HTPC Recommendation

[NotQuiteAPCGuru]

I have a couple of computers networked together through an old router. I was thinking about upgrading to wireless and building a third PC to hook up to my projector in the theater room.

The idea is to have one computer for the file server (it has two 500GB HDD's in it), one computer as a game machine, and the third computer just to hook up to my Receiver and my projector so I can watch movies and listen to music. Will a wireless router be fast enough to view files off the server's HDD or do I need to plan on having the files hosted on the HTPC?

Any suggestions on my minimum hardware reqs and setup are welcome.

(I'd like to be able to watch HD clips and get 5.1 surround. Anything beyond that is fluff for me.)

TYIA,
J.

 

[Matthias99]

Will a wireless router be fast enough to view files off the server's HDD or do I need to plan on having the files hosted on the HTPC?

802.11 will be pushing it, and probably won't cut it for most HD content. 802.11a/g should be OK if you don't have too much other traffic.

Any suggestions on my minimum hardware reqs and setup are welcome.

For SD... you don't need much. Even very cheap videocards have MPEG2 decode support, and any remotely new CPU can handle DVD/MPEG2 decoding in software without an issue.

For HD material (especially H.264-encoded videos) you'll either need a pretty fast CPU or a modern video card with hardware acceleration for HD formats.

You don't need much RAM.

 

[jkresh]

If you are planning on using hd off the server then you want either A or N (with N being preferable), G is borderline for streaming HD content. For HD processor isint that important but if you want to do encoding on it then a good dual core would be reasonable (amd or core 2 depending on budget), most important would be a gpu that handles VC1 decoding (as that takes the workload off the cpu), which would mean either an 8500/8600 or 2900xt (if you want to use the system for gaiming the the 2900xt otherwise their are cheaper options).

 

[beatle]

I don't have any luck streaming anything wirelessly to my HTPC. I use a Linksys WRT54GS and a Linksys NIC w/speedbooster. Even if it's the only wireless device on the LAN, it still chops a lot.