John@TunerUK

My reason for asking is that I'm currently wiring a house for a friend. and he has asked if I could find a media solution for the 3 rooms he wishes to have A/V equipment in. (Lounge-Bedroom-Kitchen)

Now during a meeting with a supplier for the home automation equipment, I was pointed in the direction of a company based in Nantwich called 'Bliss AV' who offered a solution to the A/V distribution.
I set up a meeting at his showroom, and he spent 2 hours showing me what the system that he had developed could do.
The system was ideal, DVD, TV with HDD recording, and internet; the price however was a little scary
They wanted £13,000 for 2 server back ends (One main, and one backup) which upon looking inside, was rougly £500 worth of PC, and £750 for each 'play box' (These went in each room with a TV).
that's a staggering £15,250 for 3 rooms!
I explained that I'm sure he wouldn't mind if he only had the one backend, because no way can he stretch to over fifteen grand. He dropped it to one backend at a cost of £7500. Still kinda hefty!
But I figured, well, he's spent the time to develop the software, and everyone has to make a living.

However, he was a little too giddy about the whole thing, which I find is always the case when someone is about to make a LOT of money for very little, so I figured I'd do some research. Sure enough after a couple of hours on the net and some advice from a friend, it seems he is actually just using Linux MCE; which I'm sure you'll all know is free. The play boxes were just cheap mini PC's with a network port, an spdif out, and a dvi-hdmi converter plug. £300 perhaps? so £900 for 3, and add to that a £500 back end. That makes £1400 of hardware. take that from the £9750 price of the install

Is Linux MCE really so hard to configure that it's worth paying someone £8350 to do it for me, or is this guy trying to screw my mate out of a lot of cash for nothing?!!

P.S. I know that was some lengthy babble, so cheers for reading

gar

He is just trying to rip you off. Linux MCE is an exceptional distribution, which is much easier to set up than alternative, commercial solutions.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

What kind of servers are they, we buy dual core Xeons with 3 gigs of ram for about 2k.

John@TunerUK

Inside the backend was one HDD, although I'm not sure of the size, what looked like maybe a gig of RAM, a graphics card, and a DVB capture card. The most expensive bit was probably the case, which was a large ally HTPC case. Nothing groundbreaking.

jowl

John@TunerUK

I'm also looking at sorting a similar system for my house, and looking at the components needed I should be able to put a one box solution together for around £390. My house already has cat5e run to the required positions, so I can add front ends to the required rooms as funds allow.

Would this system be suitable, and allow for future upgrade to either Blu Ray or HD-DVD when it becomes more affordable?

Antec Fusion Black HTPC Case - 430HE Watt PSU £113.96
Abit AN-M2HD nForce 520 Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £58.74
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £49.34
Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x512MB) £32.89
Samsung SpinPoint T HD501LJ 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £69.31
Pioneer DVR-112DBK 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM £19.96
Hauppauge Wintv-pvr-150 Mce Lp £43.71

Total £387.91

jowl

I would say that is a good starting point. Personally, I'll be using Intel Core Duo chips.

Are you going to have this system, as a front and back-end? As in will it be used for viewing content in one room and serving out content to other machines when you get them?

I'm going to build a similar spec fileserver (without TV card, for now) to store all programs/music/data. My Mac mini's will access the fileserver for content via Cat5.

Having a fileserver stored in a cupboard upstairs out of the way means I have to worry less about noise, appearance and it means I can add several drives if I get a decent size case. I want to use a RAID system for added data 'security'

John@TunerUK

To begin with I'm just going to have it in one room, so yes it will be a front and back end, then when funds allow expand it to 3/4 rooms.

But depending on the noise generated, I may actually have a backend hidden away at some point, and just use the htpc case for my lounge front end, since it looks quite nice.

jowl

Yes, I am a fan of Antec cases. The 'fileserver' will be housed in one.

I started building a PC for the front end but my initial attempts weren't quiet enough and I found it easier, and maybe even better value to go the Mac Mini route.

Having said that, I don't think I notice much noise once the TV is on and DVD/Video playing. But if it's idling or playing music/video in another room, I want the machine to be quiet.

John@TunerUK

Yeah, I currently have an Antec Sonata II housing this PC. It's been a cracking piece of kit, so I was quite pleased when I saw they did a HTPC case also.