Low cost HTPC

Viral

Viral

Viral

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Joined
15 Mar 2006
Posts
448
Location
Vancouver, BC
I was wondering if anybody else has built themselves a low cost HTPC, I require one but it must be small and quiet. I was thinking of buying a Via Epia mobo as it comes with a CPU.
 
I built two on Biostar 200N chassis, but in the end it's very hard to beat an upgraded Sky+ box. Is there anything you specifically want to know?

The big plus on the Epia is the silence with 'low' cost, but if you use Socket A as a platform you can get the same cost and much more performance. Socket A can also be had now with effectively passive cooling so again that's not a big issue.

Most people are now looking at Pentium M as the processor of choice for HTPC, but they are not as cheap as the Epia solution.

As I said - in the UK you can get a Sky+ box for very little (£150 without any contracts) and it's a real dedicated HTPC.
 
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Unfortunately I am in Canada not the UK so no Skybox for me.
As far as the HTPC goes it just has to be small and quiet and capable of playing all my movies and tv shows. Would a Mac Mini be upto the task?
 
Processing power-wise, absolutely - but where are you going to plug in the tuners and stuff? USB kit will soon start to look very messy, so it probably wouldn't really suit.

If you really want an HTPC then mini-ITX is the way to go. Or what about a TIVO?
 
Well to be honest the tv here is pretty bad too many adverts. I plan on just using the HTPC as a glorified DVD player so I will probably not need a TV tuner. Are all the other outputs on the mac mini ok for HTPC use?
 
Cant go wrong with Epia, i've had several over the years. Starting with the 5000 (500Mhz Fanless) upto the MII12000 that handled everything i threw at it. It struggled a bit on video encoding, but it didnt it eventually :)

You can get upto 800Mhz now i think fanless, which is great as they are so silent!

Just gotta watch the costs, it can add up.... My build was just under £400 for a pretty well spec'd Mini ITX machine.
 
Ive had a number of different things running on them, mainly Linux, Ubuntu and Slack... They work best. Have XP on them all at some point, all handled better than i thought. It was slow on the 5000 but easily usable.

Best was Slackware tho, compiling was quick, GUI was even quick!

I never tried XP Media Centre though, could warrant the cost to buy a license to try :(
 
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