Home Theater / NAS File Server PC Setup

[kmfdmk]

I've been wanting to create a computer to serve two purposes for a while now. I have a large collection of fansubbed anime as well as a large collection of music videos and a massive collection of mp3's. I have at this point the music and anime backed up on DVD. The problem is keeping it all organized and in one place and being able to watch it on a TV.

The solution to my problems is to create my own Home Theater / NAS File Server PC. Here's the rig as I've got it so far, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas please feel free to let me know.
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-156-070-03.JPG
Case: $59.99 - Raidmax ARES Mid Tower w/ a 450W Power Supply
Mobo: $84.99 - MSI K9N4 SLI w/ RAID 0,1,5 7.1 audio, & Gbit LAN
Vid Card: $79.99 - Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT 256MB DDR2
CPU: $42.99 - AMD Sempron 64 3000+ 1.6Ghz AM2
RAM: $66.99 - Patriot Signature 1GB (2x 512MB)
HDD: $419.97 - 3x Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB drives in RAID 5 for ~ 800GB
DVD: $29.99 - NEC 18x DVD-RW
Kybd: $39.99 - BTC USB RF Wireless Multimedia Keyboard w/ built in mouse

Subtotal before shipping, w/o OS $824.90

I do have a question or two, on Video Out. I'm wanting to get the video out of the PC. Is there something that I'm overlooking in getting the video into a composite format other than using an S-Video -> Composite converter cable? I've looked @ the HP Media Center Edition PC's and they all focus on watching TV on the PC, I wanna play video off the PC on the TV.

At this time I'm still figuring out which operating system to run, whether it's somehting like MythTV, or just go with XP Media Center Edition.

I am going to be using a APC UPS Surge Arrest. I don't want to lose all that data and hardware to dirty power.

I would consider one of the standalone multimedia players that use a hardware and embedded software however the issue of not having data redundancy, and some issues with audio & video codec support are keeping me from choosing something. However if you don't have anything that's using OGG Vorbis VIDEO then I would really suggest this:

MvixUSA MX-760HD
Wireless Hi-Definition Media Player
http://www.mvixusa.com/images/mx760hd/mx760hd.jpg

The thing plays all these video formats: DivX® (3/4/5), AVI, Xvid, MPEG, MPG, VCD(DAT), DVD(VOB, IFO), ISO, WMV(WMV-9), ASF(WMV-9), TP, TS, TRP

[Stang420]

I have the ATI A-I-W X1800 card and it has 3 options for video out: S-video, Component (HD-output), and standard composite out. I connected my pc to my HDTV for a few minutes once just to see how it worked, and it seemed to do alright. I have one problem where I can't watch DVD's on the tv through my comp, all it shows is a black screen. I'm guessing it's some kind of copy protect thing, but I never looked into it. Image quality was fairly good on the few things I did try.

Here's another option, which is what I do when I want to watch vids on my tv. Buy an old Xbox (original, not 360), mod it, install Xbox Media Center on it, set up a shared folder on your pc for all your videos/music, and you can now stream anything off your pc to the xbox and watch it on your tv through XBMC. If you share your dvd drive you can even stream dvd's. It even supports Hi-Def if you have any HD videos. :)

You can also install a large hard drive in the Xbox, but you won't get any data redundancy.

[Davis Silver Sti]

Here's another option, which is what I do when I want to watch vids on my tv. Buy an old Xbox (original, not 360), mod it, install Xbox Media Center on it, set up a shared folder on your pc for all your videos/music, and you can now stream anything off your pc to the xbox and watch it on your tv through XBMC. If you share your dvd drive you can even stream dvd's. It even supports Hi-Def if you have any HD videos. :)

You can also install a large hard drive in the Xbox, but you won't get any data redundancy.

That I did not know and sincerely appreciate the info!

[Jay]

Seriously, I think I understood 3 words in this thread, an those were from Davis' post.

uhm, cool

[RallyEX]

yeah, XBMC is pretty robust... you can stream just about anything to it, including stuff from iTunes. It has a lot of plugins and skins as well.

Also, if you are really feeling froggy, build a small home linux server with a huge hard drive and a TV cap card and run MythTV (PVR/DVR Server Software) and you can use the server as a DVR backend and the modded Xbox with XBMC as the front end. Really cool stuff.