[mral70]

I am still pretty new to this, I looked at Plex, and am now looking at xbmc. In Plex, I set up a media server and then can Stream my DVD collection to any TV in the house either streaming it via HTTP, or via Plex app (none for Sony TV's at this time, but Chromecast appears to work fine). It looks like this can be also done with xbmc by using common shared directories on a NAS box which should not be a problem. The question I cant seem to find anywhere is:

Do i need a seperate machine (computer) to be physically tied to each TV to accomplish this with xbmc, or are there apps that can be loaded on Sony TV's etc that allow them to reach thru the network without the need for additional hardware at each tv location. If each TV needs a comp station, would a thin client work?

Thanks
Al

[nickr]

I am still pretty new to this, I looked at Plex, and am now looking at xbmc. In Plex, I set up a media server and then can Stream my DVD collection to any TV in the house either streaming it via HTTP, or via Plex app (none for Sony TV's at this time, but Chromecast appears to work fine). It looks like this can be also done with xbmc by using common shared directories on a NAS box which should not be a problem. The question I cant seem to find anywhere is:

Do i need a seperate machine (computer) to be physically tied to each TV to accomplish this with xbmc, or are there apps that can be loaded on Sony TV's etc that allow them to reach thru the network without the need for additional hardware at each tv location. If each TV needs a comp station, would a thin client work?

Thanks
Al

A computer running xbmc attached to each TV is your best bet.

Smart TVs have a dlna/upnp client and xbmc can share via upnp. However xbmc does no transcoding so it can be hit and miss whether it will work with any particular combination of media file and TV.

Take a look at mediabrowser3 too.

[mral70]

Nick,

Thanks for the reply. I suspected that was the case. I do like the look and feel for xbmc, but am really looking for centralized storage stategy (I am currenly loading a 48TB NAS box using a 10+2 RAID 6 which gives me about 40TB usable for storing everything) and have hardwired all of the TV cable jacks additionally for GigE lines. The internal home network is being fed off a 48Port switch with a 376Gb/Sec backplane so I have an ocean of bandwidth available. I simply hate to commit 10+ computers simply to pull from the NAS box to serve video. Would make more sense to stream it over the network to the TV's from a common interface. I looked at the Kaleidescape 3U Server, but 20K was just a bit over the top for me. Given this additional info, any other possible candidates I could look at? I will check out mediabrowser3.

Thanks
Al