So my HTPC died.

My five-year-old budget HTPC finally died. It withstood 3 moves. I'm unsure of what to do now, though. Here are the things I'm thinking and I'd love some input:

Option 1:
- Raspberry Pi 2 B hooked up to TV w/ Optical Audio addon
- File server w/ 3 HDDs somewhere in a corner close to the router (for anime of course)

Pros: Less room taken up in the living room. Inexpensive, as I have most all parts for a home file server. Power consumption for file server on par with old HTPC build.

Cons: RP doesn't work with Hulu and Netflix, which my wife and I use daily. I could use my built-in TV or PS3 functionality but the performance is spotty. Getting new material onto my file server hard drives might be inconvenient.

Option 2:
- Build new budget HTPC that will hold 3 HDDs; will replace recently dead one

Pros: Same exact setup as before, essentially. Hulu and Netflix work.

Cons: A bit more expensive than Option 1. Parts could die or I could have video quality problems (which I did have over the last year with current HTPC).

Option 3:
- Buy something like a Steam Machine to replace HTPC.

Pros: Pretty good machine, and can game on it if I wanted to do so in the living room. Already built for me.

Cons: Most expensive option. No Optical Audio (that's a must-have). Would also have to run a file server for all those animus.

So I guess Option 3 is out now that I think about it.

if you have a smart phone, you always use MHL/Slimport to connect it to your TV

Or you can buy a cheap pre build that can take 3HDD's

My computer has been a living room staple and it's pretty nice having it there. It's too much of a hassle to hook up my phone with the amount of use we got from the htpc. I'm also not too sure how well the phone would handle constant 1080p streaming over time.

go with option 1 but instead of a Raspberry Pi use a cheap pc like Asus Un62, they can be mounted to the back of a TV where the wall mounting holes are.
you will get your Hulu and Netflix and you can stream the rest from a File server

I was considering something like that, but my sound system uses optical (for teh surroundz) so that's pretty much the route I have to go to get things sounding right. If I had a receiver that'd be a different story, but I don't :(

Most of the asus mini PC do have Optical S/PDIF out and a few of them do support 5.1 surround.

And depending on how much you want to spend, they do gaming version and have some with i7 and 4k version.

There may be also other company's that do mini PC.

That's good to know.

A friend of mine told me today that I can run HDMI to my TV and then have the sound output to my optical with no loss in quality and not noticeable de-sync. If that's the case, then I can solve my problems pretty cheaply.

Bought all of these parts today but they won't all be in until the week after next =(

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($104.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock H97M-ITX/AC Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($29.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($71.33 @ Amazon)
Case: Xigmatek Nebula Mini ITX Tower Case ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($24.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $351.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-28 06:09 EST-0500

you can save quite some cash if you use parts from your old HTPC.
(works only if its a custom build one, or has a atx/sized mobo)

that way you can save up to 100$
if the older HDD's are ata format, you can use sata-ata convertors, (cost around 5$ in china), this way you can still save your old data.
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as for rasberry pi mediacenter, this can work too, but its not as powerfull as a good media pc,

you could try setting up some rasberry's in raid format so they have shared processing power, to create a more powerfull Pi-mediacenter.
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as for data-server, you can use a stimilar setup as a normal pc only then with (free-nas/stimilar software)

With a rather old CPU, it worked better off for me to just get a new one since it'd be difficult to find an older mobo as a replacement.

Also wanted one that could handle HD video without using a GPU. Kept all of my HDD storage with a new SSD for the OS (I ended up cloning my desktop SSD to it and put my older SSD in the new HTPC.

Unfortunately the RP has some issues with Netflix and Hulu (and Silverlight in general it seems), so this ended up working out pretty well.