Like many of the folks that read this forum, I too am building an HTPC device over the holiday break at the end of December. I have ordered most of my gear and most likely have made a few mistakes that I will not discover until I start to hook everything up. I want to built a complete HTPC device that does the following:
1. Music Jukebox, I have about 500+ CDs, but realistically I want to dump about half of them onto the Jukebox at near CD quality (320 kbs). I'm most interested in building play lists. Burning CDs will be nice, but not a something I do much of. I do want to be able to transfer MP3's to a Apple iPod.
2. To support above, I want high end audio quality (optical or coax connection).
3. I want to be able play DVDs at equal or better quality that my current Progressive Scan Toshiba DVD player.
4. I want to be able to get rid of my Tivo PTR and replace it with the HTPC. In addition, I have TWC supplied Exploer 3100HD, so I want to be able to record HDTV (which cannot be done with Tivo).
5. I want to enhance my TV picture (I have a Pioneer 505HD Plasma which is 1024x768 and supports full all HD formats).
6. I want it to look like an audio component and fit inside my HT cabinet - all my gear is hidden. To this end, I am concerned about heat and noise.
Given all of the above, here is what I have ordered:
1. Vision 2 case
2. Asus P4PE-GBL motherboard (wanted HT support)
3. P4 2.4 GHz CPU (may upgrade when HT stuff comes down)
4. 512 MB Corsair PC2700 DDR
5. ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
6. M-Audio 24/96 Audiophile sound card
7. Holo3DGraph H3D card for scaling and dinterlace
8. accessDTV HDTV Recording card
9. Seasonic 300W P4 Power Supply (it is quiet)
10. Zalman CPNS6500B-CU CPU cooler for P4
11. 2 Enermax UltraCool 8am BB cooling fan
12. D-Link DWL-520 802.11b PCI card - have Dlink Air Port
13. Evation IRMan
14. Gyration RF Mouse/Keyboard
15. Seagate ST3120023A 120 GB drive (it is quiet)
16. Windows XP - would rather run Linux, but want to get the thing working quickly and don't want to get hung up looking for drivers. May go with Linux and Windows XP running under VM at some point. If I need to write a program in C,C++ or Java then Linux will become a necessity.
I'll try mostly open-source software to start and will buy stuff as I need it.
Hope this helps. I did a lot of research on this site and the above is what I came up with. I can tell you that I did not start when I ended up. Originally I wanted a micro case, but PCI slots were going to be a problem, so I opted for the larger case so that I could do everything that I want.