Media Center Refresh

Media Center Hardware Refresh

I updated one of my Windows Media Centers this past Christmas.

I use a Hauppauge Colossus with Windows Media Center since CableCARD is not supported in Canada. With component in and the IR blaster, the setup is a bit of a nuisance, but things work well.

• LIAN LI PC-Q27B No Power Supply Mini-ITX Tower Case (Black) CA-Q27B
• Supermicro X10SLV-Q-B
• Intel i3-4340
• SAMSUNG 4GB DDR3 PC3-12800S M471B5273DH0-CK0
• SanDisk Extreme II 240GB SATA III Solid State Drive (for OS, and the temp recording cache, with lots of over provisioning)
• Western Digital VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ 500GB 10000 RPM 64MB Cache (for recordings)
• picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit
• Since I rarely use the optical drive, I moved the LiteOn iHBS-312 drive into a USB3.0 enclosure.
• The motherboard only as USB 2.0 headers, so I was unable to connect the front/side USB3.0 ports up at full speed.
• I overprovisioned the Sandisk SSD quite a bit – to help compensate for the writes that Media Center will do.
• Colossus does not support Windows 8 in Media Center. I had to downgrade to Windows 7 w/SP1. Sigh.
• Shark007 codecs worked fine – just had to make sure I didn’t install all the adware it comes with.