Advice for HTPC set up

ben1977

ben1977

ben1977

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28 Oct 2010
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In two to three months I will be moving house. This will mean I get an opportunity (aloud by her indoors) to improve our media setup.

New house has Virgin installed.

All walls are brick.

I currently use virgin, which all in, normally costs £70~ a month, phone line, broadband, TV. I want to reduce my monthly cost for media, so I will not continue my landline and TV package when I move but I will be using virgin broadband.
I have a lot of MKV film which stream from my PC to Wii U. this is a very good method and streaming quality works very well.

I want to build a good, quiet, future proof HTPC for MKV films, normal TV and Netflix/Amazon/Now. The Motherboard and processor will need to handle 4K, HMTI 2.0 and I also want to connect it to an AV amp.
I will need;
Nice HTPC case for living room.
Motherboard.
Processer, I use Intel (I will need built in graphics)
Memory
Some sort of small wireless keyboard and mouse, controller
I have loads of hard drive and SSD’s
Budget will be around £400ish

Questions:
Can anyone recommend motherboard and process?

Can you get Virgin TV cards for PC’s and what software will recognise it? I would want to pause, record an all that.

Can I split the virgin TV cable? One to going to Tivo box, one going to HTPC. Also will I need two for standard TV channels? If so what will I need for this?

I have only just started looking into this, so any help would be great.
 
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Can you get Virgin TV cards for PC’s and what software will recognise it? I would want to pause, record an all that. BUT will not continue my landline and TV package -so no virgin TV, I'm confused about that .

New fire tv , using plex or kodi sideloaded(I'm assuming your av amp has hdmi inputs, 4k pass through?)
separate NAS for file storage (HP microserver see http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18528018 with plex server if needed.

That ticks most of the boxes after cashback on the server should leave about £200

With this you can get a Humax pvr for recording std tv etc.
 
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lude1962 said:
Can you get Virgin TV cards for PC’s and what software will recognise it? I would want to pause, record an all that. BUT will not continue my landline and TV package -so no virgin TV, I'm confused about that .

yes I would like it to pause, rewind and all that.

As far as I'm aware you can still receive basic channels with a virgin box for free.

You can still have broadband, TV with no virgin landline

New fire tv , using plex or kodi sideloaded(I'm assuming your av amp has hdmi inputs, 4k pass through?)
separate NAS for file storage (HP microserver see http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18528018 with plex server if needed.

That ticks most of the boxes after cashback on the server should leave about £200

With this you can get a Humax pvr for recording std tv etc.
Click to expand...

I don't Need a NAS/home server, hence why I'm asking advice for HTPC.
 
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