Hey Guys,

I have been searching throughout the internet for some answers to my question, but have come up empty handed. There is plenty of information on building your own htpc and all the different clients to use as well as lots of information on large server side storage and so on and so forth.

What I would like to do or accomplish is the following : Build/Purchase a dedicated server (not gonna talk about the specifics) and also a storage raid array for redundancy as well as larger storage capabilities. Know accomplishing those is pretty simple the issue is I would like to purchase netbook/nettop style pc's to connect to my various home theater setups (basement home theater, living room, bedroom, etc). The reason being there is really no need to have a quad core pc running in those rooms when many people have scalable home servers, so why waste money on initial purchase as well as electrical costs on multiple large htpc for each setup. The issue is those lower scale netbook/nettop boxes can't handle HD video and such, so my question is if I connect these lower end pc's to my network through wired setup is there a way to offload the computing onto the server and then have the server just upstream that data straight to the computer accessing it, so the lower end cpu's don't have to mess with all those computing cycles.

Hopefully I clearly explained what i'm trying to do, if someone has any ideas or has done something like this or can quide me in the right direction, that would be great!

Thanks,
Madhu

Not sure why you need a computer at all. You could go with a Netgear Pro NAS and their 9150 server. Pick what you want off the TV screen and go.

If you really need a computer to pick what you want to serve, I believe Cidero on a windows machine and a dlna compliant NAS and server would work Some of the NMT's should be fine, some of the newer Plasma TV's are dlna compliant and you won't even need a box, just the NAS.

Alan

Hey Alan,

You make some good points there. That is def. something to look into. The only issue would be, I love how versatile and feature packed Windows Media Center is, and the amount of video formats you can play on it (through codecs of course), which would be one reason I couldn't give up the computer part of it unless some of the new dlna servers are more feature packed with more codec support.

Madhu

There is plenty of information on building your own htpc and all the different clients to use as well as lots of information on large server side storage and so on and so forth.

I can only tell yoou what works for me...

ReadyNAS NV+ (I have 3 now)
Wired Network
Media player (TViX 4100HD, TViX 5000U, PCH A-110)

at some stage you will need a PC/Laptop to rip the DVDs.

That's it. Question is cost. My setup would cost about £1200 for one NAS and without the wiring. That would hold about 625 Standard Def. DVDs ripped in "main movie" only using DVD Fab.