Checkout a Boxee box.

http://www.boxee.tv/buy

I run the Boxee app as my HTPC app. Except instead of having the actual box, i run the app on a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV via HDMI and TOSlink. Boxee is great, there isn't really anything I've found that it can't play. It'll play a DVD5 ISO directly, MKV, AVI, MOV, MPG...on and on. It also has apps built in for Pandora, Spotify, Hulu, Vudu, Netflix....again on and on.

With the addition of a supported Tuner card it can also play TV over the air as well.

This same MacMini also runs 360connect to share my iTunes playlists (not just the music, but the smart playlists as well) to the Xbox 360. And I can use the Remote app on my iPhone to remotely control iTunes so I don't even have to turn on the TV or sit in front of it to control it. I can control my iTunes from anywhere in the house.

Yes, I will be using Win7 Pro and Windows Media Server for the main app. The plugins necessary for Netflix, automatic DVD iso mounting, etc are all free, and they work seamlessly with MC. The prime goal for the main system is simplicity and ease of use for any non-techie member of the family.

I'm not sure what I'll be using for the "TV Guide" service, but I did some quick searches for free solutions and there are a few. It'll take some playing around to find the one that works the best. My wife has a Tivo in the bedroom and I hate it to be honest. The UI sucks and it's expensive.

For a basic media server, the hardware requirements aren't very high. A dual core CPU of any brand, integrated video, and 4GB of RAM would be more than sufficient (as long as the integrated video supports the native resolution of the HDTV you are using). The biggest expense is probably DVD storage at this point until drive prices drop. However, if you go with lower-end processing hardware, I would recommend getting a TV card with built-in hardware encoding so that recording TV shows won't hit the CPU nearly as much.

Unfortunately for me, adding the ability to play PC games on the HTPC, and transcoding video in the background in real-time over the LAN requires quite a bit more power. This is the part that is going to require the custom web application, database, etc.

When I get it all together, I plan to do it in stages and outline in simple terms how to do each depending on the user's goal. Then, once I get a workable transcoding method in place, I can even provide webserver/database installation instructions along with any scripts required for installing the database tables, stored procedures, etc.

I don't plan on ever exposing this system to the public web (being able to stream a video to my phone while at work isn't one of my goals), so there won't be any special router configurations or dynamic IP mapping (allows a home DHCP machine to be mapped to a externally available domain name) to do.

Something like this would definitely be the easiest and cheapest way to go.

Great point, I do basically the same thing but use the program Boxee is built from, XBMC. It provides me more flexibility and a crisper UI and integration.

I have a 7" touchscreen HTPC cases for the media PCs running an i3 and fanless NVidia card, everything is networked and wired to an 18TB storage array in the basement.

Thanks for all the tips.

And agreed, storage is the big issue right now. Hoping the pricing comes back down more. It does seem to be a little better than what it jumped to due to the flooding though.

Yeah, I did notice that prices have come down, but not all the way yet.

This WD 1TB Black edition drive used to be $99. Its still $140.

Even worse are the 3TB drives, I bought 6 for $149/ea and now Newegg is pricing them at $300.

Seagate's 3TB bare drives are $200. Oddly enough, their external 3TB drives can be had for ~$170 and they contain the same exact drive model as the bare drive. I've read a few places where people are getting the external version and ripping open the enclosure to get the drive.

Curious to see what comes up for the raspberry pi - It seems to be powerful enough to run unix and stream 1080p.

For $35 you cant go wrong.

That Raspberry Pi seems an interesting device. Very small, inexpensive, and simple. I can see it being used as an internet device to connect TVs which don't have network functionality - something like a Roku but more versatile.

For that it should be uniquely suited With the addition of a large hard drive and a TV Tuner card with built in encoding capabilities it would do very well running one of the PVR operating systems.

Wonder if one could turn it into a $35 hackintosh. :)

Can't recall the site but look for OpenElec and you will see a working demonstration of XBMC running on the pi with 1080p playback.. It looks promisiing and needs a little polishing but it's not far from ready to go.

I think in a couple of months the "geeks" will have it licked with tweaked OS's and cases etc.

It looks really promising.

Little update:

Got all the PC parts in, put it together, and installed most of the immediate software last night. Everything seems to be working fine so far.

I ended up using Media Browser, which is a plug-in for Windows Media Center. This is probably the best plug-in I've found bar none! Even though I just have a pile of DVD ISO files, this plugin automatically downloads all the metadata for each movie (includes DVD cover image, synopsis, ratings, actors, etc). So, I don't have to do anything special to manage the library - I just drag-n-drop new movies as I get/rip them and the background service part of the plug-in does the rest. Using the meta data the program creates, it allows you to search for a movie by actor, title, year, genre, etc - which is really nice if you have lots and lots of movies. If a particular movie has the wrong picture associated with it, just change the ISO file name to match what you'd find on IMDB or whatever and MediaBrowser will automatically get the right metadata for it. Cool! It is set up to use Daemon tools as the default ISO mounting software, but can be set to use whatever software you want.

The TV tuner setup works well too. Quality is so-so, but I'm on analog cable, so that's to be expected. It's really only for the wife's cooking shows or for the kids to watch Dora, Sesame Street, or whatever, so it's fine. When setting up the TV tuner in Media Center, it found that my cable provider already has a TV guide service it can use, so I didn't need to go find any kind of special software after all. I can schedule recordings, record on the fly, "pause" live tv - basically all the things TiVo does, but better and free. And even when recording shows, the tuner card (WinTVR-2250) has built-in MPEG hardware en/decoding so CPU usage is very very low.

Also installed a few simple/older games for the kids to play: Microsoft Flight, Midtown Madness 2, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2, etc. Even running at full 1920x1080 resolution with AA and AF turned up, game play is as smooth as silk (helps that these are older titles). And after about 30 minutes of play, CPU temps got no higher than 42*C according to CoreTemp.

Physically mounting this box was a bit of a chore though. As it uses a regular mid-size tower, the depth is about 5" more than the shelf it is sitting in. So, I had to make a new shelf that was deeper and move the whole entertainment center out a few inches. I want to replace the dual glass doors with something that is lockable (to keep little kids out) and then cut out part of the new door to install a hefty screen (expanded metal?) to still allow adequate airflow. And speaking of kids, I didn't connect the reset button and set up the power button to "do nothing" when pressed in case they get clicked by inquisitive little fingers.

Next, I'll install IIS (with ASP), MySQL, and get the intranet site set up. Then I get to really start tinkering to see about transcoding! Should be fun. :smile:

Well, got IIS set up, but I didn't like MySQL. There were a few SQL inconsistencies compared to Microsoft's SQL Server (which is what I'm used to since I use it at work exclusively). So, I ended up uninstalling MySQL and using SQL Express 2012.

Getting SQL Express to work was pretty simple, but connecting SQL Server Management Studio client tools from my PC to the server was a bit of a chore. It's just a firewall issue, but even though SSMS is supposed to use port 1433, opening those ports on TCP and UDP didn't help. I ended up opening all ports, but only for traffic coming from my specific computer's IP address. Again, this was just for SSMS. If I wanted to stand at my TV screen and develop the DB part of the app from there, I wouldn't have needed to go through all that.

I started doing the web app coding. So far, just the basic site framework, menus, styles, images, etc is done, but at least it's a functioning site with database connectivity. I can access the site via IP address from any device/computer on my LAN, which was the intent.

Between all that, I'm still ripping DVDs to disc. What a PITA.