Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have had this on my mind for over a year now, and in the next few months I will be putting it together. However I am very curious to know what others have in mind. If you have a similar setup please let me know, or you have also thought about what to do or have any links or references also let me know.

Purpose: Store, stream, and manage content from a central location that can be viewed on a wide variety of devices. More specifically to make sure that my Blu-Ray Collection (that I will start to rip here soon) will be able to be used by my TV at max resolution (whether via cord or not I don't care, as long as I can do it). Music to be streamed to any device, as well as pictures, and other documents.

What I have been thinking. I have been looking into HTPC's and NAS as the primary driver (or a combination, whatever makes it work). Specifically the Synology DS1511+ (with 5, 3TB HD'S) for storing and managing, this tied with either a PS3 or some other device on the receiving end to play it to the TV, or use the existing DNLA services if I can. However, I have been unable to truly find anything of value in linking these types of systems together, especially for HD Videos (dvds I have seen have no problems). This is because of the MKV format (if you know of another format that allows no lossless from ripping let me know) is a hard format for Xbox and PS3 as far as I have read.

Simply: I want to watch my Blu-Ray rips on my TV from a server, listen to music on any device, pictures, and other documents as well.

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Professional... well I'll figure that out.



"I sense something, a presence I've not felt since......."

I too, was looking at a couple Synology NASes, but since i upgraded my desktop, it was a great excuse to build my HTPC using my old parts, along with Silverstone HTPC case and an IR receiver for my Harmony remote. a new case I use that to stream all of my content.. Since most of it I view in my living room HT, this made the most sense. I have 1x 1tb and 1x 2tb 5400rpm drives in there, and it works great, and can play locally, and stream two other HD videos just fine. I use XBMC on my living room and desktop PCs. That program is wonderful.

Everything uses gigabit LAN connection to a gigabit router (DIR-655) and i use simple Windows SMB networking.

FYI - I use MakeMKV to rip my Blu-Rays. Very easy to use, and great results. The 1080p's usually come out to about 28gb. There's a trail version, but until mid-October you can use a serial you can find in their official forum for use with the current Beta.

Hmmm,That sounds like something I might look into. I have used MakeMKV and loved it, but I'm thinking of going the full ISO route.

After a little more digging I found that using a NAS with a Boxee Box has some great things going for it. Namely that by enabling DLNA I can read the ISO files from the NAS and it should play them perfectly, at least that is what I have been reading. (There may be some other Media devices that do the same, but the Boxee looked intriguing).

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Professional... well I'll figure that out.



"I sense something, a presence I've not felt since......."

I mostly use MakeMKV because XBMC won't play .ISOs without a lot of fuss. And leaving out the non-original audio languages saves a lot of space. I've run into problems tryign to get BD discs on my PCs :/

I spent a couple weeks checking out devices like WDTV, Boxee, and Popcorn Hour. Each one had at least one or two drawbacks, and I as never quite sold. I heard they they were most all awesome, but every time i dug into features adn capabilities of those thing, they all came up short in different areas. I really could not suggest one over another... You can do soooooo much more with a PC than you can with any box. Plus the television is large and sharp enough tp use for surfing, which i use a Promini 2.4ghz keyboard/trackpad for.

I have a friend that keep an old case in a closet, and filled it with 6TB or so of hard drives and runs XP on it. 4gb of DDR2 and a lower dual core AMD CPU.

For the record, my HTPC has a q9550 Quad and 4gb of DDR2 , and a 1gb 9800gt GPU. A GPU with HDMI is essential. The 9800 is a older card, but it runs all teh 1080p stuff i have just fine. Even most newer games

I am too looking at a home server solution, but getting past 6TB usually entails using some sort of RAID, as after 3 disks, things seem to get a bit sticky. Looked at various hardware RAID 5 cards, with up to 8 slots, which would give large amounts of storage, but they are quite expensive! And of course. RAID is not a backup!!!

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Abram, your solution is looking more and more viable, I might just have to look more into that.

_________________
Professional... well I'll figure that out.



"I sense something, a presence I've not felt since......."

Not the easiest solution, but it made the most sense and has the most flexibility..

If you start watching that media in your living room, give XBMC a good look. It's free, and their support forum is very good and helpful. It's beats teh pants off any program like WMC, MCE, MEdia Portal, etc.

I use XMBC and its awesome. If you have an Iphone be sure to get the XBMC app. I dont know if they have apps for other smart phone but they probably do.