OK, at the request of Ian and Brian I've taken some pictures.

This is the interface for Beyond TV (sort of like Tivos, I imagine). I picked this one because it's easy enough for anyone (Lauren) to use. You can see all the shows we're watching - Lost, the Office, etc. Notice the time I have left to do HD recordings vs. regular (SD) recordings. HD takes almost 9 GB/hr!

Here's the physical Windows Desktop. XP was recommended over Vista due to some DRM restrictions (I haven't looked into it much, I just know it's an issue), and plus XP doesn't require as much computing power. This box only has 1GB of RAM so that is an issue. Looks ok, this picture doens't really do it justice. I set the icons and text to be large, and it's running at 1360x780 (720p).

Here's us watching the Office. This picture doesn't do it justice (my apologies) but it looks really good. Here's Ryan.

Next up is the whole entertainment center set up. Notice my Xbox and Wii (hard to see) on the left, in the middle our cable box, Media Center PC, and on the right we have a bookshelf Stereo. On the cable box (hard to see) there's an IR blaster set up to the back of the PC, which can change the channel on the cable box at will. Works really well, although takes a while to figure it out initially.

Here's zoomed in on the PC. I have a wired mouse and keyboard connected, for the times I need to do something in front of the box (rare - i usually use logmein from my laptop). It's more there for typing things into YouTube to search for videos. The remote I have can control the mouse, but it's not something you want to spend a lot of time doing. Also, on top of the PC is the "eye" for the remote, called the Firefly.

Here's the HDHomeRun Tuner (notice the HDTV lettering on the top). THe back (You'll see in a second) has two co-ax inputs, an ethernet port, and a power plug).

Here's the wires (ick). I shove this into the back of the entertainment center, so they're not generally visible. It's a little awkward to see, but let me describe. I have a wireless LAN PCI card at the bottom. Above that is the Hauppage 150 Tuner card (connected to the cable box via S-Video), above that is my AGP 256MB graphics card (note the DVI port - got a DVI to HDMI cable for that one). Above that is my LAN port, connected via cross-over cable to the HDHomeRun.

Here's a similar shot. In this one, you can see the Software Encoded Capture card that Sony included with the PC. However, I never got it working and just left it in there. One day I might look into it.

Lastly is the Firefly Remote and the remote from our Samsung TV. The Firefly uses RF, and the Samsung remote uses IR, so no love there for making everything universal. Still, the Firefly can work well as a mouse (i might have mentioned that already) and I can re-program the XML files for the mouse to make the extra buttons do what I want on the computer (open Windows Media Player, open iTunes, open VLC, etc.) I didn't do that yet because it hasn't been a big deal.

The Samsung remote (that came with the TV) is actually pretty good. I set it up to control pretty much all our other stuff - the DVD player, the cable box, even my XBox!! (use RCA code 0017 for that, if my memory serves). The XBox control is AWESOME, especially since I have XBMC set up on that, and it's working as an upscaling DVD player. (Note - that's not really necessary because I can play DVDs through my media center PC at 720p, but I didn't want to overtax the Media Center too much if I didn't have to.

SO - that's pretty much it. I do have a co-ax 4 way splitter behind the PC that I didn't show - got it from RadioShack for 10 bucks or so. 2 of the co-ax's go to the HDHomerun, one goes to the cable box, and one goes to the TV (so you can watch TV completely without the Media Center if you want - which is what Lauren does most of the time, if she just watches normal TV).

That's it! Hope you enjoyed this!