Advice on Multimedia PC...

thesteve

Howdy folks, just looking for a bit of input on a PC I'm going to build. Here's what I'm after...

For some time now I've been thinking of either building a PC or buying a server purely for multimedia purposes. Now I finally got a decent job with disposable income, I'm gonna go all out.

I plan on using the PC to hold my mp3's (130GB and counting), ripping and burning DVDs (probably not playing them, discuss this later), and not much else. I'm getting DSL in soon so plan on going wireless so I can surf on the laptop anywhere in the apartment. The Multimedia PC will probably be located in a spare room, with cables being run to the sound system.

So I was thinking of going Hell... I mean Dell for their cheapest server with a decent processor, filling it with two massive hard drives, a nice bit of ram, and there you go... Or else buying the hardware from elsewhere and building it myself. Thing is, I've built a lot of PC's before, but thinking server here for scalability....

I'm not going to be playing games on it so a massive graphics card isn't necessary. Monitor wise, I was thinking of going 15" LCD but was comtemplating going 15" touch screen, locating the screen in the living room, and using it to access playlists during parties, etc....

Next question is whether to use it to watch DVDs or not, and whether I should get a sound system for the PC or else just get a decent DVD player and surround system, hence it would take the output from the sound card on the PC, and I would just use it to watch DVDs....

I know I've been a bit vague but any input would be appreciated, do any of you guys have a similar set up, go down some road and wish you chose an alternative now? etc etc

cheers in advance

-Steve

toffo

I would look in to a barebones machine. They can hold large hdd's, you'll get the useual stuff, 5.1 sound ect. And it wil fit under the telly.
Built one myself for music and dvd's have it running from the telly, with wireless keyboard and mouse.

Jammer

Shuttle would be good idea. the G5's are very cool looking, they have stealth drives and all that. they can hold 2 HDD's so get 2 400GB drives and your laughing. they come with minimum 5.1, some have 7.1. They have (usualy) 1 graphics expansion slot and 1 PCI slot. So you could stick in a digital TV Tuner card and use it as ur hifi/dvd player/digibox. You can get wireless lan modules too, it would pick up ur dsl from the wireless router.

jozi

I have the sound from my pc going trough my reciever for surround sound, works great and its only 1 cable (coaxial).
I have a server at home taking care of internet connections (bandwith limiting and ip assigning etc) firewall and it also works as a file server so that has all my mp3's on it which can be accesed from all pc's in the house (its a maped network drive). Not sure if its along the lines of what your after thou, the os on it is Clarkconnect and its free. Also does many other things like email client, printer server and much more.

Jozi

EDIT: btw once you install the os there's no need for a keyboard, mouse or monitor so you can hide the box where ever you want

Dancing_Priest

Well, it might help, or not. but heres what I did (on a VERY tight budget)
I have an xp1700 with 256 megs of ram and a geforce 460mx a tv card and a 40 gig hard drive. this is housed in an el chepo tower behind the tv. All the TV goes via the PC where it can be paused or recorded and the output does directly to the tv and the audio runs through the Hi-Fi
in the next few weeks Ill be adding a wireless nic to enable me to stream the 200gigs of media from my main pc onto the media pc.
the pc is controlled with a wireless mouse and keyboard from the couch, or from my ngage via bluetooth.
the whole set up was put together from bits and pieces I allready had (the CPU, some ram, the mainboard and the HD)and a few bits I had to buy (case, HSF wireless nic, bluetooth) BTW I'm using showshifter, ugly but its easy as hell to set up.

thesteve

Cheers for the replies lads...

condra

steve are you really a black lego man?