Need help finding a good media center.

[ReaperBoy2010]

I need a media center that i can hook up to my hdtv (with hdmi) and be able to set the audio to go through optical audio instead of hdmi when i want to. I would like it to either have the capability to have an internal hdd or use esata. It would also be great if i could stream movies from the media center to other devices like a ps3. I dont want to go over $200 thanks for the help.

[redwudz]

Have you considered a Western Digital WDTV Live? It would do most all of that for about $100. Throw in an external hard drive and you should be set.

And welcome to our forums.

[ReaperBoy2010]

thanks for the reply. Yea i have been looking at that one but i really want/need either esata or the ability to put a hard drive in the system.

[redwudz]

USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough for HDD MKV playback. But you could get a external enclosure with eSATA/USB 2.0 and use the eSATA to load the videos. I may be wrong, but I don't know of any standalone external boxes that also have eSATA and work similar to a WDTV.

Or you could build a HTPC that would do all that, but not likely for ~$200US.

What I do is use video servers to hold my videos. These are recycled computers with multiple hard drives, accessed over a LAN connection to the WDTV or to my other computers for playback.

[ReaperBoy2010]

OK that sounds great! Will i be able to stream movies from my usb hard drive to other devices like a ps3? If so, do you know if i can stream a movie to a ps3 and watch a movie on the wdtv at the same time? What do you think of the AC Ryan PLayonHD? or the Dragontech iobox-100HD?