Turn Old PowerMac G3/G4 into Media Server

I want to buy an old powermac g3/g4 with osx and put a bunch of hard drives in it and use it as a media server. however, i know relatively nothing about the old macs, so i have a few questions:
1. how many slots are there to put hard drives in them? i want to put at least 3 500gb hard drives in them so that i have enough space.

2. will i be able to use my apple remote and front row with the old mac? i want to be able to just keep this in my living room hooked up to a tv so that i can just start watching movies/playing music whenever. i know that i can just go out and buy an apple remote, but does it come with like a usb adaptor or something?

3. what do i need to do in order to be able to share all of the files on my mac over my network? (what ports do i need to open, what do i need to set as dmz host, etc) i have a macbook, and i want to be able to access all of the files anywhere i go.

thanks in advance

1.There are four hard drives bays.
2.No but you can hack frontrow on it with osx leopard by installing it with a logitech keyboard receiver pluged in.
3. itunes 9 has home share built in. OSX automaticaly recognises other computers on your network to share with it.

You really want a G4 as early G3's have IDE issues.

Convert G3/G4 to use sata drive with new controller card.

G3 & G4's used IDE drives, the storage limit was 120GB per drive port (x 2 ports). 120GB is not enough for a decent iTunes collection. For video, we'll need multiple TB. In Installed a SATA controller in my silver G4 (Digital Media era 2000) a couple of years ago for about $50, The net result was much faster start-up and file transfers. It was all good, very easy install, no issues. With 1TB drives becoming insanely cheap, Geeks had a 3TB drive for $59 this weekend. 5/23/11. Recently I to upgraded to a MAC Pro as 10.4.11 wouldn't support much of the newer software. I was looking to repurpose my old G4 as a media server when I found your post.