[tjay260476]

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This is my setup, the backend is running Windows 10 Pro, with NextPVR for the TV, I have a HD Homerun Connect for Freeview UK TV. I have two Kodi Clients, that are raspberry Pi's running Openelec, and two MX3 remotes, one for each box.

I shuffled around the Estuary theme menu and renamed them to suit my needs, as well as making the EPG font a little bigger.

I think the server looks too big....LOL

[tjay260476]

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I updated my rig in the bedroom with an amplifier and Graphic Equaliser. It connects both my Pi running Kodi and my Mac.... Now it's too big and BLUE!!!!

[tjay260476]

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For those that are interested, I needed a new TV for the bedroom.... unfortunately, I couldn't spell TV on Amazon, and ended up buying a projector!!! (Damn.... Kodi looks GOOOOOOOOOD on the BIG Screen!!!) I went for the metropolis skin, as it feels better than the stock skin on this kind of setup.

[Usafle]

Galaxy Quest: most underrated Sci-Fi spoof ever!!!

[tjay260476]

I'm surprised no-one made a remark about Ghost and Frozen together LOL

[docwra]

Very nice, I love a good server rack

[tjay260476]

When I had my own business it was bought for two servers, that was about 6 years ago.

For the Only Fools and Horses fans (a UK TV Show) it is a Trigger's Broom Server....I have had the same server for 8 years, I have replaced bits when they stopped working, i.e. the motherboard, PSU, Hard Drive, RAM and case....(for the uninitiated, Triggers Broom over the years had the handle and brush replaced!)

Nowadays it's a web/email server (ran my on email server for over 10 years now) and NAS. But now runs Windows Server 2016 Standard, I know, bit overkill for home usage, but rather have more resources than less 'just in case'. 

NextPVR has been replaced by TVHeadend on a Raspberry Pi with Libreelec, as the rewind function wasn't working properly in TV, which in all honesty (and not in any way to judge NextPVR - just didn't work for me) is better, because 'when' either the Server goes down, or doesn't log into MYSQL, TV can still be served in the flat.

[tjay260476]

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Although the screenshots are coming from Leia, Krypton is set up the same.

I added my own Splash Screen to Libreelec. The reason for adding my name to it is so that friends know that I have built the box myself, and any modification is done by me! I also moved the tty console to '3' so no calls of when it is expanding/updating, if it hangs far too long, I just reflash the SD Card and restore if need be.

All modifications to Kodi etc which I have made have my name for example TVHeadend reads 'Jay-TV Freeview' My Esturary Mod is called Jay-TV, and the description I let guests read when they proclaim I have a 'Kodi box' and as 'What build' it is... all they get from me is stock Forum Answers from me at that point!

I rearranged the Menu items to suit my own needs, this is all that is shown on both my Pi's, if I add something else in the near future I will simply move this around.

'Favourites' reads 'On Demand'  - even in the Dialog Window (YAY!), only because the addons I have added to favourites are video addons, and anything that is 'Smart' on a TV is either called 'On Demand' or 'Catch-up'
Jay-TV Channel is the LazyTV addon, just renamed and thumbnail changed.
Jay-TV Music Channel is Music Videos Party Mode, and is a shortcut in the Favourites XML.
Recorded TV is a folder on my server for archived TV recordings.
Now Music Jukebox is the Now Albums marked as genre 'Now Albums' and Partymode on music is set play just these, and added as a favourite.
The rest are from the Freeview Addon.

All 'Favourites' thumbnails are the same size, and are transparent, so they are all uniform.

TV Guide is set to Font 13

The main menu - Live TV calls to TV Guide and not channels, and Music goes straight to 'Albums' 

I use 'Font' Ariel, colour 'Midnight' and use the background add-ons for the backgrounds. 

Put simply, I have my own custom built set-top box. I am my own (legitimate) TV Provider! (at the end of the day a PVR from a cable or satellite company is a Tuner/Hard Drive and a few apps)

[tjay260476]

As in a previous post on the forum, I have succumbed to the hype and publicity, and I have decided to upgrade my two HTPC’s.....

10+ years ago, I spent over £300 for hardware (that was just the case!)

Today, I have spent £64 in total on hardware..... for my two HTPC’s.... (seriously... still cannot believe this!)

On two new Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards!

One of the two ‘old’ boards is going to be part of a pi tablet running Kodi/LE with Estouchy skin mod, with a usb drive for library.

I will be posting pictures of the ‘build’ when I have the screen etc!

I’m hoping also that I can have a photo on this thread with tablet in hand and my sreeen behind me with Kodi running on both!

[tjay260476]

I have bought the 7" touchscreen, so now here are the biggest and smallest screens in my Kodi media players, all run by Pi.... slice anyone?

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Please.... just don't judge me on my Movie tastes! LOL

UPDATE: I have bought a USB thumb drive for portable usage, and just by swapping settings in 'user data' means I can swap from 'local' storage to 'home network' storage for when I want my media on the move!

[tjay260476]

As it's now almost a year being back in the HTPC game, I'd though I'd show off my server's insides. 

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This incarnation of the server (I've had my own for over a decade now) was built over the course of a year. It's specs:
 

• Intel Dual Core Processor 3.30GHz
  
• 20GB RAM
  
• 120GB SSD
  
• 2X4TB HDD (SATA)
  
• 1X8TB HDD (EXTERNAL)
  
• 1X1TB HDD (EXTERNAL)
  
• DVD Drive
  

The last part to be upgraded was the PSU - the last one died, and looking at the date of it, it was 9 years old! It's built out of desktop parts, although it's running Windows Server 2016. The only role installed is Hyper-V. Everything else is being run as a Virtual Machine. I know I'm not running it as Microsoft would allow - it's a home server at the end of the day, and at least consumer grade hardware is cheaper!

So, the Hard Disk run down.
 

• 120GB SSD is the Physical Server HDD for the OS
  
• the 2X4TB are spanned and has the Virtual Machines and Virtual Hard disks on it.
  
• External 1TB Hard Drive is for TV Recordings
  
• External 8TB Hard Drive is backing up my media.
  

The Virtual Machine run down. These are the names of the machines - I know I was so unimaginative!

1. Email Server running Windows Server 2016 (you are allowed 2 VM licences with one product key!) which is running Hmailserver I have been using this since its inception.
   
2. Web server running Ubuntu 16.04 and VestaCP for my personal websites.
   
3. Kodi Server running Windows Server 2016 (File Server role), this has four Virtual hard disks, TV Boxsets (3TB), Movies (3TB), Music (300GB) and Misc (250GB). I have connected the 1TB HDD as a physical disk, which has recorded TV to the VM as well as the 8TB HDD that does the backing up. These can be easily removed in case of failure. My backing up is a hack job but works. I use a tried and tested method of using Synctoy, which copies all the smaller disks to the larger disk. This also has MySQL running for all 5(!) instances of Kodi to run with a shared library.
   
4. TV Server with TVheadend. Kodi Server's recorded TV folder is shared, so that LE and TVH can see it. I have mounted that via Fstab so that TVH can record straight to that. If I want to keep the recording, there is another shared folder to put those in, this can be accessed by the Favourites menu, which I renamed as 'On Demand' under the title of Recorded TV.
   
5. Just a Windows machine. My main computer is a Mac, although just by looking at this list, you can see that I'm platform agnostic! 
   

Webserver backs up to Email Server every morning, this is connected to dropbox, so I can remove old copies easily. Backups happen daily.

The two Pi's are both running on the latest Pi3 boards, as mentioned before are in the Kodi Flirc cases. Both the Projector and the TV just run on one remote (MX3) which has made it all run smoothly.

I know I could do RAID, have a dedicated NAS etc, but where's the fun in that! It's a bit of an unconventional server, bit like it's owner!

I could also go all out on either FOSS or Closed Source, I just choose the right software and operating system for the job in hand, and at present this is keeping maintenance and bug fixes at an all time low.

[guardianin]

VERY cool setup!! What I'm wondering is how is that processor handling so many virtual machines! 

[docwra]

As a network manager myself who does a lot of virtualization, that's a nice little setup you have there.

I'd recommend the free version of Veeam for your backups, but other than that it seems you have it working very well.

What OS is the TVheadend server running on? At the moment I have a silent NUC running my TVheadend but its near the TV cabinet which isn't ideal. I'd also like to publish it to the wider web at some point so I can watch TV on the go.

[tjay260476]

TVH is running on Ubuntu. I have tried that in publishing TVH to the wider web, it works surprisingly well!

I am completely self taught here, so it's quite a boost to have that kind of compliment @docwra thank you.

My first HTPC was a beige box with a tuner, DVD drive and my music collection (I was 18 at the time!) no 10 foot UI - because no-one designed one yet at that time! It was designed that way as I was living in a bedsit at the time. The only videos I had were of singing aliens and dancing babies....!!!

@guardianin I'd thought that regarding VMS with CPU load, but most of the time it's maximum load is 25%, and most of the time it's at 2% 

I do want to add another 16GB RAM and a 4 core CPU at some point though. (only because I can!!)

[tjay260476]

I know it's not entirely Kodi related, but is is how I manage the Server and it's VMs, as the Server is headless, I'd thought I show a couple more photos!

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The left is a Mac Mini (2014) and on the right is a thin client, where I can RDP to the server which is behind me. The thin client runs Wtware, which of course the hardware is a Raspberry Pi 3 in a standard Flirc case!

The fabric around the Projector screen is not permanent, it actually looks better with the lights out, and am thinking of getting black wallpaper. The screen was a cheap one from Amazon (£15) again, didn't want anything permanent just yet.

The PJ was a cheap Chinese model off Amazon, I took care in getting the right native resolution (1280x800) and Lumens. It has paid off and does look good. It is really only a bedroom setup, so didn't want to spend too much if it went horribly wrong. 

I will be upgrading the PJ and screen in the near future, but for now it does it's job. At the end of the day it's my bedroom TV, which was only £20 more expensive than a 22" smart TV! (no brainer really) 

The 5.1 system is a Trust PC speaker system connected to a C-media USB sound card (tried a Soundblaster card but wouldn't play ball!) The shelves I got from Amazon which are meant to hold books, but these do the job.

Oh, lastly the large speakers are my Mac's speakers, which of course are powered by the amp that sits in the cabinet.