Media Centre for gaming

toontastic

toontastic

toontastic

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3 Jan 2007
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I've decided that I would like to store all my DVDs, tv etc on my PC as a media centre. Stick the PC in the loft and stream it to TVs in the house. This following inspiration from http://www.mediacenterhouse.com/index.html (please remove if not allowed, the guy doesn't sell hardware or anything though so thought it would be ok).

Anyway like the guy on there I like to play the odd game as well. Would the £700 AMD machine here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18060182 be able to cope with what I want to do if I swap the DVD for blue ray rewriter and add a Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T-500 ?

Basically I'm not wanting to spend to much on the machine I'd prefer to save the cash for storage on the machine. Thanks in advance.
 
Sorry that this doesn't answer your question, but have you considered buying some sort of dedicated NAS to store your media instead?

Leaving a PC running 24/7 in your loft is gonna use a lot of power.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood your intention actually. So please ignore me!
 
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Short answer: yes.

You won't lose any performance by putting it in the loft and streaming it, so any game that PC can play, you can stream. It's also plenty fast enough for media streaming, if anything it's much more than you'd need for that.

You'll find there's a lot of problems in controlling the PC from the other rooms, but if you can solve all those, the PC itself won't be the issue.
 
Might want to check out the popcorn hour media player or something similar, seems like overkill to spend £700 on a pc and stick it in the loft.
 
Audigex said:
You'll find there's a lot of problems in controlling the PC from the other rooms, but if you can solve all those, the PC itself won't be the issue.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I recommend wiring up the reset and power buttons! It's not difficult to do. If you have any CAT5 lying around you can use 4 of the cores from that.
 
If you're going to be gaming, the distance between controls, to PC, to screen might add a bit of latency that would annoy my **** off.
 
Stag said:
If you're going to be gaming, the distance between controls, to PC, to screen might add a bit of latency that would annoy my **** off.
Click to expand...

You won't get any latency from having slightly longer cables. :p

Although some leads can only extended by so much because of the increased resistance. For instance, USB leads aren't meant to be longer than 5 metres.
 
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Thanks for all those replies. I'll try and answer a few points.

Yes could go with a NAS but then I lose the gaming which I still enjoy so I'd like to have that.

The note about the power and reset button, thanks for that, I was wanting to do this. I had a simple plan to have the power/reset switch in my wardrobe to switch it on and off without the need for going into the loft. Not 100% sure how to do it yet I'll have to look at that a bit more but your the second person who has said it will be easy.

To start with I plan on just recording TV/DVD/Blue ray from my bedroom and having it linked to the LCD TV in the room. I had planned to do this using a very simple long cable from the machine to the TV for picture. In terms of controls, I had planned to use wireless keyboard, mouse and joypad. Connect the USB extension cables to the USB slots, and then have the infa red end just near the bedroom. I can't see to many problems with this, if you know of any let me know. They won't need to be more than 5 metres however probably just 1 metre lengths to get them under the insulation.

To be honest because of where the machine is i won't bother with the case £100 for the case is a waste when it's up there, I guess I was wondering more about the machine itself. I was hoping it would be enough for ripping blue ray, recording tv, encoding that sort of stuff. I assumed it would be but wanted to make sure.
 
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