Media server with remote web-access

kfish2oo2

I have a spare PC sitting at home and was thinking of using it as a media server for my house in college. The idea is to have it attached to the wireless router (a highspeed Thompson from UPC) and have its data (media like video and music) accessible to all the computers on the wireless network as well as accessible over LAN by a PS3 and XBox 360. The final requirement is that it can be controlled remotely via a web portal or similar (by one of the PC's on the wireless network) - as the idea is to have the server sitting in the sitting room alone - that means no keyboards , mice or monitors.

What I'm wondering is, whats the best way to achieve this? Would it even be possible to access the servers media on a PS3 or XBox in this manner? Could a system like the Ubuntu XBMC distro fit the bill, or would something like Windows Media Server be the best course of action?

Any input or ideas are welcome!

You could go both routes and have a headless system as required.

Ubuntu Server, webmin, samba and ps3 media server .

or as you mentioned college, you could obtain MS Server 2008 R2 through Dreamspark with a vaild college/university email address, it might be a bit overkill in relation to what hardware resources available to you, system requirements are available here.

Then share which ever folder, drive with the appropriate privileges, and then install ps3 media server or alternatives such as TVersity or a paid solution such as twonky which will run as a service and stream the media to your other devices on your LAN.

You can access the MS Server through Remote Desktop (RDP) or if you choose linux, you can SSH or use the webmin portal.

CptSternn

Check out TVersity. www.tversity.com

Runs on Windows, can share any file that the codecs are installed for.