moment of truth for the cheap-o htpc

Well, I was going to my bro-in-laws house and I was going to bring the PC I was working on for him. I put a PCI video card in the PC that had, (what I thought), was RCA/Composite video out. When we hooked up the PC to his TV it was clear something wasn’t right. We could make out the boot up sequence on the TV but the sync was off. A quick web search suggested we needed an adapter of some sort.

Now, the video card in this PC has VGA, DVI, and Composite on it. I assumed that the composite connection was an output, but from what I read on the Internet, it might actually be video out. I didn’t buy this card. It was sent to me by my Dad who sent me his old computer. I assumed it would just work.

So, my brother-in-law ran out to Radio Shack and we talked with a guy there who really knew something. He was very helpful but they didn’t have what we needed. He understood our mission; watch a German soccer match on the TV via a PC using MythTv without our wives fully understanding how much time and money we put into this without spending any money. I was trying to finish the installation of MythTV on this PC while there were two 2 1/2 years olds, two six year olds, and one 10 year old running around. It was tough.

My brother-in-law is German and signed up for this new service he’s very happy about:

The $64,000,000 question is how to watch the recorded videos on his TV. I think with this old PC I am working on, we are probably 95% of the way there. Although, at this point, I think it might be easy/cheapest to get an xbox and put XBMC on it.