One for the Techies

Fancy a challange?

The Mission, If you choose to except it.

Find me the components for a new media centre as cheep as possible.
It will pretty much only be used for video / music. And will be running something like Media Portal / XBMC and will be connected to my 42” LG tv.
I have a 1.5 Tb drive that will be used for data however a second smaller disc will be needed for the OS.

The case I will be using is one of these if it makes any difference, unless you can find any thing similar / better.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/APlus-A-Case-CS-GL-3-Black-HTPC-RoHS-/250421450871?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopComponents_RL& hash=item3a4e481877

So what can you do…..?

Prizes for the winner of any 3 things they like from my office vending machine!

Cheers.
Colin.

[L3nny]

Do you really need 6 drive bays?? The case you've linked to looks massive.

I'd go for one of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239649

Originally Posted by L3nny

Do you really need 6 drive bays?? The case you've lined to looks massive.

I'd go for one of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/239649

+1, agreed, a lot less hassle. Only takes one 2.5" SATA, but that'll give you 1TB capacity for an extra 50 quid.

Stick a Linux OS on it and it'll run like a beauty.

[L3nny]

Didn't realise it only took 2,5" drives. If you did go for that you could get a small 2.5" drive for the OS then get a USB caddy for the 1.5 TB drive you have.

[SoulKiss]

Why build a PC?

There are media player boxes out there that ill do this - all for < £100?

Unless you want to play games/surf, then why build a PC?

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

There are media player boxes out there that ill do this - all for < £100?

Linky pls!?

I have a 32" flatscreen CRT TV and 5.1 home theater system connected via S-video to an old Dell Pentium 4 2.8 GHz at the moment. It allows me to watch iPlayer, online TV, photo's, play all my MP3 through the home theater, etc. I've been in rented houses for the last 2 years. It's analogue resolution, but no worse than we've all been watching on CRT TV's for most of our lives. The Dell tower desktop is bulky, but it sits between the TV corner cabinet and the wall, so not too bad.

Once we finally sell our house in Scotland and buy in Northamptonshire, I'll be looking for a 40" + flatscreen mounted on the wall, a compact HDMi media player, and a decent sound system suited to both music and surround sound, BOSE or similar, with digital inputs all round.

I wanted to build a pc as it will play almost all file types, Will have a DVD / CD burner on it for copying off music to play in the car. Will be running a Bit torrent client for more downloads, and will allow me to add a remote for controling media portal / xbmc. plus i would be able to run a remote desktop to it from my laptop if i needed to sort any files or anything out on it.
Plus being able to expand the storage on it once the 1.5 TB drive is full up.

Anyone seen anything smart for remote control of media players, other than having to have a wireless keyboard and touchpad? (though would probably have one of these as well for websurfing on the TV)

Originally Posted by Pimp Cat

I wanted to build a pc as it will play almost all file types, Will have a DVD / CD burner on it for copying off music to play in the car. Will be running a Bit torrent client for more downloads, and will allow me to add a remote for controling media portal / xbmc. plus i would be able to run a remote desktop to it from my laptop if i needed to sort any files or anything out on it.
Plus being able to expand the storage on it once the 1.5 TB drive is full up.

Which of these things do you think you would be unable to do with the link posted by L3nny?

Granted for expanding storage it would be better if it had a gigabit LAN card, not 10/100, think that's an oversight on a media player personally, but it has 5 USB ports.