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Video Appliance For a Large Library On a Network?
devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"
what was the question?
If you can afford it, get one of the new Mac Minis and install Plex. The new version that came out yesterday is incredibly slick. It'll do all you want.
No transcoding but it plays close to all formats
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3767/media-streamer-platforms-roundup/5 You can read a decent (although aging) round-up of your options there, or just go buy the O!Play. It plays anything that matters.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Get a Western Digital HD Live box. It's cheap, tiny, quiet and plays videos with a large variety of codecs. Also does music of course, plus Pandora, Flicker, etc.
I've been using Tversity on my windows machine for 3 years now and I can honestly say it's the best solution I've ever seen. Transcoding to multiple devices with different codec/format requirement has never been simpler. I can stream to all the iPhones and computers in the house, as well as my 360 with minimal configuration.
You will want this: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735
And this: http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv-live/
Simple, effective and above all...cheap.
I've been using my ASUS OPlay! for about six months now. It does pretty well streaming from my SMB server @ 1080p. Now it they'd only add a Netflix player...
PopcornHour Network Media Tanks ! We own two and LOVE 'em. Xvid, mkv, iso, vob etc. Up to 1080p.
Trolling is a art,
MythTV, do all the processing on the backend server and have a lightweight (quiet) frontend it should bolt onto your existing ubuntu server
personally i use a mac mini with front row. i map my fileserver via smb, play content using sapphire, the hulu plugin for front row, boxee, etc.
it works reasonably well.
check out the nvidia ion based boards and systems.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856158009&cm_re=asrock_ion-_-56-158-009-_-Product
enough muscle for 1080p, all packed into a tiny, quiet package
I run PS3MediaServer on my fileserver. Streams (and trancodes when necessary) over the network to my PS3. Works well.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
I researched this long and hard. I wanted what is known as a "Networked Media Tank," but I didn't have the bucks to make a poor decision and try again. I just plugged the PS3 into the receiver I already had, plugged it into the network, and pointed it at the folder on the server which had all of my music/photos/movies. On the server I installed "PS3 Media Server," which is freeware, pointed it at my media folder, and that, literally, was all it took. Plus the PS3 will play your Blu Rays, and as it is Sony, the firmware updates for new releases will always be available... unlike with the dedicated BD player I had from Samsung. Over a year later and I have never regretted the decision.
WDTV Live+ does a pretty good job so far, and it has better Netflix support than Tivo.
However, if you want a bluray player too, PS3 is probably the way to go, I don't know of any DLNA/UPnP-capable bluray players besides a discontinued LG unit.
NT
Western Digital has a small 8"x8"x2" roughly box that plays every format I have from a smb share. My only complaint is that it doesn't do a good job thumbnails of content so the interface is rough like browsing the share. There are 3rd party firmware installs that are encouraged by WD that do even more but the official one works well enough for me. Works flawlessly for about $129 or less.
PS3 or Xbox 360 combined with PS3 Media Server / Tversity / whatever... the game consoles have intuitive UI's and can stream from any DNLA source.
Puget Systems Echo: http://www.pugetsystems.com/echo.php
There is an Atom / Ion version that may suffice for your needs (Echo I) and a more powerful Core i3 / i5 model if you need extra horsepower (Echo II). Both are very small, pretty darn quiet, and could run whatever software you'd like. I personally prefer the Windows 7 Media Center interface, but it sounds as though you aren't a big fan. Other nice options to check out are MythTV (Linux) and Boxxe (Windows or Linux).
William George
What say you, Slashdot?
Mostly, I'd say that you earn a big Google Fail badge.
There are lots of products available that do exactly what you want: Popcorn Hour, WD HD Live, Mac Mini (get a used older one) + XBMC, build your own small linux box and run XBMC, etc...
Bandwidth probably won't be your limitation. The Blu-Ray format has an absolute max transfer rate of 54 Mb/s, and only 48Mb/s for A/V bandwidth. Even movies on disc won't usually max that out, since they'll be VBR-encoded. Movies on a file server will usually be compressed all the more. Even at 50% throughput loss, a 100Mbit ethernet will still be able to keep up.
Don't know what your experience has been, but when I was using Samba, it often bogged down and caused the stream to stutter. I made my movies available over Apache w/DAV instead and the problem went away.
Not a typewriter
I run an AppleTV and have done the following non-standard things with it:
-Hacked it to enable SSH and read/write FS
-Installed Mplayer and XBMC
-Made it so a folder called ATV on my desktop computer automatically syncs with the ATV using rsync regularly so whatever I have downloaded is always on the ATV
-Ordered and installed a Broadcom CrystalHD mini PCI card that renders video and takes processing that away from the ATV's limited CPU
-Installed kexts that support the above and a nightly build of XBMC so I can now play 720 and 1080p media using XBMC
Works perfect for me. I could install Linux on it but both myself and my partner love Apple's movie rental system and the iTunes integration for our music. So by applying the above hacks we get everything we need.
It does also support network shares with a bit of hacking.
If you want to roll you own, use XBMC on an Acer Aspire Revo R1600 ($200). It uses the Nvidia ION LE chipset that supports h264 offloading. I would use these myself, but I already have three Popcorn Hours.
PCHs are nice, quiet, and cheap, but the UI is awful. It will require some tinkering to make nice. YAMJ is your friend (Yet Another Movie Jukebox).
Option 1: ReadyNAS Duo (built in torrent client) + WD TV Live (simple remote)
Option 2: Ubuntu server on network + PS3MediaServer + Sony PS3 (enable HDMI CEC for use with TV remote)
Option 3: Fritz!Box 7270 + USB HDD + PS3 as DLNA client / built in DLNA client on TV
Option 4: ASRock ION330 + Ubuntu
Option 5: Mac Mini + Apple Remote + Plex / XBMC + NAS/USB HDD
The key bottle neck is the network, if you can run LAN cables no worries, if you decide to go wireless 802.11n will do fine for 720p, 1080p is pushing it
I have a MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo, circa 2008) connected to an SMB share on a Windows 7 box (1055t/8GB ram) over wireless-n (~300mbit) and 1080p STILL gets the jitters - sometimes completely fucks out at high bitrates. 720p will mostly play nice, standard divx is fine too. If I close the lid of the laptop and lose the network share, it takes about 10 minutes to find the SMB share again. All I'm saying is, if a MacBook Pro is still complaining about 1080p over 300mbit wireless-n, AppleTV is a pipe dream unless in a 100% ideal situation.
My ideal setup, based on my experience, would be to store the movies locally connected to the lappy via e-sata/usb2, run a sabnzbd server on it and download via Windows 7 desktop. Nothing else will get A+ 1080p.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
XMBC Live on a Atom + Ion machine.
Something like the Acer R3610 ( http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/productv.do?LanguageISOCtxParam=en&kcond61e.c2att101=68913&sp=page16e&ctx2.c2att1=17&link=ln438e&CountryISOCtxParam=UK&ctx1g.c2att92=242&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2669969291 )
It can process 1080P h.264 without breaking a sweat.
After 12 years and a few days, I finally gave in to the dark side and joined slashdot.
The beauty of a PC is that it's no big deal if a new codec comes around, and if you don't like the interface you have others to choose from.
Appliances have limitations, may not allow new codecs to be installed etc.
Find a quiet PC
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This is not something I've ever tried , but in principle, here's a simple solution: Set up one of your computers iTunes with its library stored on your SMB share. I've never run iTunes from an SMB share, but it works dandy from an AFP/NFS share, so I imagine it would work. An AppleTV can pull a stream from any iTunes on its network, so you should be then be able to connect your AppleTV to the SMB-backed iTunes and access your videos/media.
If you can wait until November, the Boxee Box seems to be a really good option. It's boxee based (which is, itself, based on XMBC), cheap (150$), small and does pretty much everything you want.
Plus, it's sexy.
http://www.boxee.tv/box
Mark one more for the O!Play. it's a fantastic little box that plays every format I've thrown at it. Other options would be the WDTV Live and the Patriot Box Office.
Pick up a used 40GB Apple TV and throw Boxee onto it. Then just point it at your SMB share and let it populate. Cheap, queit, and efficient front end that looks good and comes with a remote control. Or wait and see if they can shoehorn Boxee onto the new Apple TV and then you get solid Netflix streaming to boot, or just wait until November and get the Boxee Box retail 199.
I personally have a Patriot Box Office that I bought off NewEgg for $65. It is solid for what it does. Every format, streaming off a network SMB share or from its own HD. Also has a P2P bitorrent client with web browser interface that'll store your torrent files directly to a local hard drive. This is a feature missing from many of the other similar media streamers.
Problem is the interface. It's not as slick as Boxee or AppleTV. I'd go with one of those if you want it to be accessible to people not familiar with directory structures. AppleTV, btw, will read from an SMB share, I believe. The new one will not play Divx or other common formats, though.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I just hooked up a LG BD570 for <$200 that plays Blu-ray discs, Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, other online content, files on a networked CIFS share from a Windows box and has built-in wifi. Only issue I've noticed is that it doesn't play .vob files from a network share.
http://www.geexbox.org/ Its a mini Linux install using Mplayer. I had been using it for years with out issues. You can install it to a USB flash stick or LiveCD to test it out be for install
I spent a couple hundred bucks on Newegg, put together a MicroATX box in a home theater case (looks like a DVD player, virtually silent.) I've run Linux on it and played videos with Xine, and I've had XP on there with the Mega Codec Pack's Media Player Classic. Plays everything I've ever thrown at it, including Quicktime videos (hell, it even plays Real's media, as if anyone still uses it.) I used a $35 ATI Radeon with HDMI out, and plugged it into a 65" Samsung DLP TV. Plays everything in 1080p, smooth as silk. Better even than the upsampling Samsung DVD player I bought with the TV.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've actually done this two ways:
1) PC in living room.... if you can, see if there's a way to hide the big noisy PC. In my condo, I have a conveniently located closet exactly on the other side of the wall from my TV. Poking a hole through the drywall and feeding AV cabling and the IR sensor for the remote was trivial. No noise, no mess, all the convenience.
2) Instead of an AppleTV, take a look at a Mac Mini. Has HDMI out, is only twice as tall as the AppleTV, and is incredibly silent. I use this with Plex (forked from XBMC) for the TV in the bedroom. I believe it's also possible to run Plex on an AppleTV, but I could be wrong.
In my setup everything is networked and all my movies are stored on a local server, an old Mac mini in the closet with the PC. Both the MediaCenter PC and the Plesk Mini can access the shares (afp or smb).
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
If you use a real OS and a real file sharing protocol(not MS garbage) then you won't have any problems at all. I use AFP(though NFS works equally as well) to view HD media over wifi and works perfectly. Ditch windows and you will have 0 problems.(The previous sentence pretty much works in any context)
Monstar L
I recomend the xstreamer it is about 150.00 and will play anything form a network share (picture, Video, music). it will play 1080p through the HDMI port. and suports 6.1 audio. I have 2 of these devices and they work great. It is a small box about 7" H x 1" W x 5" D. A neat feature is that you can control the xstreamer with any device compatable with Flash over the network or with the remote it comes with. it is both wired and wireless. You can also add a laptop sata harddrive up to 1 tb for more storage. It is the cheapest player that will play MKV, Divx, Xvid, Mpg, AVI, H.264 and more. The web site is www.xtreamer.net.
The Shuttle XS35GT is a fanless box with the new NVIDIA ION2 GPU, if you put a SSD drive in it it's 100% silent. It should be able to handle H.264 1080p without a problem. You can run Linux (e.g. XBMCbuntu) or Win7 with XBMC on it. It also supports a DVD, DVD-RW or Bluray drive.
Another option is the Xtreamer, I don't know much about it but it's cheap ($99, that's without a HD) and according to the site it can play 1080p (the new Apple TV only supports 720p). It has an option ("SideWinder") to attach external heat sinks to make it fanless.
A good place for more information is the XBMC hardware forum.
Aren't there TV sets that can do this? I occasionally stream media from my PC over to my Pioneer TV set. Haven't tried it with Ubuntu, but that's on the list of experiments I have lined up - in fact, got a distribution for it just last night so I can do that this weekend.
XBMC is the most fully featured and most efficiant media center there is, if you want a small quiet machine that can handle it, just get an ION system and put xbmc on it, full 1080p playback is flawless with VDPAU.
with the whole focus being power, heat and noise mgmt.
simple idea: allow dynamic spin up/down of drives via some mgmt console (a truly out of band console, even allowing the system to be booted and shutdown).
I gave up on RAID. too much heat and noise and I just don't need all my drives spinning at once. I'm starting on a new project to mount 16 or more drives for use on a standard pc. way too much to keep spun up all the time.
no, auto spin-down is not working for all architectures (usb, sata, etc). I need a mgmt solution (worked out on paper, right now) that spins drives up and down for the duration of the movie (etc). even better, a way to find the drive that holds the movie file, spin that drive up, mount it and 'exportfs -a' it. when the movie is over, signal to the mgmt console that its done and the disk is cleanly unmounted from the OS and its physically spun down via power control (relays inline with the power jack on the drives, essentially).
all done via arduino control (size, cheapness, coolness factor).
at least that's my approach. raid does not make sense for such a large # of drives and I'm going to handle my redundancy by saving multiple copies across multiple drives (via software user-land hacks).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Viewsonic makes an awesome little nettop box (basically it's a high end netbook without a screen) that is absolutely perfect for this.
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/vot132.htm
Stick a USB tuner card in there and use Windows Media Center and you have a fantastic all round entertainment system for your living room - and nearly silent and very low power so you won't feel bad about having it on all the time. I don't understand why you would buy a box that can only do streaming when you can have a full computer that can do anything.
You might want to try SageTV (www.sagetv.com). I've been using it for the past 5-7 years with wonderful success. They also sell fanless extender boxes ($150) that can access all your media from your server. Sage plays HD, DVD, BluRay, shows pictures, etc. Plus you can access your server remotely via a laptop with their free Placeshifter software.
Have fun!!
Just watch your porn on your laptop.
I run a Mac Mini with Linux for each of my TV frontends. The Mac Mini is low power but with enough processor and graphics power to output 1080p over HDMI. MythTV's interface got an overhaul in 0.23, and is now much nicer and easier to use. Add Firefox or Chromium for watching streamed videos, and you've got everything you need. Plus being a full computer means that you're not tied to one interface, or even operating system, you can upgrade as new things come out and try alternatives as you come across them.
Asus EeePC - like the notebook with no screen. Might need to add an external USB DVD drive.
wireless keyboard/trackpad like a cell phone - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126039
Windows XP
I would prefer Kubuntu but Netflix requires Microsoft "Flash".
Nothing beats a PC for compatibility.
You'll need two things:
1. A computer that stores your movies. This computer must run some sort of UPnP media server software like PS3 Media Server on Windows or fuppes on Linux. It must be powerful enough to transcode in real-time your movies. Think Core 2 Duo 2GHz for 1080p, or P4 3GHz for 720p.
2. A Playstation 3 or XBox 360. This will be your display device hooked to your TV. Both are cake to use for non-computer experts and can do other fun things as well, like games, the Internet, Netflix, etc. I prefer the PS3 since it can handle Netflix without paying Microsoft a subscription fee, but if you already have an XBOX 360 with and Xbox Live account, then that may be a better idea.
All other answers to this question are lame and/or missed the point. Seriously. Making some crap computer out of spare parts and hooking it up to your TV just doesn't make sense when you probably already have a PS3 or Xbox 360 and a computer good enough to transcode on-the-fly and large enough (storage wise) to hold your media. Hell, that computer probably sits in the same spot all day, every day and never gets turned off, so put that wasted power into good use. If you're really just trying to shoehorn some old, piece of shit computer into something useful, then what you really have is a solution looking for a problem. Fuck that. Sell the POS on craigslist and be done with it.
I have been using SageTV and their Media Extenders for a couple of years now, and I am very happy with it.
The basics:
1) You set up a "server" PC loaded with hard drives and tuner/capture cards, running the SageTV software.
2) At the TV, you connect a small, low-power Media Extender, which presents an identical user interface to the SageTV software.
I am using this to record broadcast TV from an antenna, watch DVD and Blu-ray rips, and (with the addition of PlayOn) watch Hulu and Comedy Central streaming.
Their website: http://sagetv.com/
I used to use MythTV, and I find that SageTV has pretty much identical functionality, but I could remove a computer from the living room and use the small extender device instead.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
I've been using Sage TV's HD200 for a while. They just released the HD300. Natively it supports nearly everything you can throw at it. The previous version lacked DTS support (but supported mkv files with AC3 encoding, which is just about why I purchased it in the first place)
SageTV HD300 Theater Media & File Format Support (I don't own one yet, but this is what I'm reading):
File formats: AVI, ASF, MKV, MOV, MP4, QuickTime, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 PS, MPEG-2 TS, M2TS, BDMV Folder (Blu-ray), Blu-ray ISO, DVD ISO, DVD VIDEO_TS, VOB, M4A, MP3, FLAC, OGG, FLV, WAV, WMA .sub (Subviewer/MicroDVD), DVD, BDMV, M2TS
Video formats: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, XVID, H.264 up to 1080p, WMV9/VC-1 up to 1080p, MJPEG, Flash Video
Audio formats: MP2, MP3, AAC, AAC-HE, ALAC, WMA, WMAPro (stereo downmix), PCM, Vorbis (stereo only), FLAC(stereo downmix), Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus/Dolby TrueHD (stereo down-mix/pass-through), DTS/DTS-HD/DTS-MA (stereo down-mix/pass-through) AC3 (stereo down-mix/pass-through)
Closed Caption/Subtitle Formats: EIA-608(NTSC/ATSC/QAM Closed Captioning), SSA/ASS, SRT, VobSub (sub/idx,mkv), Nero MP4 VOB Subtitles, MP4 Text, SAMI,
Media sources: Online Video, external USB Mass Storage Devices, NAS or Mac/PC over SMB/CIFS, UPnP, SageTV Media Center (The flagship, SageTV HTPC software), Unofficial support of Amazon VOD, Hulu, Netflix via 3rd party PlayOn plugin
Playlist formats supported: M3U, WPL, ASX, WAX, WVX
Pictures: Any image formats viewable in SageTV are also viewable on the HD300 when used in extender mode. In standalone media player mode JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF formats are supported.
The SageTV UI, in general, isn't great (look at the remote with the 400 buttons to get an idea). With a server and one of these dedicated units, you can customize everything. At a buck and a half it's not a bad deal.
The Dvico TViX 6640N plays pretty much any media format from local disk or over the network from SMB shares.
I'd recommend the Samsung BD-C6900 player combined with a DLNA server [Wild Media Server is my favorite, but there are many]. The player plays Bluray and supports Samsung Apps [Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc] and plays directly from the DLNA server. It doens't support many formats, but WMS supports transcoding and has worked really well for me.
Seriously, this is the way to go: ... cause they are played 24/7!)
- Small appliance
- XBMC (the world's best player IMHO)
- Integrated remote
- Quiet
- Plays everything
- Connects to SMB shares
- Can use the local storage if required (I would put all the kids movies locally
- If you get a small add-on card, it will output 1080p natively
DO NOT BUY THE NEW APPLETV:
- only 20 output
- only 3 video formats
- no local storage
- you are locked in to their walled garden
- you will need to recode all your existing content
I wanted a quick cheap route without building my own HTPC, so I recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo 3610. It's an Atom 330-based system with Win 7, but you can install Linux if you prefer. It's just a little bigger than a stack of 2 DVD cases. I got mine refurb'ed for $250. I put Boxee on it and find the interface to be great - simple and remote-friendly. My non-computer-savvy in-laws use it without problems. 1080p works fine. You can point it at SMB shares. The Revo has a fan in it, but it is very quiet (Revo is next to the TV, and I can't hear it from the couch. Most of the time I can't even hear it when I'm standing next to it either). If I hadn't gotten the Revo I would have gotten a flavor of the Dell Zino.
The PS3 will do a lot of this but not all formats. It's a bit picky with some things. A small form factor pc connected to the tv and a lan would probably work best. I believe several other people have suggested exact models. If you have a newer tv, check if it has a ethernet jack or usb jack built in. I have the samsung series 8 led tv and it natively supports more formats than the PS3 but doesn't do DTS sound and can't fast forward or rewind mkv files (which is my only hurdle at the moment to ditching my secondary computer that I'm using as a media server so I'll also be watching this thread closely).
I have a Roku Netflix Player (or whatever they call it these days, one was just on woot the other day for 50$). It is an network-connected device (wireless, ethernet and also USB in the new version) which can stream Netflix and Amazon and other junk. It is about an inch high and maybe 5 inches wide and makes no noise (no fan, no hard drive, just a couple A/V ports). But also...
You can install aftermarket applications on the box, in a manner of speaking, and Roku offers an API along with detailed examples which you can modify yourself. Several people have already done so. I use the Roksbox application, despite its developer's insistence on updating the live branch of code and occasionally breaking everything. It allows me to stream live video hosted on a local (or remote, I suppose) web server. I have an Ubuntu box in the basement I use for transcoding. It works well and the UI is pretty simple, and quite end-user controllable.
After building the necessary XML files by hand for a while I wrote a couple of scripts to parse everything out of IMDB, download posters and descriptions, etc., and that goes into the display code. So when I turn on the Roku box, it pretty much "just works", so long as the network is up and I haven't mangled the XML file. My wife and baby love it; I've got tons of Elmo on there and other cartoons she can see and recognize, so there's no more playing around with DVDs and scratching them up. And we have many movies and other content on there. It's very simple to use, but the backend can take a little work unless you're a Windows person (my server is not).
I've tried using a DNS-323 NAS box as the server, which seems to work well. I just haven't switched everything over. So in short, with a Roku box, a little additional software and a server/NAS to host the files, you're good.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
I worked exhaustingly to get my MythTV setup 'finished' and gave up on it after about three full years. I had a server, a living room PC, and one/two bedroom deployments, depending on whether or not they were broken at the given time.
Streaming killed it all. The wife added Netflix, and I added Hulu (and later Plus), and we haven't looked back. We keep basically nothing, and thus are at the whims of the people controlling the services, but aside from needing a relatively-beefy Windows PC to handle the Flash and Silverlight, there's almost no overhead.
Having been at a place somewhat near yours, I'd advise you to wait and see. Things may get better, technology-wise, or you may just wind up getting hooked on Netflix...
Plex running on a MacMini is what I use. The mini is a solid low power platform that you can easily hook up external disk or access your NAS with. Has HDMI output for connecting to your stereo/tv etc.
Plex is made to use the apple remote control, so you don't need a keyboard/mouse after the very initial setup. There's also a iPhone/Pad/Touch app so you can control Plex or stream from the plex app to your iPhone/Touch/Pad. The main application for your mac mini is free and the iOS component is $5.
Great community of support for the app definitely better than XBMC.
I used to use a Mac Pro on my TV, which is very quiet. It had no problem with 1080p video. I later bought a mac mini for my TV. I bought whatever they were selling in July 2009, It can do pretty much anything, although 1080p video is a bit of a stretch because the mini's CPU isn't as powerful as the pro. Specifically, it tends to skip in high-motion scenes. I really wish I spent the extra money for the faster CPU.
If you have a budget slightly over $1000, the Mac Mini with the fastest CPU will probably handle 1080p. Just remember this: The extra $1000 you spend for a general-purpose computer will buy lots and lots and lots of BluRay disks and iTunes rentals.
No, I will not work for your startup
The d525 is a dual core, 4 thread atom at 1.8Ghz.
ION2 = just a low power GPU but can decode high def easily with this CPU
bcm70015 decodes divx, xvid, wmv, mpeg4, vc1, h264.
slam these in a cheap case from newegg for 75 (includes power, is VESA mountable.
Thats a ~$225 system.
This system has zero fans and is completely quiet. no lights blinking, nothing.
1 of these http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=1&modelno=rpc-4220
1 of these http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/raid_controllers/sata_sas/3ware_9750-8i/index.html
1 quad core Xeon + mobo + 8gigs of ram of your choice
1 of these http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=75
1 of operating system of your choice
20 of these http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=733
and then put on the media software of your choice (mine is ps3 media server)
This is all because my current (6tb) array got filled with media, home movies, tv shows and what have you. So, hopefully ~30tb (raid6 + 2 hotspares) will do the trick for a while.....
Probably WAY overkill for your use, but +hypervisor of your choice, its nice and easy to run as a media server and an ARMAII server or TF2 server....
lastly, check out i-star or istar usa, they have rackmount cases for prettymuch everything. Awesomeness! (50drive case....maybe for my next one, mwahaha)
Reminds me of the original Xbox. Why make it impossible to stack things on top? (say, a dvd case, cellphone, etc) Also looks fairly tall, too tall to fit in where a set-top box would.
I had tried over and over to build a computer that would work well for playing video and that would be easy to control, the video always seemed a little jerky, couldn't get the remote quite right, so I finally gave up a bought a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ (www.Newegg.com P/N: N82E16822148499). It was on sale for $70 when I bought it, then went on sale for $50, now is out of stock. If it can be found anywhere, I would recommend it because it works great for me (sounds like I was looking to do the same thing). It can connect to my Windows shared drive and play the HD content perfectly. It can also access miscellaneous online sites like YouTube and NetFlix. I haven't had it long enough to see if there are easy ways to search and find media on the network shares, but I don't have a problem just browsing to the right folder and selecting the right file. I don't know how this device compares to the WD, but one thing I did notice about the WD is that the component video comes out of a little 1/4" jack + adapter, which I didn't think would be as robust as the RCA type plugs.
I am currently using a Box Office by Patriot purchased thru CompUSA (TigerDirect) and it supports Linux kernal 2.4.1.0 or above as well as various Windows flavors and Mac 9.0 and above. The box supports a good number of video formats including MPEG-1 (MPG/MPEG/DAT) up to 1080p, MPEG-2 (MPG/MPEG/VOB/IFO/TS/TP/M2TS) up to 1080p, MPEG-4 (MP4/AVI/MOV) up to 1080p, DivX 3/4/5/6 & Xvid (AVI/MKV) up to 1080p, H.264 * AVC (TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS) up to 1080p, Real Video 8/9/10 (RM/RMVP) up to 720p, FLV, WMV9 (1080p) and ISO (1080p). Many audio formats including the regulars plus OGG and FLAC. Image formats include JPEG, BMP and PNG. The box has fast Ethernet, 2x USB 2.0 ports and internal 2.5" SATA HDD connections. (HDD sold seperately, but very easy to install.) A USB wireless adapter is available, but came included in my package. You can stream video from network storage devices. Best of all, it is small, quiet, has a remote control, HDMI output as well as composite A/V and S/PDI outputs.
I use an ION based HTPC. I have two of them and both are about the size of a Wii. The decoding is done via the NVIDIA chipset and VDPAU under Ubuntu. My ASROCK has a DVD drive - it's not needed. My Zotac is small enough to mount on the backside of the TV if I wish. I get 1080P video just fine and I get surround sound as well. Visit the XBMC forums and peruse the Linux section for hardware help - I post there too. Hardware I use is quiet, power saving, and produces little heat. The Live distros work well IMO with a little tweaking - plenty of help for that.
As for feeding this beast - I use unRAID as a NAS. I have 2 of them with quite a few TB of video rips and TV shows from my HD TIVO. I can play this all fine with a 100meg NIC but I happen to prefer a Gig NIC for speed of copying rips to my NAS. My entire video and music library is contained in these servers, I can access anything quickly and it wasn't a million bux to build...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
There is a post in the TVersity forums from back in April stating that TVersity would be coming to Linux within months. http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13993/ IMO TVersity is a solid application. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is only a windows version released.
In my case, the problem was the kids scratching up the DVD collection, so I wanted a way for the kids to watch a movie without worrying about them popping it out of the player with peanut-butter covered hands. Now I backup up the originals (which go on a high shelf) and we watch the digital backup over the network.
I am having good luck with the vanilla Win 7 media center that comes with Win 7 Home Premium. The user interface is easy enough for my 5 year old to operate it without assistance. No trans-coding or format translations required. I have my video library (DVD native VOBs) backed up on a 2 TB NAS (WD My Book World Edition, which is a Linux box that you can admin through the web gui or SSH ). Everything plays perfectly my two Win 7 media center clients and on my Vista media center client (Vista requires an easy registry hack to get the DVD library to show up, Win 7 needs only be pointed to the NAS). Again, these are straight DVD backups with no trans-coding. The good thing with this is that all the DVD menus and special features are available.
I am in the process of extending my setup to the TV in the living room. I have a Dell Zino HD on order (delivers Saturday). I can't comment yet on fan noise, but this is an extremely small box (8 in x 8 in) with a HDMI connector. I bought a Hauppauge tuner and a wireless keyboard with trackball to go with it (I suppose I could also buy a media center remote too, but I think the keyboard and trackball will be enough).
I had tried a media center extender before and I was severely disappointed because they don't play VOBs, which means you have to trans-code, or rip to another format, and in either case you won't have menus. But the Win 7 clients can play VOBs over the network flawlessly. I am high hopes for the Zino when it gets here in a few days.
I also have to say I've been favorably impressed with the WD Mybook World Edition. Nowadays, they include a checkbox in the web gui to enable ssh. You can then ssh in and do anything you want with it. In my case, I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
why the fuck is this question even accepted by /.? Do your research before submitting, there are dozens of solutions: HTPCs, a bunch of the latest Blu-Ray players and TVs, media streamers (a couple of which have been mentioned above), and 7th gen video consoles. hell, even some recently-announced tablets will be able to grab content from SMB (or DLNA) and output it to your screen via HDMI (gotta look closely, though, not all do 1080p)
The Acer Revo and several other machines will handle this, but I've felt that the full 1080p just doesn't feel smooth with one of the small nettop style boxes. I would recommend something like the following (customized to your discretion):
http://www.computerlx.com/config.aspx?t=&product_ID=1390
ALLPCZONE AMD 215 ICEBERG SERIES AMD 215 MIKE
Current Configuration:
AMD AM2/AM2+/AM3 PROCESSORS
AMD Athlon II 64 X2 215 2.7GHz Dual-Core AM3 Processor
AMD PROCESSOR COOLING FAN
AMD STANDARD COOLING FAN
THERMAL PASTE (STANDARD PASTE INCLUDED)
OCZ/ARCTIC Ultra 5+ Silver Thermal Compound
MOTHERBOARDS FOR DDR3 (PICK IF GOING W/DDR3 RAM)
MSI GF615M-P33 Socket AM3/ GeForce 6150SE/ DDR3/ A&V&GbE/ MATX Motherboard
DDR3 DUAL CHANNEL RAM
2GB (1 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600MHz (PC3 12800) Dual Channel
SATA HARD DRIVES
Hitachi / WD 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB CACHE SATA 3.0Gb/s
DVD-RW/BLU-RAY DRIVES
22X DVD-RW DUAL LAYER
PCI-EXPRESS VIDEO CARDS
nVidia GeForce GT220 1GB DDR3 DVI/VGA HDMI SLI PCI-EXP Video Card
SOUND CARDS
REALTEK 6-CHANNEL DIGITAL SOUND ONBOARD
NETWORK CARDS
REALTEK 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Card (onboard)
COMPUTER CASES
HEC Blitz Black Steel Edition ATX Mid Tower Computer Chassis Gaming Case
CASE COOLING FANS
THERMALTAKE/ANTEC ULTRA-QUIET CASE FAN
POWER SUPPLIES
OKIA 420 WATT POWER SUPPLY (BASIC LOAD)
WARRANTY 3 - YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLAN
3-Year Limited Warranty Plan with Lifetime of free USA based Support...Custom Hand Wiring For Ultimate Air Flow, Assembled in Cleveland, Ohio, USA
SHIPPING METHOD
FED-EX GROUND SHIPPING "INCLUDED" (1-7 BUSINESS DAYS)
Beyond that, install XBMC live instead of using it as an application in Windows. All of the newer Nvidia cards support VDPAU, which allows for the video decoding to take place on the GPU, which is much better than software decoding. I think you'll find this solution much more satisfactory than running both windows and XBMC (especially considering Windows 7 has between 768MB - 1GB memory footprint by itself, not to mention CPU usage). Alternatively, your current setup may work just fine with XBMC live and you may not need to build anything at all (and i would suggest trying that first). Good luck.
Get a PS3 and either a network attached storage device capable of running twonkymedia, or a small quiet PC you can stick in the closet running linux and PS3 Media Server.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
I use a Synology Cube Station to store my files and share via SMB.
I use a Linksys Wireless G router to get it to the living room.
I use a Mac Mini running Boxee, XMBC, and Hulu Desktop in the living room. It's connected to my receiver via HDMI for video and TosLink for audio.
I can use everything with a Mac Mini remote. Very stable, easy to set up, easy to use, quiet, access to tons of stuff. I don't even have cable now, just DSL for internet.
You can get fanless Atom based motherboards in mini ITX and pico ITX form factors, some of which have actual (as in, not intel embedded crap) graphics hardware.
Right now, you can get a 1.6ghz atom CPU, pair it up with 2gb of RAM, and use an SD to SATA adapter for booting a minimalist linux. Since it won't be running any major applications, it shouldn't need swap.
The whole thing will be fanless, and wont have a mechanical disk drive. As such, it would be totally silent.
Put a USB2 wireless N dongle on, and you are good to go. (It would also take up far less space, and use much less power than a typical MMPC.)
I highly recommend MediaPortal http://www.team-mediaportal.com/
The setup is significant, but once you have it going, it's great. You can use hardware accelerated h264 decoding (whereas Boxee, XBMC and many others are software only). The plugins for it have great, poweful support for automatically matching Movies and TV shows based on regexps and online lookups of the filenames.
Some screenshots can be found:
http://code.google.com/p/moving-pictures/
http://code.google.com/p/mptvseries/
Too many people here miss the fact that you want the PLAYER side of the equation, not the server.
I'd suggest something like the Patriot Box Office:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patriot%20box%20office
http://patriotmem.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=6&catid=69&prodgroupid=159&id=895&type=20
Small, reasonably quiet (more so if you do a bit of work on the fan), HDMI or composite out, does 1080i, does S/PDIF, does just about every form of media I've tried, does SMB/CIFS, uPnP (not just DLNA, but also plain old uPnP), runs Linux internally, can accept an internal 2.5" hard disk, can use an external USB WiFi stick, supports external media via USB (including EXT2/3 file systems).
www.eFax.com are spammers
I second this option.
I have an Asus Eee EB1012, which is a 1.66ghz atom with ION graphics, and it runs fantastic. XBMC is on it, and I have no problem streaming full 1080p over wireless-N to my TV. Plus, the entire thing only cost me $350 total. You can do it for cheaper since all your storage is on the network and you don't need anything of a hard drive to speak of. Before I got my hard drive, I was running it off of a flash thumb drive, and that was working perfectly well.
Furthermore, and I can only speak of this particular Atom+ION solution, but it's nearly completely silent. I have it sitting right next to my TV (it's REALLY small), and even with all volume off, I can't hear it unless my ear is right next to it and it's doing something heavy.
A word from the wise: don't waste your money on the new ION2 systems with the Atom D510's. They cost more, but won't deliver you much more at all, and nothing more for just simple viewing purposes.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
But this is what I do. I keep all of the computers in my office. The server that plays the media (several are in use for purposes of storing it), has video and audio output that feeds into a UHF modulator, and I feed the output of that into a backwards splitter and combine it with the regular
cable signal on channel 90 (which is unused by my cable company). I could easily use more channels as well with extra modulators, but I so far haven't needed more than one channel at a time. I set this up several years back, and I think I tried mythtv at the time but had issues getting it installed correctly, so I just wrote my own interface and use a netbook as a remote control, but if I was doing it over again, I'd probably use myth or something similar and a RF remote or an IR transceiver.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
SO I CAN WATCH IT ON MY HANDHELD!!!
(why are we shouting?)
Seriously, there's lots of reasons to transcode. Not all movies are available for download in friendly formats. I recently got a beautiful DVD set of the silent film Greed by Erich von Stroheim and I wanted to watch it on something that didn't have an optical drive, away from home.
How else but to transcode?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I have a Mac Mini. Anything post Oct 2009 is fast enough for HiDef. I have an Ubuntu server sharing via SMB and I use Boxee or XBMC on the Mac Mini.I'm connected to a 42 inch Sony at 1920x1080p. Bonus because the Mac has remote control support built in. The Mac Mini is SILENT!
The only downside is cost. A Mac Mini is $599.
A Dell Zino is the same size and seems like it should also fit the bill and they start at only $260 but (a) I've never used one so not sure they can do HD. Boxee and XBMC are supposed to use the GPU for video decoding now so maybe the Zino is fine. (b) I have no idea if the Zino is silent. (c) no built in remote but given the price difference you could easily add that and still be well under the price of the Mac Mini
Bonus, you can get BluRay on Zino, something you can't do on Mac Mini AFAIK.
... connect the AppleTV to network shares... sorta.
I have a gen1 AppleTV. I have a NAS with all my video files on it.
In iTunes on my desktop, I have added the NAS-stored files to the iTunes library (by link, not by copying).
Now when I use the AppleTV to play "Shared Movies" from the linked iTunes on my desktop - those movies show up and play just fine.
From what I've read on the new AppleTV, it will be able to stream files from an iTunes library... so this should still be usable.
Now if only it did DLNA so I could watch Hulu/Amazon/etc. via PlayOn.
Anyone know if Roku does DLNA? don't see anything on it so far on their website.
I've tried. I've tried for years. The best solution: WinXP OS with Zoom Player. This combo allows a standard universal control to run 100% of my media in any format. In addition having the power of a full computer and using ffdshow I can get the best picture quality AND can reliably fast forward & rewind (something that is very hit or miss on the various media streamers). I started with an old computer determined to not spend any money about 7 years ago. Now I have: Antec Sonata III case, Corsair 40GB SSD (boot OS), Nlited XP (remove everything not needed), Zoom player. 2TB local drive + 1GB wired network access. 4GB ram (overkill), Intel Dual Core E6550 in a new Gigabyte motherboard.
important bit: CPU heat sink, no fan. Power supply, no fan. Video card, no fan. 2 120mm case fans running at 600rpm (silent). Plays everything perfectly and my wife can use it 100% of the time. Boot time is 12 seconds but mostly we leave it in standby so power up is faster than the TV.
And since it is a full computer: Firefox and web surfing (with remote keyboard/touchpad)! Games, you name it.
ZP plays everything and will run slideshows, etc. Highly recommend.
It seems obvious to me, that after many comments, that there is no consensus to this question. The art in deciding what is the best technological solution in terms of streaming video to the living room remains unevolved. Everyone has their opinion. I use a dlink 323 that talks to my xbox 360, but it sucks - requiring time consuming transcoding and the all too familiar experience of a data file that for all intents and purposes should play, simply doesn't. I know in my heart of hearts that there ought to be an inexpensive open hardware solution that can stream content from either an internal or network based source video and dts audio to my TV but it simply doesn't today. At least there doesn't seem be to a definitive, universally accepted as the best way to do this, at least at cost of less than $400. I think this community can do better. We should be able to define a hareware platform / software configuration that is both open and reliable to do this simple task.
Or, even better, if you want to support an open source project, use XBMC instead. Plex is now 90% closed source.
One more thing. I think a PC is better than a dedicated box like AppleTV, PopcornHour (which I owned) and other boxes because...I can also browse the net and use the latest software. So for example if Boxee ever dies I can still use a browser to watch Hulu or Vimeo or PBS. If some new service suddenly appears it's pretty likely I'll be able to use it immediately. With a dedicated box that's generally not true.
If you can find an open source implementation of Bonjour. I'm pretty sure there is one, the name escapes me.
Reeses
Just chiming in with my vote for Mac Mini + Plex (the new Plex\Nine is quite promising though still has some bugs). I'm running this setup via my 1080p projector system and a NAS over wired gigabit ethernet and it's just fantastic.
True believers seek redemption from the sin of death.
Easy task. Just get a PS3 slim and stream your content with Ps3 Media Server. Works charms with me. It even muxes subtitles on the fly, for my non-english speaking girlfriend. Can do 1080p just fine, assuming you've got a decent server.
Does everything you want and more; including Netflix support.
http://wdtvlive.com/
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
Plex is now 90% closed source. No way am I gonna use an app by folk who don't give a shit about the opensource model that they're building from.
I have the most recent Mac Mini. With Plex, it cannot play full-screen 1080p, even 24fps (my test is Avatar, full blu-ray file). XBMC nightly builds can do it if you have h.264 acceleration on, so maybe Plex will work soon.
All in all the Mini (even my 2.66GHz one) is probably not a good choice due to the slow CPU and high price.
It's too bad too since the Mini does HDMI audio (7.1 channels, 24-bit, 192KHz).
Also, if the Mini wakes up with no TV attached (because your amp is set to another input) it switches audio back to the internal speaker from HDMI audio out and you have to reset it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Windows Media Center. It's built into Vista and Windows 7. It has access to Internet TV, it holds your media, it plays Netflix, and it runs on XBox as an extender.
I'm surprised nobody has suggested it. Supposed to be better than the PopcornHour and WDTV boxes.
for the non-*crowd, set-top ready.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/home-entertainment/d3fe/
Native 1080p video output at up to 1920x1080 resolution (check)
- Analog recording of your favourite TV shows from Cable or Satelite (check)
- Time-shift and scheduled recording (check)
- Incredible variety of video and audio codec support including MKV (check)
- Built in BitTorrent client for sharing and downloading video files (check)
- HDMI, composite or component video output (check)
- Optical SPDIF 5.1 Channel Dolby Digital audio output (check)
- Takes up to 2.0 Terabyte SATA hard drive (check)
- Built in samba server with UPnP implementation (check)
- Oh and a completely sweet price! ($169, plus $35 for 1 to 3 week coming wireless N USB adapter4, plus you supply the SATA drive up to 2TB, and an external DVD burner if desired).
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Another vote for the Western Digital box here...Great product.
Setup an NFS server on your Ubuntu box and then get a WDTV live. Install the updated Brad firmware, and map the NFS share with xmount. The WDTV live is cheap, and NFS is free.
Came to say just this. Right now I'm using an older iMac with video and sound out to my large screen. But the idea is the same. I'll eventually move to a mac mini but there's no point in spending the money right now while the iMac is running just fine.
Actually, I have two of them. It plays discs (of course), Netflix, Pandora, Youtube, etc... But also will connect to networked machine via SMB.
It's a pretty simple file browser, but it plays most anything I throw at it...
It's the BD-590 I believe. Although I'm sure other models of theirs will probably do the job, too...
http://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video/video/LG-blu-ray-dvd-player-BD590.jsp
WD TV Live comes to mind.....
I built a cheap hackintosh, with reasonable grunt (Core i5, mini ATX etc). I use Plex, which is just amazing, especially the latest version. Will transcode anything. The same box also runs Apache/MySQL for a webserver, and hosts DNS + a few other services. It's great!
I tried MythTV some time back and it wasn't all that. I still have that Asus Pundit box that I bought for it sitting around doing something else now. It's more like a framework than an actual usable product. Note that most of my gripes were actually about the DVR capability rather than just media-player capability.
What about a remote? Nothing that works out-of-the-box. Sure, you can tinker and hack anything to work with it, but no matter what, you have to tinker and hack. Nothing "just works" with a drop-in config. I just want something that works and it wasn't there.
I had endless issues with the video, on a hardware platform that was apparently "highly recommended". Wasn't just me. Forms were full of people with the same issues at the time.
My friend uses a similar setup - Twonky media server + a playstation 3. Works flawlessly, beautifully. Plus, the playstation 3 can do 1.5x fast forward with sound that's digitally sped up without altering the pitch of the conversation. Really, Sony made the PS3 an awesome media center.
WD make a fine little gadget that can do CIFS mounts, has youtube capability built in, can use DHCP or assigned addresses, and can stream HD. .... Did I say that out loud?
Bout $200 AU. Its great - now I can watch Pr0n in the living room when no one is home!
Why the hell would I hire a DVD? Their references are almost always terrible, have no work experience prior to 1996, and they don't do any work -- they just sit around looking all shiny.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
I bought a WD Live the other day, and it's utterly fantastic.
It's small (About the same size as an Apple TV) and uses very little power. It can connect to a Wired network, or you can plug in a USB WiFi adapter. You can also plug a USB Hard Drive or Memory Stick into it and play movies directly off that.
As for networking, it can browse DLNA and Samba shares with a somewhat reasonable interface, and will happily play full bitrate 1080p content.
It seems to play most popular formats (Specifically, it'll handle h264/MKV and Divx/Xvid perfectly).
It also has built in support for Youtube, Live365, and Pandora radio.
There are a few flaws with it, but nothing major.
* Copying via samba *To* the attached hard drive is very slow
* Very occasionally loses lipsync. Can be fixed by pausing it for a second.
* Corrupt/broken files sometimes crash it, and it requires a full power cycle (Turned off at the wall) to fix.
Since you are happy with XBMC, you just need a smaller box to run it on.
Buy an Acer Revo, Asus EEEBox, Zotac Zbox, or something similar. Pretty much anything built on the Intel Aton/Nividia Ion combination is going to be able to play full 1080 content with XBMC.
Or you could go for a Popcorn Time box, or even a boxee box.
I'd still recommend XMBC on an Ion.
I have tried various media centreish things over the years. The problem is that for a particular amount of computing power bigger is better. Once you cross the transition to something with a fan then larger fans are quieter. Presently I have a bog standard ATX case in the living room. The large ATX power supply has a large slow turning fan. The CPU has a huge heat sink with a large slow turning fan (I think it is a Golden Orb II). Video is integrated. The result is a lot quieter than the projector it drives, even when the projector is on low mode. That is with the computer sitting right beside the couch. I presently have a dual core Athlon in there. If I run short of CPU I can just add cores. Much simpler than fooling around with hardware acceleration.
Adding a video card with a big heatsink (no fan) gets me a free living room computer using Linux multiseat (which seems to work well now). I control the projector session with one of those wireless multimedia keyboards with a built in trackball. I no longer bother with media centre software or a remote control. That includes recorded TV. It is just a computer that happens to be in the living room. It ends up being a lot simpler.
Hate to sound like a fan boy, but I too tried everything and now i Love my setup, mac mini with frontrow is the way to go. email me if you have any questions about my setup. PS i put HULU and Boxee inside front row along with a folder attached to a NAS device that has my archive collection on it.
The previous version of Knoppmyth (R5.5) is based on Debian. I still run that. There are Debian packages for mythtv.
For a relatively painless Debian like experience, I would install the latest Ubuntu and then install the mythtv packages on top of that, or I just might try MythBuntu, or you could back up your Debian server root (easier than remembering and removing 100 packages) and just try slapping in on there from the repositories.
root@mythtv:~# apt-cache showpkg mythtv ... (sounds like Lenny to me) ... (the version that I am still running)
Package: mythtv
Versions:
0.23-0.0lenny2
0.20.2-7
The question is all the tweaking and glue that Knoppmyth did for you. MythTv is probably a lot easier than when I started 4 years ago, but I would still recommend that you find someone with MythTv experience because you will have issues and questions unless you buy a pre-built system.
MythTv has all the features that you know you want and all the features that you didn't even know about, that you still want. Although MythTv can control many set top boxes, I find that one set top box is all we need in the house.
It manages, prioritizes and records for everyone off the one Set Top Box with results going on the file server. It knows how to move recordings around so that it will record everything (if possible). It knows when the shows get moved to a different night. It flags commercials for automatic skipping. The schedule is $20 a year. You find that you never watch things live any more, you watch when you want.
Any PC on the network in the house is a TV set and they can all watch any mixture at the same time (of course with the limitation that you can only watch 3 different live shows at the same time if you only have inputs).
Windows machines can run "mythtv player". Ubuntu machines can run a true MythTv native front end. Other distros have packages too.
HD is the question. There is no good, generic way to get encrypted HD from a set top box into a PC. Many shows are now marked "play once" by the provider in the DRM inside the STB and e.g. the STB firewire won't talk to open source because open source could be coded to ignore the DRM restrictions (if I recall correctly).
SD runs fine, even over 802.11g WiFi, possibly even two streams at the same time. I run ethernet where possible to minimize WiFi usage.
Weather button, music storage and playback, TV, video files, burn a DVD of any TV or video for use in a DVD player, automatic commercial skipping on playback. I even have some old virtual computer images that I can run on the server.
I have shown this wonderfulness to relatives and now manage 3 KnoppMyth R5.5 systems.
Come to think of it, I should probably do a backup :)
I've just got my hands on one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856107072
the "Jetway Mini-Top", comes with an Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz), and the new Nvidia Ion2. It has onboard HDMI that definitely supports 1080p out, onboard optical, onboard A/B/G wifi, a handful of usb, etc. The thing is unbelievably tiny to me, and it's VESA compliant so you can bolt it to the back of your TV. I have mine set right now as dual-boot with Vista and Ubuntu 10.04, XBMC works just fine in both over the network via smb shares. Allegedly you can run bioshock 2 and some more recent games on the Ion2, haven't tried it yet but that's what reviewers have said. A sub $500 (ram, HDD, etc) solution that can do 1080p video, it looks great when connected to my 55" samsung.
Just to be clear, with MythTv, you can play any HD content that you can get into the system, like via download or a BD player(?), provided you have the network bandwidth and CPU/GPU power.
that is what I have and it plays everything at 1080p no problem, works with DLNA servers no need for SMB shares, but it works with shares as well. Does Netflix, Pandora, Live365, YouTube and something else I don't use.
Works great over WiFi I have tried a 802.11n USB adapter, has 2 USB ports for local storage as well.
use mythbuntu with nfs on a gigabit network and you are good to go
using it for years
HP MediaSmart, running Windows Home Server. It can stream content to clients running iTunes, including Apple TV. Also acts as a backup host and generic shared storage. http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/index.html
I'm holding out for a D-Link Boxbee. It is small, dedicated hardware which supports both online streaming from netflix, hulu and such as well as full support for your local library of video/audio. Should be out this fall.
I'd provide links, but it's easier to just google for it.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
Not sure why you would bother with the streaming server idea. big, noisy, expensive, inflexible. As others as pointed out go the WDTV and a portable HDD. The HDD has everything on it and I can play from my PC, my laptop, my TV (via WDTV), take it to work, take it on holiday, take it to a friends and share (OMG! call the cops) and it's all there ready to go at all times.
It supports 1080P as well as all the other lowly formats.
I have a Windows machine that acts as a server. I can access any of the shared directories on that machine. It supports 802.11n (which I use) and seems to stream high end video quite well. It also has an ethernet port, but I don't use it, and I am unsure if it supports gigabit or not, but I would suspect it does.
It supports youtube and a photo site if you have some software installed on a remote PC. The neat thing about the software is it gives you remote control over that PC from the digital entertainer. Very useful when you forget to turn on your torrents at night.
It has HDMI output on the back, as well as component and a composite output, as well as digital and analog audio. I originally had it hooked up to a 20 inch via the component, but when I changed to a 37 inch 1080P HDMI connection, everything clicked. It supports pretty much any video i throw at it, including MKV and really really old xvid stuff.
There is a version with an internal 500G hard drive, which is what I am using. It works quite well, altho i haven't had the need to store any video locally as it plays pretty much anything I throw at it.
The GUI is simple and i had it configured out of the box in 2 minutes. It took me longer to put the shelf up next to the TV in the bedroom. I haven't noticed it running hot, i turn it off at night. The box looks like a DVD player or any other CE device that yo would find in the rack. The universal remote is simple to use, if a bit pedestrian, and I haven't tried to use any of the logitech remotes with it, it did support the Sony LCD that I have connected to it.
I have had it loose connection to the "server" PC (where the video is stored) and it's a bit of a kerfuffle to get it reconnected. The issues all stemmed from when the virus checker on the video storage machine rebooted the system. A reboot of the netgear appliance was required. I have had to reboot it 4 or 5 times since i purchased the unit, which was around 6 months ago. I have not had to reboot it in the last 3 months. There has not been a firmware update in the last 3 months, at least with the automated download procedure.
Some of the menus run a bit deep. For instance, you can send a message to the appliance from any machine that has the software installed. Lunch, Dinner, come here, that kind of thing. the responses are buried 3 or 4 levels into the machine.
Overall, I am very happy with how the unit performs. I am watching video within 20 seconds of turning on the unit and picking out what I want. I have found that i need to keep the videos organized, as a long directory list (say over 100 files) can slow down the machine a bit.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
I have my media in my upstairs office on a Linux box. My media player is a standard Shuttle with a projector in my downstairs living room. Forget SMB CIFS or Windows Too Slow. I expose my media over NFS. At the player I use VLC or Elana or MythTV to play files directly off the NFS mounted partition. And it's over a Wireless adapter.. And I've got pretty old Wireless stuff (802.11b). So, I get a very occasional buffer run out, which causes a freeze for a second or so, but then starts up without a hitch. I can solve that problem by running a wire downstairs or upgrading my wireless router and network adapter, but I'll live with it.
the Boxee box: http://www.boxee.tv/box is perfect for you, although it wont be here till November. I also have an ubuntu server with a few terabytes of media that I have the exact same problem with, so I am anxiously awaiting for the release of the Boxee box. Im running boxee(which I love) on my ubuntu box fyi, but again basically the same deal as you.
Am I really the first to suggest a SageTV HD200 with SageTV Media Center running on his server box? Full 1080p BluRay rips stream seemlessly over a wired connection.
Start with this http://www.amazon.com/Zotac-IONITX-90-Watt-Intel-Motherboard/dp/B002BA5IHC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1283483342&sr=8-3
Get a small case, some ram and a small laptop HD. You could do SSD if you wanted really quiet. Then install xbmclive, once setup, configure it to use hdmi. I have three HTPC's based on that board and they can be run fanless and with the dual core and the Nvidia VDPAU i'm doing 1080p over the network to my NAS.
I've tried the WDlive, the seagate, AppleTV, xbox360... none are as flexible as xbmclive.
http://packetnexus.com
I feel for you brother. I too have much media. Hundreds of hours of unwatched video, thousands of hours of audio, thousands of ebooks and no time to enjoy them. I hope that before I die there will be time for some of that.
Is it possible that the problem is not the equipment, not the cost, but the fact that you have no life? Do you have a job? Do you perform any function other than to absorb entertainment? Hey, just curious, and maybe a bit jealous.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I have media on the Ubuntu server running ushare (in xbox360 compatibility mode) and stream media to the xbox. Ushare can stream to xbox, ps3 or any upnp device. It supports other formats too. I sometimes stream media to vlc on my laptop using the upnp plugin, though it seems the vlc plugin has problems reading/displaying the upnp directory structure.
Ushare can be installed from the repositories - sudo apt-get install ushare - though you might want to create /etc/default/ushare containing: USHARE_OPTIONS='-x' ....to get it to work with some devices.
In /etc/ushare.conf I share /media and mount my permanent media drives in there. This is good because if someone brings a usb device over I just have to plug it in and restart ushare to make the new files available. Works for audio, video and still images.
BTW occasionally the xbox gets it knickers in a knot and needs a reboot... but the backend hasn't given me any grief at all.
Like an iPad!
The original Apple TV is $150 as of yesterday and you can get a crystal HD card off of ebay for $50 or less. Install XBMC on it and for $200 you have a slick, quiet, versatile media front end for your file server! (with a remote!)
http://patriotmem.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=6&catid=69&prodgroupid=159&id=895&type=20
It's small, light and silent, and it even comes with a decent remote and HDMI cable. I paid under AUD150 for mine, and I swear by it.
You can install a hard drive if you like, or attach USB dries, but I just go straight off the network (ethernet). It does also have wireless, but I don't recommend it.
I understand the A C Ryan Playon! might be even better...
http://www.playonhd.com/en/
If the Boxee Box strikes your fancy, you can download and run the Boxee client for FREE (as in beer) on your existing Windows (XP or newer) machine.
I'm not a huge ZOMGWTFBBQSAUCE fan of the Boxee interface, but on my old XP box, it plays DVDs, ISOs, and ripped movies with ease. The other features and apps are nice, but I use it primarily as a media library, and it does just fine at that.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
However, Small, Quite, HD, Cheap : Choose three.
Personally, I am of the Large, Quite, HD camp. You can make a very quiet system if you get the right case. I have a Antec Fusion Remote Max (not to be confused with the Fusion Remote). The Max edition has a 140mm side exhaust fan, a front/bottom 120mm intake, and a rear 120mm exhaust fan. So you can use extremely large slow rotating fans which make very little noise in this case and still move plenty of air. There is enough room to suspend 1 hard drive using bungie cords without much problem (or you can fit 4 or 5 in the case if you want max hdd space). Better, yet, buy a small 60gb solid state drive. Get a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P, an Intel Core i5-750, a Thermalright HR-02 PASSIVE CPU cooler, 4GB+ RAM, and a Powercolor HD-5750 Go Green (passive GPU). Only need to run the rear 120mm exhaust fan and the power supply fan. System will be extremely silent (under 16db if you replace the stock fan).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
It seems to me that the OP has done zero research on the matter. There is a lot of information available all over the Internet for precisely the types of appliance the OP wants.
I recommend an Acer Revo R3610 or it's newer cousin with the new Atom 550 processor. It absolutely silent, small enough to be tucked away behind the TV or fancy enough looking if you want to keep it in the open. It can do 1080p easily, has HDMI and has digital audio output if you want to pipe the audio through your HiFi receiver.
I use Windows 7 & XBMC. It is easy enough to configure Windows 7 to boot straight into XBMC without any password prompt or Win desktop (Hint: search for Windows 7 Shell). XBMC is the perfect Media player & Media library.
Look, if the problem is the PC, why bother with all this nonsense when you can just relocate the PC? Stick it behind a wall or something and it can be as loud as you want. Just run a cable to the TV/projector, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it. (Everything's USB these days, so if reception behind the wall is a problem, use a little USB extender cable (A-male/A-female) to locate the receivers on the proper side of the wall.)
This is slightly older tech now, but my HTPC that was built 6 years ago, is still unmodified.
Silverstone LC4 case, Power supply hacked so the fan is disabled, Via Mini ITX board. The one with the 800mhz proc thats passively cooled. Boots from a CF card plugged in a PATA adapter. Uses a internet bought serial IR pickup, so I was able to program the bottom half of my Samsung Plasma remote to work with the menu (It does nothing to the screen as it;s used for setup screens only).
Running Gentoo Linux which I have not even updated for a few years now. fstab lists the mount point of an external NFS mount for the file store. Lirc converts the IR scancodes in to keyboard commands. mplayer plays pretty much everything for me. Freevo give us a nice front end. My 5 year old work out how to get to the Dora xvids herself.
Data is stored on a ReadyNAS Dou (now, previous another box). The good thing about the Duo is that it can export both NFS and CIFS from the same back end file system. This mea ns I can happily run a windows torrent client like uTorrent on a VM elsewhere, keeping the HTPC focused on uptime and responsiveness. (Hence the fact that I never update gentoo.). The other cool thing about the readynas is that it'll happily rsync to another readynas for a backup. My backup readynas turns on at midnight for an hour each night for nightly replication.
The uTorrent VM (Running on Fusion on the old imac) uses RSS feeds to pull down all our shows(about 40 rules are active) and places them on the Readnas when needed. The whole thing works flawlessly except that when there is a power outage the readynas doesn't auto start, so the HTPC is just rebooted after it's finished the FSCK.
All up I think it weighs in at under 20-30 watts, cpu idles at 40% playing standard eztv standard def files. Is dead silent. It was a lot of effort up front, but was a cool project that has paid us back many times the intial setup costs. The Silverstone LC-04 is looking a bit dated, and looks completely empty with only a mini ITX board in it. the project initially had a riser with a tv card and DVD player but I pulled those out years later to save on running costs as they were never used. DVD's are played on the XBOX if really needed, but more likely to be ripped if we're not watching it the same day. I don't bother recording TV as everything we like to watch is on eztv.
After the first few months we cancelled foxtel and bulked up the internet plan and never looked back. I'm in -no way- a linux person. I'm an old school mcse from the 3.5 days. Never run linux on a home machine until this for more than a day (then went back to windows). Don't really feel it was 'hard' but certainly required a few solid night of attention and rebuilding the gentoo box a few times to understand whats going on.
Now, if I were to do it all again, I'd probably just get a Samsung Series 8 and get it to use a DNLA file server. The ReadNAS does that too (it wasn't chosen by chance).
Zotac Mini-ITX motherboard, low power quad core chip, Antec Mini-ITX case, 4 GB of RAM and a cheap laptop hard drive + Linux + XBMC.
Completely silent, lower power and tiny (About as long as a shoebox and 1/2 as high).
Plays everything and can be updated when new stuff comes out. People promoting the appliances are not looking towards the future when stuff breaks, you're stuck with a worthless appliance. With the PC, you can just update the software or replace parts that wear out for cheap. Plus you can dual boot it and do some gaming if you're so inclined.
Use Boxee on top of Ubuntu, with a small nettop like an acer aspire revo - just as long as it's an atom with ion processor. You could also just wait a bit for the boxee box to come out :) XBMC, if you get the right plugins, can do all of this but I like boxee's implementation.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
nobody has mentioned xbox 360... granted, it probably won't play nice with the ubuntu, but throw on any windows from xp onwards and you've got a pretty slick system that plays games, most major codecs, and lets you rent movies and tv shows too (not that i think you're a renter given any type of mass media collection), and is full 1080p when the source dictates
MediaPortal with MPC-HC. You'll need an nvidia 8500gt/9500 or better graphics to do full gpu off-loading (currently only developed fully in windows)
My Current system:
Core i7
Six 1Tb drives (raid5)
gtx275
6gb ddr3 ram
passive water cooling
Windows 7
The system is whisper quiet and cool (mainly due to the cabinet housing all the AV equipment getting pumped with 52F air from the adjacent wine cellar)
i use that as my network server. I have a PDA and a laptop that i hook in the the HTTP server the tversity runs. open any good web browser and input the local PCs IP:port and you pick video from a menu system. Even my grandma can use it. Windows. Option to hook into your local lan over the internet too. tversity.com
This is relatively simple, except for 1 thing: You need to set up an infrared remote input to your server box. After that, it's simple:
(1) Set up your server to actually output the video to its video out.
(2) Connect the video out to the Slingbox.
(3) Connect the Slingbox to your network.
(4) Run Slingbox Player on whatever you are watching the video on. (Windows, OS X, or Linux).
You will need the HD version of slingbox to actually serve HD video over your network. But all the networking part is taken care of for you. You can control the source video device through a "virtual" remote on the screen. Slingbox has 2 IR remote outputs. I have one running my cable TV box and the other my DVD player.
Slingbox will optimize the video according to your throughput. If you have plenty of network throughput, you get great quality. If your throughput is lower, it compresses the video more and quality suffers.
You even can access it away from home over the internet, but your throughput will usually not be as good. I took my laptop to the office and showed the folks there how I could get Cable TV and my DVD player, and control them, right there on my screen. It's pretty cool.
But again: the difficult part would be setting up a control system for your video source. Slingbox is designed to work with a fixed list of "standard" IR video device remotes. But there are links on their website to places where you can get the info to create a custom config file for your IR Remote if it isn't "standard".
The current batch of HDTVs on the market all have networking capabilities and claim to be able to play media off connected PCs
A game has objectives and is competitive, anything else is just play
Price? about 99 euro for a diskless streamer, my mede8ter (without disk, with ALL cables) 139 euro, for a disked station like the popcorn A200 220 euro.
(and forget those cheaper pre-2009 streamers, they are underpowered and don't eat averything you throw at them.
PS, despite the fact these boxes run linux, they have large binary blobs so i would not consider them open source NMT's
My setup includes:
65" Rear Projection CRT with Component, Composite, and S-Video
Desktop computer with some kind of old ATI All In Wonder card with s-video hooked up to the tv.
All of the videos reside on an ubuntu smb share. Playback with vlc.
The tv and the computer are at right angles on an inside corner so watching tv from the computer chair sucks. It's set up so we can watch broadcast tv on the computer, tv or both. Video from the server can be watched on the tv, computer, or both.
Works great for everything except hd due to a) old playback computer, b) old tv, c) network lag (permanently installed cable limited to 10 mbps, permanently means in concrete)
Lack of hd notwithstanding, it's fine. I never jumped on the hd bandwagon, and besides, what is hd going to do for Family Guy, Futurama, and Southpark anyway?
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
I have a QNAP TS 210 with twin 1 tb drives in RAID. Works a treat as a media server and general NAS. It sits under my desk on a 1 gb home network (the Samsung series 6 TV is hard wired too) and makes virtually no noise.
I use a Dlink dns 323 see http://wiki.dns323.info/ for storing all my video/photo's/music.
Then I use the uPnP client on my samsung C6900 46" LED to watch stuff downloaded to the DNS323.
My nokia e52 can handle audio streaming, as can the linux machines around the house.
For PVR functionality, I use a Zotac ION - checkout http://techreport.com/articles.x/16893 .
I think my home entertainment is getting there :-)
TVersity (on Windows) can do transcoding automatically, and also fetch files from another computer. It is a UPnP server program, so devices like the XBox 360 will play from it.
So will probably get modded "troll" for using a microsoft setup but here is what I use. Its easy for anyone especially non techies Xbox 360 a windows box (currently a laptop) Logitech harmony xbox remote Only problem pretty sure only 1080i can't remember but looks good enough The remote allows anyone one touch access to my media through the same remote that controls my entire living room entertainment center Its low cost (used xbox 360 arcade runs really cheap) My $0.02
As an alternative to the Apple TV/Mac mini, you could consider the fit-PC2 or fit-PC2i. It is a small, low-power, fanless computer using the atom-processor. Full hardware video acceleration of H.264, MPEG2, VC1, and WMV9 using the Intel GMA500 (not sure if linux will be able to use this however).
8W at full cpu load.
Possibility of built-in IR receiver depending on which model you choose.
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/
Netbooks or laptops are small, quiet, come with built-in power backup, and a second screen besides your TV for installing stuff.
Get a Hisense 1080p media box
http://www.expansys.com/d.aspx?i=186127
They work a treat connecting to ubuntu SMB shares.
Ok so it does not have flash player or web browsing but it will happily play HD videos and just about every file format available.
MKV, avi, mpg you name it it plays it.
Sorry, but Slashdot has finally been overun by lame questions.
There have been network media players available for 3-4 or more years now and obviously do just what the OP is after.
Wow, looking for a year for a solution? looking where I have no idea...
I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows
So get a small and quiet case, and run XBMC-Linux on it.
-- Yours sincerely, Captain Obvious
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Dont bother with the hot and noisy frontend, Sit a virtual MythTV host on a KVM server somewhere insulated from you. Use PCI passthrough for the video card. Run HDMI and USB over ethernet to your TV/HiFi area. Plug a USB sound device and IR receiver into a hub connected to the USB over ethernet adapter. Plug the HDMI adapter into your tv.
Works great :)
-Max.
http://www.xtreamer.net/
Imaging.
Just get a Boxee Box when it comes out in November. It's based on XBMC and has a much nicer, easier interface. ;)
You could install a POS computer like many geeks do, or you can do two simple steps:
- Turn on iTunes Home Sharing
- Connect your Apple TV
Done. It really is that simple.
Intel i3 530
Scythe Ninja II Rev.B Heatpipe CPU Cooler
Passively cooled PSU
Metal case (Antec)
Notebook hard disk (will eventually switch to an SSD)
No fans. The only moving part is the notebook hard disk.
Connected via HDMI using the onboard GPU (the audio is also carried via HDMI).
I'm using Windows 7 Media Center in conjunction with "My Movies" and Total Media Theatre 3 (for playing rips of my collection of HDDVDs). I also installed Shark007 codecs so I can play pretty much anything. And Core Codec for h.264 acceleration when playing MKV files.
All media is stored on a Netgear DNS-323 NAS housed in a kitchen cupboard.
Result is a silent PC with CPU temps that hover around 40C.
I have acquired a "ScreenPlay(TM) TV Link, Director Edition" to replace my old Emprex-1 which was nice but not perfectly reliable. It plays music (MP3) and videos (AVI or ISO) from SMB shares It also handles Mythtv streams allowing me to provide recorded programs over UPNP. When appliances like this fetch data from a network share you have a risk whether it will support your data format but the ScreenPlay seems to be sufficiently capable for my purposes.
I recommend this over many of the other suggestions for the following reasons:
1. cheap - £80.
2. Small - about 1cm high (smaller than a DVD case), slides in next to my V+ box.
3. energy efficient, I think about 10 watts.
FAQ below:
https://iomega-eu-en.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/iomega_eu_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=22760
One recommendation I would offer if you bought one - put something over the activity LED as it is bright enough to read by.
-- Don't believe everything you read, hear or think
Use LinuxMCE as a backend and a is Foxconn NT-330I-A-W-NA-A NVIDIA ION as a frontend which you PXE Boot (so no internal drive to make it silent) -P
forget all the rest. Just by a DUNE player.. it is the best in every review.. if you want the best sound. Pch 200 is also good . but what a messy GUI.. it has.. Dune plays everything.. and so easy to use. pch200 and dune are the bet. but for sound.. at least that is what I have read dune is the best. and and for a NMT it has a nice simple GUI .. The one thing I found to be a problem is that , none of these MNT use gigabit ethernet.. they have it built in . but the chip set will not support.. I have talk to PCH and Dune about this. they both say the same thing. maybe in 2011.. That really sucks if you want to play big 50g movies.. over the network. some stream fine others well they don't see to look or play so good.
True the Dune is not cheap. but it works great. I also have the little Western Digital box.. works pretty well and easy to use. and nice GUI. but feels cheap. well it is cheap..
Hope maybe this will help you out there. Look at the BD PRIME Dune 3.0.. even has a bluray built in if you want it.. harddrive is easy . plug and play..
I've got an asrock ion 330 with XBMC live (ubuntu based distro) in it, connected through PLC to my server. It has no problem playing HD content shared with SMB. You only hear it if you shutdown everything else during the night.
Can't you just use a "thin client" and let the backend do the work? You probably wouldn't need any additional hardware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Terminal_Server_Project
I haven't tried that myself, just a hunch. And I would hate to see a decent computer turned into a dumb terminal...
Try an Revo R3600 (~ £150 GBP) and XBMC live. The Revo is excellent, very very quite (much quieter than my sky+ PVR), about the size of an original apple tv, has HDMI and VGA output AND comes with a VESA stand that that you can use to hang it directly on the back of your TV (unless it's wall mounted). XMBC live installs very easily and quickly, once you've found a usb cd/dvdrom to boot it from :)
The only other thing I needed was a remote / usb receiver but I just bought the cheapest windows media centre one I could find.
HTH
There's one on offer from Iomega; the Screenplay Director.
http://www.iomega.com/support/manuals/hdd2009/spdirector/en/consolidated/main.html#amrgn
PROS:
Has a large storage capacity(1TB, 2 TB is available)
Handles pretty much any video you can throw at it
Can stream from SMB servers
Can stream from WMP12
Full HD (1080i)
Does torrents
Shares it's hard drive on LAN via SMB
Has a linux OS; good for tinkering; has already been done on it's sister media player, the screenplay HD
CONS: .srt files
Takes a minute to boot.
The interface responds slowly.
Has some issues with
Will not play Shoutcast radio (even though the capability is advertised)
Data transfer over LAN/WLAN is very slow (2 MB/s as opposed to the ~12 MB/s over USB)
Known to hang once in a while
No seek functionality in video playing mode (it's a pain to FF)
1080i is the highest res (not 1080p)
No OS hacking project exists.....yet.
What you want is a Western Digital WDTV. Great product that retails just over $100. Plays basically any format you can throw at it, networkable, can connect local USB storage. It has a remote with onscreen menus that are not terribly difficult to use, but not the best I've seen. I've been waiting for this device for years and not only is it great, it's cheap.
Use xbmc - it's an excellent HTPC with a 10 foot user interface and a TON of content available. Plays pictures, movies and music, and has the best plug-in in the world (IMO)
NaviX - Internet content automagic / site scraper
http://www.xbmc.org
Get yourself a teeny atom/nvidia ion box (acer revo/zotac )
Game console. Has wireless and you get a blue-ray on the cheap (comparatively). Outboard a big drive and you've got it.
I usually rip movies to ISO, then use handbrake to pull the title track to m4v, then use http://clip-bucket.com/ to put up our own family toob site. The player plugin is configurable, so you can use any flash movie player(with h264 pseudo-streaming on the server side to be able to skip around) or an HTML5 code-up to play without flash. Also allows for a download link that will stream the file direct(I use this link to stream to iPod/Android). Works well.
I'm posting as anon because I don't have an account here, I'm a closet nerd.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011006&p_id=7066&seq=1&format=1#largeimage
I picked this up last week and it plays "logged in" network shares and creates shortcuts as well as being able to use USB HDs or mem sticks, does HDMI and a variety of video formats. Still buggy with internet youtube playing, but all in all, a cheap convenient package.
Jason
You never said you needed a new system. You said your problems were "Windows 7" (don't particularly like) and "case is too big and noisy".
a) You want a UI for the non-Slashdot crowd. That would be Windows based. Suck it up Princess but that's what normal folk like and understand so make that a concession to the family and friends; and
b) Downsize your case. Asus, Eee, and others all make really nice small footprint machines. Get one of those. No fuss, no muss, no changing over your whole working system to something new. If you want to get really DIY, rip the guts from a suitable laptop (used), chuck the screen (well, put is aside for another project), and make a nice, tasteful, low profile box to put them in.
Honestly, your "problem" is really silly. A big noisy case? WTF, you have to ask how to solve that? Honestly, who really put your system together?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I use Vuze and a PS3. All my torrent'ed movies/TV looks amazing on a 52" plasma...
I use playon app in my office and a wdtv live box on my tv. With this setup I can stream anything I want from my pc to the tv (pretty much).
Buy a Tivo and run Streambaby on your media server. Streambaby is on Google code and Tivo will give a UI for non-Slashdotters in your home.
I built a full system about a year ago that is versatile and wife friendly. It is upgradable and I never have codec issues.
1. I chose an iCore 3 because of the quiet nature and the HD-friendly power.
2. Motherboard - I chose ASUS P7H55D-M EVO LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX because of the HDMI + DVI and the optical sound in addition to its no fan quiet design.
3. Case - This is always the tricky part. I chose the Antec Minuet350. It works even though it is not the best looking case. I prefer my old ASUS barebones for looks, but they stopped making the book pcs when the eee became popular.
4. Software - you can choose windows media center or something like sagetv. I prefer GBPVR. It is simple, intuitive and still actively developed. There is a great and helpful community to assist.
Get one of the little 200-300$ book sized atom/ion devices such as the revo or one of the Zotac boxes throw ubuntu and xbmc on it and call it a day. (alternatively you could also pickup a last gen AppleTV and install boxee/xbmc on it via thumbdrive)
Just because your using a oversized/overpowered device to run xbmc, does not mean that xbmc is not the right tool for the job :P
If you use a real OS and a real file sharing protocol(not MS garbage) then you won't have any problems at all. I use AFP(though NFS works equally as well) to view HD media over wifi and works perfectly. Ditch windows and you will have 0 problems.(The previous sentence pretty much works in any context)
1/10, try harder next time you troll.
This is how you troll:
Use a real OS, avoid the Fisher-Price style MacOS, it treats you like you're a complete idiot and can't handle anything remotely complex. If you do ever need to fix something, you're out of luck.
Second, avoid Linux, it's got the style and compatibility of running a small nuclear power station. Anything that would normally require 3 seconds in Windows takes 10 minutes of pulling levers and turning dials.
Finally, don't ever install itunes on Windows. Steve made sure you have a penalty for not choosing his toddler time playground of an OS, and that penalty is a confusing mess of application garbage and unnecessary services and protocols.
Thank you, this has been a PSA.
Remember, if you're too stupid to use a computer, get an Apple instead, it's the AOL of the 21st century!
Apple, "We're dumbed down just for you"
If the device without the optical drive you speak of is e.g. a netbook, just rip to iso and play it with vlc.
I can appreciate transcoding in order to squeeze it onto a mobile, but for a home media server, transcoding DVDs is a waste of time these days - hard drives are cheaper than the time, effort, & loss in quality.
I replaced the busybox setup with a full system using optware (ipkg), installed a cups print server, and attached a printer to the USB port. So far it has been able to serve up different movies to three different clients simultaneously over my home network without any problems.
A printer? What are you doing, making them watch movies on flick books?
http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap
I just ordered one of these http://sagetv.com/hd_theater.html that does just what the poster wanted. Very small (about 2 playing card packs), 1080p streaming in most any format you could want, quiet (no fan), and only $149. The only thing missing is Netflix (although Sage has a license for it, so it's probably coming).
To serve as a storage vault to work with my XBMC Live box, I threw a low-end PC with a high end SATA storage card + 6 2TB HD's in my basement. I used freeNAS as the OS. Works great- ZFS is da bomb when it comes to large storage systems.
My setup consists of an Ubuntu-based server with tons of storage, media served via Samba, an Acer Revo connected via ethernet, which connects to the TV via HDMI. The Acer Revo box runs XBMC (installed from the XBMC Live install CD). I even picked up one of the SoundGraph remote/receivers to control it all from. Best setup ever.
But, as I came to discover, the new Samsung TV I picked up recently has media decoding capabilities built right into it. It has an ethernet port built into it that can be used to stream media from a DLNA-compliant server. I don't use this method, however, as I find it's capabilities extremely limited compared to XBMC, but it will play x264 (via the mkv container), as well as divx/xvid files. An advantage to this is that you can use your TV remote to control media playback.
I got this MVIX box off e-bay. My model is the 760 HD, I paid under $50, but most auctions seem to go for under $100. It will look for open SMB shares, wired or wirelessly. If you get one with a hard drive, you can also use it as an external hard drive, but one's not required. They have newer versions also. The interface is basically a file browser, and I've only had a few poorly ripped movies not play with all the codex loaded on this thing. Makes about as much noise as an external hard drive, when you have a hard drive in it, otherwise, everything is in the solid state memory. I guess the downside is that it is JUST a media player, and doesn't surf the internet or anything like that.
Any MCE remote works out of the box.
Reload your Win 7 box with XBMC Live or Install on Flash Drive
After setup and scraping your library navigate with your iPhone over Wifi
You do have an iPhone right?
Or
Build a WHS with Twonky to transcode and watch through the Xbox 360
I use a laptop with Windows XP and AV, and Miro as a front end for my video library stored on a file server elsewhere on my network.
I have a inexpensive wireless keyboard attached, and away I go.
Even my six year old can search through the index for his favorite shows, and not have any trouble finding what he wants.
I was a XBMC user for many years but the xbox just couldn't keep up wuth modern video standards.
I tried several set top boxes and software packages, but the one that most closely matches my XBMC experience is boxee.
boxee.tv
It has lots of app plugins for streaming content
The best thing is that when installed in windows, it supports netflix.
Install something like Mediatomb on your ubuntu box, and then get a hardware UPnP player.
You can use a PS3 (fantastic for this purpose), maybe even an XBox 360 (not sure about that one), or buy a dedicated device like the ZyXel DMA-1000, Dlink DSM520... Netgear makes one, as does Buffalo, etc.
Mediatomb can be configured to transcode on the fly (uses a *lot* of CPU) for formats that your UPnP client doesn't understand. It's a bit complicated to get working, but it works very well.
I can't speak to your set up issues, but I've had no trouble getting the server running on my Myth/server box and I've set up a dozen frontends on all kinds of hardware and several in virtualbox. Not a single issue with any of those, just type in the information and it goes. It doesn't require anything fancy.
And any Windows Media Center remote works out of the box with MythTV. Unless you're talking about a version that's 2+ years old, you clearly missed something.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
I run the exact same thing, (well, OpenSolaris on the smb server). However, my windows 7 computer is downstairs while the TV i supstairs. I ran a long (30-40ft I think) VGA cable along with a USB cable (2 16ft cables that included a build-in signal repeater powered from the USB) from the room with the computer to the entertainment center. At the entertainment center, VGA goes into the TV, USB goes into a usb hub. The USB hub has a extigy usb soundcard (connected to the sound system) and a logitech diNovo mini keyboard/mouse.
This setup works great. My wife is not a tech time but loves it because she can watch her netflix and abc.com shows easily. She can also browse the web/etc. There's something to be said for the windows interface. With a good wireless keyboard/mouse combo (like the diNovo) people are familiar with windows and have no problem navigating it on a 50" tv. People find most set-top boxes or fancy media center interfaces to be foreign and shy away. However, they know what a keyboard and mouse is and they know what windows is and can use both.
I do security
Do you know what transcoding is?
You could easily rip the DVD and play the movie from the VIDEO_TS directory. Many media players (for Windows, at least, I assume others do too) support this.
You could also remux the audio and video into a new container (.avi, .mkv), though depending on the container you choose, you may lose features (you're certainly going to lose menus...).
Transcoding is changing the codec (or the video format) used to compress/decompress the audio and video. Unless you have a specific reason to do that (reduce resolution, reduce file size) then it's better to avoid it. Transcoding ALWAYS (unless you're transcoding to a losless codec, and you certainly aren't) reduces video quality (at least theoretically).
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Grab a cheaper bluray player that supports DLNA, or if you have DirecTV the newest updates for some of the units with ethernet jacks support DLNA.. hell even a lot of TV's now do.. Plug bluray/tv/directv receiver into your LAN, setup a DLNA server, and you're done. Period.
http://www.obsessable.com/feature/home-media-streaming-101-dlna-explained/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance
http://www.dlna.org/digital_living/how_it_works/
http://www.rbgrn.net/content/21-how-to-choose-dlna-media-server-windows-mac-os-x-or-linux
There's a few helpful links for you. No need for a PC for the client side, and can setup the DLNA server on a choice of OS's. Don't over-complicate things
I can't believe no one said this already. I use my notebook from time to time when the D-Link Media player I have won't play some format.
Our TV is a 1366x768 50" Samsung plasma - it was the state of the art several years ago when be bought it (for LOTS of money - they were _expensive_ then) Nice picture, but it does not do a very good job when fed with 1080p video via HDMI - we get _much_ better results feeding it video at 1360x768 via VGA.
The machine driving it is a fairly standard PC: triple core Athlon, huge passive heatsink, fanless PSU, running nLited Windoze XP from 2 CF cards striped and protected by EWF (no writes, no shutdown required, just turn the power off) Control via a Windoze media centre remote and Event Ghost.
The player is Zoom player... mainly because we have both been using it for years and know it well. Video decode by ffdshow, which also scales whatever is offered to it to correctly fit the 1360x768 display and makes a damn good job it it. This plays everything from high bitrate 1080p down to ancient, overcompressed DIVX-3 encodes. My only complaint is that there is a short glitch when changing subtitle streams during playback.
This is not a setup I would recommend for a new build, but it works well for us, and my wife and I are both used to it. The user interface is "arrow keys and OK" (like point and click, but no mouse) and, though not particularly slick, is immediately usable by anybody who has used Windoze.
The server runs Slackware. In our house the server has always run Slackware starting from when the server was an original 60MHz Pentium.
Have a look at LinuxMCE. They have "Media DIrector" nodes that can be a small PXE boot box, nice and quiet.
Many other features as well, VOIP integration, home automation..
http://linuxmce.org/
You can easily use an external player (for now) with MythTV for any content
that may not play well with the one built into MythTV itself. There is very
good support for GPU accelerated video playback with nvidia cards.
If you rip the m2ts file by some other means, Linux will play it.
There's also good IR remote support in the Linux video players.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Note that most of my gripes were actually about the DVR capability rather than just media-player capability.
ppppfffft. MythTV stomps all over the alternatives when it comes to DVR capability.
That is not MythTV's weak point.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Drobo (choose your size device) to live on the network somewhere other than your living room - this will allow you great growth at a reasonable cost.
Pick your low cost \ low noise device to live near your TV
Run Windows Media Center 7 - No XMBC necessary.
Windows Media Center 7 has a fantastic interface, very wife friendly, lots of features, and has been quite reliable for me. I use it to record TV as well (4 tuners) and it just works. Zero "management" just use it.
You don't need to worry too much about re-encoding your videos for this solution (like say AppleTV) - if you can get WMP to play the file (with a codec pack or something) then it will play in media center.
It's 100% remotely friendly. Netflix support is great. Hulu support is decent. Until GoogleTV comes along, this is the only workable solution I've found that passes the wife test.
The Roku set top boxes have a pretty easy to use scripting language so you can buy one of those for less than $100 and write a quick channel to access your media. They have a table of the media the different players support on their website. It's a very basic interface but its hard to beat for the price.
SO I CAN WATCH IT ON MY HANDHELD!!!
(why are we shouting?)
Seriously, there's lots of reasons to transcode. Not all movies are available for download in friendly formats. I recently got a beautiful DVD set of the silent film Greed by Erich von Stroheim and I wanted to watch it on something that didn't have an optical drive, away from home.
How else but to transcode?
You could rip the DVD without transcoding it, then copy the VOBs over.
If I hadn't built my own HTPC based on a Intel Core2Duo I would have chosen a ASRock straight away, but I built my HTPC before the Atom frenzy started.
http://www.argosy.tw/product-detial.php?prod_id=154 Not a lot of bells and whistles. But it holds a 2TB drive if you want it. It works with every TV I have tried it on. It has played every media I have thrown at it. The UI is a bit boring, but so what! Dirt cheap, ultra quiet, and does the job. I just wish it also worked as a NAS, and not just samba client.
Personally I have been using Windows Home Server streaming to an Xbox. I copy all of my decoded video to a videos folder on the windows home server. The home server is automatically detected by the xbox and streams through my router to the xbox which is hooked up to our LCD TV via HDMI. It works great!
I more or less have this same setup. I have a small AMD Athlon X2 machine/case with large/quiet fans that I built that runs ubuntu, but basically just boots into freevo. I have my video files directory nfs mounted at boot up and freevo just sees them as if they were on the local machine. I have another old laptop in the bedroom that is under my dresser that does the same thing. I bought two USB remotes from dealextreme.com for like $9 each and hooked them up. I had to create custom modmaps for a few buttons, but other than that it just worked. The setup was a little bit of a pain, but now that it is done, my wife (non-tech) uses it with no problems. The other plus is that since it uses VLC, Xine, and/or Mplayer to play the videos (you can configure it based on file extension), it can play pretty much anything without having to worry about going from one thing to another.
So now I've got 4gb of VOBs instead of 700mb of m4v or avi. That's 8 to 1. If we're talking about watching them on a handheld, it means I can pack 16 movies instead of 2. Anyway, I don't even know if there's a mobile application for viewing VOB files.
I'm not saying you always want to transcode, or that there aren't situations where the very best thing you can do with a video file is leave it alone, but the idea to which I was originally responding, the "Why do you people waste time transcoding anythgn???" is just silly.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What application would I use to do that on my handheld?
Don't tell me there's never a good reason to transcode.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Install Mediatomb on the server. It's a UPnP server, so it will work with many different clients (I use the PS3, but there are many different devices you can buy that will work).
It's the setup I have, and I recommend it.
This article is about a box for displaying shit on a TV. Transcoding is useless except for when you need to improve the source material (e.g., inverse telecine).
I have described a good open-source personal media network here:
http://frequal.com/pmn/index.html
The article is about a machine for a home entertainment system.
It doesn't mention "displaying shit on a TV". It specifically mentions a large media library.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I always buy the lowest level refurb mac mini I can find (paying $300 for an extra 100GB of disk strikes me as insane), and they do a great job. Lower power use, remote control, etc. etc.
I use a linux machine as my server and have two machines for the clients (1 in my room and 1 in the living room). The machine in my bedroom is a linux mythtv machine which mounts the media file system over nfs. The mythtv/nfs part has been great, the hardware it's on hasn't been so great. In the living room i have a ps3 (had an older mac mini and it sucked at playing the videos). I'm not too thrilled with the ps3 either, the video formats it accepts is bad and ps3 media server is kinda shitty. So my plan is to buy a small revo 3610 for about $350 and install mythtv on it to replace the ps3 (though the way the hardware has been acting up on my other machine i may replace that instead).
I got this about a year ago.
netflix
youtube
1080p
xvid
h.264
dlna
It doesnt say it anywhere but somehow the dlna allows it to browse any smb share.
Works for jpg, mp3, and all video codecs that my pc can play.
Basically a blue ray player. Just check the ones out there and give it a try.
There is vlc for the iphone, in cydia.
Again, transcode != remux. Just because your handheld doesn't have software capable of playing video straight out of .VOB files, doesn't mean you need to transcode anything. Just remux into a new container. Should take seconds.
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I'm not saying you always want to transcode, or that there aren't situations where the very best thing you can do with a video file is leave it alone, but the idea to which I was originally responding, the "Why do you people waste time transcoding anythgn???" is just silly.
You are getting hit with the typical responses that plague a lot of tech questions. The 'I don't care what the situation is, you must always/never do this.'
You could ask a simple question "I need to do this, but for a variety of reasons, B is not an option. How would I go about that" You will always get a response similar to, "B is the better way to do it, so throw everything you have in the trash, go buy this, and do B." Or you will get the questions, "Why would you want to do that in the first place? I don't do that, no one could ever want to do that."
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Why the hell would I hire a DVD? Their references are almost always terrible, have no work experience prior to 1996, and they don't do any work -- they just sit around looking all shiny.
Am I going to make you feel old?
I have no work experience prior to 1996. I've designed aircraft components that have been in service for over 5 years.
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http://www.zotacusa.com/products/mini-pcs/mag Zotag Mag and Win 7 = 1080p streaming over 802.11n and low energy consumption, no noise.