Absolute Beginner's Guide to Microsoft Windows® XP Media Center®

■ An SVGA extension cable—This comes in handy for people who want their

Media Center PC across the living room next to their TV, but want to get up

close and personal with a PC monitor. You may find that this kind of setup

gives you the best of both worlds, by allowing your Media Center PC to provide

entertainment via a TV placed across the room, while keeping a conventional

CRT or flat-panel monitor up close for your personal computing tasks.

■ An optical mouse—This eliminates the need for a mouse pad. Again, that

might be pretty useful if you want to mouse around and control things from

the comfort of your couch. Check whether your Media PC already includes

one of these before you go shopping.

Getting Connected

By now you’re on a first-name basis with the counter guy at the electronics store,

but that’s okay; he’s a friend and a kindred spirit. If anyone appreciates what you’re

doing—nothing less than dragging your entertainment experience kicking and

screaming into the twenty-first century—it’s him.

And you may need all the moral support you can get. Yes, everything seems pretty

straightforward when you’re looking over that beautifully organized, color-coded

instruction sheet. But be forewarned: Things may look very different when you’re

crouched and cramped in the darkness under some heavy piece of furniture, sorting

out a veritable rat’s nest of assorted wires and peering hopelessly in the bad light at

your Media PC’s rear panel, which seems to have more holes in it than the surface

of the moon.

26

ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER

FIGURE 2.5

This RCA remote

sensor provides an

inexpensive way

to hide all your

components—

including your

Media Center

PC—and still

communicate

with them via

your infrared

remote control.

Still, there’s nothing for it but to forge ahead

and get this thing connected. Assuming that

you have paid attention up to this point, and

have at least decided where you want your

Media Center PC to be situated, it’s time to get

started by hooking up your PC components.

Hooking Up Your PC Components

This is the most straightforward part of putting

your Media Center–based system together. Every

manufacturer’s hardware is a little different, but

here’s the basic routine:

1. Connect your mouse and keyboard to the

PC. (If you have a wireless mouse and key-

board, install the batteries they require,

and then plug the wireless receiver into a

USB port on the PC’s rear panel.)

2. Connect the monitor to the Media PC

using the SVGA cable.

3. Connect the modem to a phone jack, if

you plan to use the media PC with a dial-

up Internet connection, or if you plan to

use the built-in fax features of Windows

XP Professional Edition (which provides

the underlying OS for Windows XP Media

Center Edition). If desired, you can go

ahead and plug a phone into the pass-

though phone jack on your modem.

Alternatively, if you plan to use a broad-

band connection, plug one end of an

Ethernet cable into the broadband (cable,

DSL, and so on) modem, and the other

into your Media PC’s Ethernet jack. (For

additional home-networking options and

procedures, see Chapter 22, “XP Media

Center and Your Home Network.”)

4. Plug the monitor and PC into your power

strip or UPS. Don’t turn it on yet, though.

CHAPTER 2 BASIC SETUP OF AN XP MEDIA CENTER SYSTEM

27

tip

When you’re doing a rela-

tively complex installation

project, it’s a good idea to

hook things up in stages. Of

course, it’s tempting to get

caught up in the moment

and connect everything all

at once, and then simply switch it

on. But it’s heartbreaking when

you’ve followed every instruction

to the letter, only to reach for the

power button and get nothing, or

in the case of Windows XP Media

Center, to click on

My TV and get

No TV signal detected.

The best way to avoid that is

to check every new device and

connection as you add it to the

system, constantly verifying the

last step before you go on to

the next. The downside is that this

approach could add hours to your

setup time. Instead, try a balanced

approach, stopping every so often

to see whether what you have

connected is working. Even if you

plan to use your PC display for

watching TV, you may want to

have a television set handy to

check that your TV signal is

actually working before you

connect it to your Media PC.

The guiding principle is that the

more often you stop and verify

that everything is working,

the less time you’ll spend

troubleshooting in the end.