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In my case it was to keep them out of the way where it's quiet. So far temperature (in both summer and winter (high/low)) and dirt haven't been an issue.
For the TV server the satellite dish is right next to the part of the attic where the servers are meaning not having to trail coax around the house. Much easier to expand with more Tuner cards with it being in the attic.
All the rooms that require networking are already all connected with CAT5 meaning I could easily put another small PC (or ATV2 as you mention) in any of these rooms with XBMC PVR as the frontend and have them connect to the TV server to watch TV. Obviously more people watching TV at once will require more tuners.
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Hmm I never thought about putting my server in the attic near the dish. I guess I would need someone to run a cable from my dish if I wanted PVR capability or at the very least electrical and a CAT5 cable? I'm going to look at the Eebox you mentioned too. The only issue I am a bit concerned about is my occasional blue screens. That would mean climbing into the attic to hard reset the damn thing lol.
Server: Synology Diskstation 1511+ with 8x WD Red NAS 3TB drives, DSM 5.2
Main HTPC: Home Built i3, 8GB RAM, Corsair 128GB SSD, nVidia 630GTX, Harmony Home Control, Pioneer VSX-53, Panasonic VT30 65" 3D TV, Windows 10, Isengard
Bedroom HTPC: Zotac-ID 41 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Rii micro keyboard remote, Samsung HW-E550, Sony 32" Google TV, OpenElec 6.0 beta 4
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Probably no need to go to my dish I guess. I have the DirecTV HR34 which lets me record 5 things at once. The HTPC idea was to give me instant access to all my movies.
Would one of those new ION2 systems be suitable for a front and back end? I'm guessing not since there's probably not nearly enough storage on them. So, if I bought one of those, do you think I would be better off serving my media from a Linux distro or just leave it Windows 7?
Server: Synology Diskstation 1511+ with 8x WD Red NAS 3TB drives, DSM 5.2
Main HTPC: Home Built i3, 8GB RAM, Corsair 128GB SSD, nVidia 630GTX, Harmony Home Control, Pioneer VSX-53, Panasonic VT30 65" 3D TV, Windows 10, Isengard
Bedroom HTPC: Zotac-ID 41 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Rii micro keyboard remote, Samsung HW-E550, Sony 32" Google TV, OpenElec 6.0 beta 4
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Besides the PVR backend/frontend stuff, a central media server has a lot of advantages. I'm using a simple NAS drive (Buffalo Linkstation Live) to store ALL my media and personal files. I can access all videos, music or pics from any capable device like PCs, Media Devices, Smartphones, Consoles... and from outside using a FTP connection.
Actually I don't store any data locally on my PC or Laptops so I don't have to backup anything when wiping the system or installing another OS. The printer is also connected directly to the server.
I can recommend you the Zotac ZBox devices if you need a small and silent XBMC client. I'm using the AD02 (which is AMD-based) because it's capable of bitstreaming HD Audio (DTS HD MA, Dolby True HD...) via HDMI. The performance of these device is really impressive and it is totally silent when using it without a physical harddrive.
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zepo
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Will this PVR function only work with windows/linux? I have a mac mini with EyeTV deluxe which pick up HD DTT signals from public channels, can I have that work as a "backend"?
I know there is a cool EyeTV script here but the "live tv" is not in HD but in an iphone/ipad resolution.
I have a perfect picture using the EyeTV app, It would have been cool to use xbmc instead (and keep the picture quality).
