[wmr1980]

Hi all,

I have an HP N40L - which is just running as a NAS at the moment. Whilst it seems OTT for a NAS, it's actually cheaper and offers more options - but that's not the point of this thread!

I'm currently plugging in my laptop into my Denon AVR every time I want to watch a movie.

Sure, my Bluray player can access the files, but the interface is clunky, and it doesn't cope with all the different media files. So it's not really great.

So my idea was to use the N40L as a media centre PC.

It has the capacity, it has the media I want to watch on it already and it has the ability to do so.

I'm likely to buy a FLIRC for it, as I already have a logitech harmony - unless you can think of something else?

Now it's down to HOW I actually do it. I read the stickie with the pros and cons of the different media centre software available. I'm sort of thinking openeelec or xbmc would be the one for me - however I'm open to suggestions.

My ultimate goal is to have a stand alone solution, that is on all the time and can access easily so that I can:

a) Browse and watch my movies quickly, and in a slick manner
b) Play music without having to spend an age browsing through folders etc
c) View photos
d) Watch streamed content (iplayer, 4OD, etc...)

A bonus out of this would be to be able to:

Install an HD freeview card/receiver and set it up as a PVR - but this is not a priority.

The N40L would plug into my Denon AVR via HDMI (it's got a low profile graphics card in there with audio processing), and be controlled by a logitech remote (I want to avoid using a wireless mouse and keyboard, but if I have to I will).

With that in mind what route do you think I should take?

I have a few hundred movies, over 20k MP3s, and thousands of pictures.

I don't really watch much TV, though the "bonus" would be quite fun - but it's the least of my priorities and would sacrifice the ability to do that for the 1st 4 options.

Thanks guys!

[jammyb2004]

what OS you got running on the N40? if windows 7, then just bung XBMC on it and that'll be your media frontend with local access to your media on the drives.

[Bossworld]

Is the power supply really 150w? You might be stretching yourself if you put a tuner card and any graphics card capable of proper deinterlacing in there.

Heat dissipation will also be a massive problem, you're probably looking at having either a graphics card or tv tuner in all honesty.

[Avalon One]

Personally I love xbmc, I ran win7/xbmc with an Nvidia 210 at various points on my N36/8GB, you should have no problem achieving a-d with that set-up.

[wmr1980]

Hi guys,

Sorry for the late reply have been away.

The tuner card was just a "nice to have" - it's actually not that important to me if I'm honest. I guess I could go USB if I wanted to view TV through it. But TV is not really something I watch an awful lot of.

At the moment I'm just running WHS 2011, as I just wanted some storage and storage management.

XMBC will run on it fine I believe from my research, and WHS 2011 has a DNLA capacity too I believe.

Bossworld, a fanless low profile gfx card will run full 1080p without any hesitation.

The reason for doing it via the N40L, is that it's on all the time, and it's already there with lots of storage. The alternative was buying another device (Acer Revo for example) - but that's just another device to add under the TV.

I'm happy to hear alternatives though.

[Bossworld]

Originally Posted by wmr1980

Hi guys,

Sorry for the late reply have been away.

The tuner card was just a "nice to have" - it's actually not that important to me if I'm honest. I guess I could go USB if I wanted to view TV through it. But TV is not really something I watch an awful lot of.

At the moment I'm just running WHS 2011, as I just wanted some storage and storage management.

XMBC will run on it fine I believe from my research, and WHS 2011 has a DNLA capacity too I believe.

Bossworld, a fanless low profile gfx card will run full 1080p without any hesitation.

The reason for doing it via the N40L, is that it's on all the time, and it's already there with lots of storage. The alternative was buying another device (Acer Revo for example) - but that's just another device to add under the TV.

I'm happy to hear alternatives though.

Hi mate,

The problem isn't the resolution, it's the deinterlacing of content, especially if you're planning on watching live TV. If you've got a low card, it can't do vector adaptive deinterlacing, which means the white lines on a football pitch look awful for example. The GT 220 is a far more capable card than the GT 210 in this respect, even though both are tailored for the HTPC market (both are quite old now but I'm using a fanless half height GT 220 in my setup, after previously using the inbuilt ATI HD4250 until I became aware of the difference in image quality when deinterlacing content).

If your content is progressive 1080p/720p then it shouldn't matter.

hope that helps

EDIT: image comparison about half way down the first post: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1157287/hd...ers-icl-ticker

[wmr1980]

Hiya thanks for that.

I think I'm going to drop the idea of it being a PVR anyway and will probably head towards a humax box or something in due time for a dedicated PVR box. So I appreciate your advice on that. I've got myself an HD 6450 and it's coping well with 1080p content

I've got XMBC running as a low end user just for a login name - no admin rights. Just need to finish the logitech harmony programming.

The microserver works excellently as a media server/htpc, and I still get to use it as my home server too.

It's got 8gb of ram, 4TB (at the moment) of data, and now I just have to tweak XBMC and get all the plug ins installed. Working well so far though.

Most of this was thanks to reading through this forum - glad to have this resource to read!