Help on creating a Media Centre?

[Sam.Bridges]

Hello, you can guess my name and the reason I'm here. Although I'm not new or a newb to computers I barely know anything about this (including many other things) and my dad has recently tasked me with the job of setting up a media centre in his home, I could handle a computer being plugged into his TV but he what he wants is a little more, I'll outline what he's pretty much asked for, what I've assumed and perhaps someone can help.

I'm not too sure how this should work, will it be better to have one main computer which will stream video to a computer in each of the rooms or have all the computers connected straight couple of HDDs.

He says that he wants this to last a little while so I guess going for high specs able to play 1080p video is what I should do.

4 Rooms with TVs in them, connected up, able to play movies from HDDs where I will be ripping his DVD collection to (atleast 300 :/).

Office: This will be where the HDs will be stored, along with the main computer(?) connected to a lcd (an old 37" Sharp Aquos).

Lounge: A large lcd screen (not sure on which yet), Virgin Media Cable Box, I'd like this to be able to play in other rooms too.

Room1&2: Small lcds.

So what I need to know is which would be the best option, going with prebuilt boxes or buying the parts myself, what cables will I need to play HD through this and such.

Hopefully someone's already written a guide that you could link me because I haven't really found anything.

Cheers for reading, hope you guys can help me understand this a bit more.

[tkmedia]

Sam look at some of the user setups there have been some recent additions ( thanks to someone bugging them ).
It all sounds doable and then some. Check the wiki for hardware specs, and please don't purchase anything before checking in chat.
Save yourself the trouble of incompatible hardware.


TK

[its_tricky83]

Hey guys, I'm new but I've had a good look around and LMCE is an awesome and seemingly massive masterpiece.
Where are these so called "User Setups"... is there an easy way to find them or are they scattered throughout the forum?

[seth]

 
You can get to them by going here : http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User_Setups
For example mine is located @ http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User:Seth

I will add a link from the main wiki TOC Under the heading User Setups. I thought this should be here. Worst case, someone will bash me and remove it, but by then, you will have it in your history 

Regards,

Seth