Raz0r Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Hi All, After finally getting the family room in line with a new HT set up, I am now on to the next part, a home theater server. I want a place to store movies, music and digital content and be able to play it on the new set up. Curious what every one uses as the base software for their set up's. I have looked at Plex and XBMC as the main two as they seem to be the leaders in "free" HT software. I am not opposed to paying for software if there is a good commercial software available. I have loads of computers that I can use as I have been a IT Architect for 20 years now, so the PC part is no concern. So way in with what you have used, liked, not liked, or if there is a better option please let me know that as well. As always, that you to this community for the great help and support!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swapface Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 (edited) Okay, I have spent many many hours in this world but am by no means a expert but I can share my experience. I have tried about all of the free options out there. Hopefully this is not more than you want to know but here goes. I settled on XBMC which is now called KODI. I have two computers connected to my HT. One Windows 8 machine with three OTA turners to watch and record broadcast TV using MCE and serverWMC (allows me to stream live TV to all my other XBMC machines). Used mostly for sports. The other much smaller machine is running OpenELEC.( OpenELEC is basically a XBMC imbedded on a very small Linux distribution. So all it does is XBMC and it does it very well and it is quite lean and fast and is compatible with every audio and video format you can throw at it. I rip and store all my Blurays, DVD etc on a drive connected to the OpenELEC machine. I also download many of the broadcast TV shows I like to watch with the commercials stripped out of them from using the SABNZBD suite. One of the many add-ons available for XBMC. XBMC excels at providing a great visual environment. It automatically download art to support you TV and Movies. Its just magic. I have XBMC installed on several other computers on my network and can watch live and recorded TV from anywhere in the house using a shared library. So, regardless of what PC I use to watch a TV show the library gets updated on all of the PCs in my home. In my bedroom I have a Raspberry PI running OpenELEC. You can buy them for $35 and it will stream 1080p contentTV from my main HT OpenELEC machine and output to HDMI to my TV. I could go on but this should get you started. Hope this helps. Edited September 27, 2014 by swapface 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NBPK402 Posted September 27, 2014 Share Posted September 27, 2014 Similar to my setup too... I have a windows i3NUC for my HA server, A i3NUC for my media server (running OpenElec/XBMC), and a NAS running UnRaid with all my media stored on it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldred Posted September 28, 2014 Share Posted September 28, 2014 I run windows 7 ...And Media Browser 3 server with clients. I run 2 home theater Pc's in different rooms with the server being in the basement. Love the way it works...all movies/music/everything plays on every PC/ tablet /cell phone in the house. They even got their own player Media Browser Theater which is nice ...but does a better job of interfacing with windows 8 but does work with windows 7. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tromprof Posted September 28, 2014 Share Posted September 28, 2014 JRiver Media Center on my computers. I have one main computer that is backed up to an NAS that all the other machines stream from. Plays everything and has a number of nice audio and video tools. It is not free however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raz0r Posted September 28, 2014 Author Share Posted September 28, 2014 So for those of you running NAS, what NAS do you use? Does your media live on the NAS as its primary residence, or is it backed up to the NAS and resides on the HT computer? As I am an IT nerd by profession and choice, I have a complete network set up at home with network shares and the bandwidth to handle the videos playing remote. So I am just curious what the experience has been with the software? With XBMC, Media Browser, or JMedia, can you rip your DVD's/ Blu-ray's into them? Meaning, does that software directly rip the disc or are you using something like Tunebite to rip the disc? If it is the latter, then how does the software know what the movie is? Do you tell it the movie that you are adding to the library? I want to be able to take all of our movies and put them into a digital library so I don't have to worry about the discs, and make it easier for the family when they want to watch something. Lastly, how do you control the different softwares? Do you use a keyboard and mouse like a regular PC or can you interface it with a remote? Wondering if I can make a home Netflix-type set up in the HT. Thank you all for the information and ideas. It is much appreciated and, in this area, you can never give me too much info or go to deep !! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derrickdj1 Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 (edited) I use the Western Digital My Book Live external, small hard driver, Samsug smart TV, and Samsung smart BDP for my needs. I like it since it is smiple, no extra software or hardware. Edited September 29, 2014 by derrickdj1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NBPK402 Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 So for those of you running NAS, what NAS do you use? Does your media live on the NAS as its primary residence, or is it backed up to the NAS and resides on the HT computer? As I am an IT nerd by profession and choice, I have a complete network set up at home with network shares and the bandwidth to handle the videos playing remote. So I am just curious what the experience has been with the software? With XBMC, Media Browser, or JMedia, can you rip your DVD's/ Blu-ray's into them? Meaning, does that software directly rip the disc or are you using something like Tunebite to rip the disc? If it is the latter, then how does the software know what the movie is? Do you tell it the movie that you are adding to the library? I want to be able to take all of our movies and put them into a digital library so I don't have to worry about the discs, and make it easier for the family when they want to watch something. Lastly, how do you control the different softwares? Do you use a keyboard and mouse like a regular PC or can you interface it with a remote? Wondering if I can make a home Netflix-type set up in the HT. Thank you all for the information and ideas. It is much appreciated and, in this area, you can never give me too much info or go to deep !! I run UnRaid for my NAS, and it is a separate PC. I use OpenElec/XBMC for my media server (separate i3 NUC), and sometimes JRiver (JRiver is used when I want to use my PC (another i3NUC) for viewing.. I rip my media with AnyDVD, and DVDFab on my Win 7 PC (the one with JRiver). I am currently controlling via separate wireless keyboards. I use a full size one for my PC, and I use this one for my Media PC. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swapface Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I too am a IT dude. You have several remote options with XBMC. I use a combination of IR USB plugged into the PC and then a Harmony remote. I also use Yatse which is a Android app which operates like a remote via your phone on your wireless network to XBMC. You can have all your XBMC machines in the one remote application. Its pretty sweet. There are many ways to skin the cat when it comes to delivering media in the home. I personally don't use a NAS but I have one set up for my parents that they use for storing and delivering media to XBMC. He has 4 2TB drives in it. Two store the media and the other two are backups of the first two. I chose not to go with any complex RAID settings as recovery can be tough. I just mirror the drives so he always has a online backup ready in case one if the drives fail. of My advice would be to experiment some and see which ones work for you. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTT Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 (edited) It seems like every year I spend time researching new HT software to see what is best. Right now, after trying many different options, I came to the conclusion that XBMC gave me the best overall experience. It has a great list of features along with some great UI. The only down side, if you're not an IT guy (I am) it can be more difficult to setup than a lot of other programs. I also like using MyMovies for managing meta-data, but use XBMC as my interface. I also don't use NAS. Primarily because I use the PC for much more than just media. I have about 10tb of drives with 120gbs of SSD. Here's the case I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811204037 and am really happy with for the price I paid. Edited September 29, 2014 by FTT Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swapface Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 Similar to my setup too... I have a windows i3NUC for my HA server, A i3NUC for my media server (running OpenElec/XBMC), and a NAS running UnRaid with all my media stored on it. ellisr - how do you like the NUCs? I may be looking to upgrade in the near future so I would be interested in your opinion of them. Living here in Intel land I should have one LOL. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NBPK402 Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 Similar to my setup too... I have a windows i3NUC for my HA server, A i3NUC for my media server (running OpenElec/XBMC), and a NAS running UnRaid with all my media stored on it. ellisr - how do you like the NUCs? I may be looking to upgrade in the near future so I would be interested in your opinion of them. Living here in Intel land I should have one LOL. I like mine so much I have 2 i3 NUCs, and a Celeron one too. My only complaint is they do run warm and must be in a ventilated location. They run dead silent though which is a big plus for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swapface Posted October 2, 2014 Share Posted October 2, 2014 Similar to my setup too... I have a windows i3NUC for my HA server, A i3NUC for my media server (running OpenElec/XBMC), and a NAS running UnRaid with all my media stored on it. ellisr - how do you like the NUCs? I may be looking to upgrade in the near future so I would be interested in your opinion of them. Living here in Intel land I should have one LOL. I like mine so much I have 2 i3 NUCs, and a Celeron one too. My only complaint is they do run warm and must be in a ventilated location. They run dead silent though which is a big plus for me. If you need something to only stream and runs cheap and cool you might want to look to the PI. For streaming only it works like a champ as long as you are using a hard wired Ethernet connection. I do see a NUC in my future for my main OpenElec box. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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