Media Centre thoughts

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

A follow-on from my NAS storage post! Linky

The desk with the PC on and TV are about 5/6 metres apart - any thoughts on whether its possible to storing movies etc. on NAS and to run display them on an LCD TV?

I have to admit to knowing very little about the media centre idea - and while I'm off to do some research now, I thought I may be cheeky and get a chance of tapping your knowledge as well!

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

My *personal* belief is that TV and PC displays are far enough apart in specifications that trying to get the best of both worlds on one unit is doomed to failure.

That said - for many people there are compromises that work well for them.

Harry.

 

I've always felt that they have had a distinct separation but now with all this streaming TV programs available on the 'net, it may make it a little more comfortable watching it on a 22inch screen sitting on a sofa rather than a 17inch screen at a desk - especially if there are more than 1 of us watching.

 

To be honest Harry that might have applied in the old days. But now many TVs and PC monitors share much of teh same technologies so the differences are a lot smaller. That's why so many TV manufacturers have switched to making monitors as well now. And with the new interfaces of HDMI being used for PC and TV the specs really close up. You can now use an LCD tv for your pc and wouldnt notice much difference.

Its really in the decoding of the transmission that the difference occurs. I'd say that a TV with is dedicated decoders etc produce better TV that a TV card in a pc. Plus you need a powerful pc to watch full 1080p HD on a 26" screen or bigger when playing games and decoding DIVX video into HD, yet you can watch it perfectly alright on just a TV for programmes in FULL HD.

More and more PC LCD monitors are becomming 2nd TVs for people, as they use TV cards in the PC and can play games etc, and the reverse is true too, people are playing more games on their TVS from a pc than they ever did before. 5 years ago it would have been uncommon to play a PC ona TV (consoles yes, pc no) but now its not.

 

Ive currently got my PC linked through a netgear eva8000 digital streamer, this is then connected to my 37" LCD and i can watch anything by simply using the remote and browsing by folder to what i want to watch, i love it!! Im pretty sure that you can connect a NAS to one of these via USB.

 

Thanks for the info Raffaz - reading up on the speed of data from NAS's they are only around 10/11 MB/s - do you know if this is enough to stream a movie or whatever to such a TV?