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Hi
Anybody on the forum got a media centre?
I'm looking to build one for the lounge to have under the TV for music (I have a surround system linked to the TV so anything piped to the tele can be played out of the amp), pictures, Bluray etc etc, no need for viewing card or recording.
Any suggestions on case (with remote?), Motherboard with onboard GPU with HDMI 1080 output, CPU. Was thinking of a small SSD for OS and a HDD for storage.
Any suggestion would be appreciated
What's your budget? I build a rig using a Zotax ITX board (built in 9300 which does dxva/vdapu depending on your OS), with a cheap 2.5ghz dual core Intel CPU and 4gb Ram.
Stuck it in an (overpriced) Mini ITX silverstone case, and now it lives happily by the TV running XBMC with the Aeon skin.
Lemme find my original post on it...
[e!] - My build
See my sig below, I would recommend using the Silverstone Grandia GD04/5 myself as a case, used one recently and it was top notch.
Hawker
same again, my info in my .sig
found the antec case to look fairly good, is pretty much silent and was reasonably priced at the time with lcd, psu included.
I don't like the lcd though. it doesn't look good (certainly not compared to the vfd on the silver model) and the built in remote sensor doesn't detect the red button press. Though things may have changed as I've had it for nigh on 2 years.
windows 7 makes everything look very nice and most things just work straight away.
you don't need anything powerful like a quad, just get a mid range dual core, but idvise against getting a slow cpu. I know that the gpu does a chunk of the work, but if drivers mess up or something is encoded differently then it's good to be able to fall back to cpu. pain in the arse when you've got someone round to watch a film and the player either doesn't work or you get choppy video.
Here's my build - http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/zapsay...iaCentreBuild#
Since changed the PSU to a Pico.
i built one just using some old bits that i had lying around and then gradually upgraded it over the years. Its going to get a full refresh soon though, i fancy making it smaller and more powerful :D
You can do whatever you want with a media center really, just depends how much you want to spend and how much you want to do with it. If its just video music and a bit of browsing then you can do stuff on the cheap, if you want to play games on it, re-encode video or have it also act as some kind NAS then you might need to spend a bit more.
Not read the whole thread, have to put the kids to bed, so don't have time, but I have an HTPC thread which is now a bit old. have to update it, but I have a small SSD in it running Vista and MediaBrowser, and ALL my media is on a WHS rig, connected over LAN. Works great.
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ch-happen.html
Fits under my telly, but if you go the server route, you could get a teeny tiny Micro ITX rig...
Oh, and GYRATION remote, like a wii controller. Awesome.
I have a MediaPortal setup, see the project log in my sig.
Having this with only one client is a little bit of a waste, but it should really come into its own when I move into a bigger place. Might end up with 4 or 5 clients all using the same EPG and recordings.
cheers guys for all your input, I'll give the links a good read.