[mythtv-users] Hardware Suggestion for under $1,000

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday, December 16, 2010 11:36:52 am Steven Adeff wrote:


> > - a bluray drive to play bluray discs
> 
> BluRay support is minimal at best right now. If you have a BluRay
> collection, as I do, stick with a standalone player until the
> software gets better. If this is a "for future movie purchases"
> thought, then well, either don't get into BluRay yet, or make a
> dedicated player a separate purchase.

Blu-Ray "playing" support is almost nonexistent, but you can rip BR 
disks fairly easily, and play the resulting files.

I bought a Blu-Ray burner mainly for backup/archive purposes, you can fit 
a lot of video on a BR disk, and the prices for media are starting to 
come down. 


> If you have to have the backend in your TV room, then you'll either
> want to find a good HTPC case that can hold the number of drives you
> will have (Silverstone Tek, etc), or go with a NAS to hold your
> drives, in another room where noise is not an issue. NAS can be
> expensive, and generally don't have the best transfer speeds.

NAS doesn't have to be expensive, especially if you don't need really 
fast speeds. I'm using an NSLU2 ("slug") with some attached USB drive 
cases, and it works just great, and draws only 6 watts plus the drive 
power (about 10 watts per drive). Even for multiple HD streams it's 
plenty fast enough. The various "Plug" machines (Sheevaplug, Pogoplug 
etc.) also do a good job of this.