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Archive for the ‘htpc’ tag

Combining a PC, media streamer and NAS box

Posted on 16th Aug 2012 at 07:33 by Antony Leather with 36 comments

Antony Leather
I have a love-hate relationship with NAS boxes. Part of me adores them. They offer a form redundancy for your data, can perform many functions such as FTP, photo and media servers, Bit-Torrent clients and many more, without the need for a PC. And they’re also smaller than a shoebox. The mere fact they’re designed to carry out a set number of tasks – far fewer than a Windows PC – means they’re very streamlined and usually easy and simple to use.

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Tags htpc, media streamer, nas box

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone?

Posted on 31st May 2010 at 02:49 by Richard Swinburne with 18 comments

While we've had our concerns about the Mini-ITX bandwagon, it's still a trend that we're broadly in favour of. After all, small, potent PCs can be great.

One of the nicest - and smallest mini-ITX cases we've seen comes from Taiwanese company Lutec's retail brand, SEED.

SEED is a shoehorned acronym of "Saving Energy Efficiency Directly" - the brand promotes mini-ITX and low power chassis, as well as a few 80Plus ATX PSUs and some laptop accessories too.

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone? Checking out SEED's latest mini-ITX chassis
Click to enlarge

Our interest was perked with the MU-380: a gently rounded and elegant aluminium mini-ITX case. It measures a very tiny 315 x 215 x 63mm, which also limits its compatibility to Atom-esq products under 6cm tall.

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Tags htpc, htpc case, mini-itx, seed

Reader Advised HTPC Buyers Blog, Oct 09 #1

Posted on 27th Oct 2009 at 11:28 by Richard Swinburne with 38 comments

Richard Swinburne
Yep, you read that right, I want your help in designing a Home Theatre PC reference guide to go on the site and in the mag.

I get constantly asked for one, but we simply don't test enough HTPC hardware to be as widely knowledgeable as I'd like in order to recommend a setup with 100 percent confidence.

The difficulty is that HTPCs vary by country; in the UK we don't have analogue HDTV (cable) access like the US, not to mention other issues, like varied internet TV services and user need - does it need terrabytes of storage or is gaming compatibility a priority, for example?

With that in mind we want your advice; what have you seen that works? What would you recommend to others that fits the spec below?

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Tags blu-ray, buyers guide, hd, home theatre, htpc, silent

Will Boxee’s $6 million help make media PCs less rubbish?

Posted on 14th Aug 2009 at 08:17 by Alex Watson with 18 comments

Alex Watson
Last Friday we sent the latest issue of Custom PC off to the printers – and it’s back already, looking mean and moody with a water-cooled PC on the front – so it means this week I’ve been starting my tasks for the next issue. First up, the letters page, and I’ve just answered an interesting one about media PCs.

Specifically, why they’re rubbish – I had a long email from a reader detailing a pretty tortuous experience building and setting up a media PC. Despairingly, he’d turned to us to see if we could alleviate any of his misery.

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Tags boxee, htpc, windows mce
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