Our New Entertainment Center

[MountainDon]

Nope, this is not a woodworking project. It's a computer project. We got a new 60" LED TV. One thing led to another... We haven't decided on speakers yet, but the Samsung TV has surprisingly reasonable sound for the interim.

The computer is new; Dell Inspirion desktop, no monitor; the TV is the monitor.  Windows 8 Pro, 1 TB HDD, DVD/BluRay player/burner. I installed a Hauppauge TV tuner card. It has two tuners so we can record two channels simultaneously, like a Tivo. I've ripped around 200 CD to the HDD so far. I also have about a third of our digital photo collection copied to the HDD; till lots of empty space.

Win 7 and Win 8 Pro have a built in Media Center. It can catalog all the pictures, videos and music you can throw at it. With the TV tuner card we can record anything that comes in to the antenna. Yes, we have no cable, no satellite; old fashioned in that respect. But we have HD over the air TV. Amazing, all the hardware this has replaced. There's a remote control to operate the computer functions too.

As a part of the Media Center, Microsoft provides a programming guide using data supplied by zap2it.com. No monthly fees to anyone other the the internet provider. Of course we can subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, etc and stream content from them too if we want to pay them. Not enough hours in the day for much of that though. 

[NM_Shooter]

Hi Don, excellent news!   

I have been wanting to do something such as this for a couple of years, but was unsure what hardware to put together. 

I've also been recently thinking about trying to do some sort of network attached storage as everybody in my family has unique digital pictures on their laptops, and I want to consolidate the pictures onto one drive that is shared and in a box that is always on and accessible. 

Did you buy this from Dell or from a local shop?  When you say a remote control, is that for the tuner or does it replace the keyboard and mouse as well?

[Ajax]

I've also been recently thinking about trying to do some sort of network attached storage as everybody in my family has unique digital pictures on their laptops, and I want to consolidate the pictures onto one drive that is shared and in a box that is always on and accessible. 

Shooter,
I  have a Western Digital "My Book" external hard drive for that.  I think you could buy one for about $50/TB or less.  I don't keep my online, however.  I back up to it and then unplug to reduce the chances of damage due to power surges, etc.  I'm also considering cloud storge but as of yet I'm unconviced.

[NM_Shooter]

Thanks... I am considering both the Western Digital and the Seagate.  I was a little put off by some of the reviews that I saw on both of those.  Quite a few folks didn't like the software that needed to be installed with the Seagate, and there seemed to be a lot of failures on the Western Digital drives.  How long have you had yours?

I was surprised to see that there is not a bomb-proof, easy to use, and fairly inexpensive option out there for this.

I started prowling around on craigslist looking for a used small tower case, as I have a disk version of XP that plays well with Win7 networks.  However, Don's new media box has me intrigued too. 

[MountainDon]

I got the Dell through Amazon. They don't have the exact configuration anymore, but have others. It is not listed on Dell's site at all. Dell goes bare bones at about 329 and upper shelf at 800 or so. Ours is in between.  It has Wi-Fi built in.  It is the "s" for small, model. Potential drawbacks on that os no internal space to add any drives and only 0ne PCIe 1x and one 16x slot. It will do what we want though. There are 4 rear and 2 front USB 2.0 and 2 rear USB 3.0 ports.

The TV card is a Hauppauge  WinTV-HVR-2250
http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr2250.html

The remote control is made to work with the Media center software. It is an Ortek VRC-1100
http://www.ortek.com/html/pdt_view.asp?area=25&cat=154&sn=65

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I have a WD 1T 2.5" drive in a case I bought separately. 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YFHE9I/ref=oh_details_o06_s01_i00
That is my backup drive for the new media computer, actually a cloned drive. (see more below)

I also have a couple WD My Passport drives; about 2 1/2 years old (500 GB). They work well, no problems.  I have a couple of older Seagate desktop external drives (250 GB) and they have external wall wart power supplies. I've had those for a little over 5 years. 

The WD My Passports are clones for our laptops. I use Acronis for the cloning. I run those on an irregular monthly schedule; plugin as needed. I store them in a different and secure location. The laptop data files are also backed up over the network to the old mainstay desktop that runs XP; that's where the Seagate drives come in. They are connected to the XP machine. The XP machine also runs the printers, both older ones without Wi-Fi.

I do not run the WD or Seagate backup software. It gets the job done, but there is one thing I do not like. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like backups that are compressed into a large file and thus require that software to uncompress and restore. I've used software called Second Copy since the year 2000. As it's name implies it make an exact file by file, folder by folder copy of the files you configure it for. If there is a problem with a few files you can go to the backup files and retrieve copies there. It will also save the deleted files it finds when it runs to a special folder if so programmed. I have it set to run once a day on the laptops. It can also be started manually anytime. Second Copy is also used to backup to the Seagates.

And because I am paranoid I also have all the photos and videos burned to "gold" Delkin CD's and DVD's as an archive.

I have not used a cloud. They seem too nebulous for me. 

[Ajax]

Thanks... I am considering both the Western Digital and the Seagate.  I was a little put off by some of the reviews that I saw on both of those.  Quite a few folks didn't like the software that needed to be installed with the Seagate, and there seemed to be a lot of failures on the Western Digital drives.  How long have you had yours?

I was surprised to see that there is not a bomb-proof, easy to use, and fairly inexpensive option out there for this.

I started prowling around on craigslist looking for a used small tower case, as I have a disk version of XP that plays well with Win7 networks.  However, Don's new media box has me intrigued too.

I've had mine for three years.  Haven't had any issues with it. 

[hpinson]

I do this too, though I use it more for backup -- and there were some gotchas which took some effort to work around:

Windows 7 will not backup its image to a NAS device unless it is the PRO version. Not sure about Win8, but knowing Microsoft, it is probably the same. There is some good inexpensive alternative backup software out there that offers a lot more flexibilty than Windows backup (scheduled full file backup and incrementals). I really like SyncBak Pro but it does not do system images.  Some image alternatives are listed here: http://lifehacker.com/5303067/five-best-free-system-restore-tools

Wireless backup is a lot slower than ethernet LAN.

Backup is only as fast as the slowest network interface.  My 2 year old PC had only 100mbps ethernet, and my one year old CenturyLink ADSL modem/hub the same.  I ended getting a new gigabit modem and putting a second gigabit ethernet card in each computer on the network. The gigabit ethernet rocks with my Western Digital 3TB MyBook NAS ($179). It was painful slow with 100mbps ethernet.

There are some new fast network interface options out there - USB3 and Thunderbolt.  Sticking with gigabit ethernet for now though.