Media Centre - DIY

I just use a normal PC with a couple of 500GB SATA drives. Does everything I want from Internet TV to DVD to viewing my photos and playing my music collection, and it's great only having one central device for everything.

At the moment I live in a rented house and it has a 2.1 speaker system connected and s-video to a 32" CRT.

When I buy a house I'll be getting a big HD flatscreen and a BOSE 5.1 or 7.1 system installed on the walls and I'll connect into those via HDMI and S/PDIF. Doesn't matter then what the quality of the video and soundcards are like as the PC is just outputting pure digital signal as it reads it from DVD, MP3 whatever. The PC has a freeview card, but as this is built into the TV it is only used for scheduled recording of TV to hard disk, or watching TV when you might want to pause it. A wireless keyboard and mouse gives you control from the sofa, and you can sit and surf the org on your 54 inch screen

[maviczap]

Lots of helpful advice, thanks

Shameless plug: www.evocomshop.com

But I agree, PS3 + 42" Flat Screen + any cheapy PC with PS3 Media Server + 100Mbps Lan is fine.

You dont need Gigabit to stream HD, unless you have a lot of other stuff going over your network. Wifi is fine for DVD streaming but doesnt cut it for 720+.

On the PS3 there is also a free app which you can download, basically music vids on tap. My very own personal MTV

[L3nny]

Originally Posted by hongman

On the PS3 there is also a free app which you can download, basically music vids on tap. My very own personal MTV

Not forgetting youtube.

Originally Posted by hongman

Shameless plug: www.evocomshop.com

But I agree, PS3 + 42" Flat Screen + any cheapy PC with PS3 Media Server + 100Mbps Lan is fine.

You dont need Gigabit to stream HD, unless you have a lot of other stuff going over your network. Wifi is fine for DVD streaming but doesnt cut it for 720+.

On the PS3 there is also a free app which you can download, basically music vids on tap. My very own personal MTV

I know I don't need gigabit, but the router was about 50 quid, so i thought why not. transfers to my server are rocket fast too.

Originally Posted by L3nny

Not forgetting youtube.

Aye, but for the purpose of music vids, youtube cant do playlists (or can it?)

Originally Posted by Jackie_Black

I know I don't need gigabit, but the router was about 50 quid, so i thought why not. transfers to my server are rocket fast too.

Yup, just clarifying thats all. Most recent stuff is gigabit anyway.

[maviczap]

I'm going to resurect this thread, just for an update.

Finally got round to building my media centre, although I didn't get the Antec case in the end, as I picked up a case, with mobo + CPU , CPU cooler, 500gb sata HD, 1gb memory & psu for £99

Added 2 x 2Tb hard drives, graphics card,satellite tuner card, another 1gb memory, blu ray DVD drive and a Wifi dongle

All running nicely on Windows 7 at the moment.

All my music & video's have been uploaded, although I've still got a few more of ours and the kids DVD's to rip to the HD

Very impressed with the Media Portal software

I may get the Antec case, as the PSU in my case is a bit noisey, as is the CPU cooler. Everything else will fit, plus there's space for another HD