Advice Building/Buying a home Media Server/Player

[opticle]

What it says on the tin really.. I want something small and quiet to sit next to my TV that can stream downloaded movies from my main PC to my telly with decent quality..

Any tips ?

I was thinking something like this (are onboard GFX enough)? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-075-OP

Obvs I'd have to get a wireless card for it.

Or any better suggestions ?

Ta

 

[old.user4556]

PS3? Mac Mini?

http://www.apple.com/uk/macmini/

 

[Clown]

Apple TV? Acer Revo?

 

[Zenith.UK]

If you don't want to lay cat6 cabling, you could use PowerLine adapters to extend your network via the electric cabling.

 

[Ch3tan]

What Big G and Clown said.

Do you have a ps3 or 360 already?

 

[opticle]

I have a 360.. Should I try and fiddle with this ? I'd rather not have wires all around the room.. are the wireless adapters still ££s ? Does it work well ?

I also have a Wifi-able Blu-Ray player.. It's Ok using whatever Windows 7 calls it, but it doesn't do the job for streaming and iplayer etc. as nicely as I'd like it to (control of seek, etc. is a bit naff).

My cousin uses this with his media PC from the sofa: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keysonic-Wireless-Keyboard-Integrated-Frequency/dp/B000L10Y5E

It is pretty sweet tbh.

 

[opticle]

Mac Mini.. starting at £529 .. But it does look so pretty..

Apple TV.. do I need some sort of Apple product to use this ? (Don't have one)

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a noob at this stuff Ta for the advice o/

Edit: Sigh, if I hadn't already bought the Blu-Ray player (impulse buy for new flat) I'd consider the Acer Revo.. but if I bought it, it'd make the BR player obsolete, and I've not owned it that long.

Then again, my income isn't great enough to justify £600 in one purchase.. in installments however ^^

 

[dysfunction]

Xbox + smartglass and you will be all set!

 

[old.user4556]

Sell your BD player, get this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005EL3A...de=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B005EL3ACK

 

[Ch3tan]

I have a 360.. Should I try and fiddle with this ? I'd rather not have wires all around the room.. are the wireless adapters still ££s ? Does it work well ?

I also have a Wifi-able Blu-Ray player.. It's Ok using whatever Windows 7 calls it, but it doesn't do the job for streaming and iplayer etc. as nicely as I'd like it to (control of seek, etc. is a bit naff).

My cousin uses this with his media PC from the sofa: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keysonic-Wireless-Keyboard-Integrated-Frequency/dp/B000L10Y5E

It is pretty sweet tbh.

Well you already said you simply want to stream from your main PC, so simply use your 360 as a media player. A few ways to do this, for less hassle I'd got the ps3mediaserver route (it's name is deceptive, works with most devices).

You will need to wire up your 360 for best results, media streaming over wifi isn't ideal.

 

[Keitanz]

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...-hdd-function-with-usb3-and-usb2-esata-itunes I bought this about a year ago, works nicely I'd just use an xbox/ps3 if you have one laying around that you don't use though..

 

[opticle]

Sell your BD player, get this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005EL3A...de=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B005EL3ACK

Yeah, with hindsight, I should have just bought this :facepalm:

This is what happens when you are ignorant and naive

 

[Clown]

Why is my comment funny? You can jailbreak the aTV and get XBMC on there.

 

[Keitanz]

Why is my comment funny? You can jailbreak the aTV and get XBMC on there.

Ah I thought an Apple TV would cost about 3-4x more than it does since it is Apple after all but it actually seems pretty cheap! that's probably the best option for the price then.

 

[Ch3tan]

You can't jailbreak the new gen of apple tv yet.

 

[Cyradix]

Whatever you do don't get the player with onboard intel gfx..
The intel stuff can't do proper 23.976 Hz so you get a stutter every 40 sec or so
(some people don't notice it, but why risk it)

My suggestion :
http://dune-hd.com/hd_players/current/285-dune-hd-tv-101.html
Or if you want one where you can add a 2.5" HD
http://dune-hd.com/hd_players/current/286-dune-hd-tv-301.html

 

[Poag]

Alternativly you can get one of the deciated boxes for a certain media type. IE a boxee box.

http://www.boxee.tv/buy

Boxee is a modified version of XBMC, i used it for umm. 3 maybe 4 years before moving to Plex recently. Its very good, has lots of supported plugins.
Has a proper TV remote aswell

However going this route means you stuck with it if you ever decide to repurpose, but thats unlikly.

I persoanlly use a Mac Mini (2009) with Plex, sabnzb and sickbeard installed. Handles all my tv needs.

 

[soze]

There are loads of options and a lot of them depend on how willing you are to get your hands dirty and what you need.

I believe the HP Microserver still has £100 cash back. With some hard disks that can become and NAS box then add a GFX card and XBMC for Windows and you have an all in one solution.

RaspberryPi these will be great when the bugs are ironed out. £32 delivered and they just need an SD card. At the moment a bit of skill with Linux and SSH is needed to get them running smootly but as soon as OpenELEC and RaspBMC hit proper releases they should be install and forget.

Apple TV 2 these have been going for £50 in stores getting rid of stock but it will be pure luck if you find one. There is now a Unteathered Jail Break for this model so you can run XBMC very easily following a walkthrough. But Apple TV 3 has no Jail Break yet so its only running basic apple software. But that is not all bad any media you have in your iTunes is avalible on your TV. I have played about with adding tv shows to iTunes and watch it that way and it work very nicely but it is not as easy as a lot of other ways.

The Revo way is what I am mainly using until my RPi is working properly. With OpenELEC and a Revo with ION graphics it is a piece of piss. USB Disk in and OpenELEC does the rest. Using either a Network Share or a USB hard disk this way will just let you play media.

You can also have WD Live TV and BOXee ect but they are not something I have played with.

 

[opticle]

Cheers for all the input guys. o/

To be honest, I hadn't realised how good the Xbox 360 is with Windows Media Centre - works a treat and does all I want it to. Didn't realise they had iPlayer and 4OD now too.

Bit bummed I got the Blu Ray player I did instead of the above PS3 Slim as that'd probably do the job of them both, but then again I'm a noob and I didn't know what I do now It's pretty and together they do the job, so that's cool.

Contemplating picking up a 360 Elite for the HDMI as I just have an old Premium, but not sure it's really worth it as the quality on the progs I stream seems to be pretty good over the standard connection.

 

[MYstIC G]

Why is my comment funny? You can jailbreak the aTV and get XBMC on there.

You can't jailbreak the new gen of apple tv yet.

This. I'm waiting for the aTV3 jailbreak with interest. Currently you need an original or version 2 to jailbreak. At the moment my aTV only gets used for movies which for me is no more expensive than Lovefilm or Netflix as I only watch one or two a month with the missus. It's a shame Netflix in the UK has such awful content at the moment.

My current setup has my HP Microserver running FreeNAS with a Serviio process running jailed. This takes care of all the transcoding issues and dumps the output to my PS3 / XBOX / HP Touchpad / iPhone / XBMC (on RaspberryPi running OpenElec) without issue and without the need for wired networking.