[NA] DIY home media server

CJones

CJones

Final Approach
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uHaveNoIdea
We have officially kicked the cable habit for almost a year now. Believe it or not, you can waste just as much time with 12 channels as you can with 1200.

I'd like to bump up and set up a home media server. We currently have two TVs with another one to be added this winter if I stumble onto a killer deal. I would like to be able to rip and play dvds/music/downloaded movies, etc. from a central server to any of the TVs.

Here's what I am thinking. I have a desktop PC that I haven't even booted up in a couple of years. I can fire it back up, wipe it, install clean OS, and then install Plex Media Center (www.plexapp.com). It's free and runs on Windows or Linux. Then get a Roku 2 XS (www.roku.com) box for each TV which will 1.) Allow me to stream Netflix/Hulu/etc. to the TV without having to hook up the laptop and 2.) Allow me to connect to the Plex Media Center where my 'local' content resides.

Has anyone had any experience with this setup? Any suggestions for a better setup?

As an added bonus, I could install a TV receiver PCI card in the 'server' which would allow me to record 'broadcast' TV just like the cable/satellite DVRs. This is where I'm fuzzy. Does anyone have any experience with particular cards and/or software to facilitate recording live TV?

Any other suggestions on a setup like I've described?
 
I built a media center using Snapstream back in 2005. Hauppauge PVR-500 tuner card. It won't do OTA HDTV. That's what you want; and a good aerial.
 
Jaybird180 said:
I built a media center using Snapstream back in 2005. Hauppauge PVR-500 tuner card. It won't do OTA HDTV. That's what you want; and a good aerial.
Click to expand...

That's the kicker - most of the cards that I've found so far say they are for Analog signal. I haven't found anything that does OTA HDTV yet - but I admit I haven't look terribly hard yet. I wanted to check to see if anyone has done it successfully before I try to reinvent the wheel.
 
CJones said:
We have officially kicked the cable habit for almost a year now. . . . .Then get a Roku 2 XS (www.roku.com) box for each TV which will 1.) Allow me to stream Netflix/Hulu/etc. to the TV without having to hook up the laptop
Click to expand...

Let me translate:

"Hi, I'm Jonesey and I'm an alcoholic. It's been one year since I've had any hard liquor. Nothing but a case of beer every day and boy am I proud of myself!"

:lol:
 
I repurposed an old laptop. Installed XBMCUbuntu on it. You can do anything you want with it, and no need for any additional hardware/software for the most part.

I use an android based remote controller on my smart phone to control it, and use WOL to turn it on. I download most of the shows I want to watch, or, you can use one of the many, many plugins available to stream live tv from it.

For example, I get to see every Lobos game televised from North Carolina. This year, that doesn't mean much because a lot of the cames are on CSTV and ESPN, but last year....any idea how difficult it is to get The MTN on the east coast?

There's a justin.tv plugin, there's a plugin for TheFirstRow.eu, and there's a plugin for most things.

In short XBMC is the ****.

My setup:

Old ass HP laptop, with HDMI output connected to the TV. I have a 1TB USB drive for media storage attached to it, which I set up SMB shares on so that I can download from any computer in the house and put the files directly on it.

You can buy a Roku or something, but there's no need. You're a nerd like me, so I guarantee you that you have an old PC or laptop lying around that you can repurpose.


edit: I see you mentioned PLEX in your OP. I would avoid it. It just adds another layer of complexity that really isn't needed. Its based on XBMC. Instead, run one XBMC and share the Library using Samba, then from each of the other PCs you put elsewhere to run XBMC as well, use the shared library.
 
My current setup:

Tuners
HD Homerun
Hauppauge Collosus

Software
Server: Media Portal
TVServerXBMC (Media Portal plugin for XBMC)
Schedules Direct (Subscription for EPG + the Media Portal Plugin)
PlayOn (Allows viewing of Netflix, Amazon VOD, Hulu, ESPN, Fox, etc...)
IR Server Suite (Changes channels on the DirecTV box via the network, interfacing with the dtvTune.zip exe)

Clients: XBMC (Version 12 beta with PVR support)
Running Windows 7 on the clients. I used Linux at first, but switched to Windows so I could make use of the ability of the Windows XBMC Media Portal plugin to read the timeshift buffer on the Media Portal server directly. The Linux version relies on transcoding currently, which isn't as fast or as seamless.

Client Hardware
Foxconn NTA350
Azend Remote

After switching over to the above from a SageTV configuration, I have to say that this setup has been awesome; even my wife loves it. Is it painfully easy to setup? No. In particular, getting the DirecTV channel changing to work over the network and interfacing that with Media Portal took a little bit of doing. It was absolutely worth the setup time now that it's done however, and it's been rock-solid.

The main cons are that the media browsing of things like Netflix and Hulu doesn't look as nice as it does on something like Boxee or Roku, since it's basically just using UPNP to connect to the PlayOn service, but the streaming itself has worked great (that said, the XBMC interface itself is beautiful and very easy to navigate). Also, the EPG timeline on the XBMC client software isn't color coded, making it a little difficult to browse for movies or sports at a glance. You do have the ability to group channels on the Media Portal backend, however, so you could make a "Sports" group that had all the ESPN channels, for example.
 
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Oh, and btw, its worth your while to install the 1channel plugin for xbmc. Almost never have to download anything ever again.
 
I'm running SageTV on FreeBSD with 3 HDHomeRun boxes tuning OTA. I've currently got 1.7TB of recordings and another 4TB of BD and DVD rips in the library. I use Sage HD200 extender boxes on each TV for playback. Works great! I'm starting to look around at what I'll replace SageTV with when things quit working (SageTV was bought by Google and no longer for sale, or actively developed).
 
So out of the setups that you guys are running, what is the most 'user friendly'? The reason I liked the PLEX/Roku setup was that it provided a nice easy-to-use menu interface so my wife doesn't get frustrated and throw the remote through the TV. She has a short fuse for stuff not working like she thinks it should (especially with a 1-year old crawling around under her feet). I currently have Netflix set up to stream through the PS3, and "changing inputs on the TV then handling the PS3 controller to get Netflix going" is about as far as I want to push the 'complexity' of the setup.

If it were just me, I could hack together some sort of simple file sharing, etc. and be done with it, but I need something easy to use.
 
CJones said:
So out of the setups that you guys are running, what is the most 'user friendly'? The reason I liked the PLEX/Roku setup was that it provided a nice easy-to-use menu interface so my wife doesn't get frustrated and throw the remote through the TV. She has a short fuse for stuff not working like she thinks it should (especially with a 1-year old crawling around under her feet). I currently have Netflix set up to stream through the PS3, and "changing inputs on the TV then handling the PS3 controller to get Netflix going" is about as far as I want to push the 'complexity' of the setup.

If it were just me, I could hack together some sort of simple file sharing, etc. and be done with it, but I need something easy to use.
Click to expand...

If you want, when I get home today, I'll throw together a recording of how it actually works so you can see whether its simple enough.
 
Here's XBMC in action, live from my living room, with no tuner needed


Apologies - due to a severe blood infection I am fighting right now, I'm severely drugged up, and the heavy breathing and lazy voice is due to how high I am presently on Vicodin.
 
Argh. I have my rig setup with wmc7 and hdhomerun, with wmc terminals sprayed around and it was fine. Now, I have that itch to tinker again. Any good guides you followed for media portal and xbmc clients?

I do detest that wmc likes to wake up at 2:15 am to grab updates and can't manage to put itself back to sleep, especially after windows update managed to overwrite my presence for 2 pm.
 
masloki said:
Argh. I have my rig setup with wmc7 and hdhomerun, with wmc terminals sprayed around and it was fine. Now, I have that itch to tinker again. Any good guides you followed for media portal and xbmc clients?

I do detest that wmc likes to wake up at 2:15 am to grab updates and can't manage to put itself back to sleep, especially after windows update managed to overwrite my presence for 2 pm.
Click to expand...

There's really only a few steps:

1. Download XBMCbuntu image and burn to CD from http://xbmc.org/download/
2. Boot off the CD and install
3. Replace the librtmp library to allow streaming
4. Enjoy - this is where you install any additional plugins or whatnot you want.
 
SkyHog said:
Here's XBMC in action, live from my living room, with no tuner needed

Apologies - due to a severe blood infection I am fighting right now, I'm severely drugged up, and the heavy breathing and lazy voice is due to how high I am presently on Vicodin.
Click to expand...


Excellent! Thanks for making the video demo.

The only downside I see with that setup is that I would need a PC of some sort at each TV. I would like to find a way to have a smaller device at each TV that streams from a central server. Of course, I saw that they had support for Raspberry Pi, so maybe that could be used as the 'at TV' device that gets its media from a central server. Hmmm...
 
For what it's worth, I don't store any media on the XBMC clients themselves, I pull it all from the server running Media Portal via PlayOn or shared folders. This includes recorded shows, DVDs and my music library; works great. The Raspberry Pi seems like a neat device...might have to tinker with that in one of the guest bedrooms.
 
CJones said:
Excellent! Thanks for making the video demo.

The only downside I see with that setup is that I would need a PC of some sort at each TV. I would like to find a way to have a smaller device at each TV that streams from a central server. Of course, I saw that they had support for Raspberry Pi, so maybe that could be used as the 'at TV' device that gets its media from a central server. Hmmm...
Click to expand...

You could get the Raspberry Pi or even a couple of tiny little netbooks and accomplish the same thing, but I've never tried it so I can't speak to how well it'd work.

But I can say that I do not miss having pay-for television service. Getting everything for free just feels right :)
 
SkyHog said:
But I can say that I do not miss having pay-for television service. Getting everything for free just feels right :)
Click to expand...

Preaching to the choir. We still watch everything we want without the $xxx price tag every month. If I can get it all consolidated to one device (currently PS3 for Netflix, Hulu for one show, NBC for another show, CBS for another show, etc. etc.) without having to eat up my laptop, we'll be all set. If I can add DVD's to the mix, that will be an added bonus!
 
So after doing a little research and performing some mind exercises, I'm leaning toward installing XBMC on a Raspberry Pi as the GUI for the at-TV device and setting up my old desktop PC as a Linux file/media server that the XBMC devices can connect to. If I can pull it off, I would have a whopping TOTAL cost of $45 (Device + power supply) per TV.

Once I get the media sharing itself working, then I can work on adding recording OTA to the Linux server.

Could be a fun Christmas!
 
Good luck on the Pi; still waiting for mine...
 
SCCutler said:
Good luck on the Pi; still waiting for mine...
Click to expand...

One website I looked at ordering from said there was a shipment due to go out Dec 10 and another shipment due to go out on Dec 28.
 
SkyHog said:
Here's XBMC in action, live from my living room, with no tuner needed


Apologies - due to a severe blood infection I am fighting right now, I'm severely drugged up, and the heavy breathing and lazy voice is due to how high I am presently on Vicodin.
Click to expand...

I saw Glee in there. Yellow card against your man-card. ;)
 
madtrader said:
Me too. I ordered the B model. I got an e-mail saying it's gonna come with 512MB of RAM now. I've been waiting about 3 months for it, though.
Click to expand...

I borrowed a Pi and tried it last night.

There seems to be 3 versions for the Pi, I loaded this one

http://www.raspbmc.com/

Very easy to load the Memory card from a windows machine.
After you load the memory card, you install it in the Pi and turn it on then wait at least 30 minutes while it does its thing.
This version of XMBC for the Pi is slow and it reboots alot. I did manage to watch 1 You tube video using the addon that comes with XMBC.
I tried 2 addons that seem to be popular, 1channel and icefilms.
Anytime I tried to do anything with 1channel it rebooted the Pi.
Icefilms was usable but anything I tried to watch was slow to load and the video and audio was jumpy.
I don't know how well it works with a media server because I don't have one.

greg
 
river_rat said:
I borrowed a Pi and tried it last night.

There seems to be 3 versions for the Pi, I loaded this one

http://www.raspbmc.com/

Very easy to load the Memory card from a windows machine.
After you load the memory card, you install it in the Pi and turn it on then wait at least 30 minutes while it does its thing.
This version of XMBC for the Pi is slow and it reboots alot. I did manage to watch 1 You tube video using the addon that comes with XMBC.
I tried 2 addons that seem to be popular, 1channel and icefilms.
Anytime I tried to do anything with 1channel it rebooted the Pi.
Icefilms was usable but anything I tried to watch was slow to load and the video and audio was jumpy.
I don't know how well it works with a media server because I don't have one.

greg
Click to expand...

Interesting. Do you know which version of the Pi you had - was it the 256MB or 512MB version?
 
river_rat said:
After you load the memory card, you install it in the Pi and turn it on then wait at least 30 minutes while it does its thing.
Click to expand...

30 minutes? What's it doing, ordering out for pizza?

Seems like they could create a bootable image that's pre-loaded for the Pi hardware... booting that should take 2 minutes, not 30.
 
denverpilot said:
30 minutes? What's it doing, ordering out for pizza?

Seems like they could create a bootable image that's pre-loaded for the Pi hardware... booting that should take 2 minutes, not 30.
Click to expand...

That's the first time, after that it boots in under a minute.
 
river_rat said:
That's the first time, after that it boots in under a minute.
Click to expand...

Right. I'm assuming they did some goofy thing like have it boot, LOAD itself, and then boot again. That's a waste of time, if the hardware is as homogenous as those things are.
 
Mine arrived this week. I popped the board into a case, but nothing else. I conceptualized how small it is from pics and listed dimensions, but it seems so small in hand. I need to get a power cable for it and if I get some time this weekend I'll give it a spin.
 
madtrader said:
Mine arrived this week. I popped the board into a case, but nothing else. I conceptualized how small it is from pics and listed dimensions, but it seems so small in hand. I need to get a power cable for it and if I get some time this weekend I'll give it a spin.
Click to expand...

Are you going to try the XBMC/Pi OS on it? I'm a little nervous about it after the previous report here about the combo.
 
CJones said:
Are you going to try the XBMC/Pi OS on it? I'm a little nervous about it after the previous report here about the combo.
Click to expand...

Update. I did some reading so I tried openelec for the Pi today and it is much better.
The menus are smooth and it never randomly reset. It did lock up a couple times trying to use airplay to play a video but that may have been because I didn't have the settings in XBMC correct because it eventually worked with no problem.
Today I played a mkv file off of a usb stick, worked great.
Used 1channel and icefilms to watch TV/movies not so great. The Pi was tethered to an Android phone on 3G so not the best internet connection. The movie played but stuttered a little, the tv show eventually became unwatchable due to audio issues.
The main reason I chose RaspBMC the first time is it has a Windows based loader that makes it easy to create the initial small image on the SD card. Then you wait after booting the Pi the first time while it creates the final image.
With openelec you have to download either the source or an image someone has created from the source. Then you can use win32diskimager to write the image to the SD card.
Also got one of the XBMC iphone remote control apps to work today.
 
CJones said:
Are you going to try the XBMC/Pi OS on it? I'm a little nervous about it after the previous report here about the combo.
Click to expand...

I'm going to try all 3 XBMC distros that target the Pi (and probably a few Android rolls too; and NetBSD, as I'm a BSD guy). The question is whether or not I'll have the time this weekend.
 
CJones said:
Are you going to try the XBMC/Pi OS on it? I'm a little nervous about it after the previous report here about the combo.
Click to expand...

I asked Santa for a Pi this Christmas. If I get it, I'll find the best distro and let you know.

I forgot one of my favorite features, btw: If you install the XBMC Remote on your Android Phone (it might work for iPhones too, but I don't have one), anytime you find a video on your phone (Facebook, Youtube, random internet), you will be presented with the option to watch it on XBMC instead of on your phone (you can disable this if you don't want it). Its awesome - most videos people post, if I'm using my phone in the living room, I'll just watch them on my TV instead.

Edit: I have to admit, though, I am a bit nervous about only having 512MB of RAM. I have 4GB in my old laptop, and when streaming, I use like 3GB sometimes.
 
This looks like a great mad science project. Just bought my daughter a refurb Lenovo g570 for Christmas, thinking that in less than a year when her academic life advances, she may want something else. I will then be able to put the HDMI port on that thing to good use!
 
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