Digital Server - How do I do it?

[Tombolino]

Hi

I would love to buy the MCX 2000 but we all know in 1 year from know there will be other makers and cheaper.

What can I do to imitate in the meantime?

My goal is to have a bunch of mp3s, plus upload many of my cds as mp3 and just have this in the living room connected to amp and good speakers.

I thought about getting the Mac Mini for about $800 and hooking it up to a flat screen and then amp and speakers and internet. But then, I would have to wait for it to boot like a computer as opposed to a stereo

Dunno what else I can do

thanks for any ideas

Sebastian

 

[thoward4444]

Windows Media Center

Sebastian,

I am using Windows Media Center and find it fantastic. I purchased a refirbished Dell for about $500 a year ago and have upgraded the storage to 1TB (1024 GB). The dell is in my office and always on. I use an Xbox 360 as a media center extender (it connects to the dell and is very quiet) and it is connected to my plasma and outputs 720p. Take a look at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/default.mspx

If you are interested in Media Center feel free to ask me any questions. For a lot less than the MCX 200 you can have a great computer with far more storage plus an Xbox 360 for games.

Taylor

 

[jcPanny]

Computer music server

If you put the computer on suspend or sleep mode when not in use, then it will have a much shorter startup time.

You should also consider ripping your CDs in FLAC or another lossless format to reatain the same audio quality as the origional CD. FLAC is only about 50% compression ratio so it will require much more hard drive space.
Use a digital optical or coax output from the Mac or PC to connect to your receiver and some bookshelf speakers and possible a sub.

I am setting this up on a windows XP machine and was planning on using Meedio for the interface, but their product is in flux because they were just bought out by Yahoo!.

 

[JMO_PWR]

I was considering doing this with a linux system. However to get something decent you would have to have a good soundcard and all in all it would end up to expensive so i rather just have a HT setup. At least you get alot of storage i suppose.