Hi all.

I've just finished putting the new HTPC in the cabinet.
It all went to plan, and the Wife Acceptable Factor is looking pretty good, so far.

Here's the spec:

Case: Antec Fusion V2 Silver HTPC Case CFD w/ IR Receiver, 430w PSU
Motherboard: ASUS P5KPL-CM Intel G31 ICH7 LGA775 Micro ATX
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2.0GHz Allendale 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Dual Core Processor
RAM: G.SKILL 2GB KIT (2X1GB) DDR2-800 (PC-6400) CL5-5-5-15 MEMORY
Video: Asus 8400GS Silent 512MB PCI-E Fanless Video Card HDTV
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV HVR 3000 Triple Mode Analogue, DVB-S, DVB-T NZ FreeView HD Ready TV Tuner
Additional TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S-Plus DVB-S
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD753LJ 750GB SATA II 7200RPM 32MB
DVD: Asus DRW-2014L1 Black/Beige 20x Dual Layer Lightscribe IDE DVD Rewriter
Sound: Onboard
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit OEM

I purchased in two stages:
1. 2 TV Tuners (both Hauppauge Nova-S-Plus)
2. The rest of the hardware.

Stage 1 involved testing Vista Media Center (VMC). If it didnt work, I would move onto a competing product.
I'm pleased to say it passed all of my requirements, though with a lot of effort at some stages.

I have only a Freeview dish and no aerial. My set up was to be completely DVB-S.
As many of you know, VMC does not work with DVB-S.
Lesson 1: There are Hauppauge specific registry hacks to convert the signal from DVB-S to DVB-T. VMC is now happy.

Lesson 2: no guide data.
I'm not really interested in downloading from reven (i'm not paying for that, and the demo was lousy and insulting), or community based xmltv sources.
They were fine quality, but I felt I should get this going in a non-dependant way.
I downloaded a bunch of utilities, and almost settled on dvbguide, until I saw it clash if both tuners were occupied.
I wrote a utility that queries freeview's website for xml guide data, and outputs xmltv.
I use epgstream.net, hey, even donated a little, so whenever VMC wants guide data, epgstream.net receives the request, runs my tool, then reads in the xmtv file back to VMC.

So, I proved stage 1, and onto stage 2.

I was nervous at this bit. I havent assembled a computer in over 10 years.
At one moment, as I was opening the CPU, I pulled out the heat sink with one hand, and chucked the packaging over my shoulder.
Proudly displayed the device to my wife.. "is that the CPU?" she asked. "No, the CPU is... umm..." frantically trying to find it... It was a tiny little thing still in the packaging! lol
I bought a SATA hdd, but not a SATA dvd. so frustrating with the ribbon...

Slight mistake with the power. Apparently motherboards need two power plugs now too. freaky turning it on and getting nothing.

So all fitting fine. Installed Vista.
The software that comes with the Antec case is kinda rubbish. The volume knob didnt work so I tried to get that going.
I ended up on SoundGraph's website and downloaded a fusion driver, so I've got two drivers at once. Kinda messy but now I know. old driver removed, moving on...

It's quite noisy. The case fans were going full speed, so I knocked them both down to low. They cant be controlled by the motherboard, which is a shame. Can hardly hear it on low - sweet as. Dont know if it'll heat up. Time will tell.

I tried to get FM radio going against the 3000 series TV tuner. But I read somewhere it's not easy, and you've got to install SoftMCE? That's a challenge for another day.
I'm running a bunch of Internet Radio streams instead, for the moment.

The Hauppauge remote didnt work against the IR receiver on the Antec case. Not really a surprise.
I plugged in the Hauppauge IR receiver, but it didnt work either. Tried all sorts of drivers, but it didnt work.
At this stage, I'm wondering if I have to get crazy on the case, and disable the IR hardware.

Stage 3:
I went and bought a Philips 5100 Remote Control. Works against the Antec IR receiver out of the box. I really like that it's a learning remote - point old remote against this one, and it learns the codes.

Still got a few challenges:
- get the radio feature to work on the card from VMC
- get file sharing to work without password challenges (i think i'm there, just need to test it)
- get my movies across, and a menu with password protection (i have kids, dont want them seeing terminator really)
- get my cd collection tagged, genred, and rated.
- get recorded tv playback playing at 1.5x speed (with audio). A favourite feature from our sony hd recorder)
- get some form of bookmarking/chaptering for recorded tv, with commercial skipping. Another favourite feature from our sony.

So all plugged in and away. Pretty happy with it so far.

My kids seem happiest of all, playing Purble Place from the games section.