One for the Techies

Originally Posted by -Ralph-

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)

http://www.firebox.com/product/2691/...yboard?via=ser

Its still a keyboard like, as opposed to a more media biased remote, but pretty cool nonetheless and solves the problem of seperate mouse/touchpad.

[L3nny]

Originally Posted by -Ralph-

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

Sorry don't follow you there?? Should be able to do the lot.

I personally use a PS3 or just plug my laptop into the TV via HDMI on the rare occasion I want to play a file format the PS3 doesn't like and I don't have time to convert it.

Originally Posted by L3nny

Should be able to do the lot.

It will be able to do the lot, though he may need to purchase the DVD/RW drive separately as it's an optional extra.

Which is why I'm asking the question. Which bit did Pimp Cat think it wouldn't be able to do?

[L3nny]

Ahh right, yer that is just a barebones system so memory and drives would eed to be purchased as well.

I'm sure that the one in the link from lenny would be able to do all that but the dvd writer / extra hard drives would have to be in there own caddy and pluged in by usb meaning more power leads usb leads and ending up with 3 / 4 little boxes instead of one bigger one.

[Bluepete]

A Sony Bluray player links to our wifi network. It streams all the content off the laptops and the kids PC. Plus, it is wired to the router so streams BBC Iplayer, demand five etc, plus loads of other internet TV. You can surf the net and control it all via an Ipad. I can plug an SD card or USB dongle into it to deal with images and HD videos from my camera.
For mass storage, an external HDD plugsinto the back via another USB and I can send data and images to that via the Wifi.

£150 for the Bluray

Pete

[L3nny]

You can fit an internal DVD writer to that box but if you want to be able to fit full size hard drives then that's not for you so I guess I will have to try harder to win the vending machine bounty.

If you want to go with that case on Ebay, then pretty much any compononets will fit so just buy the most powerful ones you can afford.

Ebuyer is pretty good for components.

Personally to expand on storage I'd buy a NAS device, not plug in extra USB's, which is why I said it's a pity it doesn't have Gigabit Ethernet, but if BluePete's is streaming eveything over WiFi... does it really need Gigabit?

The NAS device can sit in a cupboard somewhere, give you literally terabytes of extra storage, and act as a shared central data repository for the whole family to get access to the same music collection, photo's, videos, etc from laptops, iPhones, etc, and also act as a backup device for those laptops, etc.

Of course it's up to you, if you want to build a PC, go ahead. I'm just saying what I would do.