The first few days of my last job were a bit odd, to say the least. Between an all-day road trip to a dilapidated preschool in Milwaukee and trying to navigate a new city in the pouring rain without a smartphone, things were…not ideal. Like many people, I tried to combat my woes by throwing money at Amazon to treat myself to a nice laptop (my alternative was a $300 mess from the school I was stationed at). Fast forward a couple years and I find myself with a good job, a nice work laptop, and a personal laptop that’s still in good shape. Rather than have the latter gather dust while it waits for me to forget about it, I decided to turn it into a full-time media center.
The procedure is simple to start, but can get as complex as you want. You’ll need at least:
1. A computer. Preferably something compact if you want to set it in your entertainment center. If using a laptop, make sure to configure power settings so that the laptop doesn’t go into sleep mode when the lid is closed.
2. A display cable to plug the computer into your TV. This will most likely either be HDMI (better) or VGA (not better).
a. If using a VGA (blue-headed) cable for display, you’ll also need a 3.5mm stereo male to dual RCA male cable. The single 3.5mm plug goes into the headphones/speaker port on the computer and the RCA plugs go into the color-corresponding audio ports on the back of the TV.
b. Some TVs may require a DVI (white-headed) cable instead of VGA. This situation is a bit more complicated since you’ll most likely need to buy an adapter in addition to the DVI cable.
3. Input devices. Most likely just a keyboard and mouse. I’ve used a cheap wireless set for my setup, but if that’s too much bulk on the coffee table, look into getting a mini wireless keyboard with a touchpad.
From there, it’s a matter of figuring out what you want it to do. I primarily use mine to stream games from my desktop in the back office over the wifi; and to watch movies/TV using Kodi, a nice piece of home theater software. Both of these are ongoing projects that require continued maintenance to keep them working well, but using it as a simple Netflix/Hulu box in the meantime was a cinch. I do recommend running backups to an external hard drive if you end up with a lot of stored movies/TV/music on it. But other than that, maintenance is at your discretion.
Enjoy the Cül Tek Tip!