[SoonerDave]

Hey everyone...

Had recently started toying with the idea of building a media server for the primary purpose of hosting/playing my own library of ripped DVD's and BluRay discs locally and on remote devices such as DLNA-aware clients. Originally thought of going the MythTV route, but decided it was a bit too PVR-centric for my purposes. Then I come across xbmc, and it sure looks like its the route I want to take, particularly after perusing this form!

Only problem is I'm a bit buried in information!

I'd appreciate a minimal sanity check on what I believe I've drawn from what I've read so far:

First - my requirements are pretty simple:
1. Host and play back my own ripped DVD and BluRay discs. No 3D support necessary.
2. Serve as DLNA server for remote clients.
3. (Very secondarily) serve up 'Net based content, such as YouTube or Netflix. .\
4. Video/audio served up via HDMI to Pioneer receiver, and then to Sammy 1080P TV.
5. Prefer Linux-based system. Appeals to my inner geek Could leverage existing Linux/Samba file share(s) as possible media host. (?)

So, from what I've read here, here's what I'm thinking - please correct where wrong:
1. For a Linux version, avoid AMD and go Intel. Looks like I could go as low as dual-core Celeron, but perhaps I3 for a bit of a "comfort zone"
2. With Linux, look for nVidia GPUs - something on the order of a GT660?
3. Appears I could go with max 2GB memory w/proper GPU selection
4. Host O/S on SSD drive (ideal, but not vital)
5. Ideally, host movie files on NAS (but not mandatory)
6. Thinking XMBCUbuntu may be the path to take, as OpenELEC seems geared toward smaller ION-based devices (bit fuzzy on this) and not so much on SSD-based devices?

A few questions do persist:
1. Are there specific issues in getting audio through nVidia cards out to a receiver/switcher (and then to the TV)? Is HDMI sufficient? (read some posts about the need to use certain drivers to enable audio properly?)
2. Any problem with plopping in a BR drive in my prospective build and perform my BR/DVD ripping from that system? I understand that BR ISO support up to Frodo v12 is still a work in progress. I've got mostly DVD's, comparatively very few BR's, but I gotta rip them and get them into my storage somehow.
3. (And I guess this really isn't a purely XBMC question), but I'm not yet clear on the "best" way to rip DVD's/BR's into a format most suitable for XBMC hosting, eg memcoder, dd, or others where encryption issues are at play? Also realize conversion types also drive file sizes, which then affects storage planning, so
4. While NAS is appealing, isn't there an inherent bandwidth issue in pulling the raw files from the NAS, and then streaming them (for example) to a DLNA client? Is 100mbit hardwired ethernet sufficient?

I've got an old P4-based system that I could repurpose for XBMC, but its suffering from what I think are a) age and b) heat-related spontaneous shutdown issues, so I'm not sure how healthy it is, or else it would be a prime candidate for a "test" XBMC system with zero addtional investment.

Anyway, that's where I am, trying to learn, no problem playing with Linux (already have Linux-based Samba server and firewall), and might have enough "sock drawer money" around to put together something newer, so I'm just looking to sort out my options, double-check my understanding, and make some sort of plan going forward...

Thanks in advance,
SoonerDave

[Dougie Fresh]

For serving your other clients, will you need to transcode-on-the-fly (aka streaming) or will they just need to be able to see the files on the network (aka sharing)? That will make a big difference as to what CPU you'll need.

[shess757]

Well where to start

First my background. In february of this year I had enough of cable and noticed an HDMI port on my new laptop (wow I bet I could connect that to my TV, and there's lots of video online!!). Stumbled across xbmc, did a minimal amount of research, and bought the hardware.

I ended up with an ASRock A75M motherboard an AMD A6 3500 Llano 2.1GHz APU with Radeon HD 6530D, 8GB of RAM, and an old...old 320GB WD hard drive that I had in an old computer in my closet. As for the motherboard I remember reading a lot of reviews recommending this for a first time HTPC. The AMD A6 was also recommended about as much as an Intel i3 IIRC. The 8gb of RAM may have been pointless as I remember reading XBMC can only use 4gb but it was cheap and maybe in the future that'll change. I'd like to say I wish I had gone one or two models up on the APU or a nice SSD for the OS but at the time this all fit my budget. Everything is in a Silverstone case running xbmcbuntu v12.2 with Aeon Nox (resource hungry, but beautiful). Also have an HDhomerun for local OTA TV.

I knew very little about Linux but over time have learned to use it, things take me a long time to figure out, I don't have any real complaints. I'd like to be able to run Netflix but with Linux that is a bit of a challenge. I have tried Openelec and thought about installing windows to run my main HTPC. I have XBMC installed on a windows 7 laptop, an ubuntu 13.4 laptop and Openelec running on a Raspberry Pi in another room.My liabry is stored on my main HTPC and shared accros my home network HTPC and Raspberry Pi are wired.

Now that you're even more overwhelmed/annoyed I'll try and answer your questions. A lot of these are opinion based so what I like or works for me may not for others.

1. Yes!! No problems hosting and playing back, I've had an HD movie on my main HTPC, SD movie on the Pi, SD movie on a laptop, and music streaming to my phone all at once. Probably a fire hazard! You can sync everything like watch status, fanart, pause on one device and play on another with MySQL. I have not seen a need for that as of yet.

2. Yes.....with some limits. Netflix takes some setting up on Linux, and I'm not sure it works much better on windows. YouTube works fine, There are a lot of other options for streaming online content. Some of which are not discussed on this forum due to questionable legality, and piracy concerns. A quick search on Google will bring up alternatives. A word of caution third party add-ons are not reviewed or supported by XBMC or this forum, and can cause problems on your system. Some developers support add-ons on both this and other sites. There are also several options such as SickBeard, Couchpotato, Sabnzbd, if you are familiar with usenet.

3. Yes!! see http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=UPnP. (The Wiki is a great source for information http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Main_Page). The only real UpnP I use is for music on my phone. I've tried yatse remote, and Mediamonkey both work great. Yatse for remote and MM for music and movies.

4. As far as I know yes. I think there are some audio problems when passing through a receiver but not sure.

5. Yes. XBMCbuntu is a standalone installation for XBMC with an underlying minimal Ubuntu OS, but it will boot straight to XBMC. Openelec is also Linux based but without the ability to log out of XBMC and into an Ubuntu desktop. Openelec is locked down pretty tight and is best used on an appliance type setup where no real changes need to be made. I've tried both and stuck with XBMCbuntu on my main and Openelec on my Pi.

If I've still got your attention I'll do my best with your second set, although I'm kind of limited to my setup.

1. Not sure there is a huge difference, maybe just personal preference. I've had very few problems with my AMD APU. The only problem I still have is with interlacing, auto deinterlacing does not work for me, but only a problem on TV episodes and not if you rip/encode correctly or streaming . There was an XVBA build for AMD but has been replaced with a Linux Radeon OSS with vdpau (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854) I beleve this is an actual XBMC OS so I think it would replace XBMCbuntu, but that is a little beyond my skill. The OP in that thread Fritsch is very helpful, and everywhere. I run into posts from him on several different sites.

2. Again maybe personal preference.

3. I remember reading 2gb works but RAM is so cheap get 4 and be safe. Some of the nicer skins are resource hungry, Aeon Nox for example barely runs on my Pi which has 512mb of RAM. Not totally sure if RAM or CPU is more important maybe a combination of both. Again No problems on my main HTPC.

4. I started with an old 320gb hard drive, swapped out to a 3tb WD green HDD. I would have liked to start with an SSD but no problems using a HDD, although I think very soon I'll be switching to an SSD.

5. NAS is ideal but not necessary. I'd also like to go down that road, more for backup vs. sharing since all my media is one hard drive, I'm constantly paranoid.

6. Probably answered this question above. Xbmcbuntu is great for Main/server HTPC while Openelec is good for appliance like clients.

The one thing I really remember reading over and over again is XBMC can run beautifully on many different setups, there are a lot of very helpful people here in these forums that are familiar with just about every piece of hardware. My personal opinion is to built a setup within your budget, and upgrade/add-on in the future. It also depends on who will be using the HTPC for me mainly my Wife and kids who could care less if something is SD or HD as long as it plays. If you are wanting true 1080HD with flawless playback then you may need some higher end hardware.

Hopefully my rambling will help you a little, I'm very happy XBMC and if you have a little time, patience, and like to tinker a little I think you'll find it suits your needs very well. Fell free to PM me if you have any questions. I'm sure some others will jump on with there suggestions as well. Good Luck!

[black_eagle]

FWIW my bedroom HTPC is a dual core Pentium 4 with 1 gig of memory and an Nvidia 7300le half height gfx card. Runs XBMCbuntu perfectly although I must admit I haven't tried to run a skin like AEON on it. Music and video are held on a NAS drive and on my main PC downstairs and served over wireless. Database is shared via mysql and a couple of paths on the bedroom machine are substituted to the one downstairs. The monitor isn't full HD and the audio is only stereo, but it's only for watching stuff while I fall asleep !! It does prove though that you don't need state of the art equipment to get a good experience.

[SoonerDave]

Okay, I've replied to this thread twice and both times its been eaten?

Thanks much for the replies!

black_eagle: I've got a PC with nearly identical specs on the shelf that's been suffering from spontaneous shutdown issues. It would be a great test build box for zero investment. Tore into it to discover its shutdown issues and found a mammoth layer of dust in the heatsink fins and fans, plus found there was no thermal compound on the CPU. Fixed those issues, and appear to have dropped CPU temps by 20 degrees C. Hopefully solved the shutdown issues!

dougie_fresh: On the transcoding issues, I plan to set up a remote DLNA client through a BluRay player, then some laptops...may even install XBMC on one of our laptops, but that implies wireless streaming. Not sure I'm educated enough yet to know if that answers your question.

One way or the other, looks like I can get into this project without a huge pile of money. We'll see how it goes. Recommendations and continued input are solicited, encouraged, welcome,

Thanks!

[Prof Yaffle]

More random input to overfill your head, then ...

OpenElec is a pure client. XBMCBuntu (or any other Linux base with XBMC on top) is probably better as a general-purpose server. If you're going down the NAS route, you're already thinking of an always-on server... so is this where the server-ey functions live and your HTPC is thus purely that, or do you need a more general-purpose client as well? Is your NAS to be a proprietary system (Synology, etc.), a dedicated software platform (unRAID, etc.) or a true DIY ('buntu, Windows Server, etc.)?

For ripping, DVDFab and Makemkv are some of the more common packages. You can leave the disc as an ISO (the former) or a single file with the movie or extras in (the latter). If you want to re-encode, Handbrake is popular and handles *most* things (but not all - it chokes on some HD audio formats for passthrough and re-encodes).

Do you want a TV server? Where'd that go - HTPC/client (USB stick? PCI?) or NAS/server? What does that do to your NAS choice?

Do you need Netflix or any other Silverlight-based streaming? That'll cut your gallop a lot in terms of client OS choice.

Do you want your TV-connected HTPC to be on when serving DLNA clients? Or could this come from the server/NAS so you can stream to your 'phone/tablet/laptop/whatever without switching something else on?

Are you a perfectionist? Do you want to worry about pull-down and perfect frame rates, perfect HD audio, and so on? Or just watch the stuff? Most modern platforms will play most resolutions/framerates and decent (5.1) sound - perfection and losslessness demands more care over specific OS/hardware combinations.

Personally, I have an i5 server running Xubuntu that handles ripping, encoding, DLNA, fileserving and some other tasks (and doubles as an XBMC client/jukebox if needed). Clients are then ION boxes with SSDs and a couple of gig of RAM, all running OpenElec. Everything's on gigabit wired LAN and doesn't miss a beat, though I re-encode BR rips so can stream them over 802.11N just as well, e.g. to Android clients - 100Mb/s would be adequate if wireless is. This will do me fine until 3D and H.265 kill off the ION clients (sniff... computers are friends...).

[SoonerDave]

Good stuff, Prof. Here's where I am....

As much as I'd like to ditch my Cox DVR, the alternatives make that the lesser choice among various evils. It looks to me like the only way I"d be able to set up my own DVR and record all Cox content is if I had Windows Media Center with an HD tuner that could host a CableCard, and I really don't want to do that. Even if I could it does really nothing for my other hopes of enabling remote clients to watch the recorded content due to all the encryption rules. At least that's what I"m inferring from what I've read regarding who has paid which licensing fees for the decryption keys and attendant certification.

In all honesty, that forces me into a situation that aligns with my original objectives more closely - an HTPC setup that is focused mainly on hosting my own currently-owned or produced content. Also, having discovered that the old P4 box I resuscitated has a 1GB drive almost entirely unused, it seems that's a natural spot to host my local files without going to the extra expense of a NAS. And, in all honesty, that was why I stuck the big drive in that box originally - but once it started dying, I didn't really take the time to tear it down and find out why. Now that I have, I think I need to at least try using that drive for movie storage and go from there. A NAS may be down the road, but I think when I do that I'll want to replace most of my infrastructure with 1GB switches and nics rather than my current 100MB boxes.

So, right now, I"m probably *this close* (putting my fingers about 3mm apart) to getting any specialty/old stuff off the drives on the current box (pictures, etc) and rebuilding it as my XBMCubuntu host, and letting it host files to other clients via DLNA or some laptop frontends. We'll see how that goes. Besides, its the least cost (zero), which is even nicer

Thanks for all the great feedback.

[Prof Yaffle]

1GB? Wow, enjoy that HD collection :-)

I think you know enough to make an informed choice. If you want to change it later... well, you'll have the knowledge and experience then to make an even more informed choice, won't you?

[SoonerDave]

1GB? Wow, enjoy that HD collection :-)

I think you know enough to make an informed choice. If you want to change it later... well, you'll have the knowledge and experience then to make an even more informed choice, won't you?

OOPS!!! Let's try 1TB

[Skram0]

1GB switches and nics rather than my current 100MB boxes.

Grammar police. I figure you mean 1Gb switches and 100Mb boxes. Note the lowercase 'b' is for bit, and an uppercase 'B' is for byte.
carry on...

[SoonerDave]

1GB switches and nics rather than my current 100MB boxes.

Grammar police. I figure you mean 1Gb switches and 100Mb boxes. Note the lowercase 'b' is for bit, and an uppercase 'B' is for byte.
carry on...

I s'pose I deserve that, I know better....blame it on a rapid response...mea culpa.