HTPC/Streaming Media Box

W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
Just looking for some basic information or advice. I am looking to put together an HTPC. I believe I know everything I want to put into the HTPC (could be wrong). However, I am confused as to how to get my media to a second tv in the bedroom. I was planning on having my living room set up include my tv, receiver, PS3, and soon I want to add the HTPC. My plan is to try to have the HTPC to operate as a MAME system, an over the air DVR, and eventually to have it contain (or perhaps on a NAS) my movie collection. The confusion comes in when I want to add the ability to stream as much of this as possible to the TV in the bedroom (obviously not streaming arcade games). I thought something like a Roku may work. But it seems that they do not offer the ability to stream media from local sources on the network. Is there an easy solution that would allow me to just plug something small into the bedroom TV and be able to receive any media wirelessly from the HTPC? I have spent quite a few hours researching various set top boxes for this purpose, but I have only become confused because each set top box contains completely different features and it seems that none of them have all the features I could want.

While the main purpose is to stream my own media (movies/DVR'd tv broadcasts), it would be a bonus to be able to access streaming content from Amazon on the bedroom tv. But definitely not a must.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help.
 
G

g0bez

Audioholic Intern
It sounds like you have multiple things you want to accomplish:

(1) DVR
(2) Streaming to multiple TVs
(3) File server / NAS

I have been working on this myself, and I don't yet have a solution... but I can tell you what I have working so far:

(1) DVR -- I do not have need for this, so I can not speak to it

(2) Streaming -- My Panasonic TV is able to stream directly from a DLNA server. I'm primarily in a linux / mac environment at home, so I went with serviio for my DLNA server -- it is really nice (handles any necessary conversion, auto updates the db of videos, etc.) If your TV has this capability, I've found DLNA to be extremely easy. Serviio has a nice windows client, too... so that would work. If your TV doesn't have DLNA built in, you can look for a device with this or similar streaming protocol, and find the appropriate streaming server to put on your HTPC.

(3) File server / NAS -- I just ordered my drives to make a NAS. I've chosen to go with FreeNAS so I get ZFS benefits. Not only is it a rock-solid OS with a large support community, there are plugins available as well, which will make this an even better option (for me anyhow). I can tie this in with my newsgroup (NNTP) subscription to auto-download videos and then stream them to your XBox (if you have that) using some streaming protocol i'm unfamiliar with... or you can run a DLNA server straight from FreeNAS to serve everything up from that box. Turning your HTPC into a NAS may not be practical, especially if you want to still be able to do things like play video directly from that machine. In my case, since I have DLNA as an option, I probably won't have much need to do direct streaming any more.



I'm interested to see what kind of response you get here though -- I'm by no means stuck on the solution I've come up with. I hope to hear some other ideas from people on this thread. Thanks for the opening question!
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
You sound like you are fairly tech savvy, but my further responses will vary based upon just how savvy you are and how much of a project vs turnkey setup you want.

There are several ways to go about this depending on your priorities. For instance I enjoy having a very customized setup that works exactly how I want it to, this takes more time and effort than getting something simpler up and running.

If you give me a little more info on how you hope the install will go and how you wish to interact with everything I can point you in a few different directions when I'm not at work.

I have a 3 screen setup running xbmc with movies, ripped tv shows, and amazon streaming. I don't use it as a DVR but I have a decent idea of how to go about it.
 
W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
Thank you guys for responding. I have been sick, and am currently at work. I will try to respond tonight with exactly what I want to do (and even some of the things I think I may want, but am unsure of). Any additional help is appreciated. Thanks again.
 
W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
Hopefully I understand what you are asking for. Currently I am living in an apartment. Once I get a house I would likely need to be able to push things out to multiple tv's (and perhaps a projector in a basement). For now... Currently I have a PS3, TV, Receiver and surround set up in the living room. Nothing great as far as a computer. I have a tv in my bedroom with a dvd player hooked up. Haha, and a VHS player as well in case I feel the need to watch the movie RAD. I am now beginning to plan for the next few purchases for my place and want to make sure I try to plan the best I can. So thanks again for the help. Now assuming all goes to plan the next step would be to put together a HTPC. I am still fairly early in the researching process, but I would like it to handle a few things.

In a perfect world... I would be able to use it as a DVR for over the air TV. I work two jobs currently and decided cable wasn't worth it so I just bought a LEAF indoor HDTV antenna for each tv. I have found that since I am not home that often anyways I am not really missing most of what I watched on cable. Just wasted lots of time on interesting but non essential programming. While most probably wouldn't consider it essential, I can watch most of the NFL games and quite a few college football games. However, I can't record or fast forward through the commercials. Really miss being able to do that. I think I have found that there are some dual tuner cards that would allow me to do that. In a perfect world, I would like to be able to watch any recorded shows on the bedroom tv, as well as the living room tv. While we are on the topic of tv, the only show I really miss is South Park. I know those are available online. So it would be awesome if I could somehow watch the episodes from South Park Studios on both TV's as well.

I have an Amazon prime membership, which I believe allows access to streaming movies and tv episodes. Although I am not positive about that since I have never bothered to try accessing those features. It would be great if I could access and watch those on both tvs. Continuing with movies... I have been collecting what I would consider to be an excessive amount of blu rays. While I plan on hanging onto the actual discs, it would be nice to rip and store those either on a hard drive on the HTPC or access them through a NAS. Some of the movies are 3D, in case that may make a difference in some cases. Ideally, I could watch the movies and tv shows I own on any of my tvs and in a truly perfect world through my tablet or phone (at home or even better when I am on the road). Ideally I would be able to use the HTPC to do the same with music and any photos I may have. Although I don't take many photos currently.

Internet surfing would be nice as I said earlier, as it would allow me to access the South Park website for the tv episodes on all the tvs. Unless there is a better way to get those episodes. However, I currently do most of my web surfing on my tablet.

It would be really nice if I could use the HTPC for a MAME system as well. I finally saw King of Kong this summer and I am quickly becoming obsessed with the idea of getting an arcade stick set up for some games on the tv in the living room. I have seen some things about a front end called HYPERSPIN, which from the videos looks pretty sick on most people's systems.

I think that is about it. I would say I know a little bit about all of this. But I am by no means an expert at all. I feel like I have a little bit of an idea about the hardware I may need, but no idea at all about any software to run the system. I hope that all makes sense. Sorry for the ridiculously long post. And thanks again for any help.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
A setup like I have would work quite well for this IF you're willing to do a little tweaking and put some time into it. You can get it up and running fairly quickly but the more time you're willing to put in the more you can get out of it.

A small computer with an Ion chipset will be easily capable of playing back blurays and will be fairly light on the wallet and electricity. I chose to go w/o a NAS because having the computer on all the time takes no more power than a reasonable NAS would and now I have only one device I had to purchase.

Adobe does have hardware acceleration built into flash [an ion system has a very slow processor but a decent graphics card that is capable of decoding video] but I find that it is a little flaky. This means that web based videos usually work just fine, but sometimes do not. For instance amazon prime from their website USUALLY works but sometimes the hardware acceleration decides to die and the video gets choppy. That said the media software I use [XBMC] has a plugin for amazon that works 100% of the time. {I'll talk about software later}

An ion system would be capable of MAME.....my origional xbox is capable of running MAME, not the most demanding of tasks.

For an OTA tuner, I strongly recommend an HDHomerun from silicon dust. I used one before I got a DVR from the cable company and it was flawless. For software at the time, the only thing i found that worked decently was windows media center, which i wasn't fond of. XBMC is currently about to release a beta that has some PVR support.

For a second room you have a few options, and IMO there are two questions that sum up the direction you go for the second room, if you do a setup similar to mine. How much time, and how much money? If you're willing to throw money at it, a second computer is the best solution. Two of my rooms have full computers. My media library is centrally served and is displays identically between these two screens, including showing what movies/shows i've watched and it saves a bookmark for where i left off in a show so i can pick it up on any computer running xbmc. My third screen cost a significant amount less but takes a little more doing. I'm running a raspberry pi [a very inexpensive, very small ARM based computer] with a modified version of XBMC on it. Currently it doesn't have access to the central library, but it does have access to the shared media and can still play all of it, just less fancy about it. It also will work for amazon streaming, but will not let you access websites.

The other way to go is to get a dedicated media playing settop box (STB), like a WDTV live or one of popcorn hour's offerings. I have very little experience with these so hopefully someone else will give some more info. If you do like i do and have your media on an HTPC that you use as a server, you could use the STB to access that server in the second room. You could also go with a NAS in the closet and a STB on all screens, but I find that I enjoy the flexibility of an HTPC.

I hope these ramblings on hardware make some sense, I was trying to throw as much in as I could.

Here are some examples of ion based computers
Amazon.com: ZOTAC ZBOX Intel Atom D525 1.8 GHz Dual Core Barebone Mini-PC ZBOX-ID41-U: Electronics

Newegg.com - ASUS Eee Box EB1501P-B016E Nettop Intel Atom D525(1.80GHz) 2GB DDR3 320GB HDD Capacity Next-generation NVIDIA ION graphics Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
For software I am running XBMC. I will say I'm pretty biased, I've been using it since it actually stood for XBox Media Center and ran on a modded xbox. It's come an amazingly long way since then.

I'll start with some pros:

XBMC and it's internal players is capable of playback of just about any file type you can come up with, you will never need to search for a codec or media player. It has an interface that is clean and fairly easy to use with a remote from the couch. It's internal library functions are quite robust, and with a little work, very powerful. There is a bit of third party support, so with the built in plugin system there is a lot of functionality to be had right within the program. So much so that I just leave XBMC running full screen and rarely ever open anything else on my HTPC, you can even use it to browse your MAME rom collection and launch from it.

Cons:

A simple setup is simple, install the software, point it at your media, DONE! To get fancy can take some work. The shared library I was talking about requires you to install a mySQL database server to run on a system on your network. You then need to edit some config files to tell XBMC to go look at the server instead of keeping the database internally. There are tutorials on how to do this, and if everything goes well it's actually quite simple, but mine didn't go well and took me days to get working. [If you decide you want to do this it's best to do it at the start, else you'll have to rebuild your entire library since it doesn't transfer it from the internal to the external database.] They are constantly updating the software, which is awesome.....but they also end up changing things a lot, which can be bothersome and sometimes break things.

PVR:

I said they were adding PVR support, but it's not 100% support. They are adding a 'frontend' meaning the control portion to XBMC. You'll still need to run some form of tuner software [from a specific list] that XBMC knows how to control. I have absolutely no experience with this and cannot tell you how it is or how to set it up, though I'm seriously considering buying a tuner with cableCARD support and giving it a go.

Other software:

I also run subsonic media server for my mobile devices. It runs in the background and allows you to access your music and movies through a web interface or android/iOS app. I have mine to automatically transcode my FLAC files to mp3 when i download them to my phone, very handy software.

Parting word for the night, XBMC is completely free, give it a download and try it out for size.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
Oh, one more thing since I found out about this today and think it's extremely cool. The person who wrote the amazon streaming plugin for XBMC added a new feature that allows you to export any items you desire to the main library. This means that instead of having to open the amazon plugin every time you want to stream a TV show or Movie they show up right in the library along with your locally stored items. It's very slick and convenient.
 
W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
What specific advantages do you think there are to having a computer in the 2nd room, as opposed to a set top box? The computers you linked to seemed reasonably priced. I may try to build something with a little more "juice" for the HTPC in the living room. How steep is the learning curve for XBMC? I had read about a few different media centers and was leaning towards that one, until I read somewhere that it did not support PVR. But if it will soon, then from everything else I read, I think that is probably the best one to go with. I just want to make sure that I will know enough to have an idea of how to get started setting everything up. I don't mind spending some time with it in order to make everything perfect. However, I also don't want to spend every moment of free time doing it.

One other thing I forgot to mention... I happen to have a Harmony remote that I use to control everything. Is there any chance that I could set this up to run on the remote so that I can minimize the number of times I need a keyboard/mouse? I don't know anyone personally that has set up a HTPC, so I have only been able to watch them in operation through videos on the web. So, I am somewhat clueless as to how most people interact with their system. Please let me know if you think a remote set up is possible or worthwhile, or if it is just best to plan on using a keyboard/trackpad/etc set up. Thanks.

I like the idea of being able to bookmark all the movies and pick them up on another screen where I left off. Is that only possible with a PC at each monitor? If so, that alone may make it more worthwhile than a set top box.
 
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G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
I use a harmony one to control mine. I am using a windows media center remote receiver I had laying around, and set the harmony up as such. This took a little doing to get it to work, but if you Google you'll find several solutions to using a remote.

currently the only officially supported way to have bookmarks is with the desktop version, but there is a very very beta android version coming out right now that would run on N android based STB, also the raspberry pi I mentioned should soon work as well.
 
W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
Thanks. I am glad to hear that your Harmony remote works with the HTPC. Makes things simpler for me (after setting it all up of course). Are there cases that have remote sensors built in? Are there any websites that you recommend that do a good job of giving an overview of what exact steps I will need to take in setting up XBMC or even picking hardware? I found a site called "My media experience". As I am just getting started in researching all of this, I am not positive if it is incredibly accurate. But I think it at least gave me some ideas to start with. If you could recommend other places where you may have done some of your research, I would appreciate it. If I could eliminate some of my time spent just searching google, and getting right to quality information, that would be great. Thanks again for the help.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
Unfortunately (for you) I'm very technically inclined, so my research was never of a broad primer. I always looked for solutions to specific problems, I can post links to various topics when I'm at home, but I've got nothing for you hardware wise.

I know there are cares with built in IR, but I do not know how well they interface with XBMC. You can make almost any remote work the way I have, using a piece of software called eventghost, but it's a fairly arduous process of selecting a specific function for every button you want to use. On a side note eventghost is a very cool program to automate things, it runs in the background looking for whatever "event" you set it to look for and then runs whatever task you set for when it sees the event.
 
G

g0bez

Audioholic Intern
@Grador -- what base OS are you using for XBMC? I like the idea of only having one system, but I really want to have the storage space available to a variety of my household OSs. I prefer linux, so I guess I should give XMBCbuntu a whirl. With a linux OS that would give me more of the options I like for disk/filesystem management and file sharing protocols. Have you had any experience with XBMC on linux, or straight-up XBMCbuntu?
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
I have experience with neither of those, I run it on top of windows. I do run openELEC on the raspberry pi which is similar to XBMCbuntu, but strictly for STB use, they stripped a linux distro leaving only what is required to run XBMC intact.
 
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G

g0bez

Audioholic Intern
Ahh ok. Well, I guess I'll just have to check it out myself. I already have the XBMCbuntu install downloading... I'll drop it on a spare disk I have and see how it goes.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
Some tutorials I think might be helpful. These aren't difficult to find but I can guarantee that the info here is correct. If you're looking for anything specific I can advise.

Setting up a mysql library:
How to Synchronize Your XBMC Media Center Between Every Room in the House

This is even easier now than when the tutorial was put together, you no longer need to make the databases, just set up the user account for XBMC to access [setting it as the database administrator] and it will make everything itself.

IR remote:
Remote controls - XBMC

I have my remote set up using eventghost, and instead of having eventghost put out XBMC commands [which it will] I have it emulate keystrokes. This means that play/pause [space bar] works with most web based videos as well.

Also the wiki is a great resource for general info and tutorials.

Amazon prime:
How To Get Hulu and Amazon Video On XBMC - How-To Geek

This isn't really difficult, but figured I'd include it.

Raspberry Pi installation:
How to install openelec on Raspberry pi with windows

This is the tutorial I used on getting it set up. I've included this so that you can see how much work it is if you decide to go this rout.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
Ahh ok. Well, I guess I'll just have to check it out myself. I already have the XBMCbuntu install downloading... I'll drop it on a spare disk I have and see how it goes.
Tell me how it goes, I've been wondering how well the install goes and how well it works.
 
G

g0bez

Audioholic Intern
Tell me how it goes, I've been wondering how well the install goes and how well it works.
I definitely will!! I may still go with a NAS (for ZFS benefits) since my TV already handles all sorts of streaming (including DLNA for network files, and netflix, amazon, hulu, etc.), but XBMCbuntu is pretty much a no-brainer to give a shot first running off the live CD. Ubuntu still gives me some decent filesystem options... and LVM support, etc. so as long as it performs well enough I wouldn't mind sticking with it. And if I can have a linux server running, all the better!

My 2x 2TB hard drives just arrived, so I'm looking at this as my project for the weekend. Now... I just need to figure out how to get out of work tomorrow so I can start my weekend a bit earlier :D
 
W

WHEswim

Enthusiast
In terms of the HDHomeRun, were you able to then store the recorded shows and play them on all your media centers?

Thanks for the links. I had found one of those websites (the MySQL one). But the others were helpful as well. I also found some about the skins for XBMC. Do you have one that you would recommend? Also, are their any plug-ins that you use, that you would consider must-have? I saw a few sites with some lists of some interesting plug ins.

Thanks again for all the help. I have been neglecting work for the past 2 days to look up more of this stuff. I can't believe I haven't done this already. Ha. This seems like it will be one of those luxuries in life that once I have it, I won't be able to imagine going back to life without it.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
PVR: Yes and no. I hadn't set up anything fancy yet when I was still using the tuner. Keep in mind that the HDHR comes with no actual software, just drivers. It is supported by most any PVR software available. I was using it with windows media center, I shared the directory that it stored all it's files and was able to access those on other computers but It wasn't very slick. Using the upcoming PVR support in XBMC it should work out better, but I cannot really make much comment on that.

Edit for clarity, at that time i had only my primary media center and accessed the shows occasionally using file explorer on my laptop.

For plugins I think I literally only use the amazon prime one. I've found all of the housekeeping ones [supposedly better scraping etc] to be unnecessary, and really for what I do most of the functionality is built in so....

As for skins. I've used Aeon, didn't like it. It's very good looking, but I felt it was a little cumbersome to use. I really liked Alaska, quite minimalist in design while still looking good and being very easy to use. I stopped using it for a specific reason that i cannot remember, probably incomplete support for some functionality. Honestly I'm currently using the default skin, it's nice looking, it's easy to use, and it [obviously] supports 100% of the functionality. I may though go back to using rapier, a skin I think might be better than the default. I used it for a while but stopped because I was doing a lot of tweaking of my setup for a while and the settings menu in rapier is DIFFICULT to use. Every other aspect of the skin is fantastic and offers a bit more customization in how it displays everything.
 
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