Media PC, or seperate players?

[-Hox-]

Evening all,

I've not long moved house, and have invested in a nice telly to sit in the lounge. The Mrs. is happy with a DVD player, but I want more... I want a decent Blu-Ray player, a media player that will stream music and movies from my NAS drive, and a decent sound system to cap it all off. I'll be throwing a Wii and an Xbox at it too.

Question is, would you guys recommend that I build a media PC (all in one box), or buy separate units for everything?

Cheers for your thoughts,

Hox

[tshirtman]

I have an xtreamer (http://www.xtreamer.net/) media player, which I got on launch day, it's now a nice little piece of kit, (after about 10 firmware updates),
but then I built a high spec games/media PC, which is also hooked up to my TV, and I'm finding I hardly use the xtreamer anymore,
but it's only small (about the size of a hard drive) so would be OK for taking on holiday/travels,
personally, I wouldn't have bought the xtreamer if I already had my current PC

[-Hox-]

I have an xtreamer (http://www.xtreamer.net/) media player, which I got on launch day, it's now a nice little piece of kit, (after about 10 firmware updates),
but then I built a high spec games/media PC, which is also hooked up to my TV, and I'm finding I hardly use the xtreamer anymore,
but it's only small (about the size of a hard drive) so would be OK for taking on holiday/travels,
personally, I wouldn't have bought the xtreamer if I already had my current PC

So go with a media PC would seem the way then?! I'm a novice with building anything apart from old VW's... got any pointers?!

Thanks for you reply tho tshirt, appreciated.

[xant14]

quick pointer.
I use a Revo 3600 as my 'tvpc' media centre whatever, and it is quite shite really, in win7 mode... not enough power for todays high quality downloads. It is perfectly fine with 700mb to 1 gb stuff on the win7 os... but for the 4Gb + stuff, I need to run it straight from xbmc live on the memory card. However... this works very well, but is a faff about with hitting boot menu on load up.

What I am saying is get a system with decent oomph

[-Hox-]

What I am saying is get a system with decent oomph

Cheers mate, it's the oomph, or rather the knowledge of what I need to make the oomph that I'm missing! Any help is very much appreciated. I'd ideally like to have one box with everything in it, but if I need to buy seperates to get something that won't drive me crazy with frustration then I'll gladly invest! Building a system is very appealing though!

[xant14]

mine aint as bad as I make out, but it has flaws. It was a birthday prezzie from the missus so I can hardly bin it.
First off.. You are better buying one without an OS, get one cheaper that way.
If it is just for media, then load xbmc on as the OS. That is a great package, and FREE!

[-Hox-]

Cheers for the info! It'll be mainly for media, but I want to keep it flexible - no dout the Mrs. will enjoy ordering shoes from the comfort of the sofa! I'm thinking along the Windows 7 route to take advantage of the media centre, but I'm not fussed either way to be honest - as long as it works!

[tshirtman]

just one thing, if you intend to connect it to your new TV,
when buying a new graphics card, make sure it has a HDMI output
and check how many display controllers it has, the more the better, but you would want a minimum of 2

[marcelvdk]

I' would go for a mediaplayer instead of an mediaPC. Takes a lot more work to get it perfectly going. I've got an eminent media player. Works fine in my network and plays all formats.