But what about the rest? The pieces that, although not major, are still required to have a - you know - functioning HTPC? Well, that’s where this article comes in. We are going to be giving you a quick rundown of the smaller components that you will need in order to get this thing built, before we do out wrap-up in our next article.

CASE: Antec Fusion Version 2 (V2)
the Antec Fusion offers two 3.5″ bays for hard drive, one 5.25″ exposed, a VFD, IR receiver, and potential for very low noise cooling via its side-mounted 120mm fans. The 120mm fans are very well positioned to pull air off of the CPU heatsink, which is something low-noise builders will want to take advantage of.

OPTICAL DRIVE: LG GGC-H20L
Since we are focused on cost, we are going to go with a Blu-ray reader, and we’ve chosen the LG GGC-H20L. You are gonna want Blu-ray capabilities with this computer.

MEMORY: 2GB DDR2-800
RAM is very inexpensive, but we are keeping the price down by only going with two 1GB sticks of RAM. This should only cost about $20, depending on where you end up.

VIDEO CARD: None
The motherboard that was chose in a previous article is more than adequate, since we are focusing exclusively on television and movies, along with other basic computing tasks. We aren’t doing any graphics intensive gaming, so we don’t need a separate video card.

PROCESSOR: AMD Athlon X2 5200+
We chose a chip that, again, is more than enough for the tasks that we are going to throw at it. The processor runs cool, which means your fans won’t be going at full speed (which means a quiter room) and it goes nicely with our chosen motherboard.

In our next piece, we price everything out, and see how close we came to the $1,000 target - think we made it?

Explaining how and what to tweak in a system BIOS using text can be somewhat dry; I think the video above will be more useful and informative.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my posts up to this point–in my final installment I’ll secure the media server using some slick Symantec software.  Stay Tuned!

It’s not that I don’t have other machines that I could play on. My new MacBook Pro is supposed to have a pretty hot video card. I could install Windows on that. And Asus just gave me a couple of new review laptops, both of which are supposed to be wicked fast for games. (Disclaimer: Asus is currently a sponsor of Boing Boing, but these are just review units. They may suck!)

But the thing that’s killing me is Fallout 3. I absolutely adored playing it, but I’ve already put several hours into it — probably a couple of dozen. And I could restart with a new character on these new machines, but I don’t wanna. I hate replaying games.

Getting my save game off the broken gaming machine may be possible, but if you can believe it I don’t have another working PCI-E videocard around the house, so I can’t even get the machine to start running
long enough to get it on the network.

So it looks like my only option may be…evil. If I install XP or Vista on my MacBook Pro — the one machine I’m taking with me as I go out of town for the next three weeks — I could install Fallout 3. And since I played a good character the first time, the best chance I have of not playing the same game over is
being a real bastard. A child-killing, junk-stealing, mutant-loving bastard.

Maybe this won’t be so bad.

For those of you who don’t want to read the earlier article, you should know that I measured seven different variables, all of which Norton claims have dramatically improved. They are:

- Memory footprint
- Download size
- CPU usage
- Scan time
- Update time
- Installation time and size

I have already run the test for AVG, the results of which are in the earlier article. Below, we’ll see how Norton did. Now, keep in mind that the results are being compared to AVG 8.0, and not to previous version of Norton.

So, how did it do? Eh, I’d have to give it mixed results, though I am impressed by even that much from Norton.

Download Size: 61.5MB (AVG is 50MB)
Norton Internet Security 2009 is a 62MB download. That’s not huge, by any means, but it is larger than AVG’s by about 12MB.

Installation Time: 59.6s (AVG is 2:46)
This is very impressive. Norton promises an installation under one minute. For those of you who’ve ever installed Norton before, you can see why this claim would have a comical element to it. Yet, there you have it. Under one minute. Just so… but still under one minute.

Installation Size: 72.8MB (AVG is 63.7MB)
This figure is a result of a 62MB Norton folder, as well as a 10MB Installation Folder which remains on the disc. Combined, you have used us about 11MB more space than if you had installed AVG. When average drives are topping half a terabyte, this is not a whole bunch. But still, it’s more than AVG.

Memory Footprint: Incremental between 3MB, 8MB and 9MB (AVG was Between 3MB and 20MB)
Norton uses a surprisingly small amount of RAM, particularly when running a full system scan. While AVG was comparable when either sitting in the tray, or displaying it’s security options… running a full scan would use up 25MB, compared to Norton’s 9MB. This is great.

CPU Usage: Between 0.3% and 37% (AVG was between 1.3% and 25%)
It’s sad to say, but it looks like while running a full system scan on AVG used up more RAM, it was more taxing to the CPU with Norton. AVG rarely topped 27% and averaged 25%, while Norton did spike up to 45%, while running an average 37% when scanning.

Scan Time: 11:54 (AVG was 24:13)
Norton pretty much halves AVG’s scan time. This is really impressive and a clear advantage to Norton.

Update Time: 24s (AVG was 47s)
Once again, Norton’s time is half that of AVG’s. These updates are also seamless, while AVG did require some user interaction the first time it updated.

So, what does this mean? Norton beats AVG in:
• Update time
• Scan time
• Memory Footprint
• Installation Time

It loses in:
• CPU usage
• Installation size
• Download size

My thoughts and conclusion in the next article.

It’s time to put that Home Office PC to the test.  So far, I’ve assembled it from scratch, and managed to set up a RAID 1 array.  This has given me redundancy: if one drive fails, at least the other one keeps going, hopefully making my data safer.  It’s now time to install software and compare two popular anti-virus solutions:  AVG Internet Security Vs. Norton Internet Security 2009. Norton used to have a relatively bad rep as being somewhat of a bloated resource-hog nagware.  The new version of Norton however has been redesigned with speed and ease of use in mind.  So, let’s see if they did a decent job.

But, how should we go about this?  I decided to put the machines through a series of simple tests, and measured their performance.  I’ll do this once with AVG and once with Norton and we’ll compare.  Specifically, I wanted to look at the things Norton has allegedly improved:

-       Memory footprint

-       Download size

-       CPU usage

-       Scan time

-       Update time

-       Installation time and size

I wanted to perform these tests in a fairly typical office environment.  So here’s a list of the software I put on the machine before installing:

-       Microsoft Office

-       Firefox

-       SnagIt9 (for screen captures)

Then, I downloaded AVG 8.0 and started testing.

Download Size: 50MB

AVG’s download file was decently sized.  Anything above 100MB would have been stretching it, so this is ok.

Installation Time: 2:46

Two minutes and 46 seconds.  It’s almost three times as much as Norton claims their installation time to be.  But this will vary from PC to PC, depending on your system.  We’ll see how Norton stacks up.

Installation Size: 63.7 MB

Not bad.  But again, we’re doing a comparison with Norton, so more than absolute size, what matters is how this stacks up next to Norton.

Memory Footprint: Between 3MB and 20MB

When the system is idle and AVG is doing nothing but sitting in the tray, it uses 3MB.  As soon as you start up the application, that’s another 7MB.  If you launch the anti-virus feature and start scanning, then you get another 10MB.

CPU Usage: Between 1.3% and 25%

Again, the difference between idle and active-scanning resource usage is drastic.  When the system is idle, each AVG process takes up less than 1%.  But when the scan is launched, it averages 25%.

 Scan Time: 24:13

That’s pretty horrible if you ask me.  Almost half an hour to scan an entire system, and there’s barely anything installed on it.

Update Time: 47 seconds

Not bad, but not too great.  Between the time it takes to check for an update, download it, install it… almost a minute has gone by.  By no means is this a lot, but I’ve seen better.

So that’s it for AVG.  These results don’t mean much by themselves.  We’ll see what happens next week.

1) The process of selecting the hardware for the HTPC
2) A closer look at our chosen motherboard, the MSI MS-7411
3) A look at how we will drive 7.1 sound from the HTPC
4) The smart way that we will move content to the HTPC so it’s displayed on our television

We’ve come a long way to far. In this article, though, I wanted to talk about the TV card that we’ve chosen. Since we are doing this on a budget, we are hoping for a nice balance of good performance at an inexpensive price. This is why we’ve chosen the AMD TV Wonder 650. Amazon has it for 43% off of the retail price. This card supports both over the air HD broadcasts, as well as ClearQAM cable TV.

The TV Wonder 650 series of HD PVRs are loaded with the very latest in digital TV technologies. Features such as advanced 3D comb filter, noise reduction, automatic color control, and edge enhancement produce brilliant, sharp video that rivals high-end consumer television sets. Loaded with abilities, schedule, watch and record analog TV, “free-to-air” HDTV, unencrypted digital ClearQAM cable TV and FM stations, making the TV Wonder 650 the ultimate media upgrade for your PC. These complete solutions even allow you to watch the latest DVD titles, author your own DVD, or convert your recorded TV shows to take with you on your Portable Media Player. The entire experience is then elegantly packaged within the attractive, easy-to-use 3D interface of ATI Catalyst Media Center software.

The card is new enough that Windows Vista will easily recognize it and pull in the drivers, and Windows Media Center will happily move along using this card to bring in all the channels that you have available.

As I mentioned back in my first couple of posts, I planned to use Windows Home Server for this build.  Because Microsoft has taken so much heat for Vista this past year or so, it could be easy to dismiss any Microsoft OS as a flawed product, but Windows Home Server is actually a pretty cool product.  With that said, WHS did suffer from a data corruption issue after its initial release, but thankfully that has been addressed with an update.  The main features of Windows Home Server are what make it an attractive product; here they are at a glance…

• Digital memories and media stored and organized in a central location
• Home computers backed up daily, automatically
• Simple restore of lost files or even entire hard drive contents
• Complete access to files from both inside and outside the home
• A secure and personalized website address for sharing photos and home videos
• Easily add storage space and new software capabilities

You can learn more about WHS and its features here.

Installing WHS on the server is similar to installing any other version of Windows.  Users are required to boot to an installation CD, answer a few questions, and follow a handful of on-screen prompts.  With WHS, Microsoft has made the installation easier than other versions of Windows, and overall it takes but a few minutes to install.  Start to finish it took less than a half hour.

The OS installation is only part of the story though.  WHS also requires the installation of a small application called the “connector” on client machines on the network.  Installation the connector is also an easy process, that requires little more than running a setup file and letting the application scan the network for the server.

Next up, I’m going to tweak the home media server’s BIOS and OS for maximum stability and performance, so stay tuned for more in the coming days.

“Oh,” he sheepishly said. “I didn’t think…”

The weird thing was that my machine booted back up and I played for a while after that happened. The only strange symptom was that I had a little bit of a hard time pairing my wireless keyboard with its USB dongle on the PC. But I played for another hour or two before going to bed.

But when I turned the PC on in the morning to listen to some music while I worked on my laptop, something was awry. There were artifacts on the screen as it booted up, strange lines that went up and down through the start-up screens. And while I could hear the machine start into Vista, a few seconds after hearing the initial chimes that computer would reboot itself. That cycle would continue endlessly.

The day it died I seriously just about cried.

I loathe troubleshooting PCs. It’s not that it’s that difficult, but I don’t keep a whole lot of PC hardware on hand these days. That means I have to take a good guess as to what the problem may be — blown video card, power supply, or motherboard (in that order of likelihood) — and then order the individual parts, test
them, and then send back the ones I don’t need. It drives me mad — and I just don’t have time to deal with it right now.

But now I have to, because I still haven’t tested this machine running Norton, which was sort of the whole point.

My roommate offered to replace any parts he’d blown out. I think what I may do instead is ask him to fix the machine. Money is a factor, but what I lack more is time.

Now, I am positive that we are going to be storing at least SOME content on the HTPC itself - after all, with Windows Media Center built in to Windows Vista (our operating system of choice, for this project only,) it would only make sense that we would use the capabilities of Media Center to use the HTPC as a DVR. Even that sounds easy when spoken, but really, it means we need another part for the computer. A simple high definition TV tuner will suffice, and we are big fans of ATI tuners because you can get good quality as a decent price. With that, you just plug in your coaxial cable signal into the card, and you’ve got cable TV piping into your HTPC. Cool.

Now, what about other content? If you are anything like me, you have multiple computers. The HTPC is definitely not going to be your main PC, and you probably have music downloads, movies, and other media on your other computers that you would like to be able to view from your couch, via the HTPC. Well, the motherboard we chose has Gigabit Ethernet integrated into it, which means we have a fast connection to the network - and THAT means that we can stream content from the other computers that are on the network, directly to the HTPC - all we need to do is set up and allow sharing on the computers where the files are housed!

I would like to say that things went well and smooth. I’d like to say that I had this system up in a jiffy and was up and running in no time.

But no. No no. I had no such luck.

The thing is that after spending half your life tinkering around with computers, you grow overconfident. You learn how to do things much like the quintessential dude lost on his way to someplace thinks he’ll manage to get back on the right track: you poke and poke until it just works. That’s always how I’ve done things with PCs and it’s worked until now. This time, I had to look it up. And I’ll tell you how to do it right here, so you don’t have to.

The machine was ready to boot. I had a 64bit version of Vista Ultimate to install and two 1TB drives ready to mate in wonderful RAID love. Three days and a whole lot of headaches later, I figured how to do it. Note that this will work with nForce 4 to 7 chipsets.

1) Before you start, this is the most important step: Go to nvidia.com (on another computer, of course) and download drivers for your motherboard. Extract the files and put the entire “SATA_IDE” folder on a thumb drive.

2) On the new PC’s first boot, enter the BIOS. Usually pressing the “Del” key will take you there.

3) Most BIOS settings differ, but sound similar. In this case, you had to navigate to “Advanced > Onboard Devices > SATA Mode select > Select RAID mode.

4) Hit F10 to save and exit.

5) Once it boots up again, you’ll see an option to “Enter RAID configuration” by pressing F10. Do so.

6) The next screen will show you all the available drives. Select the ones you want to setup an array with by sending them to the right with the Right Arrow. I want to setup RAID 1, so I chose “Mirror”.

7) I suggest leaving the block size at 64k.

Press F7 to save your configuration.

9) You will be prompted to “Clear MBR”. Do so.

10) On the next screen you will see your newly created array. This one was 934GB in size. Make it bootable by pressing “B”.

11) Press Ctrl-X to exit.

12) You have now created and configured your RAID array. You computer will now treat it as one hard drive and you’re free to install Windows… But that process is slightly different with RAID. That’s why you downloaded those drivers. So…

13) Once you boot up again with Windows in your optical drive (which you set to be the first drive to boot, through the BIOS. This is a normal procedure when first installing a new OS), go through all the initial prompts. This includes choosing language, EULA, version of Windows to install, entering product key, etc. After the EULA screen, press “Custom (Advanced)”.

14) Insert your thumb drive with your drivers on it.

15) On the next screen, press “Load driver” and navigate to the SATA_IDE folder.

16) Select the nVIDIA nForce SATA Controller and press next.

17) You’ll then see the two drives as one. Create a partition and format, and then continue installing Windows normally.

So there you have it, bliss in 17 easy steps. Yeah. Right.

But I have a fully functioning 64-bit version of Vista, ready to put Norton Security 2009 to the test.

How will I do this? Not sure yet. Here’s what I’m thinking.

I’ll install common office programs. MS Office, etc. Just to have an office environment. I’ll then install a common Norton competitor, like AVG. I’ll measure a few metrics: Installation time, installation size, memory footprint, boot time when installed, complete system scan time.

I’ll then measure effectiveness? How? I’ll setup a list of stupid things to do: open spam emails, visit dangerous sites, etc. I’ll see how good a job it does protecting my PC and how long it takes before I get infected with something, if ever. I’ll then (oh my, lucky me), scorch the entire thing, format the drives, re-install everything and do the same thing with Norton.

Then, we can compare. So, stay tuned!