I’ve annexed a room at my house to be my ‘den’. First order of business is getting some entertainment in there.
Requirements:
- Watch DVDs
- Watch other media from my computer
- Reasonably inexpensive
My current solutions contains the following components:
- Xbox running XBMC as a games/media streaming console (just purchased from Global Consoles)
- Some sort of network storage so I don’t need to have my PC running constantly.
The network storage decision is narrowing down. I considered solutions such as the Thecus N1200. I dismissed this as being overpriced and probably overkill for my needs.
My current front runner is a Linksys NSLU2. It doesn’t have any internal disks, but has two USB ports to plug in external drives. The real beauty of the device (affectionately known as the ‘slug’ by fanboyz) is that there is an open source Linux based operating system that can be installed to it. This adds lots of extra functionality like all sorts of servers (print, bittorrent, iTunes, media/photos). I was even thinking I could install svn on it and it can be my source control repository.
I’ll let you know how my plans proceed. Any advice/comments would be very welcome!
My initial reaction is that you’re a lucky bastard for having the space to annex a den!
Is the Thecus device new? I don’t remember seeing it when I was looking around at such devices.
Yeah, I know 🙂 It’s not a big space, but that’s fine by me.
I’m not sure how long Thecus has been around. A colleague has one that he raves about which is where I heard about it. Have you heard anything about the Linksys?
I presume you saw this amazing deal and bought one?
No, I didn’t… thanks for teasing me with a bargain I now can’t get 😛