OH so confused

[kkapp]

Hi guys, I have been reading threads here and at the avs site, it seems the more I read the more I get confused. This may be a bit off topic but I hope not. I would like to do some HA at my house. I see some that have what appear to be simple systems and then there are those with multiple pc's or servers or server racks, whew what does it all do?.

I have set up my den to be what I want as an entertainment room. Flatscreen on the wall, inceiling speakers, all wires in the walls and hidden. I have two family pc's in there and a wired/wireless network. Directtv is wired into my network and I can access pics and music from my pc's via the media share software dt has. My question is, if I want to rip al my dvd's and have them available from one location to any pc or tv, music as well, how do I accomplish this. I have all my music in an itmes library that is shared between pc's and can access it to the one dtv system. I have gotten dvd shrink and anydvd to manage the rips of the movies. I have also downloaded jrmc, since I do not really like the vista media center that came with my pc. I am just confused as to how to set up a media server, i guess is the term I am looking for. I would also like to be able to access everything in my sons room via his xbox360.

Any help getting my head straight is greatly appreciated.

thanks,

Kevin

 

[CollinR]

Probably the best bet for you right now while you are unsure what to to is add a NAS device to handle the storage side of all this stuff. A good NAS should have high speed networking gigabit at a minimum, a good RAID storage system RAID 5 or better, good power supply and your choice of operating systems. Some NAS OSes are very simple booting from compact flash/CD and some are more complicated like Windows Home Server or professional like Windows Server. That choice is yours but having a rock solid place to stick your stuff is paramont, this is where your DVDs, images, music and videos would be stored.

Here I am the big SageTV fanboy so of course thats what I would suggest, this could be running on the NAS making it a "Media Server" or on another machine more dedicated to the task. I think you will quickly find some limitations in the software directTV provides as I don't think anything is really compatible with it.

 

[kkapp]

Thanks for the quick reply. I was actually planning on using my current pc for now instead of buying more hardware. I have 640gig of hd space so I can put a fw things there. Is this not a practical storage solution just to get started with?

 

[CollinR]

You can use whatever hardware you want, I just wouldn't use it for anything else at the same time. It's nice if you have a large case to support multiple drives and a mainboard with lots of expansion space. Although it doesn't need to be new or super powerful/cool actually alot of cool mainboards are older units with 4-5 PCI slots and a couple serial ports. Alot of the time you can get these for free or a song.

 

[jumbodogs]

You might want to take a look at http://tversity.com/ This will let you keep all your movies, pictures and music on 1 computer and be able to access them from any other computer in the house even your xbox 360.

 

[drozwood90]

Probably the best bet for you right now while you are unsure what to to is add a NAS device to handle the storage side of all this stuff. A good NAS should have high speed networking gigabit at a minimum, a good RAID storage system RAID 5 or better, good power supply and your choice of operating systems. Some NAS OSes are very simple booting from compact flash/CD and some are more complicated like Windows Home Server or professional like Windows Server. That choice is yours but having a rock solid place to stick your stuff is paramont, this is where your DVDs, images, music and videos would be stored.

Agreed! Gigabit is a must (streams DVD images so nice!). I like to recomend freenas when it's applicable. FreeNas

--Dan

 

[electron]

I am actually more impressed with OpenFiler than FreeNAS. I do have 1 FreeNAS box, but haven't had time to switch it yet.

I would also recommend SageTV. I personally use it with AnyDVD as well, so I can play discs in the drive of my PC closest to the TV (My SageTV server is in my basement).

 

[felixrosbergen]

I am actually more impressed with OpenFiler than FreeNAS. I do have 1 FreeNAS box, but haven't had time to switch it yet.

I would also recommend SageTV. I personally use it with AnyDVD as well, so I can play discs in the drive of my PC closest to the TV (My SageTV server is in my basement).

I wish you could just make it work with the Play DVD button rather than have the PC DVD drive appear as a DVD with all the other DVD's. Is there a fix for that? Currently i have to search for 'Kitchen-DVD' amoghts the other DVD's.

 

[electron]

I have different video sources configured, which makes it easy for me to access the drive. This is what my menu looks like:

SageTV > Media Center > Videos > downloads (online podcasts etc)
SageTV > Media Center > Videos > dvd library
SageTV > Media Center > Videos > dvd drive

Since they are all on the same level, it's easy to figure out what is where. If desired, you could create a menu entry on the main screen, called "Play DVD", which points to the dvd drive source.