Can You Recommend A Good Media Center HDD Enclosure?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by superstar, Apr 21, 2008.

  1. superstar

    superstar Major-Superstar

    I recently found out there is new hard drive enclosure technology in the form of "media center" HDD enclosures that you can hook up to television in order to watch/listen to whatever you put on the hard drive. I think that would be a great idea for me because I have a lot of videos on my pc that I would like to watch as fast as possible instead of burning countless dvds that take hours to convert from different pc video formats to dvd disc format.

    Not only that but I also have an enormous musical mp3/wav library and would like to have access all of that on the television in my living room. I don't know much about these "media center" enclosures, but I hear that all you have to do is buy one of them, stick in a hard drive of your preferred size, connect the enclosure to your pc via usb to pass over anything you'd like [video/audio], than simply connect the enclosure to your tv and go through the menu to watch/listen to whatever you want. I've read that you can also record shows from live cable tv like tivo systems straight to the internal hard disc drive.

    I'd like to know what the best brand of "media center" hdd enclosures are, what to stay away from, and possibly a few you may recommend.

    I want it to be fully capable of doing the following:

    - passing video and audio from my pc to the media center via usb
    - record live shows on my tv to the media center
    - be able to hook up the media center to my standard rca input tv/vcr
    - be able to connect the media center to a new hd tv or any newer tv [so I can use that feature when I can afford to buy one in the future lol]
    - fitting in at least a 500GB or 1TB hdd

    Note:
    Most of the videos on my pc that I'd like to pass are in mpeg/avi/divx format that have mp3 or ac3 sound. & my music is in mp3 and wav format

    Here are some "media center" HDD enclosures I've found on the net:

    http://www.btecanada.com/images/mg-45.jpg

    http://www.btecanada.com/images/MG35-back.jpg

    http://www.btecanada.com/images/markus-300-front.JPG

    http://www.btecanada.com/images/markus-300-back.JPG

    http://www.asipartner.com/ocadmin/images/52666.jpg

    http://www.btecanada.com/images/LX351_img01.gif

    http://www.asipartner.com/ocadmin/images/69024.jpg

    http://i1.ebayimg.com/07/i/000/e8/30/5029_1.JPG

    http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/B000S6R93C-2_small.jpg

    http://i14.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/de/27/c6d8_1.JPG
     
  2. foogoo

    foogoo Major "foogoo" Geek

    I have the Mediagate MG-35. It is an older model that has USB & wired network. You have to buy a 'key' in order to use the ethernet to upload & download from it. Otherwise you have to connect via usb to move content. The ethernet is used for reading media stored in other locations. So you can share media on your PC and play it through the Mediagate. I found it very useful until I made an XboxMediaCenter which has a little more functionality (built in DVD player, etc)
    But if you not inclined to 'modding' an Xbox visit:
    http://www.cooldrives.com/memgaltedime.html
    It says the are no longer made & selling for $100.
    They have more models:
    http://www.cooldrives.com/macpowercases.html
    Most of these do not record.


    http://xbmc.org/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Media_Center
     
  3. superstar

    superstar Major-Superstar

    How would you say the picture quality is on the Mediagate MG-35 you have? Is it good sound and video or just ok? I'm looking for something that plays and sounds as good as the files should really be.
     

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