Build a cheap windows media center

The download is in tar. You can decompress that with WinZip if you are a Windows user. If you want to be able to play Windows Media 9 and RealMedia files, you'll need to download some additional codecs. I found the default settings to be reasonable, but you can read more about the various options in the documentation. You won't be able to install the extra codecs or adjust any settings, but this might be all you need.

Making the CD Windows users just run generator. Run generator. It's really that simple. If you are an OSX user, you'll need to install cdrtools and zisofs-tools before generator. Download and untar both packages and then follow these quick steps note: I just install the zisofs binaries to the cdrtools directory :. Connect your computer's video and audio out to your TV, stick in the cdrom you just made, and start it up.

After a few seconds, you should be presented with the main menu. You can now eject the boot cd and replace it with a cd containing your favorite video. All of them are certainly fine products in their own right, but it seemed to us that we could build something equivalent, or maybe even a little better. At the top of our list was the ability to seamlessly integrate this rig into our home-theater system. Finally, the system had to support HDTV viewing and recording.

Once it's copied over, rename the file to. The same SFTPing method here will be useful if you ever want to manually install any plug-ins or skins down the road, or just copy over media directly to your nettop's hard drive. Though we'd recommend streaming—see below. As I said above, you can buy more expensive, meatier machines, but for my money this Acer nettop has worked perfectly. Like I said, though, so far I haven't seen the need for it.

I also quickly switched the skin to the MediaStream skin, which is the one you see in the photo at the top of the page. For a look at some other great skins you may want to apply to your XBMC box, check out these five beautiful skins —or just head to XBMC's main skins page. Now that you've got it all set up, you've probably also realized that GB isn't all that much space for your media. You'd be right, of course.

You've got two pretty good options. First, the nettop should have something like four free USB ports still, so you can easily plug in a big old drive that way. Assuming, however, that you can run an Ethernet wire over to your nettop, your best option is just to connect it to a shared folder on your home network.

Whichever method you use, you just need to add your extra hard drive space as a source in XBMC. You can do so through any of the individual menu items videos, for example , or you can add a default Samba username and password in the settings so it can connect automatically without asking for a password each time you add a new watch folder on that machine. At this point I could go into more detail on how to use and get the most out of XBMC it can be a little hard to get your head around at first, even though once you do, it's not actually confusing.

But stick around; tomorrow we'll follow up with an updated guide to some of our favorite XBMC tweaks. This guide covers in pretty close detail one method for putting together a dedicated, quiet XBMC media center without breaking the bank, but it's certainly not your only option. First, download and install XBMC. This ensures that XBMC will start up automatically with your computer. This will solve some video problems XBMC has in full screen mode. Our original XBMC guide should have everything you need to know about installing add-ons, but note that which add-ons you install will change over time.

Most add-ons are not official, so things like Amazon or Hulu may break over time and require updates or an entirely new add-on to work.

The best way to keep up is to search around the XBMC forums. See this article for our streaming recommendations. If you want to set up video games, check out our feature on turning your XBMC media center into a video game console with Advanced Launcher.

It has everything you need to know.