Home media pc help!!

joedeath332 · 11 Apr 2020 at 20:12

So i'm wanting some pointers as for a solution to making a small pc for my home media requirements.
if i was to build a small PC to go in the living room for the purpose of downloading and streaming media using bit torrent and other android APK's
if i install Android as the OS on the media PC will i be able to use an android media player to play any media downloaded ?
Also as for the hardware side of it , would i be able to play 1080p movies without a graphics card , by just using the integrated graphics from an intel CPU , if so what would be the minimum CPU spec?
I want it to use android OS as many of the streaming apps are not available for windows.

I've just had a dig around and found a i7-2600k and 2 x 4gb of DDR3 , would the integrated graphics from that CPU be able to play 1080p movies ok ? and is the 8gb of ddr3 memory enough?

Blue160 · 11 Apr 2020 at 21:35

I’ve got a media PC under the telly with a Pentium G3258 and 4GB DDR3 and it plays and streams 1080p with no problem. Your i7 should breeze it.

No idea about the Android questions though.

joedeath332 · 11 Apr 2020 at 21:45

Blue160 said:
I’ve got a media PC under the telly with a Pentium G3258 and 4GB DDR3 and it plays and streams 1080p with no problem. Your i7 should breeze it.

No idea about the Android questions though.

Thanks for the cpu help!! i take it your media centre has no GPU in it , with the cpu doing all the rendering ?

Pulse · 11 Apr 2020 at 21:48

I've got an Intel NUC running a i5 1.6Ghz and that's more enough for torrents, plex server and cctv recording. As above, not sure on android side of things.

joedeath332 · 11 Apr 2020 at 23:00

Pulse said:
I've got an Intel NUC running a i5 1.6Ghz and that's more enough for torrents, plex server and cctv recording. As above, not sure on android side of things.

super , thanks for the info

Blue160 · 12 Apr 2020 at 00:12

joedeath332 said:
Thanks for the cpu help!! i take it your media centre has no GPU in it , with the cpu doing all the rendering ?

Yup. Pentium doing all the heavy lifting in a really basic itx board.

keenan · 12 Apr 2020 at 00:55

I know this is different from what you are asking, but through all my years of media streaming I have finally found a solution that works best for me.

I have an Amazon FireTV 4K connected to my tv to handle all the media playback. I use Kodi for local playback and both X264 and X265 plays without any issues.

In a seperate room I have a low power always on server that does all the downloading/storing of media.