I am looking into turning my Dell into a Media PC. I am looking to get a 300 GB USB external HDD, and a TV card, and a new video card. My question is:

What Software to use to organize the DVD movies?

How much memory does a dvd with no compression take up?

Are there discrete codes that will allow me to control the PC?

Should I wait for improvements?

Mike

Are you going to install MCE or just use WinXP? If you install MCE it will organize your movies for you. You should be able to buy a kit with MCE and an IR to USB adapter, and I am pretty sure the codes are discrete for that.

I am not sure of how much space movies would take up, but I am sure you are looking at 600MB+ each.

I am pretty happy with my new Dell that came with MCE. I was going to buy a standard one, but they offered too many incentives if I got MCE. I record all the time, but haven't messed with making it a movie server yet.

I would install MCE.

Mike

I thought a movie took up 4.7 GB uncompressed, more if doing trailers, etc.

I would love to get rid of my clunky Sony DVPCX850. Also, this unit does not play DVDr and CDr. At 4.7GB per movie, I would have to get a 1 TB to hold around 200 DVD's. With 1 TB drives a $700 bucks, I think I will wait. Thanks.

Mike

vwpower your are right, I was thinking of CDs not DVDs. But that is 4.7GB compressed. A DVD can only handle 4.7GB, and I think that is even on a double layer.

I want to experiment with this as well. I found an interesting motherboard from A0pen that uses the petium mobile centrino processor and fits in a micro ATX case. there is no fan on the cpu so you can make it pretty much dead silent and it draws under 30 watts at idle. Two traits I like a lot if it's going to be on all the time. On the storage side I still think I'd rather just integrate a DVD changer into the video distribution system. I just don't watch the same movie over and over and I don't need to use a terabyte of storage for something already on the DVD. A 400 disc DVD changer with USB could be an interesting solution.

Most of the DVD's Iv'e burned lately, with all menus and features, have been around 6-7gb.

RSDL DVDs can have 8.5Gs of space.

250gb Hard drives can be found for around $100 each... Stack em ina RAID Array....

I recently built a Media PC for out showroom.... MCE is pretty nice... . Music management is good... On par with Escient..... Gonna start experimenting with DVD ripping and playback next.