I finally got around to getting my PVR, pretty much the most integral part of an HTPC, this last week. NewEgg finally got some Hauppauge 250MCEs in after months of being out of stock (it's one of the most popular single tuners for MCE apparently) and I got mine on Tuesday. Some of you may remember my extreme displeasure at nVidia's tuner, the NVTV that I bought, RMAd, and then had to return when they finally called and told me it may never work with my system. Fortunately they did hook my up with a free copy of the nVidia MPEG2 decoder for MCE for my wasted time and money. The Hauppauge units came highly recommended so I waited for NewEgg to get them in stock again.

Installed it this weekend finally and had absolutely no troubles getting it running. Played with it a little and found my antenna reception isn't very good with a splitter on it so I'll have to get a switch for it I think. However that means I wouldn't be able to watch TV while recording on the HTPC simultaneously. The interface was nice and I recorded my first show while I was out Saturday night. Unfortunately the strippers for DVR-MS files I tried using error out with my recorded TV files. I'll have to keep playing with that apparently.

Unfortunately the Lian Li with all its 80mm fans and the big Thermalright sinks and fans still make a tornado of noise so I really need to either swap it into the 3U case sooner rather than later or build a new system entirely. I do have these Noconas sitting around doing nothing so perhaps I'll build a 7525 system and make that my new HTPC 8)