[Lab Bench Online]
EiED Online>> Building A Multimedia Home Control Center, Part 1
William Wong
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ED Online ID #13330 |
August 21, 2006
To start off, we’ll take a look at the components involved in the entire project. The detailed description of each product is available via links at the start of the article. Likewise, each of the products associated with each part of the series will appear with the appropriate article.
System Components The main system centers around the Sharp LC-37D40U HDTV. It is the largest, most expensive, and most impressive part of the system. It is a standalone TV with high resolution inputs including HDMI and S-video. It has its own speaker system so we did not include any external components or audio although many audiophiles may plug this into their own amplifiers.
Attached to the LC-37D40U is a PC that consists of a VIA EPIA EN 15000 motherboard that uses the latest C7 processor. It has HDTV output but we didn’t have the adapter to take advantage of it so we used the S-video support instead with very good results. The motherboard is housed within a Casetronic C137 Mini-ITX case courtesy of Logic Supply, a Mini-ITX vendor. You can get most of the hardware for the system from them with the exception of the HDTV. The case has a power switch and two openings. One is for the FB-4652 Compact Flash to IDE adapter that can handle other flash formats via an adapter. The other is for a slimline DVD-recorder.
The case holds a 500Gbyte Western Digital Caviar SE16 SATA2 hard drive. We didn’t choose a large hard disk just for the fun of it although it is an impressive specimen. It was more of a requirement given the PVR status of the system. Recorded video can gobble up space faster than spam. A DVD movie is a case in point. A regular DVD is about 5GB and most movies are delivered on double layer DVD’s with twice the capacity. Even accepting a higher level of compression, hour long shows will use at least a gigabyte of storage. A couple hundred hours of video may seem like a lot until you have to decide what to burn to DVD or delete.
The PVR support was provided by ATI. I actually took a look at the ATI TV Wonder Pro ($99) and the slight more expensive ATI HDTV Wonder ($119, $199 with remote and TV antenna). Your choice will depend upon what you plan on connecting the TV capture board to.
Keep in mind that over the air HDTV will be a requirement in 2007 and that is not too far away. That was also when analog TV broadcast signals were going to stop but that is likely to be more like 2010-2015. Analog TV signals and the ATI TV Wonder Pro can still be used with a converter or with set top boxes from cable and satellite TV but you will need the ATI HDTV Wonder to handle HDTV support. Of course, the ATI HDTV Wonder will also handle analog TV signals so it is well worth the added price.
The ATI boards and the Sharp HDTV have their own remotes. The former are RF. The latter IR (infrared). For the keyboard I went with the Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser. This stylish three piece unit consists of a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard and keypad. The latter is a bit larger than a remote but provides much of the same functionality with a two-way interface via a built-in LCD display.
I don’t know about you but I have my house wired for sound and networking (Arcnet, coax Ethernet and CAT5). Unfortunately, one place I don’t have properly wired is the room for the TV. It was definitely time to go wireless here as well. The VIA motherboard has built-in Ethernet but a Belkin 802.11g USB adapter linked to a Belkin 802.11g Access Point provided the necessary connection to the Internet and the rest of the PCs in the house.
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