It's been about two months since I got the idea to build a home theater PC to replace my TiVo HD.  Much of that time was spent waiting for a computer to arrive.  I had been planning on building my setup around the Dell Zino HD small form factor computer.  However, I encountered a few problems with it once I got it in.

The Zino that I got had an Athlon 3250e dual core processor and Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics on the AMD 780g chipset.  I put Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit on it, which ran pretty well overall.  The main thing I wanted to do with the system was run Windows Media Center and view/record TV shows in HD.  I set up the system to run at 1080p.  Watching TV was smooth until I hit the menu or guide button in WMC. As soon as WMC put up on overlay (such as the main menu or the electronic program guide) on top of running content, the framerate slowed significantly - to about 3 frames per second.  This was unacceptable.  I ended up turning the resolution down to 720p.  After I did this, the system ran fine even with a program guide overlay on top. This ended up to be a common issue among people with the AMD 780g chipset.  It is widely discussed on the Zino HD AVS Forum thread: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1170527

So, I relegated this system to an older TV, because I don't want to restrict myself to 720p on my main TV.  I then ordered another Zino HD, this time with a 3250e processor and a discrete Radeon HD 4330 graphics card.  This system was on order for a month, and then I got a note from Dell informing me it had been delayed.  During this time, I kept up with the AVS Forum thread and saw that people encountered lots of other issues with the system, and workarounds included modifying drivers to get performance gains.  I realized that getting this system working was going to be as much work as building a system from scratch.  In addition, it would be less expandable, and I would have to wait an indefinite amount of time to get it in due to production delays.

Long story short, I decided to build an HTPC from scratch out of components from Newegg.  I have the system built, and after a little bit of work, it does everything I need it to do, and quite well at that.  The disadvantage is that it is bigger than the Zino HD, and probably a bit louder.  Luckily, neither point is significant enough to adversely affect my home theater experience.  I will write an article in the near future describing the setup. 

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.