Hey Gang,
Here's what I'm trying to do...
I want to put a machine downstairs where all my home networking comes together, connect a machine to it, put all my media on that machine and be able to stream it all the televisions in the house. All the TV's have network inputs or have a blu-ray player that's connected to the network that are DLNA ready.
Is this possible? If so, will XBMC be what I should load on that machine?
Also, should I set that machine up as a home server??
I'm in new territory here.
Thanks!
XBMC is meant to run on boxes (computer or say a hacked ATV2) connected to the TV. It's not really for DLNA/UPnP, and it won't transcode video formats or give you the nice XBMC interface on all your TVs.
Hey mate, you'll need to have more of a think about exactly what you want to achieve (or just explain it to us).
Sounds to me like you want a hub somewhere with all your movies/tv eps etc.. And you want to access these from all the TVs in your house. If all your TVs have network inputs, they might be able to see your networked hub (PC with videos on it), and they MAY be able to play them (example, Samsung series 6 onwards.. possibly earlier versions as well).
But honestly, for a total solution, you'll need to specify exactly what you have currently, what you want to achieve, so people can give you options and costs etc...
Check out other users current setups on the forums as well. Might give you some ideas to begin with.
XBMC is for the client side, the television side, so probably not. From the sound of it you need to set up a server or NAS with DLNA.
XBMC is used to have a very pretty and very easy to use interface to watching videos. As far as I know, it doesn't do anything to share its files over the network, it only takes shares from others and lets you view them.
Plex I believe does streaming, but I'm not sure what kind. It's available for Windows now, so go check it out. I don't know enough about it to say if it's right for you though.
Veovis Wrote:XBMC is for the client side, the television side, so probably not. From the sound of it you need to set up a server or NAS with DLNA.
XBMC is used to have a very pretty and very easy to use interface to watching videos. As far as I know, it doesn't do anything to share its files over the network, it only takes shares from others and lets you view them.
Plex I believe does streaming, but I'm not sure what kind. It's available for Windows now, so go check it out. I don't know enough about it to say if it's right for you though.
XBMC has a UPnP server that will stream content to other compatible devices like the XBox 360. As mentioned it does not transcode formats so not everything is playable on the UPnP clients. At least in the case of the 360 there is no eye candy and you basically just get a formated listing of the media. It's OK for just watching a movie but there are no watch statuses kept so it doesn't work too good for things like TV Series. I guess it really depends on the clients software.
If you want the full XBMC experience on all TV's then you have to put some type of PC at each TV and share the videos and the Main XBMC database.