[odintheterrible]

Greetings to one and all ....

As a definite 'Newbie' to all of this media serving/streaming and whole house music thing etc I've been coerced by my grandchildren into buying a second user Shuttle PC and they've told me that I must use MXBC. LOL

OK, I can achieve the hardware OK but as far as what mxbc will and will not do for me is overwhelming and much of the technical chat is beyond my current level of understanding ... and having been swamped by the shed load of stuff/info on the internet it's difficult to know where to turn for reliable, simple guidance.

Bottom line is; I understand the concept of mxbc and how it brings streams etc into the house via my 'Shuttle' pc and then plays it back onto the main TV in the living room via HDMI connection. What I'm struggling to achieve is the understanding of how this media can then be shared around the house (music in different areas of the house and tv streams on other tv sets in different rooms of the house).

That said, I'm wondering if any of you guys n gals would be kind enough to steer me in the direction of some reading (or videos) on the subject that will lead me by the hand through this jungle of conflicting/diverse info

many thanks in anticipation :-)

[Prof Yaffle]

Welcome to a whole new world!

XBMC (or any other permutation :-) ) is really the display software. It's the program that takes video files (.avi, .mp4, .mkv), streams (e.g. YouTube, iPlayer) and audio files (.mp3, .aac) [and photos and some other stuff...] and processes them to be displayed on a TV or similar device. As part of that, it builds a library of all your media and basically gives you a lovely-to-look-at and easy-to-use way of cataloguing it all.

Sooo... you've got lots of moving parts:

1. XBMC as the "client", the bit that does the playing. You can run this under your operating system of choice, or go for something like OpenElec if you want a dedicated system.

2. Somewhere to put your media. That could be the same PC, but a multi-client setup benefits from a central server of some description - this could be an always-on Windows or similar system, or a proprietary NAS such as Synology or Qnap.

3. A backend. If you want to watch or record live TV, you need something to host the TV tuners and process those streams. Again, this can be the same device as a client, or it can be on your server, or on a different system entirely.

Now, how you share all of this around really depends on what you want to achieve. Some systems (e.g. your secondary TVs) will support DLNA, which allows them to basically get at the library of stuff XBMC knows about (or, indeed, your server knows about). Nothing pretty, normally a hideously clunky interface, but it works. Unless you have really modern digital audio systems, though, it's unlikely that any of your audio-only devices will support that.

That means the alternative is to plug devices into each of your alternative "outlets" (video or audio). These can be cheap Android sticks, old mobile 'phones, tablets (iPad, Android or Windows), or they can be fully-fledged PCs like your Shuttle. Again, it all depends... something to stream audio only maybe doesn't even need XBMC and certainly doesn't need huge processing power; something to stream 1080p bluray rips in high-definition audio is another beast entirely.

Does that help at all? There's no easy answer, as you need to think about how you want to use it all - and you can't decide that without knowledge - which you can't really get until you start playing with it - which means deciding how you're going to use it...

I've been through many iterations over the years, and I'm still not 100% happy!

[odintheterrible]

Many thanks for the intuitive response ... which is more or less what I anticipated anyway LOL
I've more or less decided on 'WHAT WE WANT' but I'm still none the near in understanding how can 'GET WHAT WE WANT' ROFLMAO ;-)
Thanks again

[black_eagle]

If you tell us 'What you want', we can likely tell you how to get it

[printmaster]

hi a complete newbie also sports would be good to get any ideas . many thanks for ant replies

[Hedda]

Wrong subforum for this discussion I think, instead see http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112

Begin by reading the stick threads at the very top there to get an idea of what type of XBMC you want

[natethomas]

As an alternative, you might begin with our quick start guide.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_Quick_Start_Guide