- Jan 28, 2014
- 2
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- 10,510
There seem to be a large number of articles written and blogs posted on how to build the "ultimate" home theater PC, but I'm having trouble finding anything about how to control and view the content over my home network.
Currently, our family has an overclocked i7 workstation and a couple of notebooks running Win7 Pro, and two (dumb) LCD televisions w/cable boxes, one upstairs and one down. The LAN is cat-5 and dual-band wireless N, and internet/tv/voice access is by high speed cable. My budget for the new hardware and a copy of Win 7 is about $1,500.
I'd like to build a HTPC "server" using a 6 tuner cable card, a video capture card, a Blu-ray player, and a sound card. The tuner and capture cards get rid of the cable DVR boxes, and the Xonar sound card is for headphone listening. There are lots of suggestions here on which motherboards, hard drives, cases, etc. work well together, but what I can't find is what additional hardware and software I need so multiple viewers can independently access the content available on a HTPC server — HBO, internet TV, web surfing, DVD, etc.
I think an Xbox comes into the picture at some point, but I can't find much on what one actually does outside of game play ("network extender" is not particularly self-explanatory). Using another media box just seems to defeat the whole idea of building an HTPC vs. connecting a bunch of different media boxes to an HDMI switch, so I'm hoping that whatever function it serves is available from a PC card of some kind. But if not, then how do you connect an Xbox (never seen one) to the HTPC and use it in that mode?
Thanks, from an old fart who started building computer systems with tubes in the '50s, but is a total FNG when it comes to video and HTPCs.
Currently, our family has an overclocked i7 workstation and a couple of notebooks running Win7 Pro, and two (dumb) LCD televisions w/cable boxes, one upstairs and one down. The LAN is cat-5 and dual-band wireless N, and internet/tv/voice access is by high speed cable. My budget for the new hardware and a copy of Win 7 is about $1,500.
I'd like to build a HTPC "server" using a 6 tuner cable card, a video capture card, a Blu-ray player, and a sound card. The tuner and capture cards get rid of the cable DVR boxes, and the Xonar sound card is for headphone listening. There are lots of suggestions here on which motherboards, hard drives, cases, etc. work well together, but what I can't find is what additional hardware and software I need so multiple viewers can independently access the content available on a HTPC server — HBO, internet TV, web surfing, DVD, etc.
I think an Xbox comes into the picture at some point, but I can't find much on what one actually does outside of game play ("network extender" is not particularly self-explanatory). Using another media box just seems to defeat the whole idea of building an HTPC vs. connecting a bunch of different media boxes to an HDMI switch, so I'm hoping that whatever function it serves is available from a PC card of some kind. But if not, then how do you connect an Xbox (never seen one) to the HTPC and use it in that mode?
Thanks, from an old fart who started building computer systems with tubes in the '50s, but is a total FNG when it comes to video and HTPCs.
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