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My HTPC setup at home! - Printable Version

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RE: My HTPC setup at home! - docwra - 2018-05-24

Cool keyboard by the way Smile


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-05-24

That’s the Mac keyboard and track pad in holder, before the holder, both used to crawl around the desk!


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-05-30

watch gallery


This is Hyper-V running on a dual core CPU, this is a standard day, running video to my PJ, whilst downloading emails from it.

There is a 6th VM which is for a friend but that is unimportant for this thread!

The crazy thing though is the VM's running TVH and Kodi Server, these are thowing HD content around the flat whilst I have a small village looking at how to prune tulips on the webserver! (I still do small traffic web hosting from home!)


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-06-14

At time of writing this post, I'm staying around a friends up in the North of the UK, and have been Remote Accessing my server at home! (too much spare time LOL) I can now safely say that my home media is setup with FOSS all the way down!!
  • Kodi Server VM is running Ubuntu with NFS, and I'm using rsync to sync my media to an external drive along with MySQL community server and PHPmyadmin for it's shared database.
  • TV Server is of course Ubuntu and TV Headend
  • My two Pi's are running librelec/Kodi.

I have been meaning to do this, but due to having to use the server for TV boxsets, watching movies, or just running the music video party mode - the only way to do this was to be off site!

The hardest part was to move the library (over 3TB of media) from NTFS to EXT4 but at least now, I've a home media setup that is built on FOSS and very proud of it!


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - gb160 - 2018-06-16

Nice setup.
I think you should call your server Rodney, after Dave Wink


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-06-17

Seeing the amount of views, as well as the nice comments about my setup, means a lot, especially since most of my reputation points have come from this thread. So I must be doing something right lol

On the name of the server.... I might just do that! Only just to confuse people, oh and tell them the reason why too 😂😂🤣


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - 3dfx - 2018-10-06

I love the darlek and the old console, really nice Big Grin
Wish I had enough room for a big server case/rack like yours.

P.S. your movie taste isn't that bad!


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-10-06

I've just got the Philips Hue and Alexa setup, so I now now say 'Computer, it's movie night' the lights din, the side lights come on and the TV and Amp switch on... thanks to the Broadlink Magic Bean!

Just got to rinse and repeat for the bedroom now  Eek


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-11-13

TL ; DR: Movie night with the Hue, Alexa and Broadlink didn't work!

Now for the long bit!

Bit of an update:

Things that didn't 'go to plan'!

Tried using the Broadlink rm mini 3 and.... lets just say it had one job, and did it badly (read not working at all!)

I tried the Hue add-on for Kodi, and it just dimmed the lights when it was a video file (read PVR/Youtube/Music videos ET AL!), so, again couldn't do it!

I also wanted to be able to stream my content to my IOS devices when I'm off site, so tired Emby, tried both add-ons, and I now fully appreciate why Team Kodi doesn't like the database touched by add-ons (rouge or otherwise) not only that Emby erased ALL my tract.tv data (not good!)

But things that did!

Changed folder shares from NFS to SMB, which now means that my Mac, my Windows VM AND my two Kodi instances now can see the folder shares without resorting to the dark arts of CLI commands in MacOS or adding features in Windows 10!

Installed Plex Server as a separate VM for those offsite usages, and was able to permanently mount the folder shares, so all transcoding is done separately, as well as that my MySQL databases and Plex Server are separate. 

Lastly, TVheadend is now updated to Ubuntu 18.04!

Lets just say, I got bored one week LOL


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - docwra - 2018-11-13

Nice! Voice activation and transcoding are obvious next steps for my HTPC setup. Nice to see someone experimenting.


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-11-28

I have done it again! (Damn you Team Kodi with your news and blogs!) I saw a new shiny, there was enough wishes left on my card (read money in my bank!) and have bought a new case!

Here are both versions together - before they parted, and now separated between a slice of plasterboard (read one in living room and one in bedroom!)

watch gallery


And now, for the V2 box, sitting quite peacefully between my consoles all fired up and happy on the living room TV!

watch gallery


Having worked on a cancer unit myself, it's nice to know that some money goes to a cancer charity, as well as a FOSS project. Not only that, the money made from the Pi's that I have bought, goes to teaching kids in the UK computer science at a young age. So a full on win win all round!


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - Dumyat - 2018-11-28

(2018-11-13, 00:54)tjay260476 Wrote: I also wanted to be able to stream my content to my IOS devices when I'm off site, so tired Emby, tried both add-ons, and I now fully appreciate why Team Kodi doesn't like the database touched by add-ons (rouge or otherwise) not only that Emby erased ALL my tract.tv data (not good!)
You say you've tried both add-ons, does that include EmbyCon? It's great because it doesn't interfere with Kodi's Databases.
I've used it many times on Kodi when I'm away from home and it works a like a charm.


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-11-29

It included Embycon, but I needed it to integrate itself within Kodi for a seamless setup, hence using the other add-on.

I have now gone down the Plex route, so I have a VM that is just a Plex Server, which I have added the SMB folder shares via FSTAB using cifs-utils which gives me my library offsite. Also is able to do transcoding on a couple of TV shows due to Pi limitations, which has worked, for me at least!

It means that my Media Server is still fully FOSS, which was the intention.

So, basically,
  • Plex for offsite
  • Kodi for at home.
Works for me! (especially as I have IOS devices in the mix of the FOSS stuff - I'm complicated!! LOL)


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - docwra - 2018-11-29

Such a shame we need Plex for that, but I see a lot of work was done on the Kodi video player to hopefully allow transcoding in the future.


RE: My HTPC setup at home! - tjay260476 - 2018-11-29

For us IOS users, that also want our libraries offsite - I consider Plex as a necessary 'evil' (my opinion!!!!)