Picking hardware for Media Center

I love the discussion here about the "complexity" of HTPC interface and about EPIA vs. full size motherboard and Pentium/Athlon quite solid and interesting. The topic "Picking hardware for Media Center" is quite relevant to what I am currently thinking of - what do I really need from an HTPC box in the living room...????

I have built one HTPC configuration on Pentium D already [http://www.buildmediacenter.com/html/projects.html ]
and now realize, that I need a different kind of HTPC in the living room:

1. BIG or small case
If you build smth on Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon - it becomes (a) a BIG BOX (b) rather a lot of heat and typically case fan requirement - meaning noise (c) 3.5" harddrives are as noisy as a silent case fan. Fist reaction of my friends was often ..."why is it so big???", they expect it to be of a DVD player size as any other entertainment electronics. This brought me to a conclusion to check if my dream model can be built in mini-ITX form factor.

2. Configuration
You don't really need the 7-in-1 card reader, keyboard and mouse, many USB ports in your living room. It is actually MUCH MUCH more convenient to upload and edit your pictures or home videos at your home office PC or laptop, when you can sit at the table, have a keyboard to type, a mouse to navigate the program, monitor to see the small text and scroll through directories. When you come back to the living room, you just want to crush on the couch, quickly turn it on (your HTPC) and operate it with a remote. It is ok to schedule some TV recordings from time to time, but not ...remove red eyes in your recent picture... right? The point here is - you don't need many things which are typically there in a standard off-the-shelf HTPC. Rather you look for a combination of two computers in your home: a home office PC (laptop) + living room HTPC.
Comment: This argument may not hold true, if you have your home office also in the living room and you can use your BIG BOX HTPC as both - home office PC and living room PC, having it connected to TV and to a Monitor. This is not the case though I would like to discuss here.

3. HDTV
CableCARD option will become available in US only end of the year with release of Vista and CableCARD tuners. My understanding is that CableCARD is already available in Europe - so some of the European readers here may have their practical experience and correct me... My experience though is the following:
a) only limited HDTV content is currently available, about 10 channels (I have a COMCAST HD cable).
b) when I watch TV - I will want to send the DVI output from cable box through a DVI switch directly to the Flat Screen LCD TV to avoid delays in channel switching the PC brings (almost 1 second) and the trouble of switching channels on the cable box through an IR transmitter (it is not reliable). So, I don't actually need a PC when I watch TV, only to record from time to time - which in such case I could also do in a non-HDTV format by taking analog TV signal out of the cable box and recording. So, I may actually not need HDTV tuner... This will potentilly reduce the load on CPU, and make mini-ITX configuration possible.

So, what the requirements to the living room HTPC are
- need to be small (the only option is to build it in mini-ITX form factor)
- need to be absolutely silent (basically fanless case and small 2.5" hard drive)
- will use for recording TV, show home videos, pictures, play music
- need to have a DVI output
- don't need a large hard drive (to reduce noise/heat) and will either use external USB drive or network storage
- don't need or optional HDTV tuner or HDTV recording (there is a Firewire option to get HDTV from cable box - if it works fine, good...if not, also ok...). There is also an option to experiment with external USB HDTV CableCARD tuner later - I don't need an extra slot not for it).

So, I guess, I am putting for discussion the "living room HTPC" vs. "big box universal HTPC". I would like to check my assumptions with others on what is needed in a living room HTPC first, than we can build the hardware configuration accordingly...

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Andy at http://www.buildmediacenter.com