Building a HTPC became a necessity when I found all my digital media - photo, audio and video - became scattered over various PC's and storage medial like optical disks and external hard disks. Storing the media on an optical media is not reliable and looking for a particular audio, video or photo became more and more difficult every day with growing content.

In the series of reusing existing resources, I came across this laptop with its screen broken. Vivek made me aware of his earlier laptop which he had discarded as its broken screen required £170 to be replaced. A laptop with broken screen is unusable on its own right but can be used as a server - specially as an HTPC. Vivek liked the idea and was happy to bring the laptop to my workshop for evaluation. I hooked the laptop to my HD TV and was amazed to find that it supported the HDTV resolution without any issue.

The search started when Vinay expressed his wish to build a HTPC with stunning looks. It didn't took us long and we figured out that we are going to build the HTPC with Silverstone ML02MX. The HTPC uses a MoDT (Mobile on Desktop) motherboard and a mobile processor, meaning it is very power efficient as well. It is currently hooked to a 42" full HD Samsung TV and outputs the picture at full 1080p resolution and outputs the audio to Denon+KEF audio setup using optical out.

Specification at a glance

The article contains the details of my HTPC (Home Theatre PC) and all the excitement associated with it. I started building it with great zeal and then there was a time when I had all the components with me for more than 8 weeks and I was unable to figure out which component is faulty. Nevertheless, I managed to identify that the RAM was faulty and not the PSU. I got it RMA'd and once it booted up, it started to rock.

This is collection of bits & pieces that I put together to get the box up and running. This is in fact my server that runs 24x7. The box runs on Ubuntu and provide the services like http, ssh, ftp and hosts my personal website. MythTV is also installed on the box and thus serves as the media server. Being media server it is hooked to my TV and sits with my Sky+ box and AV reciever.

Old PC's laying around the home are good candidate for projects like home theatre and private telephone exchange. Jawaid was happy to spare me one of his old desktop PC's to play around with. Interestingly, when I got the box it wasn't so old. In fact, it had a PIII (100 MHz) processor and a 250 GB hard disk and sounded like a good candidate for a home theatre.