If you have the Home Premium or Ultimate editions of Windows Vista you will have probably figured out by now that they come with a special version of Windows Media Center. I’m really appreciative to Microsoft for this, as it allows me to easily use my PC as a Media Center itself, without hardly any additional hardware.

Sound

If you want HD sound you’ll need a HD sound card, but usually a normal stereo out sound card is good. An important aspect from the sound card on is where the sound goes; I’ve got my PC hooked up to a Sony stereo, with two 8Ω speakers attached. This actually works pretty well for me, and the sound quality is awesome. Most people have stereos, and most of them have line in ports, albeit phono or a normal 3.5mm headphone jack.

Video

You probably won’t need anything more than a graphics card that can run aero, and it might be worth investing in a 16:9 or 16:10 monitor, it makes all the difference. My 4:3 monitor doesn’t look quite right with Media Center, but it does the job fine. You can connect DVI or VGA outputs to some new TV’s now, so if you have a really awesome TV you might be able to use that.

TV Signal

You will need a free coaxial socket and a cheap TV card to watch TV with media center, so I recommend something like this if you want to get Freeview on it. Basic stuff is okay, but if you want to use 2 tuners at once you will need a dual tuner card, and they cost quite a bit more.

PC Remote

Here’s something that will cost you next to nothing, a USB PC remote. This product works absolutely great for me - stuff like navigating around media center and audio / video control is really easy. I’ve dropped it a few times too and it still works fine; it’s a pretty robust unit.

Music

If you already use Windows Media Player to play music you don’t need to do anything, Windows Media Center shares the same music library, so everything you have will already be there. If you use iTunes however, you can’t play your music using Media Center. I’m not sure if there are any third party plugins that let you do so either. Windows Media Center also shares the plugins that Windows Media Player has, so the last.fm plugin I use to scrobble my music to last.fm still works on Media Center, meaning people can see what i’m listening to while i’m using it.

Hard Drive

You won’t need a really large hard drive if you plan to record a lot of TV, I think something like a 160GB hdd will suffice, it all depends on how long you’re recording for, and what kind of other stuff you have on your PC filling your hard drive.

One small thing I hate about Media Center (as highlighted in a previous post) is the fact that you can’t stream live TV over a LAN, which pisses me off. I gave up on the JTVLAN software as I just find it easier to watch TV with my PC, but I hope Microsoft solve the problem in the future. You can do it, just to media extenders, not other PCs on the network.