agreed, i would do the same if i had a suitably wired closet to put it in. also, i hook my tv up to the htpc so they need to be close anyways.

1/28/2013 9:51:21 AM

I just installed XBMCBuntu on my decommissioned gaming computer slash home server. I have about 5TB of storage scattered around 6 or 7 drives. What do I do here? I also have a Zotac Zbox that I bought for work but could easily just write a check back to us for it.

I don't really care about noise or the use of the box itself, I just have a bunch of configuring to do to make sure this ubuntu build mounts all the HDDs on boot and that uTorrent and SabNZB will run in the background with sickbeard.

tl;dr is it unconventional to have your XBMC installation on the same computer that your 6 SATA drives reside? I don't want to try and move and backup all the content but I suppose that I could if there's an argument to be made for windows home server or FreeNAS or something...

2/16/2013 12:54:34 PM

the hp proliant I bought is pretty good for the server side. I run freeNAS because ZFS has enough of a worthwhile feature set for me (zpools/zraid vs traditional raid). You can get an android stick or some <$100 silent device to be your front end. If you wanted to get fancy, you could xbmcbuntu on a partition and then install virtualbox and run freeNAS as a VM on the same host and transfer all your data between the front end and freeNAS via loopback and all your other nodes can access the NAS via the bridged virtual interface

2/16/2013 4:26:43 PM

bump

Just got my WD Live TV all setup. I love this thing. I had a extra wireless usb sitting around and popped it right in and it worked.

Copying shit over is taking awhile (2.50MB/s) but i like it.

9/21/2013 2:56:23 PM

Got my parents a WD Live Hub and it's connection is horrible. It always drops the network and you have to restart the thing before you can connect back to a network share. It's great for Netflix and streaming stuff when it works though.

9/21/2013 2:58:41 PM

I got hit with the cinivia protection on my PS3, so im royally pissed about that, thus the WD TV. I could wire to it but it's a rental house and don't feel like networking a rental house, so wireless will do.

going to utilize the storage on it so the wife can watch things without the PC being on it. Plus 1080p will go without a hitch on it.

9/21/2013 3:07:44 PM

i have a 23" monitor in my bedroom. i use it almost exclusively to watch netflix on at night when i go to sleep. for a long time i used an old macbook over vga to drive the monitor, with a wireless keyboard/touchpad that i keep near that bed so that I can 1) keep the macbook lid closed all the time and still operate it and 2) not have to get out of bed to "change channels". i used to use a VNC client on my phone to operate the macbook but it was always soooo many seconds to get the app started and connected whereas the remote is instantaneous.

i finally just got rid of the macbook, and am looking for alternative solutions for driving content to the monitor while maintaining the ease and flexibility of control. i'm looking for something smaller than a laptop this time so i can free up some space on my desk by mounting (or at least holstering it or something) to the back of the monitor. i also like the idea of having another device handy around the house that i can quickly detach/re-attache to the monitor when i want to. the macbook sat on the desk hooked up to the monitor for 3 years straight b/c it was not worth the effort to move it out of place.

i've been using chromecast since it came out, but i hate it. the netflix app sucks ass, it won't get updated nearly as often as the web client or even the iOS/android apps, and in the end you can't really do much with it other than watch netflix anyways.
so instead, at first i was thinking an ipod touch or ipad mini as they support AV out. but there's no way to remote control them so i'd have to get out of bed to change channels. F that.
then i thought, maybe android tablets are a little more flexible in terms of remote control options. haven't explored it much yet but it seems like they'd be a bit easier to find a VNC solution for.
and then i thought, why not a windows 8 tablet? i've been itching to find a reason to buy a Surface and I could use that for this purpose, but any RT device probably couldn't do it, and a Surface Pro is still just too expensive for what I'm trying to do. But I could probably find some used cheapo Acer Windows 8 tablet that would do the job.
but then i came back to the Android idea again. I happened to buy a Nexus 7 today for my kids to replace their original iPad, and I noticed one of the settings was for Wireless Display using Miracast. ok so I'd have to get a $40 adapter to plug into the monitor, but that might work ok. i'd be able to run the netflix app or even chrome, but i probably wouldn't have much like with stuff like firstrowsports or other flash-based streaming web sites.
another option would be instead of relying on the Nexus I just got, get a $40-60 android on a stick device. i could set up a VNC server on it and get remote control from my phone, i could probably even plug my wireless keyboard/touchpad into it (maybe?). still no flash-based websites would work, but compared to a few hundred bucks for any win8 tablet, it might be worth it.

any other options or considerations y'all can think of that i haven't mentioned before i go ahead and pick something

[Edited on October 4, 2013 at 5:10 PM. Reason : .]

10/4/2013 5:09:16 PM

^Is there anything you'd like to do with the replacement device that a Roku 3 + PLEX media server couldn't accomplish? I just picked this up after having a similar unused laptop + monitor setup in the bedroom. I know there's a thread for streaming devices, but Roku + PLEX covers about everything I would do. Netflix and other streaming services, plus a pretty simple solution for streaming content from another device. Buying another device seems unnecessary to me anyway, not that Roku 3 isn't a device but it's an affordable and pretty damn niche device that isn't hugely overlapping with all your other devices.

Plus, Roku 3 supports Miracast--but it might still be shaky? I'm kinda uncertain. I know that Miracast is only now being optimized for first gen Nexus 7 (at least in early August when I was reading about it).

10/5/2013 1:14:00 AM

I have sort of a "what would you do based on your experiences" question. I haven't used an htpc before. I've built computers though and am fairly comfortable doing so.

My apologies in advance for the long post. I've read through this thread a lot over the past few years, but have never delved into using an htpc. But I know that many of you have been doing so for quite some time and have a lot of relevant experience and insight/practical advice in turn.

So I'd appreciate any input or thoughts.

Here's what I'm currently doing/would like to be able to do:

I got rid of cable a while back, and I'm happy with that decision.

I'm was using my xbox360 to access:
Netflix
Amazon Prime/Instant
my Plex Media Server via dlna (movies, tv shows, music through the iTunes channel, PBS channel) -- I use Plex more than anything else
OTA channels (I really only watch football and 60 minutes OTA) -- it'd be nice to be able to record programs, but it's really not necessary


The catalyst for change
My Plex server was outgrowing my 360. It was a pain in the ass to scroll through so many folders to get to what I wanted, and it seemed to be having a tough time populating as the library grew. Plus my xbox live membership is about to expire, and I really don't play games online much. And I think it's absurd that MS requires you to have a live membership to use Netflix.

So...
I bought a Roku3 this past weekend to use with Plex moving forward. It's a lot better than using dlna through the 360, but I'm a little underwhelmed with the Roku client compared to the desktop client and android clients for Plex. It's not really easy to navigate through large libraries and visually it leaves A LOT to be desired. I have been able to customize it some (change the icons for genres, collections, etc. so that my custom icons show up on the Roku). That did help make it a little easier to sort through things and it made it a little more aesthetically appealing as well.

Also, it handles most of my media fine, but not everything is supported native, so plex is transcoding. Most of my media is h/x.264, mkv or mp4, and audio is a mix of stuff, but mostly aac, ac3, dts. I've been remuxing stuff to mp4 though just because more clients play nicer with the mp4 container and I share my plex server with a few people using a variety of clients. I usually just copy the video and audio stream to an mp4 container, no encoding, so it's quick an easy and done in batches. But sometimes I do re-encode the audio to aac 2.0 since I don't have surround sound anyhow.

So that's sort of where I am. The Roku suffices, but I know how much better the overall experience could be. And I use Plex A LOT, so I'd really like it to be as easy to navigate and as nice looking as possible.


So at this point I'm thinking of two possibilities:

Option 1
Exchange the Roku for an AppleTV. I was considering buying an iPad mini once the iPad mini 2 is released next week (since I expect the price of the original mini to come down). I like the Plex iOS app better than the roku app and I can mirror it to the AppleTV. But that is dependent on a device that I do not currently own. And I really don't have much experience with the AppleTV. I know people say they use iOS devices to mirror to the AppleTV with plex and it works great. But I have no firsthand experience with that or any of the regular apps.

The cost there will be whatever the price of the mini drops to since the AppleTV and Roku will be an even exchange.

Option 2
Re-purpose some of the parts I have in a desktop (that is running my plex server) for an HTPC. I have:
AMD 64 X2 2.2GHz cpu
4GB of ddr2 800
micro-atx ASUS mobo
2.5TB of internal storage (2 drives).

From what I've gathered so far, those components would be a decent enough starting point. Thoughts on that?

I'd prefer a smaller case than the tower I have now. And I'd need a remote/keyboard. So I'd return the roku, and put that money toward that stuff.

What OS is best? I'm currently running xp pro, but I suspect I'd be better off with WMC or win7



Option 1 really seems the simplest. But it seems to me that an htpc would ultimately provide much more flexibility. Cost, on the surface, seems to be somewhat comparable as I'd have the $99 from the Roku return to either get an AppleTV or put toward a case. And the cost of an iPad mini would leave money for other stuff for the htpc if I needed it.

So what do you guys think? What direction would you go? What do I need to consider that I haven't? Etc.

Again, I appreciate any input/advice you guys have to offer.

Edit: I should mention that while I've been using Plex and am happy with it, I think I'd be just as happy using XBMC.

[Edited on October 15, 2013 at 10:21 PM. Reason : .]

10/15/2013 10:15:15 PM

xbox one

10/15/2013 11:24:30 PM

^^I used Plex for about 6 months. Before that I used Windows Media Center + Xbox 360's as extenders with cablecard tuners for cable, and netflix/hulu/etc apps on the 360's. Ran that way for about 3.5 years.

I went to try out Plex because I was so completely fucking disappointed by the Windows 8 app ecosystem for use in a HTPC (Hulu/Netflix etc are completely unusable in Win8 with a remote), and I too was thinking about cutting the cable cord.

Plex was super easy to initially setup and index everything, which I supplemented with SABnzb and CouchPotato, but after 4 months or so, Plex started showing its seams for me. I couldn't really customize things the way I wanted, and hit a wall with fixing several issues I had in the server.

So I started playing with XBMC (primarily because 12.0 added CableCard support), and I have never looked back. Yes I have spend a fuck-ton of time tinkering with it and tweaking things, but damn I love XBMC now. I won't be going back to Plex, and it's going to take a lot to get me to move back to a preboxed solution. XBMC definitely has an insanely steep learning curve, and the community is really scattered and a pain in the ass to keep on top of, but I really enjoy it.

10/16/2013 12:11:51 AM

Everything I've read and have seen of XBMC has looked great. And I know it can be more customized than Plex. And I like messing around with that stuff, so I could see myself moving to xbmc down the road.

What sort of issues did you run into with Plex? I've been using it for somewhere between 2-3 months now and everything has been good so far, but I'd rather avoid issues before they crop up if possible.

10/16/2013 12:43:27 AM

I use XBMC as a front end and love it. I also use Plex but only for streaming to my laptop/phone.

10/16/2013 3:36:08 AM

my mobo only supports 1866 and 2133 OC (which i've never done)...with that in mind, is it worth the extra couple of bucks (and higher voltage requirement) to get 2133 RAM (which i assume would run at 1866)? i'm debating between:

8GB of 2133 with CAS 10 (10-12-12-31) at 1.65V for $63: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313416

8GB of 1600 with CAS 9 (9-9-9-24) at 1.5V for $60: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313434

and, actually, while we're at it...wouldn't this 2133 with CAS 11 (11-11-11-31) be a worse option than the other one? i'm just curious why the same company would make a worse product (their "new arrival") for the same price, unless they just wanted to cut costs...but i wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313433

12/28/2013 6:15:21 PM

I spent about a year customizing my XBMC media center, but it's now stable, powerful, and completely free. (Project KRANG) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNzGZN7qDs

Plex is for people that want everything done for them, which is fine, but XBMC gives you more power to do whatever you want.

Everything is automated on my HTPC now, with the use of scheduled tasks and VBscripting. XBMC also has a WebUI, and Airplay support. I love it.

[Edited on December 29, 2013 at 2:57 PM. Reason : -]

12/29/2013 2:55:38 PM

^I still use Plex for streaming to my Android tablet, phone, or my laptop when I'm away. The 12mbps upload I have really helps with that.

Is anyone on XBMC 13? I'm still on 11 because I had it tweaked perfectly. I'm moving soon and will be redoing my set up and swapping out the HDD I have for an SSD so I figured I'd go ahead and upgrade. I'm worried I'm going to have to fuck with the frame rate and audio/video lag again. Oh well. I had 24p working so perfectly now.

6/11/2014 4:52:10 PM

http://promos.asus.com/us/chrome-os/chromebox/

$179

Anyone got this yet?

6/11/2014 5:05:18 PM

No but I might for my parents. I pretty much only use XBMC and XBMC on a powerful computer is always going to be a better experience than any type of device like this.

Although it looks cool.

6/11/2014 5:10:54 PM

in my new house, I can't get hdmi from my pc to my tv easily so I think I'll setup steam streaming. I'm looking for something running an atom quad core, i3 ulv, or something similar. smallest form factor possible, ideally passively cooled. onboard video just needs h264 decoding acceleration.

9/14/2014 9:57:22 AM

Not passive...but might as well be because you can't hear it

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102004

9/14/2014 12:00:08 PM

yeah, i'm torn between the i3 NUC and the celeron NUC

9/15/2014 7:20:47 AM

bumpin this old ass thread.

What's everyone running? Would like to stream some 1080p avi's to my TVs. Thinking about getting this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEWEST-Matricom-G-Box-Q-Quad-Octo-Core-XBMC-Kodi-Android-HD-TV-2GB-16GB-UHD-4K-/262013594058?hash=item3d013a29ca:g:WL4AAOSwjVVV1h89

2/18/2016 7:47:30 PM

I have a dedicated server/HTPC. It's an i5 Haswell with 16GB of ram and ~14TBs of storage running Kodi on my TV. I'm usually fan of having Windows running Kodi for your HTPC because of the versatility and ability to customize stuff.

2/18/2016 8:10:29 PM

^ i see most of customization is plugins - which look like are just downloaded, installed in Kodi. Is there something else out there?

I'd like to do this all wireless with my movies on my desktop upstairs. I'd be ok waiting a few mins for a good buffer on my movies.

[Edited on February 18, 2016 at 8:21 PM. Reason : s]

2/18/2016 8:20:31 PM

Outside of just Kodi. I like being able to play Steam games on my HTPC, use it as a computer, etc. Plus most of those devices (I think) can't output true 24P to a TV which is key to playing smooth movies and tv shows (so you don't get 3:2 pull down with 60hz). My Amazon Fire Stick doesn't even provide smooth playback. The only way I've ever gotten smooth playback is using a Bluray Player or my HTPC using a decent video card set to output 24hz to the TV.

I'm really picky though. If you don't care about small stuff like that then go for it. I also have a desktop in my office but I also have the HTPC.

Quote :

"I'd like to do this all wireless with my movies on my desktop upstairs. I'd be ok waiting a few mins for a good buffer on my movies"

Ideally I prefer everything wired but any decent wireless router should give you plenty of bandwidth to stream media over a network. Even a shitty 5ghz connection over N (not even AC) will give you plenty of bandwidth to stream a 5-10mbps file. Hell an old Linksys WRT54g should technically give you enough bandwidth. There shouldn't have to be any buffering.

[Edited on February 18, 2016 at 8:32 PM. Reason : s]

2/18/2016 8:30:12 PM

^^ If all you want to do is stream random movies from your desktop, you'd probably be better off with a UPnP/DLNA Blu-ray player or TV than with that. In any case, make sure it's compatible with how your movies are encoded.

My HTPC is connected wirelessly. Kodi has no problems streaming from the internet, playing from the server, or watching/recording TV. As with all things wireless, YMMV.

2/19/2016 7:29:50 PM

i have all kinds of movies and encodes so rather go with kodi. I got shit from 2009 thats ripped weird.

2/19/2016 7:36:48 PM

if you have a desktop you keep running, just get a firetv and run kodi on it

2/19/2016 11:04:06 PM

^^ Kodi is great, but it can only do so much. If the video can't be hardware decoded and/or audio passed through, it's going to struggle.

2/20/2016 1:13:10 AM

Quote :

" If the video can't be hardware decoded and/or audio passed through, it's going to struggle."

thats why i posted the ebay link to a nettop that *looks* like it has the horsepower to chug through anything. I have a T5500 precision dell desktop that is sitting around that would be a complete overkill but rather buy a small footprint nettop.

2/20/2016 8:19:49 AM

My htpc for upstairs is a custom built desktop with an i7, 8 gb of memory, blue ray player, windows 8 media center, and networked silicon dust for antenna over-the-air tv. I use a 3TB network attached storage to store ripped movies and tv shows.

The one I just built last month for my one downstairs uses an i5 intel nuc with 8 gb of memory and runs nextpvr for the over-the-air pvr and kodi for the front end (since I couldn't buy wmc any more).

I am debating on whether I should upgrade the machines to windows 10 and go with nextpvr and kodi since I know they work, but I am hesitant to mess with a working system. I would also run nextpvr from the desktop instead of the nuc and just point both kodi instances to the more powerful machine.

2/21/2016 12:02:00 AM

Wow this is a really old thread.

I went back to Plex. It is so darn good now, I have no real reason to even mess with Kodi. I use the XBone in the living room so Hulu/Netflix/Amazon all work great.

The other tvs just run a Raspberry Pi2 running Plex client.

My HTPC server is now a core i5, 8gb of ram running win 8.1. Mounted in a 4U Chenbro 24 Bay rack mount chassis. 8 x 3tb 7200rpm drives driven by an older hardware raid card in raid 6. Couple of jbod scratch drives running on another pcie software raid card that supports 24 drives, and OS on a 120gb SSD.

Using dognzb+sickrage+couchpotato+eweka+wmc+Hdhomerun prime+mediabuddy+comskip+Plex.

When I get time this spring I'm either moving to unraid or freenas and dropping Windows completely. With unraid and some more ram, I can keep a vm on the pc to still use wmc and the cable card tuner, but everything I use is better and more fault tolerant in Linux/BSD now.

[Edited on February 22, 2016 at 2:04 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2016 2:00:28 AM

I still prefer windows on my HTPC for Steam streaming and various other applications.

While I do like Plex I can't get smooth 24p playback on any device I've tried it on. The last time I tried running Plex on my Fire TV it didn't support surround from .mkv files so I still run Kodi. I even tried Plex on newer consoles and the last time I tried they didn't support true 24p output so I experienced 3:2 pulldown jitter.

Maybe I'm not lucky but the only way I've been able to get smooth video playback with perfectly sync'd audio is by running Kodi on Windows (haven't tried on Linux).

2/22/2016 11:07:07 AM

^Thats the beauty of unraid. Linux under the covers and I can still run windows VMs (among others) if need be.

2/25/2016 12:05:01 AM

I have found Plex to be the best for me running on a Roku it hasnt really given me any issues yet.

2/25/2016 9:55:40 AM

Yeah I picked up a Roku 4 for my parents and they use Plex on it. Seems to work great. Main problem I have is those devices still only output 60hz to a TV unlike a Bluray player or dedicated HTPC that can output 24p. So no matter what you're getting some type of pulldown and stuttering with those devices. I've never watched an entire video (streaming or local) on any device (Roku, Fire TV, Chromecast, Apple TV, etc) without seeing some type of stuttering or skipping.

--I know I keep bringing this up but it'd be nice to have a dedicated streaming device that can actually provide smooth playback.

Although when I get a UK show that's at 25hz it just screws everything up.

[Edited on February 25, 2016 at 1:07 PM. Reason : s]

2/25/2016 1:00:38 PM

i'm usually on the latest beta kodi on an openhour chameleon - plays everything i throw up

2/25/2016 2:19:18 PM

All of a sudden in the past 2 weeks I've heard kodi mentioned at least once a day. Before that I'd never heard of it. It all started when someone told me they paid $150 dollars to watch any movie they wanted. I was like wuuuut? Eventually found out it's a firetv sideloaded with kodi and some plugins or channels or whatever they're called. Kids these days will never know the struggles of having to fxp from a top (that's a lie I never had topsite access except maybe once when it was across campus) to your dump so you could spend all night downloading on 512k dsl.

3/2/2016 8:17:27 PM

Quote :

" Eventually found out it's a firetv sideloaded with kodi and some plugins or channels or whatever they're called."

yeah some guy is cranking them out in the raleigh craigslist. I don't understand why you would want to use firestick. Better to get a nice nettop from ebay and load the plugins yourself.

3/2/2016 8:20:29 PM

I got an inspiron 3050 for $70 with a win10 license. I swapped in 4gb I had laying around from an upgrade and got WMC up and running https://slickdeals.net/f/9462263-dell-inspiron-3050-micro-desktop-j1800-cpu-2gb-ddr3-32gb-ssd-win-10-67-40-after-60-slickdeals-rebate-free-s-h?src=SiteSearch

I've been using a celeron NUC with 4gb of ram and win7 WMC with fire tv kodi clients around the house, but I'm really pleased now that I've replaced one of the firetvs with this intel box. It's considerably better performance and much fewer errors. I can also pause and rewind live tv, which I never got working with kodi. win10 has a surprising number of apps that are designed for a tablet UI that work well with a remote

this is the 2nd or 3rd time slickdeals has done a rebate on those j1800 based systems. they suck for most stuff, but work great in this application.

12/8/2016 11:11:22 PM

well the new fire stick that came out in oct is really nice. im eating my words now. good wifi and nice processor on it. was on sale for 29.99 - cant beat that.

12/10/2016 9:09:33 AM

KODI is the TITS. w/ EXODUS

12/12/2016 7:43:08 AM