Nettop Chronicles: Part One – Introduction

Chance Stevens 8 May 2010 125 views View Comments

Hi, this is Chance Stevens, editor at Netbookreports.com. I’d like to take a departure from our usual stories about netbooks to focus on their cousins, nettops. Nettops are netbooks without screens. They have Intel Atom guts and are enjoyed for their low power consumption and reasonable prices.

I was faced with the dilemma of having to pay DirecTV $7.50 a month for being able to use their DVR service or build my own. I’ve read all about MyTh TV and other similar software programs in the past but none of them seemed dead simple enough for me to buy. Finally I found out that prices on parts were better than I thought and found a software package that could do what I’m looking for.

Unlike most people I don’t just want to be able to pause and record live television, I want to be able to download shows from Hulu or YouTube then put it all on a DVD, my cell phone or whatever else I can find so I can bring my media with me where ever I am without having to deal with silly things like copyrights or DRM.

My budget was $300.

This was the same budget I used when buying my latest netbook (a gently used Asus 1101HA) so I figured a similar number would make sense when building a nettop. It’s important to note that I’m cheating a little bit because I already have some of the parts that I need in order to make this happen.

Here is what it’s going to look like:

- Intel Atom processor
- 160GB 2.5 hard drive
- 8x DVD burner
- 1GB of DDR2 RAM
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- Hauppauge WinTV TV tuner card
- Remote Control
- Wireless keyboard

I’m still deciding on the final components but this will be a real interesting experiment. It’s been a few years since I’ve built a computer but the increased functionality I’ll get along with having a project to share with all of you have me really excited.

Stay tuned for updates.

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