What do I want (console / NAS / Media PC?)

StockportGerbil

Folks :-
At the risk of filling up this forum I've got another question which I'm hoping for some bright ideas.

The systems at home could use some updating - at present I've got the following.

- A 40Gb digifusion freeview PVR
- A number of soft-modded XBox consoles
- A network attached disc, which under some circumstances is horribly slow
- Various networked PCs

The PVR seems permanantly full, there are grouses that new games won't run on the XBoxs and the performance of the networked attached disc particularly when serving MP3s is poor.

There are a variety of possible solutions here and I don't know which way to go. The thoughts I've had are :-

1. Get a PS3 with the freeview add-on and a better / proper NAS. This is going to be expensive (£600?) and some of my family want a Wii (I've played with these over at a friends house and lost interest quite quickly - so do wonder about the long term value of these.) I suspect I'd have to upgrade the PS3 disc drive sooner rather than later. This does have the advantage that blu-ray discs can be played which I imagine may be a requirement.

2. Get / build a media centre PC and use that as a NAS as well (is this possible?) and buy consoles as required. I suspect a media centre PC can be cobbled together for £300 / £350 or so. A wii or xbox 360 would be round the £150 - £200 mark. Can a media centre PC be 'programmed' to record stuff remotely - that would be useful.

3. Reuse an old PC, stuff a load of discs in it and turn it into a NAS. Let everyone fight it out for space on the PVR and / or which new console to get. Probably the cheapest option but I'm not keen both about having an old and therefore noisy PC whirring away and drawing loads of power.

Has anyone come up with the perfect solution?

Thanks

Kevin

mdbarber

personally i prefer the htpc solution, i run one using a twin freeview tuner and media portal, it wasn't cheap to get it how i liked it and how the mrs dictated it look for the living room but in one box i have all my pics,music,vids,tv stuff, etc also its a nas for the rest of the home network etc.
sky can be a real pain to integrate so if that's one of your priorities it may not be reasonably priced enough

d900

id avoid the pch - while its made by the company that make the software i read to much negative press about returns and doa units making a lot of end users very unhappy.

have a look here:
http://www.digitalera.co.uk/catalog/Network_Media_Players-119-1.html

at the hdx 1000 or the egreat (would depend what features u want) exactly the same as the pch a110 software wise (in fact the hdx has the same remote)

Lakeuk

A cheap option (<£15) is to buy a ICY BOX IB-168, think of it like your cd drive in your PC but instead of feeding it cd's you feed it sata HDD, once you're HD is drive is full pull it out, place it on the shelf till required and put in fresh one it.

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/details.php?we_objectID=4343

StockportGerbil

Folks :-
Thanks for the replies.
The media players you are pointing me at don't record TV, so aren't really replacements for the PVR. Another requirement would be the ability to watch recorded TV on the networked PCs ideally, so not everyone is squabbling over the PVR / TV.
Thanks again for your thoughts
Kevin

mdbarber

StockportGerbil wrote: »

Folks :-
Thanks for the replies.
The media players you are pointing me at don't record TV, so aren't really replacements for the PVR. Another requirement would be the ability to watch recorded TV on the networked PCs ideally, so not everyone is squabbling over the PVR / TV.
Thanks again for your thoughts
Kevin

the tv server version of media portal is network ready, i use it to watch tv on my office machine over the network