Basic Media Centre with LCD

Description

I had an old P4 lying about not doing much, so I decided to make a Media Centre capable of playing movies (divX) and Mp3s over the network.

I also had a few composite LCD screens designed for a Game Cube also lying about, as you can see I put one of these on the front…

WHY THE LCD??

The screen is obviously not much use if you going to use the computer to watch videos as it will be connected to a big screen anyway (you could watch a film on it, but you would be mad to!), however the screen comes in handy if you want to use the computer to connect to your Hi-Fi just to listen to music- the screen being used to select the songs.

..actually, the main reason there is a screen is because I could and it looks cool :)

I’m using my old GF4 ti4200 for the graphics card, the card has composite + S-video IN and OUT.

Construction:

Not much to say really. The case was stripped of all the crappy plastic bits, and the more observant may notice its also up-side down.

I hacked (very quickly as you can see) a different fan on the GPU as it was seriously noisy.

Software:

Its running Windows XP Pro with SageTV v2.0 (http://www.sagetv.com/) starting up in full screen.

TODO:

If I find I use this at all much, then I will invest in a wireless keyboard and mouse (very cheap anyway).

Add a TV/Freeview receiver and bigger hard drive to record shows ect...