Time to spec another PC! HTPC this time...

Percy1983

Got to say actually I am using my talk talk free one and its fine, routers aren't all that expensive these days if yours is giving you problems.

tombruton87

I think you are all going about this totally wrong. Windows Media Center for a start is not great and when it goes wrong others wont be able to fix it. PC wise you want something small and silent and possibly stylish! here the specs of mine

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~E350-A-E
zotac 350 a-e
8 gig of ram kingston value
ocz 120 gig ssd
silverstone lc19-r

its running a minimal install of Ubuntu with all the packages I needed built up. This is probably not going to be the option for you. xbm!!!!u is probably going to be better. its only available as a 32 bit version so you can only go up2 4 gigs of ram. however this will have no problem handling 1080p. xbmc looks gorgous handles every media format under the sun they have those flacs covered. It is far more stable than windows. my media is streamed over my network to my htpc, xbmc handles my collection fine which is very very large.

Percy1983

tombruton87 wrote: »

I think you are all going about this totally wrong. Windows Media Center for a start is not great and when it goes wrong others wont be able to fix it. PC wise you want something small and silent and possibly stylish! here the specs of mine

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~E350-A-E
zotac 350 a-e
8 gig of ram kingston value
ocz 120 gig ssd
silverstone lc19-r

its running a minimal install of Ubuntu with all the packages I needed built up. This is probably not going to be the option for you. xbm!!!!u is probably going to be better. its only available as a 32 bit version so you can only go up2 4 gigs of ram. however this will have no problem handling 1080p. xbmc looks gorgous handles every media format under the sun they have those flacs covered. It is far more stable than windows. my media is streamed over my network to my htpc, xbmc handles my collection fine which is very very large.

You do realise you have just referenced a system very similar to mine, I just have more processing power and masses more storage. PS its very stylish http://store.antec.com/Product/enclosure-veris_media/micro-fusion-remote-350/0-761345-15737-7.aspx

I will say you do seem rather anti windows, by all means I do run an ubuntu machine with xbmc and its fine, but its certaily not as stable or user friendly as my windows 7 HTPC.

Yes I am all up for the benefits of an open platform like linux etc and for a 'geek' like me I do quite like messing about with it, but you have to admit for out of the box user friendliness windows is great.

tombruton87

Percy1983 wrote: »

You do realise you have just referenced a system very similar to mine, I just have more processing power and masses more storage. PS its very stylish http://store.antec.com/Product/enclosure-veris_media/micro-fusion-remote-350/0-761345-15737-7.aspx

I will say you do seem rather anti windows, by all means I do run an ubuntu machine with xbmc and its fine, but its certaily not as stable or user friendly as my windows 7 HTPC.

Yes I am all up for the benefits of an open platform like linux etc and for a 'geek' like me I do quite like messing about with it, but you have to admit for out of the box user friendliness windows is great.

windows can be user friendly at the start but its when networks go down or natting is involved without a windows server aswell it just falls over. To do what I did setting it up from the 20meg version of ubuntu does take abit of geekery but the end user experience for gf's and mums is much better. I have all my media in a central location so when I add another box they can just both connect to it. Also I havnt got room for 7 hdds in my htpc

I have found mine to be more stable than any pre built windows pc

irisandalex

tombruton87 wrote: »

I think you are all going about this totally wrong.

Each to their own! I'm glad you're happy with what you've got, however our needs are somewhat different....

Percy1983

tombruton87 wrote: »

I have found mine to be more stable than any pre built windows pc

The last time I bought a pre built windows machine was 1999, I will admit I do see a lot of pre-installed rubbish these days on windows PC but that isn't windows directly but the manufacturers.

I have witnessed stability problems with my machine but that was while testing over clocks so that doesn't really count as it was the hardware becoming unstable.

I know was you mean with mini-itx, they are great small machines but personally I see it as too compromised for the size hence why I went micro atx, as it is my case is slightly bigger than the good old vhs players and as it plays everything it doesn't need to share room with other boxs so its no problem.

Interesting what you say about storing everything in one place, in my case the HTPC is the server.