Turn your computer into a music machine

[Haywood]

It would probably cost you $100/drop, but you would be amazed at the drops a professional installer could make. I would probably run it all through the crawlspace and then use a small length of conduit to run from the crawlspace to your sunroom. It's definitely doable, its just a pain.

[apcarandang]

I wish I could drop lines in my home but unfortunately it will be so expensive.
Right now my only wired network is the 2 desktops in the office and a server. They share the internet connection through a wireless bridge.

I do have an Apple Extreme N Router and for everything else in the house its Apple Express and a Apple TV.

My home has no crawl space anywhere. It's a 70's contemporary home with high ceilings.

The main hallway is 60 feet by 5 feet and I have called some electricians to put in new light fixtures but no one would take the job saying it was just too complicated the way the house was built. So wireless is my only option right now.

APC
S & V Moderator

[mrpetemd]

In the past month or so, May/June '09 Sound & Vision's newsletter published an article about building a "low cost" media server. I've scoured S&V's archives but have not found that article. Did anyone besides me see it when it came out?

Also does anyone know of any other DIY articles out there or have any recommendations for components; motherboards, cpu's, video cards, etc. Audio/video quality are priorities w/multi-channel audio, although I will probably run audio through an outboard DAC.

Thanks!

[Haywood]

You need to take a look at the new ZOTAC ION-ITX motherboards paired with the new Intel Atom 330 dual-core 1.6Ghz processor. Why? Full 1080p Blu-Ray playback and both Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master as LPCM over HDMI. That is in addition to D-Sub, DVI, digital audio and analog audio outputs. The entire board, including the CPU is passively cooled and power consumption is very low. You can build a completely silent HTPC complete with Blu-Ray that draws as little as 40 Watts at peak use. You can get the motherboard with an external 90W power supply for about $210 or the same board with a standard ATX power connector for about $190. There are several extremely nice cases out there that are either completely silent or so close to silent that they would never bother you.

[Haywood]

What I described above would make an excellent client box and you could certainly build it was a large hard drive that could hold all of your music. If you want to rip a large movie library, however, you will really need a server or a large eSATA box with hardware RAID.

[mrpetemd]

Thanks for the info.