I thought this would be an interesting topic as Im sure several of you either have or want to have a media center therefore a little thread on your setups could be helpful, insightful, etc.

I went the cheap route (see: $ -wife, -child, -house, etc) and bought a WDTV Live and Im pretty much loving it.

My setup is as follows:
I have a Terabyte presently (planning on more via JBOD - only ~35 gig free @ present) on a PC upstairs on my 2nd floor with shared drives (and TVersity pro for good measure, for hulu, ESPN, etc (see: http://tversity.com/support/premium-websites) going over the air @ 2.4 (wireless G band, I'll be flipping to A eventually) that's able to push all that lovely content (mainly avi's but including mkv's, woot!) without a hiccup to the TV (50" 1080p plasma) I have downstairs in the living room with a wireless adapter (Dual band capable).

The only thing connected to my TV is a WDTV live (HD) unit (with a wireless adapter in it) over HDMI, and that's hidden behind it anyway. That's it. Real clean.

Its just way cheaper and easier from a hardware perspective imo, and since I'm running a web server locally (informationleak) the shared drives and TVersity stream are always on (accessible) anyways and as a bonus I can FTP in and add or pull content at will.
Theoretically I should be able to remote stream but I'm yet to try... I plan to though eventually.

I think the whole setup ran me just under $300, and that includes the WDTV unit, the wireless adapter (which I paid about $85 for, dont ask!) the HDMI cable and the TB drive.

I still have 4 open SATAs for additional drives and a ton of open slots for adapters if need be for even more additional storage, you know, in case 5+ TB isnt enough, and with HD, it probably wont be.

Most of my stuff isn't HD at the moment, but I plan to transfer it over as I get it.
I currently have about 350 movies and about 2000 TV shows.
Any questions or comments on my setup are welcome.

How about your setup(s)?

I just have a PS3
It has 3x 1TB Western Digital drives plugged into it
But i also have my computer set up as a media center for my PS3 so i can also stream over wireless to my PS3
PS3 has some issues playing some Movies about 90% work fine but for the other 10% i use Yellowdog Linux on my PS3 to play these

You can control most stuff with just a standard PS3 controller, but i also have a wireless keyboard for my PS3 if necessary

My TV is just a 32" Samsung its one of their first full HD models

i use my main computer as the media server and stream the stuff to my PS3

My media center is Media Player Classic on a 15" CRT ;[

Its really not that nuts... It was actually one of the cheapest units I could get and it does have its limitations... no iso suppport for example (menus would be nice)
I'll post some pics soon.

Ok vn thread and here goes:

i have tv's a 32" plasma mounted on the wall in the bedroom which is connected to the XBox running the latest XBMC, which in turn is connected via wireless to my PC running tversity pro, i have a 50" Plasma in the lounge room running off of the PS3 which is connected via wireless to my PC, recently updated(like 2 days ago) and i have a 24"LCD in the guest room hooked up to my computer, i currently have approx 2TB worth of movies and about 400GB ,left to play with on my other drives

I wish I had your storage man, but I'm working a deal out with a buddy of mine for a couple terabytes (I think between 5 and 10) so we'll see how that goes...

In the meantime, here are some pics as promised if anyone cares. Like I said, it's not anything insane... just the unit, a HDMI cable, a usb wifi adapter and a shared drive... (with TVersity running for all the online content stuff... and also the TVersity library is linked to the drive so I can stream to the Wii, but its kinda crappy in that it cant handle any big files. Its a cheesy little flash hack that isnt worth it imo.)

I'm waiting to get 2 more of the WD units so I can have it in the bedroom (32" plasma) and basement (56" LCD) too.

Without further interruption:

Living room TV
http://s307.photobucket.com/albums/nn31 ... 0_2782.jpg

Unit and wifi adapter (pardon the dust, )
http://s307.photobucket.com/albums/nn31 ... 0_2783.jpg

Cables and such for the sake of completion
http://s307.photobucket.com/albums/nn31 ... 0_2784.jpg

Again, any questions/comments welcome. I don't know how I survived without this setup.

at current my setup is basic..

1x46" sony xbr9
1x sony 160gb ps3
1x xbox360 250gb
1x 8tb (3tb used) Hp mediashare running windows home server
1x 2tb raid 2 array
1x hava HD


all networked on a fios 25/10 pipe cisco 2500 series switch and 3 com hubs

needless to say it needs work

Sweet. I wish I had storage like that. Hopefully I will soon as I presently only have 101MB left on the TB media drive

I've been looking into getting a WDTV Live but if I do, I would want a network drive set up instead of having to stream from a computer. If you have a drive connected to the WDTV can you connect to it over the network? Or would I have to unplug it and move it to one of my computers everytime i want to add things too it? What do you think would be the easiest solution to getting a drive being shared on the network with out being connected to a computer?
Do you think something like This. Would be the best solution?

Also my set up is a
20" Acer monitor connected to a desktop with 1.25TB worth of internal drives and 750GB external drives +the 200+ Data DVD's ive burned over the years and my laptop which has an internal drive of 250gb.

PS. I have a wireless network but sadly the router does not have a USB port.

You sure can.

Thats seriously badass...
Do you think that network drive I linked would be worth it if I eventually got it?
Or should I just go stick with connecting one of my externals to the WDTV

If you're going to get the WDTV Live unit, then I dont see the point of having external enclosures hanging on it when you could just share the same drive(s) on your machine over the network and access the media from there.
The only downside I could see is if you power off the computer nightly, it could be annoying to go turn it on when you want to access your aforementioned media.
If its always up and running Id just do it over the network. Way more convenient in my opinion.

Edit:
Wait wait!
I misread your initial post about it being accessible without being plugged into a computer.
Though the answer may still be the same (you can see the WDTV connection in the network) I dont know if the local media is accessible from there. It might be, seems like it should be, but being that all of my media is on a remote machine, I never checked for access from the WDTV local.
I guess I can look tonight with a flash drive and see. I'll let you know.

Just remembered an ep of tekzilla i saw a while ago that kinda applies her.

http://revision3.com/tekzilla/veronicapc

just skip through to where they start talking about NAS'

I really appreciate it Halla. I have to be careful about my electricity at my apartment (not to mention my bed is 3 feet from my computers extremely loud fan)so I can't leave my desktop on all the time.
I have a 2 externals I don't use that often so if I could connect that way it would be amazing.