Living Room PC Front and Back Panel Design Considerations
Draft Version 0.5
DownloadLiving Room PC Front and Back Panel Design Considerations
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These design considerations are intended for engineers who build PCs and devices that run with the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 operating system and later versions.
This document describes how system and device manufacturers can enhance the user experience by making PCs easier to work with from a hardware perspective. It provides recommendations for hardware, playback controls, and visual feedback indicators that add to an optimal user experience.
This document describes design recommendations and best practices for PCs that run Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004.
In the past, PCs have been used primarily for productivity and only occasionally for entertainment. However, recent developments in digital media software, media storage and graphics adapter capabilities, and audio hardware have allowed PCs to play a more prominent role in providing rich media experiences in the home.
Living Room PCs (LRPCs) are designed to be used as the primary media center in the home. As such, the design of an Living Room PC is dramatically different from a PC targeted for office or knowledge-worker use. An LRPC should be designed for use as part of a home's entertainment center, and it should look more like a piece of consumer electronic equipment than a traditional beige-box PC.
These recommendations focus on key elements of front and back panel design and user experience: I/O connectors, user controls, visual indicators, and label taxonomy. Microsoft has created these recommendations so that system and device manufacturers can benefit from Microsoft user research in interactive hardware design and to promote informed, consistent designs that can be adopted throughout the PC industry for LRPCs. Designers can use these recommendations to establish standard interactive designs for their devices.
What Is Included in These Recommendations
These draft recommendations focus on design issues for Windows XP Media Center Edition-based PC systems targeted for living room operation. The best practices and recommendations may differ for Windows-based PCs targeted for desktop operation, servers, or server appliances.
This v0.5 draft version introduces front and back panel design recommendations for LRPCs designed to run Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 and later versions. Future review drafts of this document will include specific implementation details for each recommended connector, control, or feature, as well as implementation details for auxiliary displays.
Microsoft recommends two basic approaches for this document:
| • | Study: Read the entire document to understand the basic design principles and goals for each type of control and configurations discussed in the recommendations. |
| • | Reference: Use the recommendations as a design reference, for implementing specific controls in your system or device designs. |
Note: This paper includes a technical documentation agreement for feedback.
Included in this white paper:
| • | LRPC Front Panel Design |
| • | LRPC Back Panel Design |
| • | Summary and References |
| • | Appendix 1: Sample Back Panel Schematics |
