possible problems with playback on a tv?

[muzikul]

I want to run this idea by everyone and get any suggestions that might help this go smoothly. I am going to buy or build a computer that I can use strictly to playback divx and vcd movies on my television. I am considering a 500-600 MHZ computer with WinXP loaded, 256MB RAM, and a tv out card... probably a Voodoo 3500TV off of eBay. Unless this is a bad idea for performance reasons, I am going to network the machine to my current computer, which has all the movies, and just play the movies across that network instead of copying each movie over at a time when I want to watch it. If this will work, I'll only put a 10GB hard drive in the new computer since it won't have much on it other than the OS. So does anybody foresee any problems that I might come across with a configuration such as this? I've never tried anything like this before and so I would appreciate any advice. Thanks!

[Batman]

Personally, I would purchase a "made" computer, computers are currently cheap. Also, the machine you are going to build it very much "obsolete" though I believe it may be capable of playing divx. Low end systems, under $1000 have better configurations. Maybe you should shop around and compare the cost of building this system against that of purchasing a pre-made computer. This analysis could be helpful. If your custom-made pc is cheap, and you believe worthwhile, then by all means build it.

A 10 GB hard-drive could be small. I guess if this is a network PC it could be okay.

Just be careful that all components are compatible, people can have problems with compatibility of motherboards/chip sets/ graphic cards/ etc... Use the right motherboard.

[StumdoeS]

My experience with playing movie over a network is that the picture and sound might become jerky. This probobly has to do with many things such as network speed, duplex settings, load on the "host" machine etc.

I aggree that it might be a good idea to look around on "built" pc, perhaps a "noname" that you can rip out the graphics card from an replace with a tv-out one.