[bluray]

bluray, would i need any other units, or its just that one unit? and the link you posted with the motherboard says its unavailable, would you recommend any others, or should i just find that one somewhere else?

A single PC in my suggestion should be able to do everything in your list......

Post #10 is updated for you......

[mikev927]

never mind just saw post above.

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im not where i would like to be as far as my ht set up goes, but im 25, have limited space and income. this is one of the main reasons i cant spend a lot of money, but im the type of person that i dont want to do it half assed either. if it takes some time to accumulate the extra cash to do it right, i rather do it that way.
but it looks like everyone here has no problem with hardware that was suggest?

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actually... one more thing.
i have an appletv1, would anyone suggest modding it and just making a storage unit for the rips and going that route?

[DavidT99]

..............because of the amount of blus i have does it even make sense to do this and stop being lazy?

Only you know if the time and expense is worth it. An htpc is not like buying a TV, you can't just turn it on, tune it and then watch it. Treat owning an htpc as a hobby, you will spend far more money than you planned and spend far more time than you thought and then when it is all setup just how you thought you wanted it, you will start working on changes.

There's a lot to be said for just watching discs on an off the shelf player.

David

[bluray]

actually... one more thing.
i have an appletv1, would anyone suggest modding it and just making a storage unit for the rips and going that route?

To fully utilize your high quality (46" Samsung LED and 3d Denon AVR) to enjoy the highest video/audio quality, it's best to build a nice HTPC.....it's very convenience to have a single HTPC that can do everything........

[DavidT99]

actually... one more thing.
i have an appletv1, would anyone suggest modding it and just making a storage unit for the rips and going that route?

To fully utilize your high quality (46" Samsung LED and 3d Denon AVR) to enjoy the highest video/audio quality, it's best to build a nice HTPC.....it's very convenience to have a single HTPC that can do everything........

Spoken like a true htpc enthusiast :-)

David

[Dougie Fresh]

If you're going to just hide it in a closet and route some cables, then something like the Antec 300 is a good choice. Later, if you decide to have a separate HTPC, you can leave the Antec 300 as your server and get a little case for next to the TV.

And, I agree with DavidT99. With all this hobbying going on, who has time to actually use and of this stuff and watching movies .

[mikev927]

is there a lot of coding and such that goes into these, or is it simpler to tinker with? to be honest im not very good when it comes to that.

[wsume99]

i have an appletv1, would anyone suggest modding it and just making a storage unit for the rips and going that route?

The difference in cost between a storage unit and a HTPC with built in storage is pretty small. So you wouldn't be saving much but you would be sacrificing a lot of capability with the ATV1.

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is there a lot of coding and such that goes into these, or is it simpler to tinker with? to be honest im not very good when it comes to that.

No coding, just adjusting settings and messing with drivers. If you are just playing back 2D movies then that makes it a lot simpler and you can just use stock XBMC - which I found to be very easy. If you want to playback 3D then that takes more work but I can't really say how much because I don't mess with 3D.

[DavidT99]

is there a lot of coding and such that goes into these, or is it simpler to tinker with? to be honest im not very good when it comes to that.

You will spend many long hours just ripping your blurays to disk and even more hours planning, building and configuring the htpc and media server.

The satisfaction you get when showing off your creation to friends and family is infectious. If you enjoy playing with technology, planning, building, replanning, rebuilding, configuring, fine tuning, reconfiguring and then wishing you had done it differently just so you can start again then this hobby is for you. Otherwise buy a top spec bluray player like an Oppo and just plug it in.

David

[mikev927]

i almost bought an oppo a few months ago, and then i started to research this stuff and it looked amazing to me. how long does it usually take to rip a blu?

[DavidT99]

i almost bought an oppo a few months ago, and then i started to research this stuff and it looked amazing to me. how long does it usually take to rip a blu?

Htpc's are amazing, they do so much more than a player can do which is great if you want more than a player can do. Ripping time depends on if you are happy for a movie to use 30gb of hdd space or whether you want to save hdd space by re-encoding. The latter can take many hours for each disc depending on how powerful the PC is that is doing the encoding.

David

[DavidT99]

Have a look at this build here to see what this hobby can do to you;

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=134589

David

[mikev927]

that is one sexy looking machine

[Dougie Fresh]

That is a cool build but realize you don't need that to build an HTPC, even a 3D HTPC. The hardware can be pretty simple.

[bluray]

is there a lot of coding and such that goes into these, or is it simpler to tinker with? to be honest im not very good when it comes to that.

XBMC is getting simpler with each new version they rolled out.....it can do almost everything with very little effort.....with the hardwares I suggested, you should not have problem with XBMC......you should be able to playback the highest 1080P video and bitstreaming DTS-HD/TrueHD audio.....when you are ready for 3d, you should be able to do that too.....