servin’ up fun

More of a personal post than a story update. I do plan to have 007 content for you this Sunday — either the whole finale at once and then a quiet week, or splitting it up across two weeks. Probably the latter. Anyways.

I want to make a home media server. Specifically, a PC attached to my television, so I can watch digital video files (FLV/AVI/MP4) and Bluray movies, as well as emulate arcade games and such on my TV. Maybe even use Steam’s big picture mode. In the background it’ll run a personal Minecraft server and some other odds and ends. I know the basics of what I need to do all of that, hardwarewise.

What I don’t know is how exactly to control all of this. Either the software to run on the system, or the hardware that tells that software what to do.

What should I be running so I can launch video files, play discs, or launch a game emulator — and how do I control it? Is there a remote control designed for this sort of thing, or maybe an iPhone app? Do I need some special media server software? Most of the stuff I’ve looked at is focused on delivering media over your LAN but I don’t need that, the PC’s gonna be connected to the TV, it just has to launch playback (or a game emulator like MAME) on demand.

I don’t need something overblown here; no $200 home media server solution thing. I just wanna launch video and launch applications, and do it using a reasonably efficient and simple control method. Done.

Again, requirements are that it works under Windows 7, it can playback AVI and FLV and MP4 (maybe MKV too), it can launch executables on demand, and that it be controllable without having to bust out a keyboard and mouse.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Looks like the answer is XMBC — it has plug-ins for everything, even arcade emulation, and is open source. I’m okay with alternative suggestions though, and control suggestions. Or PC hardware suggestions.