Direct from Ben Drawbaugh at Engadget HD, DIY’ers have successfully built their own Cabled Card equipped HTPC. This is some fantastic news. One of the biggest complaints in the HTPC community is the lack of being able to support premium HD content with self built HTPC’s. Prior to this, users had to purchase OEM built HTPC’s from approved vendors. That now looks to not be the case. Currently you are still limited on the motherboards you can use, right now it looks like the Asus PQ5 mother boards work, which to me is just fine, as Asus is a very reputable mother board manufacture that make an extremely solid product.
On top of being limited on the motherboards you can use, you still have to get your hands on an OCUR tuner product ID number, which currently is still limited to those who purchase OEM pc’s with cable card tuners. Some users are reporting that the generic PID of 263DJ-2Y9YT-6X9G6-W28DB-697TF works, but who knows how long that PID # will last before Microsoft starts blocking it. Head over to The Green Button Forums for more details.
Now if only I was in the market for a new HTPC mobo and had some extra cash to pick up some ATI Cable Card Tuners, I might have just tried this myself.
And to think, i JUST bought a new motherboard for my new HTPC build. If I had see this last week I might have bought one of these boards.
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