Hi. I'm going to assist some friends in building HTPCs, and am trying to save money and complexity where possible. [this isn't a money-generating venture for me, my friends are interested in getting into this arena but are looking to me to create a primer list/kickoff point for them].
I'm currently trying to determine whether we really need a DVD burner in these units as that could be a potential target to cut down on cost. I can get a DVD-R for $25, but a decent DVD-RW is about $100. I've had a quasi-HTPC for about 12-18 months, and a full blown HTPC client/server system for about 6 months. I haven't needed to burn anything yet, but I readily admit that could be because I haven't done some bit of functionality that my friends may want.
As it's easier to do it right the first time rather than do it over, I thought I'd come up with a complete list of reasons my friends would need a DVD burner. That way I can show it to my friends, and if they decide they want to engage in some of these activities, they can purchase the DVD+-RW instead of just the DVD-R. This way we do things right from the get-go, rather than get everything stable then swap things out and have leftover parts in short order.
I should further explain that everyone I'm guiding already has at least 3 PCs in their house with at least 1 DVD burner, some folks have many more. They already do the home-movie to DVD/other stuff on these PCs.
I'd like to constrain this thread to just the management and manipulation of professionally produced and purchased DVDs and CDs, as well as TV. That's the only thing these PCs will ever be used for as all of us already have other machines to do the standard stuff like email, MS-office, camcorder&digi-cam capture & editing.
I've done some searches - here's what I've come up with. If you can think of anything else, I'd appreciate adding on to this list.
1) Recording TV to a transferable format [i.e., you want to give someone else tonight's Law & Order:CI episode.
2) Transferring prior purchased formats [i.e., VHS or Laserdisk] to another transferable format.
3) Archiving HDTV to a transferable format [i.e., save the Superbowl in HDTV]
4) Backup of OS
5) Backup of CDs in a highly leveraged format [i.e., 4.7GB of DVD space can hold a lot of MP3s]
Seems like a full list, but I'm paranoid about providing incomplete and/or erroneous guidance to my friends because of a lack of due diligence on my part.
If you have anything else you can think of, please let me know. If not, thanks for reading.
I'm currently trying to determine whether we really need a DVD burner in these units as that could be a potential target to cut down on cost. I can get a DVD-R for $25, but a decent DVD-RW is about $100. I've had a quasi-HTPC for about 12-18 months, and a full blown HTPC client/server system for about 6 months. I haven't needed to burn anything yet, but I readily admit that could be because I haven't done some bit of functionality that my friends may want.
As it's easier to do it right the first time rather than do it over, I thought I'd come up with a complete list of reasons my friends would need a DVD burner. That way I can show it to my friends, and if they decide they want to engage in some of these activities, they can purchase the DVD+-RW instead of just the DVD-R. This way we do things right from the get-go, rather than get everything stable then swap things out and have leftover parts in short order.
I should further explain that everyone I'm guiding already has at least 3 PCs in their house with at least 1 DVD burner, some folks have many more. They already do the home-movie to DVD/other stuff on these PCs.
I'd like to constrain this thread to just the management and manipulation of professionally produced and purchased DVDs and CDs, as well as TV. That's the only thing these PCs will ever be used for as all of us already have other machines to do the standard stuff like email, MS-office, camcorder&digi-cam capture & editing.
I've done some searches - here's what I've come up with. If you can think of anything else, I'd appreciate adding on to this list.
1) Recording TV to a transferable format [i.e., you want to give someone else tonight's Law & Order:CI episode.
2) Transferring prior purchased formats [i.e., VHS or Laserdisk] to another transferable format.
3) Archiving HDTV to a transferable format [i.e., save the Superbowl in HDTV]
4) Backup of OS
5) Backup of CDs in a highly leveraged format [i.e., 4.7GB of DVD space can hold a lot of MP3s]
Seems like a full list, but I'm paranoid about providing incomplete and/or erroneous guidance to my friends because of a lack of due diligence on my part.
If you have anything else you can think of, please let me know. If not, thanks for reading.
