Building a Media Center PC

[grossaffe]

why bother? a media center isn't just for playing DVDs. put a TV tuner in it and make a DVR out of it. Store all of your media in one location rather than rummaging through a bunch of DVDs.

[doctorjames]

Ok. I want to build a MC pc for watching movies/listening to music.

Oh, ok. Why bother? Just get a huge spindle of DVDs and a DVD player. If you're not going to use it for anything other than that, you need not bother.

That doesn't solve the problem. He still wants to listen to music, and assuming he has more than 4.7 GB of music, a computer would be best.
If he had more music than that, burning music to DVDs would be pointless because he would forget where his music is on the DVD (what fold and what not). And forget about finding a single song on an mp3 DVD.

Personally, if you're looking for something that can do 720p, just look for an old rig and throw a decently sized hard drive in there. That's what I did for my computer. Its a 1.4 GHz Athlon XP from like 2001 with a 64mb Radeon and 392mb of ram and it runs lower end HD stuff (480p/720p) well at fullscreen 1080p. But it won't do much more than that. So if you are planning on using the computer as more than a Media Center PC then don't get something too old.

[khaag]

Ok, my god. I don't give a poop about playing games on this thing, because I HAVE a PS3 that plays games just fine. I want this as a media hub, like some people who actually read what my requirements for the thing have suggested, as a DVR, Music, and movies. I realize I could just buy a spindle of DVD's and burn a bunch of movies, but that isn't what I'm looking to accomplish. Plus, with XBMC (along with many other MC programs) I can search and watch Youtube videos without having to actually open a browser or anything. It's going to be hooked up to the interwebs so I can download content directly to it as well.

[bicostp]

Then go with the first one and throw a TV tuner card in.

[vskid]

And if the first setup falls on its face because of the Intel graphics, he can just throw a cheap video card in it. But he might as well try without it first, no reason to spend money if you don't have to.