Solved! Budget HTPC

[jd18b]

My dad owns well over 700 dvds. He's asked me to build him a HTPC but on quit a budget. He hasn't said how much but I'm assuming it'll have to be no more then 350. Really all I'm looking for is a case with the space to hold several HDDs. I've looked around but everything I find is for the top of the line HTPC. Any suggestions?

 

[rwpritchett]

Well, your dad is gonna have to wait a bit if he wants to backup 700 DVD's for ≤$350.

700 DVDs x ~9GB each = ~6TB of media storage needed.

Right now, the flooding in Thailand has HDD prices at $75-100 per TB.

The DVD's can be compressed to save space. You can get decent quality with the movie only at around ~1GB per movie. However, you need a beefy CPU to re-encode quickly and even if you did have the muscle 700 DVD's would take a very, very, very long time to rip and compress.

 

[jd18b]

Right on thanks for the info.