Is there a stand alone media centre for 4 SATA drives?

[loungeroom]

I'm looking to upgrade to a stand alone media centre with HDMI out with space for 4 or more SATA drives.

I have been looking at the Netgear NAS systems but I think that they may need some kind of media centre to connect to.

I currently have a Popcorn Hour A110 and i'm using external drives which is annoying as I have to have them powered up all at once, and it would be so much better in one system.

I suppose the other option would have to be a PC with XBMC and space for 4 Sata drives, you recon this is the only option?

Thanks,

[aedipuss]

a low power nas that's always on and connected to your network is the best way to go. then the popcorn hour can read the files off it, and you can use your pc to add/delete files. i like the plextor 4 drive unit i have as it has 2 - gbps connections to my network, nothing slows it down.

[mh2360]

Another option is to put everything on a single larger capacity drive, unless the drives you have now are something like 2 TB each.

Building a good HTPC is far cheaper than it used to be. All you really need is 2GB RAM, a cheap dual core processor and an ATI 5450 graphics card (very inexpensive, has HDMI and on-board hardware video decoding and most important of all, no fan!).

The trick is to build one that is quiet enough so as not to be annoying.

[jagabo]

If you go with an ATI 5450 be sure you get one with a 64 bit memory interface, not 32 bit. The 32 bit cards are a bit anemic for WMC.

[loungeroom]

Thanks for the replies people,

I have 4 hard drives which are at least 2TB each in which I use a dock to hot swap when needed, although its a bit inconvenient it does the job for now.

My ideal media centre would be one box with the hdds in, with hdmi. I realise that this probably doesn't exist unless I build a custom PC, I suppose I could use the popcorn hour and put the existing hdds in a NAS. I've been looking at the Netgear 4 bay NAS at about £180 or would you put £300-400 into a decent media centre PC, either way everything has to be centralised.

Thanks

[lordsmurf]

I'm now using a wireless DLNA setup,
- using Serviio on the computer,
- and a Samsung wireless Blu-ray player in another room.

The only thing it doesn't do is play ISO files, or some goofy uncommon formats.
WDTV works well for the ISO.

[D_Knife]

HP microserver with low profile video card

[Chopmeister]

You already have the popcorn hour, which I understand has network support.

I suggest that if you are happy with it, you should stick with it. Keep it connected to your TV, connect it to your network.

Then buy 4-bay NAS box, populate with 4x3TB drives in RAID5 configuration to allow for a disk failure. Connect it to the network and the popcorn hour should "see" it. Copy all your files over, you should be able to store your 8TB of files with 1TB left over. Keep the existing disks in a cupboard as extra backup. Or (some NASes allow this) connect them to the NAS via USB ports for extra storage.

[jagabo]

I saw a few 4 bay NAS with DLNA servers at NewEgg.