | RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, JBOD and Individual modes | 4 | 2 | 1.5 Gbps | No | 5 | 5/5 | Only 4 of the SATA ports can be activated. The desired ports can be activated by switching a jumper on the card. | $31.99 |
Motherboards
| Motherboard Manufacturer | Model Number | Inter or AMD | SATA Ports | Newegg Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASUS | Maximus III Formula | Intel | 10 | $164.99 |
| ASUS | P7P55D Deluxe | Intel | 9 | $179.99 |
| EVGA | 132-BL-E758-RX | Intel | 9 | $129.99 |
| MSI | P55-CD53 | Intel | 8 | $109.99 |
Convert 5.25" bays to 3.5" Hard drive bays
| Brand | Model Number | Price on Amazon with Shipping |
|---|---|---|
| Thermaltake | iDrive A2309 | $31.16 |
Hard Drives
| Drive Name | Capacity | Drive RPM | Newegg Price with shipping | Price Per Gigabyte | Number of Newegg Reviews | Newegg Average review |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C | 1TB | 7200 | $69.99 | $0.069 | 112 | 4/5 |
| Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS | 1TB | 5400 | $59.99 | $0.059 | ||
| SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD103SI | 1TB | 5400 | $69.99 | $0.069 | ||
| Seagate Barracuda LP ST31000520AS | 1TB | 5900 | $71.99 | $0.071 | ||
| Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS | 1TB | 7200 | $74.99 | $0.074 | 868 | 4/5 |
| Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALS | 1TB | 7200 | $74.99 | $0.074 | 187 | 4/5 |
| SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI | 1.5TB | Unknown | $79.99 | $0.053 | 446 | 4/5 |
| SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI | 2TB | 5400 | $94.99 | $0.047 | 19 | 5/5 |
| Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS | 2TB | Unknown | $119.99 | $0.059 | 338 | 4/5 |
Playing Console Games
Playing Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games on Windows 7
Comparison of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Emulators for Windows 7 (Actively Developed)
| Emulator Name | Latest Stable Release Date | Latest Stable Version | Download Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| FCEUX | June 1, 2010 | 2.1.4a | http://sourceforge.net/projects/fceultra/files/Binaries/2.1.4/fceux-2.1.4a-win32.zip/download |
| nemulator | April 17, 2011 | 2.3 | http://www.nemulator.com/files/nemulator2.3.zip |
| Nintendulator | January 2, 2010 | 0.970 | http://www.qmtpro.com/~nes/nintendulator/nintendulator0970bin_unicode.zip |
USB Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Controllers
| Picture | Brand | Name | Cord Length | Interface | Number of Reviews on Amazon | Average Review on Amazon | Price on Amazon with Shipping |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Hyperkin | NES Retro Classic Controller USB | Unknown | USB | 29 | 3.3/5 | $14.48 |
 |
Retro Motion | Classic USB Super Nintendo Controller for PC | 5 ft. | USB | 47 | 3.5/5 | $19.11 |
| Classic USB NES Controller for PC | Unknown | USB | 37 | 4.5/5 | $18.48 |
