So I want a Network Attached Storage device, or a NAS for short. I want all the cool stuff NASes like Synology’s DS207+ can do — Bittorrent, FTP, web server, and iTunes server, and the myraid of other things that a NAS is capable of.
I want to stream Xvid, Dvix, and MKVs onto my TV so I can sit on my new couch and watch them.
I thought maybe I could get a NAS and hook it to my 360 and do it. Great, but let me tell you it’s a bitch to hook anything up to a 360. Even if I did get it to work, which I have on occassion, not all Mp3s will be found, and not all videos will play. I tried my brother’s PS3. Different console, same story.
Another thing about a NAS like the Synology or QNAP. They’re expensive. 300 dollars expensive. That’s just for a glorified harddrive enclosure running Linux under the hood. Sure there’s memory and a processor that runs at 500 Mhz. You have to remote in via telnet to fiddle with the settings. So now you’ve got a box in your house that you have to remote connect into instead of being able to just directly access like a computer. A NAS is a good idea, but that’s kinda silly when I think about it. Oh, and then the harddrives. You want 2 TB? That’s another 300 bucks. Granted a 500 GB will run you a lot less, but that’s still on top of the NAS box itself. So for maybe 450 bucks you have a great NAS to backup your stuff.
Or, you could have a media center PC.
And, what I really wanted after all this thinking is a media center PC. I believe I should be able to do all of those things I mentioned above that a NAS could do and then some. If I wanted to browse the web on my TV I can do that. Setting up MAME would be sweet too. It’s like I could play games in my living room. How novel is that?
So that’s what I did, I killed a couple of birds with one stone with the help of this blog post at Coding Horror. He basically built a very cheap, small, media center PC. I pretty much just bought the parts he proposed — although I did a bit of research and reading on my own before deciding to go with them. I won’t lie. He did all the legwork and I’m borrowing his brilliance. I have no problem with that. It saves me the weeks of agonizing over which part is which or wondering if the parts are good enough. I know someone’s got these parts and built the computer, so it’s got to be good enough. The nice thing is that the parts I got off newegg are actually cheaper than what he purchased them at. So I save a little bit more. The breakdown:
| CPU | AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5 GHz (45w) | $54 |
| Mobo | Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H Micro ATX | $89 |
| RAM | Kingston 2GB DDR2 800 | $23 |
| DVD | Lite-On 20X DVD±R SATA | $27 |
| Case/PSU | Antec Minuet w/80plus certified PSU | $109 |
| HDD | Western Digital quiet 500 GB | $60 |
| $362 |
I didn’t bother with a Hauppauge Tuner card or the remote at this stage — maybe that doesn’t make this a true blue media center PC or HTPC or whatever it’s called, but I don’t give a rats ass because I can, if I build it, sit on my ass and watch stuff on it. I figure a basic mouse and keyboard will do me just fine. I did get an HDMI cable to connect to my TV so in the end I was around $375 and then after shipping and handling and taxes $438. Not a bad deal.
This will be the second computer I’ve built. Let’s hope I don’t brick it.
If I don’t manage that, then I plan to install Ubuntu on it.
As they say on TV, to be continued…
Tags: computers, htpc, media center
