• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

HTPC/NAS?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Techie714

Registered
Joined
Dec 19, 2011
Hey folks, I'm new here & I thought I would post at a place where the folks seem to really know their stuff. I guess the best way to do this is just tell you what I want the system to do & you folks tell me what I need to do it. I'm selling my PS3 since I have not touched it in 3-4 months & I want to finally move over to a HTPC. Thank you for your time & help!!

Current Entertainment System:
42" Sharp LCD
Tvio Series 3 (We LOVE our Tivo & have no plans of replacing it with this new HTPC)
Yamaha 5.1 Audio system with receiver
PS3 (Selling)

What I'm looking for in a HTPC/NAS
Budget: 800.00 (Max)
System must be able to stream Hulu/Netflix/Voodoo/Amazon/Etc. (Much like Roku)
Must have a Blu-Ray player
Must have full Blu-Ray playback capabilities
I want the ability to take all my DVDs and "rip" them to ISO and have them saved on a NAS (type) system & have a nice menu to scroll through my movies & play them (Might be asking for much on this one?)
Ability for expansion to add a cable card this would allow me to record shows (I think?)
Well I think that's everything I need for the most part
 
I would go with a Llano CPU and a mobo with for sure 2 - PCI-E x1 slots for cable expansion cards. Windows Media Center in Win7 works out very nicely for a media player.

BIOSTAR A55MH FM1 AMD A55 (Hudson D2) HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

ADATA XPG Gaming Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model AX3U1600GB2G9-2G

AMD A4-3400 Llano 2.7GHz Socket FM1 65W Dual-Core Desktop APU with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 6410D AD3400OJGXBOX

Add in your choice of PSU, case, and bluray drive. Hard drive prices are still inflated from the floods so if you have a nice 2TB drive already you are in luck. Also think about if you want a media center remote or stick with a keyboard and mouse. I would go with the remote option.

You're looking at $350 ish without the hard drive and about $550 with one plus if you want to get a main small fast boot drive.
 
Any suggestions on a pre-built system? I'm not in the mood for another build..lol.
 
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7035353&postcount=5

Can't vouch for either suggestion in that post but they must be better than cyberpowerpc's builds, which have never impressed me for the price.

If you're not too picky about SIZE of the computer, then just about any dual or quad core desktop kit on tigerdirect will be plenty of juice to run any blurays and media you throw at it. Then you only need to toss in a drive, OS, and maybe a bluray burner.
 
I would just get a nice 3+ drive NAS and get a media player since you already have so much going on in your media cabinet anyway.

An HTPC WOULD replace your Tivo configured correctly depending on your service provider. Its all up to that and the tuner you select. (M-stream/cable card type of thing).

The $200 combo linked would work fine for that too, although I also would go llano instead as already suggested. More power and WAY smoother. Don't know why by the A6 setup I built for my friend was able to run VMs while doing other stuff and never stuttered.
 
Back