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BUILD THE ULTIMATE

26 MAXIMUMPC OCTOBER 2006

There comes a time in every young lad’s life when he

outgrows his personal video recorder (PVR). Tivo, you’ve

been with us for a long time, but we’ve grown, and

you just haven’t. We want to do more with our TV than

you’re capable of. We want to rip all our DVDs to the

hard drive, and then stream them across the network to

all of our portable players. Sure, you can do that, but it

can be done better.

Yes, we’re going to miss your friendly round remote,

but we haven’t really used that since we got our

Harmony remote anyway. And we can’t wait for our

entire 30,000-song music library to be available at

our fi ngertips! Heck, we’ll even be able to play a

game or two on our media center.

Here’s the trick: If you pair an inexpensive TV

tuner or two with a decent remote, quiet cool-

ing apparatus, and midrange PC components,

you can build a living room PC that positive-

ly spanks the world’s best PVRs. The time

has come to move beyond Tivo, and step

into the larger, more powerful world by

building your own living room PC!

Imagine an evening at home with a bowl of

popcorn, a tasty beverage, your significant

other, and all your favorite movies, music, and

TV shows right at your fingertips. We show you

how to make it happen!

BY MICHAEL BROWN & THE MAXIMUM PC STAFF