Time to build a mini-home theater...

In my family room I have a five year old 52" crappy television. I'm ripping it out next week to install a new LCD TV with a Voodoo ARIA Media Center with DVD Archival. I'll be taking pictures as I go through the install as I will also be capturing digital cable, and I may introduce HDTV via an over the air antenna.

This is going to be interesting because I want to make it as simple an installation as possible. This isn't meant to be the main, no holds barred, home theater, rather this is meant to replace the family room television. It's in an area that everyone in my family will be using, therefore it has to be VERY easy to use. My wife will surely tell me if it's not and I'm certainly not prepared to deal with that.

So how can one pull this off? To be honest, Windows Media Center 2005 is fantastic, almost anyone can operate it. With our DVD archival feature it should be a cynch to pick up the remote, select a movie, and watch it without any issues at all.

This project will also give me an opportunity to try various soundcards in an open home theater environment. I will also be testing chipsets from ATi and Nvidia to see the difference in image quality and overall experience, it should be very interesting.

So, I expect I'll be taking some pictures as I do the project and most definately sharing them online.