Anyone with experience building/using a home theater PC?

[BillyBob29]

I've got several thousand Blu-ray, DVD, CD's that get passed around the house and I'm just tired of having the discs passed around and keeping them all accessible.

I would like to build a home theater PC that could basically just be stored in the basement and networked to the TV's and computers in the house to make all the content viewable in any room without the use of discs themselves.

Anyone use a set up like this in their house? What are the pros / cons you have come across using something like this?

Any advice on getting started building such a set up would be apprcaited.

 

[BigPopov]

when I did my BR server it was just streams to other PCs (I had a laptop connected to my large TV.) So it was a pretty basic windows workgroup file sharing type thing, the same as sharing any file to any other PC. I did use Tversity for a streaming client to an Xbox though.

No real cons to getting into this type of thing, it takes a good amount of tweaking though. For instance, for me finding a good media library software that was viewable from a distance that supported subtitles was my biggest challenge since I watch a lot of foreign movies.

As far as what computer to use as a server, it doesn't have to be expensive. A cheap Radeon x350 series video card will run BRs and they are $30. My sister has a HTPC setup and the processor is an old old Pentium dual core. So it's more about form factor and available storage.

 

[Lieutenant Dan]

I think what you are looking to do is best accomplished by this product:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005YW7OLM/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1363613677&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

I did a lot of research and bought one of these for myself. Setup is about as painless as you're going to get for this type of project.

I've had it set up to serve music and videos in my home for about 6 months now. You can even access all your media from anywhere you can access the Internet, including a smartphone (I do this myself and it works mind-bogglingly well).

I spent this weekend setting up all my retro gaming files on this bad boy so I can play them from anywhere in the house!

 

[shrike4242]

What you're looking for is a home server, not a home theater PC. A HTPC is a PC connected to a TV to display said content you're looking to store somewhere.

As Lt. Dan mentioned, a Synology works well for that purpose, though they're not the only game in town. They do have some niceties for their user interface and how it works, though again, they're not the only one.

Here's a link to their site:
http://www.synology.com/us/index.php

I also own a Synology (DS1512+ / http://www.synology.com/products/product.php?product_name=DS1512+&lang=us) and the user interface is a very very good one compared to others. They're pricier than other options (QNAP, Iomega, Netgear, etc.), though it is a slick product.

You could even do that with an old PC, Linux and FreeNAS among other possible solutions.

 

[BigPopov]

Well, if you don't have a PC hooked up to your TV currently, you can make your server and HTPC the same machine and effectively kill two birds with one stone. Same deal, can be an older PC with an addon video card, and bigger hard drives.

If you need something that integrates, look wise, into your setup they make some good looking custom cases that fit stock PC parts.

I've never actually experimented with using the DLNA on TVs but I can tell from what it does it doesn't fit what I need it to do. I like to stream sports, for instance, that will never be aired in America, so I need an actual PC on my TV.