Anyone running Mini-ITX as Media Center

[Conrad11]

Hi there,

I have built quite a few media centers for friends with different specs each time.

I have been asked to build another one and was wondering if anyone uses MINI-ITX for a media center and has uses it as a PVR, just to see if it would be powerful. Also are you able to play DIVX and other compressed formats.

If you are able to do all this, could you post what you setup is.

Thanks

 

[mechanicom]

Hi there,

I have built quite a few media centers for friends with different specs each time.

I have been asked to build another one and was wondering if anyone uses MINI-ITX for a media center and has uses it as a PVR, just to see if it would be powerful. Also are you able to play DIVX and other compressed formats.

If you are able to do all this, could you post what you setup is.

Thanks

Hey man, could u spec me a media centre PC...I want to spend around £1200.00. I've built plenty of systems before but never media centre....

CHeers

 

[Nixeh]

im not completely sure conrad, im looking into seeing if i can get a viable and reasonably powerful media centre on mini-itx.

 

[Dureth]

You can get Pentium-M based mini-itx systems so you shouldn't have a problem with power. The only thing is you wont have room for TV tuners, sound card, multiple hard drives for media storage etc.

Your best bet is to talk them round to something like the Antec MinuetII which is a low profile case. Fit it with a socket 754 6100 board, a sempron 2800 and 1GB RAM. Chuck in a couple of 250GB Samsung spinpoints and a DVD-RW. A Mitsumi 7in1 floppy/card reader would be good too so they can add pictures and video from cameras. The compro digital TV tuners are low profile so you could fit 2 of these easily. Also the 6100 boards tend to have HD audio built in so should be good even for a media center.

 

[Nixeh]

Yeah i was looking at mini-itx... well keeping an open mind about it but then i noticed that it could cause me a problem due to the lack of connections.

im currently looking at a matx system which will be able to accomodate for this.

Probably will have to build another custom case as i dont like any of the current HTPC cases that are available.

Btw anyone know if you can get pci-e riser cards.

planning on using 1 or 2 riser cards and have the sound card and graphics laying flat over each other with the clearance in between and create a kind of btx wind tunnel that will cool the 2.

 

[Conrad11]

Hey man, could u spec me a media centre PC...I want to spend around £1200.00. I've built plenty of systems before but never media centre....

CHeers

I'm probably not the best guy to spec for that ammount of money. I have always spec'ed for silence and on a budget. With that kind of money, I just wouldn't know what to get.....Sorry, its best you do your own thread



====================

The only reason I would like to try MINI-ITX this time as you can get pretty much silence. You can get Passive PSUs (quite cheap), passive boards and then a Laptop Hard Drive which is suspended or has vibration absorbing mounts and it would actually be practically inaudible.

As all the media centers I have built have been on a budget, I thought that much be a feasible solution.

All the previous systems Ihave built have me mATX but you could still hear them and the people that wanted the media center wanted silence.

I want thinking a Kind of Spec:

Passive Mini-ITX board with integrated CPU and Graphics
Passive PSU
Any case, probably be able to mod the Antec Minuit
1GB RAM (1 Stick)
100GB Laptop Hard Drive (Plenty concidering they would not be doing much recording at all and has been plenty in the past)
1* Happage Nova-T PCI
Windows XP Home (Media Portal) or Linux and MythTV
DVD RW


The problem is, I don't know whether the Mini-ITX system will be powerful enough to have full functionality. Eg. DVD Playback, TV Playback, TV Recording, Music Playboard....etc..