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Tiger.Bomb posted:As for hardware, I just bought a TS140 which gets recommended a lot, but it only has room for three drives. My router is in the living room, so I was hoping to get something that I could hide in the entertainment center or behind the TV. But everything I look at is bigger that I'd like. That ThinkServer looks nice, but I would need to hide it somewhere. :-/ Or I can run a server over WiFi! I still have some life in my current cobbled together setup, so I'm just exploring options for now.
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May 9, 2015 05:41
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Uthor posted:My router is in the living room, so I was hoping to get something that I could hide in the entertainment center or behind the TV. But everything I look at is bigger that I'd like. You don't want to run a file server on wifi. I was in the same boat, but ditched it. While researching, though, I did find a few drives taht would fit in my centre. I needed one that was under 6" wide/thick, which really limited the number of 3.5" bays. Note that you can buy 'convertes' that turn the 5" CD bays into 3.5" bays to add more.
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May 9, 2015 08:06
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Definitely don't put a server on WiFi. Don't put anything stationary on WiFi, really. If it can be wired it should be wired, wireless is for portable devices and a last resort for something that simply can't be wired. Wireless device manufactures are hilarious with their performance claims. "AC3200" devices claim 3.2gbit/sec capacity, but that's spread across three different channels which can not be used for a single data transfer. In the real world the fastest actual transfer speeds you can get are in the 700mbit/sec range and even that's in ideal conditions where there's only one device communicating with the access point per channel. Any other devices on the network will also be taking their turns and cutting your usable bandwidth down significantly. Plus you don't want your server to be able to be taken down by the neighbor's microwave, do you? Gigabit ethernet on the other hand can deliver pretty much full line rate. I get 900-950 megabits per second to/from my home server at all times, no matter what anyone else on the network is doing (unless they're also accessing the server and thus sharing it's single gigabit link to the switch, and on that note I really need to get around to setting up bonding...). --- On an entirely different topic, are any of you aware of a configuration option or plugin for Kodi which would make the "Recently Added" view act like a TiVo where it groups together multiple entries from the same show? I've had a few times where I inadvertently missed an episode of something because enough new stuff had come in that the last unwatched episode fell off the list. The "In progress" show view is kind of close, but not really what I'm looking for.
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May 9, 2015 18:10
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I was joking about using wifi... File transfers from my desktop max out at about 5 MB/sec, usually average at 2.5 if I'm using the network for anything else. I think uploading to Crashplan goes at about 1 MB/sec.
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May 9, 2015 18:47
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So I originally posted this in the Android tablet thread, but I think it may fit better here (I got Thermopyle's permission on the crosspost). Basically I really wanted an HTPC, but I couldn't afford it, so I tried to make due with what I had. I made an HTPC out of an Android tablet I already had. With an array of apps it's nearly as functional as an HTPC (especially with Team Viewer or RDP), but without any of the noise. I haven't tested, but it's likely cheaper to run as well, since it's powered by a micro-usb charger as opposed to a big PSU. Anyway here's an intro that goes into it more: http://www.hometheatertablet.com/htt-intro-and-guides/ and here's a link directly to the guide: http://www.hometheatertablet.com/htt-guides/android-htpc-kodi-htt-guide/ I used an Android tablet, but I'd be willing to bet that this could be done with a jailbroken IOS device, a Windows tablet, or something like Ubuntu Touch. A powerful phone may even work. I'll write guides for most/all of these in the future if the site is useful. Anyway I hope that this idea/guide can be of some use for people who wanted an HTPC like myself, but haven't found a way to make a feasible. A lot of the costs can be cut if you use internal memory instead of an external HDD, etc. Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 19:41 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 19:38
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^ A Fire TV Stick is a really cheap way to put Kodi on pretty much anything with a HDMI input. It's a bit slow in the UI sometimes but I haven't found anything in my collection that it won't play. It doesn't support external storage though so you need a network share of some kind (which can just be a share from your normal computer) or you're limited to it's 4 (?) GB of onboard storage. Most of the "Android Console" type devices like the full Fire TV, Google TV, and such can handle USB drives though.
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May 9, 2015 20:08
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wolrah posted:^ A Fire TV Stick is a really cheap way to put Kodi on pretty much anything with a HDMI input. It's a bit slow in the UI sometimes but I haven't found anything in my collection that it won't play. Hm alright I'd like to write some guides up on these too then. For my build I did consider Roku as well which I think has Kodi support? But I had a tablet and I liked the idea of not having to keep my gaming PC on all the time. As far as a network share with a Fire TV stick: would that Blu Ray quality content without loss? Originally I was using a wireless HDMI, but there was definitely some compression being done. I want to do a sort of tiered approach to this where there's an extreme budget option (Rasberry PI/Fire Stick?), a mid-tier option (maybe generic tablet), etc. One of the things an HTPC has that I would find incredibly useful compared to a tablet is an RSYNC option. There may be an app, but I haven't see a promising one yet. I would love it if I could have it pull media from my server without having to do it over FTP manually, or connecting the external HDD to my main PC or something to transfer files over. How do you sync media on an HTPC generally? Do you download directly onto it? Knyteguy fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 20:57
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Knyteguy posted:Hm alright I'd like to write some guides up on these too then. quote:For my build I did consider Roku as well which I think has Kodi support? quote:As far as a network share with a Fire TV stick: would that Blu Ray quality content without loss? Originally I was using a wireless HDMI, but there was definitely some compression being done. quote:One of the things an HTPC has that I would find incredibly useful compared to a tablet is an RSYNC option. There may be an app, but I haven't see a promising one yet. I would love it if I could have it pull media from my server without having to do it over FTP manually, or connecting the external HDD to my main PC or something to transfer files over. How do you sync media on an HTPC generally? Do you download directly onto it? I have a homebuilt file server which runs the old SAB/Sickbeard/CouchPotato combination to manage my TV and movies. It exposes a file share that all my Kodi clients access, and I've set up Kodi to store its database in a MySQL instance running on the server so the libraries are all automatically the same. No syncing required, but it's certainly not the easiest. Supposedly modern builds of Kodi can sync the library via UPnP so you just need to set one up as the master and have any other clients look at that, but what I have going works for me so I haven't messed with it.
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May 9, 2015 21:23
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wolrah posted:Not as far as I'm aware, to my knowledge Kodi only supports Win/Mac/Linux and Android/iOS. All the other platforms (AppleTV, Raspberry Pi) are variants of those. I don't know which versions have it but, with the one I have, you can access Kodi's upnp through the 'Roku Media Player' app. Only downside is navigation isn't the best and files with DTS require a receiver to pass the audio through. Knyteguy posted:As far as a network share with a Fire TV stick: would that Blu Ray quality content without loss? Originally I was using a wireless HDMI, but there was definitely some compression being done. Kodi doesn't transcode or compress. It's direct play streaming. Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 22:38 on May 9, 2015 |
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May 9, 2015 22:36
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Kodi getting transcoding and nvidia gamestream eventually... http://kodi.tv/kodi-community-may-2015/
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May 9, 2015 23:32
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Call Me Charlie posted:I don't know which versions have it but, with the one I have, you can access Kodi's upnp through the 'Roku Media Player' app. Only downside is navigation isn't the best and files with DTS require a receiver to pass the audio through. Ah yea, I was talking about where you can actually run Kodi. Its UPnP server should be able to work with basically any UPnP client. Xbox 360/One, PS3/4, TVs, all kinds of things. I know the Xbox client is a bit stupid about standards and often stops working with open source servers without any obvious reason, but that's Microsoft.
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May 9, 2015 23:44
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Don Lapre posted:Kodi getting transcoding and nvidia gamestream eventually... Sweet. There are some cool things I want to do with game stream. Having it integrated with Kodi would just be all the better. wolrah posted:Fortunately they're just skinned Android devices, so the only tricky part is sideloading the APK. No rooting or anything required. Ah, yes I was mostly talking about the wireless transfer capabilities. That sounds like a great idea. I might try it with a Beaglebone Black instead of a Fire since I have one around. It'd be a fun project if nothing else. Now if I wonder if I could get away with powering a Blu Ray drive with one of these setups... I'd love to free up some clutter on my media stand. Thanks for your input.
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May 10, 2015 03:59
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Knyteguy posted:Now if I wonder if I could get away with powering a Blu Ray drive with one of these setups... I'd love to free up some clutter on my media stand. Kodi should happily see and use an external drive on anything with a USB port and it will play Blurays, but the DRM is the "fun" part. Kodi 14 does not support encrypted discs at all, but version 15 (now in beta) can use VLC's libaacs to decrypt discs for which you have a key. Getting the key files is up to the user, so it's still not anywhere close to as friendly as the DVD support. Low-effort playback of commercial Blurays is likely to be basically limited to appliances and Windows machines running commercial playback software for a while. Beaglebone Black is generally a stronger platform than the original RPi, but unfortunately it can't do 1080p for some reason so it's not an ideal HTPC device. I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work for anything up to it's 1280x1024 limit though.
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May 10, 2015 04:56
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Flirc for $16 amazon prime http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BB0ETW8...ourceId=1441473
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May 10, 2015 19:42
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I'm planning to repurpose my living room HTPC as a central server and PVR, with small client machines attached to individual TVs. What would folks recommend for the clients? From what I've been able to find thus far, the newest Raspberry Pi is still underpowered for video, and I'm having trouble finding a reasonably up-to-date build guide.
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May 11, 2015 20:08
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danno posted:I'm planning to repurpose my living room HTPC as a central server and PVR, with small client machines attached to individual TVs. What would folks recommend for the clients? From what I've been able to find thus far, the newest Raspberry Pi is still underpowered for video, and I'm having trouble finding a reasonably up-to-date build guide. It depends on what you want to do with them. Rokus are pretty good if you're just going to use Plex or whatever. Personally I'm partial to the Fire TV since it can do local playback if necessary through Kodi or just stream poo poo.
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May 11, 2015 20:11
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danno posted:I'm planning to repurpose my living room HTPC as a central server and PVR, with small client machines attached to individual TVs. What would folks recommend for the clients? From what I've been able to find thus far, the newest Raspberry Pi is still underpowered for video, and I'm having trouble finding a reasonably up-to-date build guide. Completely depends on what PVR solution you are going to use. You may want to look at the Silicondust DVR poo poo they have coming out and see what they are writing clients for.
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May 11, 2015 20:27
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From what I've seen online, a Pi should be fine for HD h.264. Real-life friends tell me it does just fine for them. So far I'm only using mine for SD video with the MPEG-2 license key installed and it's been quite good at that. I'd say it's a hair slower than the Windows 8.1 NUC I have in a different room, but given that it's 1/10 the price and only milliseconds laggier, I'm quite happy with the purchase.
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May 11, 2015 22:04
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Don Lapre posted:Completely depends on what PVR solution you are going to use. I was thinking MythTV with a Kodi frontend since the support for my tuner card is pretty good. I've looked at Plex but am not seeing much by way of live PVR support there, more just accessing the library of recordings you have. Edit: Or maybe a CuBox and Tvheadend? danno fucked around with this message at 16:36 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 04:14
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Newegg has a Zotac CI320 Nano for $189.99 - fanless, Celeron N2930, 2 GB RAM, 64 SSD and Windows 8.1 w/ Bing http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883218044
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May 12, 2015 18:58
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This looks interesting. http://lifehacker.com/the-mohu-channels-is-a-streaming-box-that-works-seamles-1704059874
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May 13, 2015 18:20
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I was looking at a PI but it seems that handling a shitload of torrents plus playing video might not be feasible. If I were to build a htpc for video playback/torrenting would I see a lot of benefits running linux? I'm on OS X now but used windows for years.
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May 23, 2015 00:38
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Maybe look into a refurbished Mac Mini if you want to run OS X on it? Otherwise, you could shop for an Intel NUC I suppose. (Ignore me, I know nothing about building or provisioning a proper HTPC.)
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May 23, 2015 02:43
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I use a NUC and think it's great. For HTPC purposes the Celeron ones are plenty powerful, overkill even. I store all my media on a PC in another room so I don't have to worry about hard drive noise.
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May 23, 2015 12:32
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TomR posted:I use a NUC and think it's great. For HTPC purposes the Celeron ones are plenty powerful, overkill even. I store all my media on a PC in another room so I don't have to worry about hard drive noise. I've been looking at NuCs lately as an option for an HTPC that can also do game emulation. Do y'all think it'd be worth it to make the upgrade to an i3 NuC or might there be better alternatives?
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May 25, 2015 20:53
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I can play MAME and SNES with my celeron NUC. I haven't tried Dolphin with it. I've been surprised at how powerful this computer is.
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May 25, 2015 23:26
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Does the current Zotac line-up not come with remotes anymore? My trusty Zotac AD-10 came with a remote that worked out of the box with OpenElec, and I'm now thinking of building another HTPC, but would prefer a remote-bundled option.
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May 26, 2015 01:45
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parsleyc posted:Does the current Zotac line-up not come with remotes anymore? Flircs drop down to $15 a lot these days. http://www.amazon.com/FLIRC-Universal-Control-Receiver-Centers/dp/B00BB0ETW8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432601348&sr=8-1&keywords=Flirc It works like magic!
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May 26, 2015 01:49
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Agreed just buy a flirc
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May 26, 2015 02:14
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Wtf Intel, a $25 price hike if you want a slim NUC without 2.5" HDD support?
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May 26, 2015 05:14
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Argh, my Zotac AD12 appears to have died and the warranty was only 1 year so I can't RMA it. Judging from a brief Google search this looks like a common issue. Since I was just using it to run OpenELEC, is the best replacement an Intel NUC or an Amazon Fire TV, or something else?
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May 27, 2015 03:30
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NoDamage posted:Argh, my Zotac AD12 appears to have died and the warranty was only 1 year so I can't RMA it. Judging from a brief Google search this looks like a common issue. Chromebox /w openelec Also test your power supply with a multimeter
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May 27, 2015 03:59
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I finally got a good setup, one input which is my big gripe. I have NUC that runs plex and sickbeard, a NAS, a HDHomeRun Prime (for OTA channels), and to tie it all together I just got the NVIDIA Shield Android TV. With the HDHomeRun App/Live Channels app I can seamless switch from live TV to Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have chromecast abilities for when people are over and want to play youtubes. Everything is working great, it ended up being a really ideal solution where I don't have to switch inputs and is easy to use.
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May 29, 2015 22:18
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I have all socket 1155 boards on my house. My photo editing rig used to run a 3570k, until I found a Xeon 1230v2 for $185 from Micro Center. Replaced the 3570k with the new Xeon and moved the 3570k into my HTPC to replace a Celeron G1630. Now my HTPC is futureproofed until the successor to 4k is out. Also, kill a watt says the same system with a G1630 sipped 32 watts at idle, while the 3570k takes about 48 watts. Not bad at all considering it’s 3-4x faster.
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May 30, 2015 00:02
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5436 posted:I finally got a good setup, one input which is my big gripe. I have NUC that runs plex and sickbeard, a NAS, a HDHomeRun Prime (for OTA channels), and to tie it all together I just got the NVIDIA Shield Android TV. With the HDHomeRun App/Live Channels app I can seamless switch from live TV to Netflix, Hulu, etc, and have chromecast abilities for when people are over and want to play youtubes. Everything is working great, it ended up being a really ideal solution where I don't have to switch inputs and is easy to use. This is what I hoped to get out of the Nexus Player, but Asus decided to save $2 a unit by not supporting MPEG2.
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May 30, 2015 00:35
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TheScott2K posted:This is what I hoped to get out of the Nexus Player, but Asus decided to save $2 a unit by not supporting MPEG2. Get the shield android tv. It's freakishly fast and responsive and everything works.
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May 30, 2015 04:05
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Is http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-Mini-Barebones-System-ZBOX-BI320-U/dp/B00LJEFR68 still a decent deal if I don't want a nuc? I already have an ssd to throw in, and 4 GB memory is only $33.
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May 30, 2015 04:09
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TheScott2K posted:This is what I hoped to get out of the Nexus Player, but Asus decided to save $2 a unit by not supporting MPEG2. The new Android M unlocks support for MPEG2 with the Nexus Player. http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-player/general/confirmed-hardware-mpeg2-decoder-t3121194
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May 30, 2015 07:41
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5436 posted:Get the shield android tv. It's freakishly fast and responsive and everything works. Do you have the 16GB, or 500GB model? I'm considering replacing my old Atom/Ion XBMC homebrew with something a bit more wife-friendly, and if this will do Kodi/Hulu/Netflix it looks like a winner. All my media/database is centralized on a NAS, and we cut the cable a few years ago. I was considering a Fire TV, which is about 1/2-1/3 the price, but the Shield looks more capable, and not much more than rolling my own mini-pc.
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May 30, 2015 18:55
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5436 posted:Get the shield android tv. It's freakishly fast and responsive and everything works. I don't care enough about not switching inputs in the bedroom to spend $200. I think I'll just head back to the chapel and light a candle for for MPEG2 to magically start working in the NP someday. wolfbiker posted:The new Android M unlocks support for MPEG2 with the Nexus Player. Hey, it worked!
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May 30, 2015 20:00
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