Every once in a while I get a wild idea to really tweak stuff in my home theater system.  I think I’ve got enough revolutionary changes to it coming up to warrant a full article.  Before doing that though, this post is my way to capture some thoughts about what I want to write. 

There has been some serious buzz around the net about a new computer Dell is releasing called the Zino HD.  It’s a small form factor computer that looks like it was made to be a home theater PC.  It’s about 8” x 8” x 3.5” from what I’ve read.  It’s quiet, and it has HDMI out.  Check out this AMD engineer’s blog about this computer:

http://blogs.amd.com/home/2009/11/12/the-dell-inspiron-zinohd/

Pretty exciting stuff.  So of course I ordered one. 

I’ve been running Windows 7 on other computers and have been very impressed with it.  One cool feature that I’ve tried is Windows Media Center – which allows me to stream content from my computer to my Xbox 360.  Cool… but it would be even cooler to have an actual computer attached to the HDTV, no extender necessary. 

Then I thought, what else could this do?  Windows Media Center has gotten great reviews and has a particularly good interface for showing TV listings.  The Engadget review linked above even claims that it beats the TiVo hands down.  And I love my TiVo HD. I realized that I could attach a TV tuner to the Zino HD and have a little HTPC that replaces the TiVo.

Now for a TV tuner.  The Zino HD is great for being a small computer but does not lend itself to expansion.  There are four USB ports on it, but I did not think putting USB tuners on it was the way to go – I would need two of them because I’m used to being able to record two shows simultaneously.  There is however, a very cool solution to this problem in the form of a network-addressable dual HD tuner.  Just like a NAS, but instead of storage, you get access to two HD tuners over Ethernet.  OK, maybe a bad analogy, but you get the point.  This thing is called the HDHomeRun.  After installing the drivers, Windows Media Center sees it as two tuners as long as your Windows machine is on the same network as the HD Homerun.

That’s it.  I’ve tested the HDHomeRun and it works great.  Now just waiting for the Zino HD to arrive.  There are other things to address, such as hooking up an infrared-based remote control to the Zino and also getting optical SPDIF audio out, but there are straightforward solutions to those issues as well.