HTPC Questions (1 Viewer)

[mark3141]

I'm completely new to this, but I'd like to have a network of computers to play music, watch TV and movies and occasionally browse the web with an emphasis on playing music and having access to all my music. To do this, I was thinking of buying a couple of small, quiet HTPCs for my living room and bedroom and upgrading my office computer to handle pvr and blu ray type tasks as well as act as a server for my files. Will this work? Can I play a blu ray from the office in my living room, use it as a whole home pvr, etc? What sort of music quality can I expect?

Thanks and if you need more information, please let me know.

 

[ryan20021982]

Yes you can play the music and files over the network fine but not Bluray, you would have to rip them to the main pc that will act as the server and then you can play them. As far as the quality of the music it all depends on the codecs used but I dont see why quality would be an issue on a computer for music. You can setup tuners in the server and access the channels from all the client and setup recording on the clients also.

 

[mark3141]

Excellent. Would I even need a sound card, then? I have a USB input on my DAC. Would this suffice? Could an off-the-shelf Best Buy computer with either a cable tuner card or external tuner work for my office? Any issues with running everything from external hard drives?

 

[ryan20021982]

Onboard sound is fine unless you really need the best quality. I wouldnt do external drives if your going to have a pc setup as a server just put them in that pc. Most tuners will work you check here for more on that Supported TV Cards - MediaPortal Wiki

 

[mark3141]

So I'll be better off with a sound card if I want better sound quality? I naively thought my computer would pass the audio straight to the DAC unchanged from the wav file, and the DAC would do the processing. Is this incorrect? I'm still learning...