HD DVD bias… ;) The hometheater pc chassis needs an upgrade. They all look like metal boxes to me.

Cool! I look forward to watching….

Any idea when you’ll be distributing GeekBrief in HD? If I’m not mistaken, you just got new HD cameras?

P.S. Hope your teeth get feeling better, Cali!

Your teeth look EXCELLENT today Cali!

Of COURSE they’re HD DVD biased! Cali likes her porn!

:) just kidding.

Cali -

Remember that you won’t be able to play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies on linux because of the AACS DRM protection. If you must have either of those in the future, you’re going to have to go with a Windows XP or Vista based solution or a standalone HD-DVD/Blu-Ray player.

–Jeff

And I bet any affordable HD-DVD/Blu-ray player will also probably double as a normal DVD/CD burner too. But who needs it… on demand HD content !!!!!

And you’re using a book… tisk tisk, a true geek just jumps in and scours all the different review sites :)

Building your own PC is such a rewarding process. You get to know alot more about what you’d otherwise take for granted.

Who knows, maybe after this project you’d be able to come fix my old computers!

Dillon - if you mean in 1080i uncompressed, we can’t do that yet. The shows being released are HD, but they’re compressed.

Jeff - because of the storage capacity of HD DVD disks, it seems like a perfect solution for archiving OTA HD broadcast.

Cali, what about the storage capacity of blu-ray then? Or are you just an HD-DVD backer? Because I’m all for that.. Sony needs a giant swift kick in the arse.

Hi,
I built a homePC two years ago and from that I have learned three important lessons.

1. If you plan to have it in the living room it needs to be dead quit.
I do not mean low noise, I mean no noise. Go for an all fanless solution. The noise is not a problem when you are watching tv or a movie, but if you are not watching the constant humm can drive you crazy.

2. Get a large disk or two. You can never have to much storage space.

3. At least two tuners is a most!

Thank you for a great show.
Christer

Hi,
I have also built, or I should say am building as the project is on going, a linux based HTPC. I thought I would share lessons learned by my mistakes; in additions to Christer’s good points.
Make sure whatever flavor of Linux you chose has good driver support for your video-in and video-out (i.e.. graphics) cards. Discovering that the generic driver doesn’t support all the features you paid for is discouraging.
If you are connecting directly to a TV go for DVI or HDMI, the picture is worth it. Also, if your graphics card supports HDCP, you have a better chance of making that HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive play movies. (Hacking hint: Xbox360 HD-DVD add-on via USB2.0)
Installing a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port will make adding drives later easier. Also consider front ports for connecting cameras to view pictures and home movies.
I am an old school geek (I learned to program with punch cards) so I like using Freevo as my software. It is very customizable and the pref. file is a Python script. If you make your iTunes folder on a Mac a NFS share, you can access it it directly from Freevo. The is Geexbox, an all-in-one disk with everything you need on the distro disk, has anyone tried it?
Just some old man words of wisdom. Good luck with your build and love your podcast.
Bob

I **WANT** your shirt. Where did you get it?!?!?