Questions and concerns regarding HTPCs & More..

Disclaimer: Please forgive me ahead of time, I already know I may ask some very dumb questions – or make a dumb statement. I honestly wouldn’t ask the question if I wasn’t sure about the answer.

I recently have acquired the “itch” to build a HTPC and/or a WHS for Media Storage. I’ve done a lot of reading and research trying to absorb all the knowledge and information I can from multiple sources. One of the major sources, being here. Being relatively new to it all (I am just your typical PC video-gamer) I am still left with some questions, concerns, and a few misunderstandings. I’m hoping in creating this thread - I can get the answers to most, if not all of them.

1) Goals


So I guess a good first question, are all my goals achievable by building a home server, and a HTPC hooked up to my TV/stereo system?

2) Connections

3) Windows Home Server


4) HTPC


I’m sure I’ll be asking more questions or looking for clarification as the discussion goes on, but for now. This is all I can think of. I appreciate any time, energy, and insight you put into helping me.

Thanks,
PrometheuSBoxeR

In regards to the remote, IR means Infrared. I posted about my remote in another thread. I love it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0018DH696
It easily learns everything I've thrown at it but every device is different, so it may work wonders for some people and not at all for others. This is true with all remotes though.
Give it a look.

yes youre goals can be met. im wondering if you need the server to be able to rip movies/music or if you want to do that from any pc on the network.

from what youve told us, sounds like a NAS+htpc connected via gigabit ethernet through a switch/router is what u need.

wired gigabit is the way to go if u can swing the cabling. otherwise wireless N will be OK. location of the server wont matter except for physical access. if you go the wired route (reccommended) you would have the server and the htpc running to a switch/router with ethernet. i guess u could just straight wire teh htpc and server together, but then u would have to setup sharing internet and network thru one or the other. just much easier to use a switch/router so they are independent as far as the network goes. then all your a/v gear hooked in to the htpc. the servers drives would be "mapped" to the htpc so the htpc sees them as local drives. in fact any pc on teh network could map drives from the server simultaneously.

i havent really messed with WHS but have lots of time with NAS particularly FreeNAS. it will do everything u want, free, and can run from a usb key to free up a HDD. FreNaS has evolved into a little more than just a NAS over the years (NAS being strictly a network attached storage solution) so its more of a "server" in a sense as it can do other things than just host data.

1080p over wireless N will be iffy; although in theory by the spec it can support it, if there is any sort of non-trivial loss, or more than marginal other traffic/interference, you're going to be running into some non-clean playback. My current setup at home just has a gige switch sitting behind my router for all my important machines; and one port of that wired to a 40something port 100mb switch for unimportant machines, when I set up the htpc I just wired off of the gig switch.

If you're using windows as your server, I can't really advise much; but a very effective solution is to use a *nix OS and nfs to export your FS. windows 7 can mount nfs shares, so any media center apps based off of that should be able to handle it; and of course any nix media center solutions also would.

/end unix propaganda