Right Then looking to sort out some type of Media/HTPC for home; nothing fancy it just needs to allow me to playback DVDs (Possibly Blueray) stream various media from the Web (Preferably via Wifi), and playback bits and bobins from camera cards, it’s probably going to turn into a bit of a general “media dump” too.

Obviously it’s going to need to talk to the TV preferably via HDMI (Although the TV has a VGA input so just about any PC is an option I suppose)…

I’m looking at a few cheap PCs (mostly used jobbies), I don’t mind installing stuff (Drives cards or other bits), and as I’m not looking to spend much hence I’m fancying a suitable Linux distro for HTPCs something which will not take up much space, possibly boot from a flash drive or USB stick, I think we’ll want some sort of media Remote so will need an OS that can support that… Ultimately My missus needs to be able to use it so it has to be simple and intuative (She’s not too computer Literate), worst comes to the worst I’ll pop for WinXP just to keep her happy, but it would be nice not to have to buy a licence..

Anyway I’m looking for some recommendations what sort of Sensible Hardware spec should I be considering:1.5 – 2Ghz/1GB Memory enough?

And some OS/Software recommendations?

I’ve been looking into getting a quiet media PC, but I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that for 90% of my needs, a modern bluray player does everything I need.

Have a look at the Sony bluray players, like the BDP-S470 (or 480). They do bluray and DVDs (of course), DLNA streaming (including mp3, DivX and xvid) from you PC or NAS, play streamed stuff from online (iplayer, lovefilm). They even have a web browser (although it won’t do flash). Oh, and you can control them using your iphone or android.

The only gaps I can see are 4od and the ultimate future proofing of being able to install whatever you like.

You are looking at about £100 for one of these… you’ll not get anywhere near that with a media centre PC.

I’m going to get one, and then decide whether I actually need anything more.

Dave

edit: just read the bit about flash drives and camera cards – you can plug USB stick in, and presumably could put memory cards in with an adaptor.

Have a look into MythTV if you want a free and reportedly good HTPC – it is linux based and once set up should meet the WAF. I’ve dabbled with it a few times but have never stuck with it because it’s a bit fussy on hardware unless you’re capable of compiling drivers and doing commandline stuff in linux and I’ve never managed to make it look as good or work as well as media center, it will work on fairly low end hardware though (as long as it’s on the ‘works well’ lists).

Currently I’ve got a 2 or 3 year old 2.something ghz dual core pentium system running win 7 media center and it does everything well, multiple dvb-t and dvb-s tuners, blueray drive (need 3rd party software to watch films from the disk itself), HDMI out to HD plasma and plays HD mkv films perfectly. The only thing that is a bit poor is the music player but install media browser and the music browser plug in and thats sorted as well. This might not fulfil the cheap bit though.

OP doesn’t mention TV.

If he does want to watch (or record) telly, I’d still probably suggest a media streaming bluray player PLUS a standard PVR type set top box (like a humax).

Unless you have exotic formats, or a need to control every last thing, I just don’t see much benefit in building a whole PC to do this sort of thing. It is always going to be more expensive, probably noisier and almost definitely harder to use (at least in the eyes of a non-techy).

Dave

My newish Samsung telly does the bulk of that stuff out of the box, wifi too. A dlna streaming hard drive might simplify storage though.

Well the memory card reader isn’t a deal breaker, but the thing I liked about the idea of having a PC plugged into the telly is that it’s a nice central point for all the family photos/videos etc to go, it means that my missus can stop chasing me for all the stuff I’ve got on my Laptop that she might want to look at/print off. like you said being able to connect to iplayer (we already do with the Wii) love film and possibly Itunes would be nice. a one stop box that I could bung a TB of drive space in, and would allow us a bit of flexibility in its use…

We’ve already got a Basic PVR box which will be perfectly ample, not too bothered about that to be honest, we seem to record a mountain of stuff and never watch it, I’m more interested in getting online content on the TV

I have to say considering all the features the Sony unit you mentioned looks like a bloody good deal really, it does a fair bit more than just play discs, I’m quite tempted by that now. Especially if I can stream to it from a laptop, like you say that could well make the whole HTPC idea a bit obsolete….
Might be much simpler/cheaper to just bung together a simple low spec File server box and any thing we want up on the TV we stream via the Blueray player from laptops…

Hmmmm, food for thought.

Cheers for that…

Look into a NAS box, like a netgear readyNAS… you can stick a TB drive in (or 2 of them as a RAID pair for protection) and bung all your stuff on it.

It will serve the files to your laptop and whatever you choose to go under the telly and will use a lot less power than running a PC. You can configure them to turn off/on at scheduled times too, to save even more power.

5 years ago a lot of this stuff was only possible with custom PCs and loads of nerd-points, but now it is all the realm of consumer kit 🙂

Dave