HTPC Noob

[Carefree Chris]

Hi,

I'm in the planning process of buying a first home in the next 6-8 months or so. As part of that planning process, I'm considering what entertainment setup I would like

What I would like to achieve is to be able to use either my main PC (built myself last year), laptop or a TV to play whatever music, video (including HD) files I may have. My idea is a HTPC (with its own O/S obviously) to host all the media files, connected wirelessly in a network to my main PC via the O2 broadband router and hard-wired to the TV, which would hopefully allow me to use any of the PC, laptop or TV to access any play the media held on the HTPC. I don't have any gaming consoles and have no plans to get any.

However, given the HTPC would be sitting next to the TV, ideally it should be as inconspicuous as possible - small and quiet with minimal power consumption. However, it would need some sort of grunt in order to play HD video. Are there any suggestions in terms of HTPC spec, which would fulfil these requirements?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Carefree Chris]

What about Llano? Not sure on the price difference between Zacate and Llano, but Llano has the greater grunt - or is Llano overkill for mere HD media playback (locally hosted and possibly iPlayer and elsewhere online)? Also, could Llano be passively cooled? Ideally I'd like to avoid boxy cases.

 

[Carefree Chris]

Thanks for that!

I'm making up two specs for myself, one for mATX and one for mITX. Settled on a Silverstone LC16-MR for the mATX, but struggling to find a mITX case that will internally house 2x3.5" or 4x2.5" HDD, plus an optical drive. Is anyone aware of one? They all seem to house either 1x3.5 and 1x2.5 or 1x2.5 and 1 optical.