media centre for my music and dvd

[admin_exported]

I am looking for a media centre device that can handle all my music 500+ cds and home movies and most of my dvd collection the device needs to be connected to my onkyo 606?

I currently have a networked 1TB hdd conected to my home network which already holds my music and home movies if this helps.

any suggestions/advice welcome

 

[John Duncan]

Is your main PC Windows or Mac?

 

[Anonymous]

don't have a main pc we all use laptops in this house hence the networked hdd

 

[John Duncan]

OK. The reason I ask is that some media streamers expect a 'server' running somewhere to serve music. Squeezebox and Airport Express, for example, both need something running Squeezecentre or iTunes respectively to be able to stream to them. Sonos however does not, it can just pick up files from a media drive and off it goes.

However, noting that you want video as well, I would be inclined to look at something like the very mdoestly priced Western Digital WD TV Live range, which appear to offer what you want. In fact, taking a look at them I might have to take another hit for the team myself

 

[Anonymous]

one other thing which is the best way of storing my dvd collection and which ripping programs are best and easist to use,

thanks for the info so far cheers,

 

[Anonymous]

if your looking to stote alot of movies and dont mind abit of compression then id recommend ripping them as an .avi file films usually take about 800mb ish depending on the length for a good avi id also recomend to make sure the audio has been ripped as ac3 for 5.1 sound there are plenty of programs that can do this which are easy enough to find on google. if your looking for full quality dvds to be with titles and extra features then your best bet is to get a program like poweriso or magic iso and making a complete copy of the dvd as an image file which will take up around 4.5gig for a normal dvd. then youd have to get a program such as deamon tools or magic disk both freeware to run the image file on a virtual drive to watch it.

 

[Anonymous]

would this run alongside windows media centre.

 

[Anonymous]

yes media centre will also let you stream it all to xbox 360 etc

also there is a streaming program free called tversity which can stream stuff on the fly such as web blogs etc to a xbox 360 or ps3 or any other kind of wireless device

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for all the input so far people much appreciated, ive just been looking at the netgear EVA9150 media centre system just wanted to know what you guys think or if you think there is a better device to use.