Be Excellent To Each Other

I fancy finally getting all modern and having a media PC connected to the big telly that I would use for streaming all the on demand services from iPlayer to Netflix as well as playing downloaded avi files of tv shows etc (at present my set-up is a modded Wii and a blu-ray player that can run *most* file types off a USB stick).

I haven't bought a new PC in about five years and don't play PC games so I'm totally out of the loop as to hardware. What would be some decent specs to be looking at for building one of these and what sort of price are we talking? I've plucked £600 out of the air as a reasonable budget.

Key notes: I will never, ever, be playing modern PC games on it, but will probably stick MAME/SNES/PS1 era emulator stuff on.
I'm vaguely up on the concept of SSD drives. A modest sized one exclusively for the OS (probably windows 7) is the way forward?
I'm not going to be regularly downloading blu-ray rips or anything like that, but would want it to cope fine with HD content (I suspect anything made in the last five years will do that anyway though).
I do not have any sort of surround sound system.

Thanks for your time, folks

I'm no expert on PC hardware, but £600 seems like overkill. You could get a small 'Nettop' PC for half that for example.

Aye, for the PC alone you should be able to do it for £300ish. Did the £600 price include the surround system too?

AE will be along in a sec to advise on specifics

I rock a recent vintage Acer Revo r3700 with a usb blu ray drive attached

nope! I'm quickly seeing I was more out of touch on PC component prices than I thought!

No you're not. Send me the money and I'll put a PC together for you.

Would something like this not suffice?
http://dx.com/p/nx002-dual-core-android ... ver-168054

I have never used one, but it is a lot cheaper, smaller, etc.

or one of these:
http://thepihut.com/products/media-cent ... spberry-pi
for £26 - it may be worth seeing if it meets your reqts.

Most likely. The only thing that worries me with those is are they powerful enough to play 1080p Blu-Ray rips? It's difficult to find out without trying yourself though, as what is satisfactory performance for one person, is awful for another. Some people just don't see skipped frames or lip sync issues, and report back that they play perfectly.

yeah, but when your original budget is £600, a "risky" £25 seems like a sensible gamble - worst case it could be flogged for most of that on Ebay.

Worth noting that probably in the next 12 months or so, there are going to be a lot more living room orientated PCs produced and released. Valve are partnering with several manufacturers to get a bunch of console-sized PCs at a variety of specification out on the market, with most likely some version of Linux with a Steam frontend, although you'll be able to replace it with Windows if you want. If you're not in any rush, I'd hold out to see what they come up with.

Thanks for the assorted advice so far, folks. Done some in depth reading this morning on example builds. Who is actually good to use these days for buying the parts from?

Get a nettop. No building required.

We run an older iteration of this as a media centre in the bedroom if that's any use. It's only got an 11" screen so has a very small footprint plus it's an actual proper laptop which can come in handy. It's got no optical drive mind so you'd need to pick up a USB drive if you needed that of course. We also got one of these mini keyboard/mousepads to go with it which works perfectly well as long as you're only typing in URLs and the odd search.

I use eBuyer if I have to.

Laptop or Nettop is the way to go IMO.

A traditional PC is pretty much redundant now for most people, most of the time.

Assuming you just need a HDMI connection for the screen+sound then you're into 'almost anything will do' territory.

LAPTOP - £230 after cashback, will do everything you need in a media centre, comes with Windows 7 Premium, has an optical drive for olde worlde DVDs, and you get a 'free laptop' into the bargain, add a £15 wireless keyboard and mouse, job done - http://www.ebuyer.com/398053-acer-aspir ... c_thursday

NETTOP - Without OS (so adds the complication of an OS purchase and/or install), you're talking under £200, http://www.ebuyer.com/395463-acer-revo- ... -smgek-006 - DO HOWEVER NOTE THAT GETTING AN OS UP AND RUNNING ON THESE CAN BE A HASSLE (read the reviews)

Or go with an OS pre-installed, bit more power in this one too, £350, Windows 8 I'm afraid - http://www.ebuyer.com/395461-acer-revo- ... -sm4ek-001

Personally I'd go with the laptop, pretty much all the pros of a nettop, and you get a proper laptop as part of the deal.

EDIT - Get from Ebuyer, they're acebest these days.

Asrock ION 330 with OpenElec (XBMC)

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/NVIDIA/ION%20330HT/

You should get one for less that £270.

It will play everything, even a Netflix pluggin although I've never tried this, so would need some homework if this is something you really want.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=143019

Isn't the Atom CPU a sack of shit though? Or are the new ones better?

Along with the Nvidia Chipset and the Linux OS from Open Elec it works really well

All my films are on a NAS in the loft (1gb conected) and I play 30GB and larger mkv no problems

If you want to buy a box for streaming, and are any way technically inclined, then the Pi is a good bet. £55 all in with a pre-installed XMBC memory card.

But why not just get the £230 laptop?

It'll do everything that the Asrock ION will, and it's like, a laptop, as well. Plus you get the versatility of a proper Windows OS for emulators and stuff, which Zen-Chan said he may well put on there.

I run Windows 7 on an atom based nettop for the exact purpose described above. With the right codecs configured correctly, it can run anything.

It can even run gta4

What the fuck's a nettop? Have I missed a thing?

Netbook without a screen.

Edit: and I guess without a battery too.

String vest

It's a 'very small PC', basically.

The early iterations suffered from low-powered components and poor performance (I remember a Custom PC review of one of the first ones bemoaning the fact it couldn't even handly high quality YouTube videos without some stuttering), but by all accounts even the low-powered Intel Atom CPUs (with Nvidia ION chipset doing the graphics) are a lot better then they used to be, plus there's the new AMD APUs and Intel i3s crammed into the little boxes too.

If you're prepared to do the OS yourself, it's a proper computer for under £150, basically - and silent into the bargain, hence them being perfect for media centre duties.

http://www.ebuyer.com/395476-acer-revo- ... -smcek-002

Blimey, thread has exploded with info since earlier! Cheers for all the replies, will get swotting up on everything and take a look.

Just get the £230 laptop!

Get the £55 pi!

it is a £25 pi, it a £55 android (they were selling ones for £14 the other day!)


Edit: £25 for a computer, wow!

No it's £25 for the kit without the pi, £55 with pi included.

grrrr, "kit includes raspberry pi (optional)". It doesn't include it then! cheeky blighters!

You wouldn't get this kind of uncertainty and confusion with a £230 Windows 7 laptop.

it's true, it's true!

Oh, I'd also say I guess maybe wait and see what the new Xbox and Playstation are like as media devices. New Playstation is unveiled in just over a week, although dunno how much detail we'll get. The current ones are OK for media stuff.

To throw another option into the ring, a friend of mine has one of these and he is very happy with it, plays anything he throws at it.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Live-Streami ... omputers_3

I use one of those too, it's great. Small, low power consumption, runs quietly and stays cool, easy to conceal (can even be mounted in the back of your telly if you want), runs XBMC like a charm even through MS Windows. Has HDMI and optical out, plus plenty of USB sockets, and an SD card reader if you care.

I think you can pay for a little computer like that with windows pre-installed, or pay less for a crappy linux version which you can wipe and then install something else.

Chuck your media onto an external drive (or a NAS) and you're away.

How much space does it have for additional drives?

Internally? None, of course (I suspect you already know that), it's a tiny little unit about the size of a couple of DVD cases stacked up.

External drives are cheap and popular but are a little inelegant to use permanently, and of course may need power adapters, so you've got more wires. That's why I put my media onto a NAS, then we can also access it on our laptops, phones, tablet, office computer etc.

A revo (or similar) and a NAS are easy to set up and won't cost all that much either.

Mine came with a 500gb hard drive. But that's only used for tv buffering and recording

Ooh, what tuner, software and stuff do you use?

We got rid of our sky+ equivalent box and would very much like to be able to record from live telly again. I was weighing up buying a separate PVR or trying to mess about with trying to get the little media box to do it... How well does it work for you?

Windows 7 media centre.

Tuner is (deep breath) a "ClimaxDigital DTV395 USB 2.0 DUAL DVB-T TV Tuner/Receiver/Recorder Adapter/Dongle/Stick Freeview with Aerial, Remote Control for PC and Laptop" from amazon.

It works really very well, but I have been fiddling with media centre since 2004

Yep, the peeps I know who have these are very happy with them.

Balls. I couldn't even jam a second one in there?

I'm growing out of using a NAS, but I want the drives to be in an array.

There are external Sata racks available that work through USB or e-sata.

Google it, man.

I've not opened the case, but I'm given to understand its pretty tight in there. There's no optical drive that you could take out, it's pretty minimal.

Hmmm, I don't have much experience with Windows media centre other than a quick try but this sounds tempting.

Dooooooo it.....

I still don't want external drives, though (well, I do, but only for backup). The e-sata ones would doubtless be fast, but I hate to think about the price.

This seems to be the best one, but YE GODS £140 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007B61GVI/

What kind of RAID are you planning to use. I've done a lot of investigating around this for home use, and keep coming back to Drobos as the best solution. Shame they are so pricey though.