Assassin's Simple/Beginner HTPC Buying Guide - Page 473

Originally Posted by phdhusky 

I was not sure who to contact but everytime I try to access the guide I get this error:
503: Service Temporarily Unavailable
Too many IP addresses accessing one secure area!
Please contact Support if you need assistance.
Has been happening for the whole week now. Was able to use it before with no issues.

Originally Posted by azula 

I have a simple request hopefully:
I purchased Assassin's HTPC guide and will be building my first HTPC some time next week. I could not locate any guides speaking about networking. Basically what I would like to do is rip/download BD movies on my existing desktop and send them to my HTPC. My HTPC will be located in my dedicated theater room and turning on the projector every time I want to work on the HTPC is a bit impractical. Any simple solution to network my existing computer and my HTPC together? Both are Windows 7 machines.

Originally Posted by MrCarner 

Thanks much flocko!
I'm starting to get nervous about the build. I've added memory and a new DVD burner to a retail pre-built PC before, but I've never built one from scratch. Was really hoping that Assassin's guides would help me with some of this, but I can understand why they do not.
Hopefully I'll be able to get some of the help I need here and find the rest with my good buddy Google.
From you last bit of advice, I take it the SSD doesn't have to go into a drive bay? Great! Will make sure I have a roll of Velcro on hand before I start. Is it pretty obvious where all the rest of the components go?
Thanks,
Matt

Originally Posted by MrCarner 

Awesome! Thanks Assassin! Just found the Tom's Hardware link in the FAQ2. Hopefully that will take care of most of my building questions.
Do I want to setup Mediabrowser, XBMC, and Plex if I want the most compatibility with Android/iOS devices including controlling of the system?
Thanks!
Matt

Originally Posted by pbmpharmacist 

Update: Ended up with 4 x 3TB Western Digital Reds (completely overkill). I went completely overboard with my build. Probably could have spent half of what I did. Anyway, installed FlexRAID last night (Thanks to Assassin's paid server guide). All is well, just need to tweak a few things in XBMC and wait for my N5902 remote to show up.

Originally Posted by Palehorse1 

To anyone still on the fence about a HTPC and building one yourself using these guides,
My wife and I got tired of the bait and switch tactics our cable TV / internet provider kept pulling forcing us to pay for ridiculous packages for the very few shows we were interested in watching so we decided to pull the plug on them for the TV service and go with a combination of over the air, Netflix, and internet TV via a HTPC. We have piles of music CD, DVDs, and Blu Ray discs here and were obviously intrigued by the capability to keep the physical discs safe while we enjoyed their content as often as we liked via Media Browser and WMC. We looked at buying a purpose built HTPC but none really offered the value or specific features we wanted so we looked into building our own. Like you we searched for HTPC build instructions and found this wonderful guide. We read the guide three times to make certain that we understood it and then took the plunge using the Sandybridge instructions. The only changes we made were to use 16gb of ram - by using a huge coupon we had found - and upgrading the CPU to the i5 variant to add the extra cores which have aided us in ripping our music and video discs but speeding up the process. When looking at over three hundred DVD's and nearly a thousand music CDs the additional power to speed those process up were greatly appreciated. We used the 65gb SSD for the primary system drive and three internal 2tb drives for video media storage. I have an external 2tb USB drive here that we are using to keep our music on for the time being but may change that out at a later date.
At first sight when all the parts showed up I was a little disconcerted that maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew but using the guide and other tips from AVS Forum members I got it up and running and installing Windows with ease. I was actually terrified that it had gone too easy and that I had certainly overlooked something or made a grave mistake. My fears abated once I got the Media Browser software installed and got the plugins for WMC added that I wanted to try. I had already started to make copies of our DVDs and storing the output onto another PC in the house so after added the new HTPC to the homegroup and setting the share properties the movies were on the move to their new home.
Obviously we fumbled around a bit as our TV experience had changed but once we found more and more features we really enjoyed our HTPC more and more. We built ours about a year ago using this guide and I can say now that if we were to go back we would suffer considerably as the HTPC just makes sense in so many ways. Eventually we will add a media storage server and build a smaller HTPCs for the master bedroom. When the time comes I fully intend to make use of these guides again as while they were a bit large to take in all in one setting they made the process painless and much more affordable than if we had opted for a pre-built unit or just picked parts that we thought would work out for our needs. With that said, thanks to Assassin and everyone else here that shared their time and knowledge as through you our TV experiences have become more entertaining and much more affordable as well. Doing the math after cutting the cable TV service off and changing our cable internet service to a business account instead of residential - faster speeds and guaranteed uptimes - we broke even five months ago via our purchase invoices and the HTPC is saving us right at around $120.00 every month.
If you are here then you have already recognized the benefits of a HTPC, so go ahead and go for it as I honestly don't see how you will dissapointed. And thanks again to Assassin and all the others that have shared so much with us. I for one, am very grateful.