Recently I have been toying around with the idea of employing a media server with my dedicated Home theater. Needless to say they are expensive.
I have a friend who is very computer savvy and we have been talking about building one ourselves. I would want one that would have more than enough space for SD and Blu-Ray as well. I also would want to incorporate a seperate external hardrive for my CD's.
The purpose for all of this of course is space and also to have all of my SD and Blu-Ray discs' displayed on my 96" diagonal screen.
I forgot to mention that I already have an iMac desktop computer.
The idea would be pretty cost effective since I would not have to pay for labor. The cost comes in from buying external hardrives, wiring etc. I have inquired at Best buys and local Home Theater stores for prices for this setup. Best buys comes in at the lowest...$1200-$1400.00. The Home Theater store was $85.00 per hour in addition to acesseries.

I recently visited another friends Home Theater to check out his Samsung Blu-Ray. Very nice. It also incorporates the use of bit-streaming videos from Netflix. Pretty cool. The picture was just as good as SD and any blu-ray.
The shortfall of the Samsung is the fact that it only has a few HD movie that they are bit-streaming and the audio while it is good it is not 5.1.
Netflex working is working on the issue. When is not certain perhaps in the next year.

I am not in a rush to make a decesion on what I will do...Make a Media Server or buy the Samsung. I do think that obviously the Samsung route is the cheapest. I would not of course be able to store my Cd's or my current list of SD or Blu-Ray disc but I would be able to access any movie I want without buying anymore DVDs.

Any suggestions?
Does anyone have any idea what the cost of building a media server would cost me?
Any better ideas?