I have embarked on setting up my very own home media centre. Over the next little while I will cover the setup and maintenance of the system from start to finish.

The requirements of the system that I wanted are

  • Must be cheap
  • Must not use pay TV
  • Needs to run on old hardware.
  • Needs to be able to be accessed remotely to be able to schedule recordings etc.
  • Needs to plug into any TV.
  • Would be nice to be able to access the content on other devices such as tablets, phones etc.
  • Needs to be flexible enough to be able to perform other tasks around my home as required from time to time.
  • Parts need to be able to be purchased off the shelf. No soldering!
  • Minimal programming.

That’s the challenge. So over the next few weeks I will put together the pieces and try to get it all up and running.