Homemade Artisanal Media Center

[bernardosgr]

Hey there community and everyone in it, what is up? So the deal is this, I have one of those not so old but kind of old (4 years I would say, maybe a little more or a little less) desktop computer and I was thinking of putting it to good use considering it's just sitting there doing nothing...
Well I did some research but couldn't get through a few basic questions that were intriguing me and although I have some knowledge of the IT business I don't handle many practical matters such as a tranformation of this sort; but putting it out there, my major concerns (not so much concerns as they were ideas) were:

1- Can I use it to stream content to all pc's or media tanks in my house (considering I have a few TVs and most of them have an electronic device that can play content to a TV).
1.1 - On that same record, could I do it with an antenna connected to my pc (for wireless) like buying a wireless antenna, or is it possible to use my Internet router to connect the components and have them share content and stream to one another?
1.2 - Is it possible to stream from a PC to a media tank sort of equipment directly (lke from a PC to an ASUS o!Play or o!Play mini)?

2 - What softwares are there for this (I heard of freeNAS but don't know if it really fullfills my streaming needs) and do they support the usage of external hard drives (considering I have a few)?

3 - What options do I have in terms of affordable data storage units or places where I could connect multiple internal hard drives and connect that t the PC/server?

I appologize for the long post and if you would take a little to help me I would be very appreciative, as you can see my problem resides in not knowing the necessary infrstructure needed to do such a thing or what software is out there to handle the process.

Thank you all very much in advance

[leus]

Downloads | XBMC

[bernardosgr]

OK, so I kind of went to try and find this one out for myself. What I've found so far: It's easy to do what I was trying to do....

First of all for storage of "big" quantities of data properly I'm currently considering getting a hard drive array (with usb 3.0 they can't be very slow, they usually have great capacity and raid configurations give it good reliability). Moving on.

So in order to make a little contribution I'll be trying out a few Media Server Softwares (some free, some open-source some not so free) and reviewing them and maybe giving a little briefing on some possibly necessary configurations. Please keep in mind that I am not specially skilled in this area and therefore don't expect very detailed information, trying out in the "user's" perspective is my point.

So far this is what I have:

SOFTWARES:

Free:

- Universal Media server (UMS) (tested)
- PMS (PS3 Media Server, UMS is based on it)
- TVMobili
- PLEX (not exactly sure about this one being what I was looking for but it does support dlna enabled devices)
- Serviio


UnFree

- Twonky Media Manager/Server
- Mezzmo
- TVersity
- QVIVO (probably won't try this one as it has a monthly subscription and I hate that (not that I was actually going to pay for any of the other ones that aren't free))


About the Universal Media Server:


Installation:
Super easy, just went down to their website, downloaded the exe file and after a clean and "as default as can be" default install it was all ready to go and I was ready to start streaming.

Interface:
Very clean and user-friendly, organized by tabs with a few fixed buttons on top, big icons to show how everyhting is going and good tools for making it run how you want (everything is very well explained also). I do however feel the need for a much more hands on interface given by something such as freeNas (when the server is accessed remotely, but considering what this is and it's purpose I'm very ok with the result)

Features:
Quite nice, very quick to set everything up, has a few (4 I think) plugins that you can download (IMDB info is a very cool plugin and I've tried it out; it basically is a plugin that downloads IMDB info of your movies and displays it, which means it doesn't save to the hard drive or flash disk or whatever), also it's very easy setting it up with your shared directories and all your definitions such as if you want it to start with windows, its transcoding settings, folder display options, and lots more. It has logs which is good in case of crashes and although there are a lot of transcoding options I'm not sure if you can apply different ones to different devices (this one I'll have to try out in the near future, as I have an ASUS o!play connected to my TV screen and that little beast can even transcode DTS (it comes as a surprise to me because a while back I had bought a WDTV HD and it sucked as most 720p mkvs have DTS), which would retrieve the need for a priori transcoding.
I tried it out with a 1080p movie on my asus o!play and it seemed pretty fine. Pretty fine as in PRETTY AWESOME! No noticeable loss of video quality (if any) and the sound was also great, although I noticed a very very tiny lag on the sound (it's so tiny it's barely noticeable, many people would not notice it but I'm a perfectionist) and this issue takes me back to the unnecessary transcoding of the audio and if it might be responsible for the minuscule gap .

Overall:
So, overall I'd say this is pretty neat, especially for its ease of use, I see it as at least being very useful for someone like me who just wants a media center for music and movies and maybe pictures streaming, for their devices but not so much for someone who wants to access their files remotely inside their network (I will try and test FreeNAS out in the following few days, which will be difficult during a house painting).


So that's pretty much it, I hope you guys appreciate my contribution and like my kind of "review". Stay tuned (or don't in case I don't make more of these).

Thanks a lot guys!

[thesoreloser]

Plex is hands down the best media solution. I first came across it last month. Works on many devices, beautify your media collection for you. It makes your media looks very professional. Trust me on this!

[bernardosgr]

Plex is hands down the best media solution. I first came across it last month. Works on many devices, beautify your media collection for you. It makes your media looks very professional. Trust me on this!

Well my friend, guess that's the next one I'll have to try out, only issue is my PC not turning on now... That shit is bugging me

[thesoreloser]

You won't regret it :)

And if you could, do support the devs by getting a subscription and you get access to sync and early preview releases. It's worth it!