The media pc project! ish.

Psypher5

Psypher5

Psypher5

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Righty,

College told us they are chucking out a whollle heap of "old" pc's for new shiney dell ones we are helping to install. Now, the key thing in this is, we get picks of what they throw out, so potentially a hell of a lot of p4 2.4ghz work desktop pc's.

A little idea suddenly sprung into me and my mates head: a media pc / storage pc project!

But alas, we know nothing of building a media pc or a file server type, thing. To OCUK we come, basically, what are we looking for (ignore the college scrap pc's for now) what hardware/software does one need to accuire for standard pc's to chuck music/files/films onto, mainly to be used for watching tv (freeview!), films, and accessing files to and from. Also connectivity for an xbox 360 (windows media centre i presume..)

Hopefully we will turn this into a full blown project by making custom cases (black, smart, simplistic, mesh, blue lights) with my mates dad's work cutting metal and us bodge-ing it all together in a student/teenager type way.

I will have full specs of what the goodies from work can supply us with tomorrow.


So what I'm asking for is a list of stuff we will need :D

Oh and another thing, this has to be CHEAP, I'm talking, dirt cheap. Free is the main aim, 5quid limit! (ok maybe a bit more.. :P )

Cheers,

Psy
 
Yes! We need your help :)

What we want is basically what Psy said. A Media PC which could also be used for storage. So lots of GB's are needed :)

We'd like to make our own cases... but maybe thats a little tough for a first project so we may just mod a case. We'd also like some lights maybe to pulse on the power buttons and what not, so we'd need some little circuits that could do that (probably available from some place :rolleyes: )

Any helps appreciated and would help us a lot :)

Cheers all.

EDIT: Damn censors on competitors :P Sorry...
 
what hardware is needed, really tv tuners, graphics power? Also software.

And should possible be a case central post but hey, litterally "how" to produce a case, from scratch or totally modding a pre built case.



Ideas for bodge bits, (mesh, chickenwire!) if you know of any guides to painting cases, (this is starting to sound a lot more suited to the case section now..) electronics help? (led circuitry and such) just bits of info for a pair of lads who have never done anything like this before really.
 
You could really rise up the ranks if you got a number of those folding. ;)

They will be plenty powerful enough for a fileserver if you add a sata card and some disks, and fine for a media centre pc unless you want to decode mpeg4 in which case they may struggle.

I'm just in the process of building an htpc and reaserching it, particularly windows mce and what it does and does not do has been a nightmare. Hopefully i can save you the trouble of reaserching as much of this stuff is fresh in my mind.
 
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Psypher5 said:
what hardware is needed, really tv tuners, graphics power? Also software.

And should possible be a case central post but hey, litterally "how" to produce a case, from scratch or totally modding a pre built case.
Click to expand...

If its going in a living room i doubt a wooden board and some chicken wire will look too nice.

For an htpc you need a remote control, some software such as windows mce or one of the free alternatives and a tv tuner. Graphics power can be anything really except old onboard graphics that those pcs may have. You would need to check that.

As mentioned, make it clear what your doing, an htpc has to have a proper case, so are you building an htpc with one of these old pcs or what?
 
Simple, use this thread for the spec me up, and make a new on in Case Central about the modding. :)

Sorted, and no wacko thread placement! :p
 
Kinda both,


Are you after a min spec to run MCE or?

Well, would be nice to know whats needed to run, if its just bog standard stuff or are there some specifics needed (freeview tv tuner for instance, decent makes/reccomended?) What do current media centres people have put together consist of.



How to mod a case?


Moreso how to get that "professional" look, tips on painting, prep, materials.

It's not majorly a home theatre pc, as it'll be in my bedroom, not in all its glory infront of a tv in the living room, but what do you mean by a "proper case"? Realisticly it will probably turn into stripping the old cases down and fitting custom panels, maybe modify-ing sizes and such of the over all case, and/or layouts.


So I'll take the case suggestions into the case forum then ;)



For software metnioned, what free alternatives are there? Are they "better" or equiv to mce? Pearsonally i hate the look of mce... and it would drive me barmy having to look at it constantly :/
 
Mce is pretty good i would say. Mediaportal is a good free one to have a play around with.

For tv tuners there are several types. Analogue, digital and sattelite. You can also get cards for cable but they are fairly rare.

You can have two tuners, both digital or one digital one analogue, either on one card or with two.

Hauppage are pretty good, and i have a hauppage wintv nova-t 500 on pre order which is a single card with two digital freeview tuners on it. The advantage of having two tuners is the ability to record a program and watch another at the same time.

Have a look at the wikipedia page for mce.
 
Psypher5 said:
For software metnioned, what free alternatives are there? Are they "better" or equiv to mce? Pearsonally i hate the look of mce... and it would drive me barmy having to look at it constantly :/
Click to expand...
If you want to run a TiVo-style system KnoppMyth is free (in both ways) and could do very nicely for you. Alternatively if you hate the look of MCE why not just skin it to look different?
 
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