HTPC / media pc ideas ...

[suicidal_monkey]

Been thinking that a media unit / htpc? thingy would be a nice idea at some point in the not-too-distant future and have two or three current plans...

TV is a rather tasty Toshiba 27" LCD unit, it's got HMDI in, VGA-in, DVI-in, and most other inputs you could want... it can do HD, native 1280x720. At the moment we use Telewest for TV (as it came free with the internet) so there's no real need for a tv-card, but I'm not entirely certain what outputs other than aerial and scart the telewest box has. ideally the media centre would store and record media, and access other media via the LAN. There's potential for using my current pc once I get around to replacing it.

1) buy a mac mini - for £386 (student discount  :narnar: ) with bluetooth and wifi and use that.
Pros: all set up (no work) in a beautiful, and tiny box with DVI out, controllable via a mobile phone like a k750i via bluetooth.
Cons: Standard Mac interface rather than htpc, and lacking video-in so would require some sort of cleverness to use as a PVR.

2) convert my current PC to fit in a slimline desktop case of some sort, probably requiring a new cool quiet video card like a fx5200 or 6200 etc and a low-profile HSF.
Pros: low cost, customisable software (linux/mythtv/etc), already have most of the parts or easily swappable
Cons: requires a new slimline case, possibly custom built (gulp) to fit ATX mobo, have to set it up myself

3) largely build from scratch using a uATX or microATX mobo, possibly with built-in cpu.
Pros: could buy a prefab slimline case and components, make sure it's got suitable video in/out/etc
Cons: could prove costly and won't be as slick as the mac mini





few questions spring to mind...

thinking about cableTV, DVD, 720p quality signals - any ideas how something like scart compares to, say, composite, s-video, tv-arial, etc...might be able to get s-video or composite inputs on a PCI card, but I've never seen scart? Is scart==composite?

Has anyone come across a nice, simple, slimline (<10cm, 5cm preferrable) metal case that takes ATX motherboards? I'm not too keen and don't really have time, to try my hand at metalworking unless it's the only way!

Are slimline PSUs readily available?


...just a thought