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 ·TekSavvy Cable
| reply to ekster
Re: Building an HTPC vs a Media Server said by ekster:If your budget is 300, I would avoid going to HTPC route. While it's very possible to build one for that price, you would need to spend a bit more to get a good HTPC that will easily handle HD, be quiet, and look decent (if you want to have it in the living room with everything else.) I'd be looking at about $500 for something decent.
I built mine about a year ago for around $600. Mind you, I did spend a bit extra on a better video card, got an i3, an SSD and a nicer box... but I found it to be worth it. No one can tell there's a PC in the living room. Everyone thinks it's a blu-ray/DVD player, it's very silent. Can only hear it if there is zero noise in the whole house during a very hot day in the summer. And it can easily play any HD video, bluray disk or anything else without an effort even if I'm doing something else in the background like burning to/from a disk, transferring files from another computer, downloading, etc.
I just want it to play videos, by desktop would handle everything else. I even considered the zotac's for a while there. | |
 zed173
join:2010-07-17
Mississauga, ON | said by eweazel:said by ekster:If your budget is 300, I would avoid going to HTPC route. While it's very possible to build one for that price, you would need to spend a bit more to get a good HTPC that will easily handle HD, be quiet, and look decent (if you want to have it in the living room with everything else.) I'd be looking at about $500 for something decent.
I built mine about a year ago for around $600. Mind you, I did spend a bit extra on a better video card, got an i3, an SSD and a nicer box... but I found it to be worth it. No one can tell there's a PC in the living room. Everyone thinks it's a blu-ray/DVD player, it's very silent. Can only hear it if there is zero noise in the whole house during a very hot day in the summer. And it can easily play any HD video, bluray disk or anything else without an effort even if I'm doing something else in the background like burning to/from a disk, transferring files from another computer, downloading, etc.
I just want it to play videos, by desktop would handle everything else. I even considered the zotac's for a while there. I got the Pivos AIOS from Canada Computers for $119 and it plays everything I throw at it so far. Can mount NFS and SMB, stream from UPNP as well. Even has a slot for a hot swap SATA drive if you want need it. Runs Busybox Linux inside.
»www.pivosgroup.com/aios.html | |
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