HTPC - £300?

[Deleted member 68110]

I'm trying to put together an HTPC on a very tight budget.

I've ringfenced a separate £200 for storage as I (think I) want 2 x 2tb HDD RAID storage attached somehow.

From the HTPC I'm after something discreet that can definitely:-

• Stream video to TV
• Stream music to amp
• Watch and backup DVDs
• Watch iPlayer and other on-demand TV

And preferably:-

• Record TV
• Surf the internet
• Watch Bluray

I've been trying to do a bit of research and found a few possibilities:-

From the most simple and straight forward:

A second hand Acer Aspire Revo such as the R3610, which you should be able to get for under £200.

The Revo sounds like a straightforward choise, but I don't know whether I'd be able to get a suitable TV tuner, and I'd need an optical drive

Boxee Box. Expensive imho but its playback capability and overall polish is very good. Glad I finally bought one. £185 + cost of an external disk. XBMC/Mplayer under the hood.
Torrents and PVR = no however.

Never heard of a Boxee - need to do more reading.

The PS3 with playTV seems to tick all the boxes:
HDTV with PVR
Will connect to Projector
Stream content from online
Download Torrents
Media player for music and movies
Bluray
Games

It probably isn't as slick as the Boxee but will be much more versatile and cheaper than HTPC.

(Not sure the missis will understand the need for another games console!)

To something equally low budget, but a bit more fiddly:

I'd go for something like the almost unbelievably cheap CIT MTX001B, which goes for less than £30 brand new delivered and includes a 300W PSU.

Then buy a second hand E2140, say £20.
Zotax S775 board such as the Zotac G41ITX-A-E £70.
2GB of DDR2, £20 max.
Cheap Blu-ray drive, such as LiteOn IHOS104-37 £40.

Total £180, insane value as long as you don't want to play games.

To something that sounds far higher spec than I thought I could consider with my budget.

Here you go:

1 x Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3 Zacate with HD6310 iGPU - AMD Fusion (ITX) £129.98
1 x Lian Li PC-Q11B Aluminium Mini-ITX Cube Case - Black £81.70
1 x Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - OEM Black £54.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUK) £35.99
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £35.98
Total : £351.23 (includes shipping : £10.50).


You could sacrifice the Blu Ray drive for a DVD drive if you do not need to play Blu-rays. Also, if you can find an Antec Earthwatts 380W, I'd recommend that over the corsair (there aren't any on OCUK)

There's a helluva lot of possibilities!

Personally I think I'll try and trim down Mikey's list to squeeze a TV card into the same budget...

 

[Cycrow]

u could get an ION based boared
if you look around, u could get one for about £100, possibily cheaper if u find one 2nd hand

if u want to watch blu-ray discs, then of course u'll need a blu-ray drive instead of a standard dvd, which will put the cost up abit.

advantage of an ION is that they are small, so will fit in any case, and use very little power and are quiet, u can even get passive versions for silence

because of the low power, u can get away with a low powered psu as well, even a pico psu would work for silence again

if u want to watch and record tv, then u'll need to add in a tuner card, either a usb one, or pci, either would be fine.


also, does it need to include an OS ?

 

[sypher365]

On paper the new AMD Fusion boards give the ION's a run for their money and have better onboard graphics but availability still seems a bit low, the only other possible reason to go ION is more support for linux but I think that will change as more fusion builds start turning up.

 

[Deleted member 68110]

Hadn't really thought about OS - was just going to go with Ubuntu and MythTV possibly. Or just stump up some extra cash for Windows7.

Mikey's list with 2 2tb HDDs comes to £475. With a bit of rejigging hopefully I can squeeze in a TV tuner for £500.

That said, my initial plan for a Revo 3700 for £185 and a 2x2tb NAS for £270 is still cheaper and less faff.