Tag Archives: HTPC

Enable Wake On Lan to remotely boot your HTPC

When the house I currently live in was under construction, my family decided that they wanted our living room area to have a very clean appearance. In our previous house, the entertainment area was a complete mess due to a combination of poor cable management as well as clutter created by equipment such as the home theater receiver, HTPC, smart tv box as well as the Blue-ray player. To eliminate the presence of such devices from the living room, HDMI, USB, ethernet as well as coaxial cables were installed behind the TV mount during the framing stages of the house. These in-wall rated cables ran to the basement where a specific area was allocated for all the Audio/Video equipment in the house. Unfortunately, fixing the “clutter” gave rise to another problem; how would we control the equipment in the basement without physically going to the basement each time we wanted to alter a setting? For devices such as the Blue-ray player which featured an Infrared input (IR) the solution was to purchase and setup an Infrared blaster (or RF universal remote). However, this was not possible for the HTPC which featured no IR ports. In turn, Wake on LAN as well as a 2.4Ghz Keyboard/Mice was used.

Setting Up a HTPC & RSS Torrenting

Over the last couple of years, the cable service has become an increasingly irrelevant part of my life. Television shows that were once exclusive to subscribers are now available freely via streaming services such as Rogers on Demand and CTV.ca. Even major broadcasts such as the World Cup and Olympics have found their way online at an impressive 720p quality. As a result of this, I decided it was time to make the ultimate move and completely cancel my $28.99 basic monthly package. Instead, I built a Home Theatre PC (Shown in the video above) capable of handling all my media needs. In the guide below, I will outline some steps I took to creating my ultimate HTPC.