Any media center kind of people on here?

[FESTER665]

So I've been remodeling the parents basement for awhile now and part of that required me to gut and redo my younger brothers bedroom. I knew he liked to buy DVDs and stuff like that, but the damn guy has like 500+ DVD's on these huge racks in his room that look ridiculous to me.

Is there any way to somehow setup like a media center PC with a bunch of HD's in it to hold all these stupid movies on and stream into his room or something? I'd like to be able to not have all this crap in the room again, and maybe pack them away in the closet after he burns them onto the hard drives?

Someone mentioned using XBMC but is that now Kodi? I'm out of the loop on a bunch of this so please explain it like I'm a 5 year old.

Would there be any way to set it up so he could then watch them on any TV in the house or would it just be his TV hooked up to the PC?

I ran a coax and two CAT6 cables to the bedroom already, would I need to run anything else?

Click to read more...

 

[blakbearddelite]

A lot of people recommend Plex, and it is awesome when it works. But I either set mine up improperly with network settings, or it is just real finicky. It does not always detect my media server, and it drives me crazy. I think sometimes that the server and the device retrieving the data are not on the same wifi network randomly. It drives me up the wall so much that I wanted to just buy an extra drive and hardwire it to the TV, shit drives me bananas.

 

[kmastl]

PLEX and handbrake to encode RIPs. Plex works very well, however it depends what client you are running. For example the Plex on my LG smart TV doesn't work near as well as the PLEX for apple TV or Plex for Android. Network issues can also be a factor. 99% of the time it's user error or faulty equipment causing a bad experience using PLEX.

Do a search for ripping bluerays with Plex. I recommend some sort of RAID if you care about not losing everything when your hard drive crashes. RAID 10 is recommended for large capacity drives.

 

[Chet Donnelly]

Plex is best for streaming to devices remotely, but Kodi (used to be XBMC) is best for a home theater setup in my opinion.

Use handbrake to rip all the DVD's and save them on a hard drive. Then point Plex and Kodi to that folder. Plex will put the movies into the cloud and allow you to view them remotely or within the home. Kodi is best if you have the computer hooked up to the TV.

Also with Kodi, you can probably get most of the movies he already has, so you might not even have to rip them all and save them on a drive. Try the Exodus and Phoenix addons.

 

[Flyn]

XBMC is now Kodi. (treed)

I have been playing around with it lately.

I used XBMC for a while but didn't think it was far enough along technologically so I stopped. I got tired of having to keep downloading new addons to get ones that kept working well.

Now that I have tried Kodi, I see that the developers have greatly improved the reliability. Third party addons have gotten a lot better, too. It would be simple, although it would take some time and hard drive space, to load all his DVDs onto a program like KODI. Once loaded, playing them wirelessly can be done with a Roku or gaming system.
Another advantage is he'd stay legal by using his purchased media compared to just streaming the same media from the web.

 

[Intel]

plex server + rokus ftw.

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

plex server + rokus ftw.

Kodi is powerful, but difficult to setup correctly, and more finicky.

Plex is dead simple as long as you have the files named correctly.

Movies, ANY movie. Should be named

Movie (Year).ext

TV Shows should have all episodes enclosed in a folder named after the TV Show. Then each episode should be:

TV Show folder
> ShowName.S1E01.Title.ext
> ShowName.S1E02.Title.ext
> ShowName.S1E03.Title.ext

Plex requires a medium powered server because the application itself handles ALL of the transcoding for the clients, except in some rare cases. You don't need anything over the top. My Server is powered by a A10-7850k AMD APU. Which really isn't any more powerful than a mid level i5 intel CPU.

Plus. Plex has clients for Xbox 360, Xbox One, as well as Playstation 4 (and maybe 3). So if you already have one of these devices all you need to do is the back-end stuff.

Kodi puts the onus of playback onto the client.

Movies will vary in size, but many encoded movies will be in the 3-12GB range for 1080P content. Some movies compress better than others. Anything with high amounts of Film Grain (Minority Report for example) will not compress well. Movies that are clean without grain encode very nicely.

A 480P DVD encode will be in the 1-3GB region for a very high quality encode.

A library with 500 Blurays will require roughly 4-8TB worth of storage as a guess.

My FreeNAS server runs Plex as a service, and my collection sucks up close to 12TB. I however do keep some movies around in un-encoded formats, so 4x the size of an encoded movie.

I use MakeMKV for ripping, and Handbrake for encoding. I've recently moved to Handbrake 10bit H265 for encoding. Higher quality, similar file size. Handles gradients much better. 8bit channels only have 256 levels, where 10bit channels have 1024 levels.

 

[FESTER665]

So will any decent PC be able to run these programs then I can just add large HD's to it to hold them?

The vast majority of his movies are on DVD, I'd guess maybe 20-25 are Blu-Ray. Glad to see the TV series will work, he's got a ton of seasons of DVDs for shows he watches.

So will he be able to watch on any TV in the house of they all have like a Roku or Apple TV unit?

 

[Chet Donnelly]

So will any decent PC be able to run these programs then I can just add large HD's to it to hold them?

The vast majority of his movies are on DVD, I'd guess maybe 20-25 are Blu-Ray. Glad to see the TV series will work, he's got a ton of seasons of DVDs for shows he watches.

So will he be able to watch on any TV in the house of they all have like a Roku or Apple TV unit?

Any mediocre PC will run Kodi and Plex.

Roku will pull from a Plex server with the Plex app, not sure about Apple TV

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

So will any decent PC be able to run these programs then I can just add large HD's to it to hold them?

The vast majority of his movies are on DVD, I'd guess maybe 20-25 are Blu-Ray. Glad to see the TV series will work, he's got a ton of seasons of DVDs for shows he watches.

So will he be able to watch on any TV in the house of they all have like a Roku or Apple TV unit?

If the device supports a Plex application you will be able to watch the content anywhere, and if your internet connection is fast enough you can watch it anywhere in the world.

His own personal netflix.

Its not for everyone. You must strictly adhere to the naming conventions, or your content will not be presented correctly.

For Movie naming titles I use www.themoviedb.org.

And for TV shows I use Online TV Database - An open directory of television shows for HTPC software, I like it more than Online TV Database - An open directory of television shows for HTPC software, which is much more heavily focused on movies than TV.

Examples from my servers.

Movie naming convention. You don't have to put movies into collection folders like I have, Plex doesn't care about that. I do it more for visual organization.

TV Shows naming convention. This is more specific. Each show gets its own folder with a title matching the entry in Online TV Database - An open directory of television shows for HTPC software. Then each episode is inside that folder with the Show, Season, Episode, and optionally the title.

*, if a two parter episode is combined into a single episode all you have to do is put the S1E01, and the S1E02 back to back separated by a period. You can see the example from the pilot for ST-TNG Encounter at Farpoint. Its actually two episodes, but on the bluray's they combined them into a single 2hr episode. But since its two seperate episodes in the online database this presents it without it looking like an episode is missing.

And, if the files are named and organized correctly then this is what you get in the Plex interface.

 

[Fish]

PLEX and handbrake to encode RIPs. Plex works very well, however it depends what client you are running. For example the Plex on my LG smart TV doesn't work near as well as the PLEX for apple TV or Plex for Android. Network issues can also be a factor. 99% of the time it's user error or faulty equipment causing a bad experience using PLEX.

Do a search for ripping bluerays with Plex. I recommend some sort of RAID if you care about not losing everything when your hard drive crashes. RAID 10 is recommended for large capacity drives.

Handbrake will rip straight from the DVD, since thats what I did when I was setting up my plex. MakeMKV will rip blurays as stated, but you also need a bluray drive on your PC. I currently run plex on my daily duty i5 2500 and see no issues. I view plex on my Sony smart TV in the living room, Apple TV 4th gen in my bedroom, and roku stick in the kids room. The Apple TV is so far the best as far as direct play VS transcoding (IE making the PC do work), and that is going over wifi, where my smart tv is hard wired, and makes the pc transcode everything. The roku stick also makes the pc transcode everything, and seems laggy, but its also probably the weakest device so I wont give it that hard of a time. A Roku 3 or 4 would most likely be vastly superior.

So will any decent PC be able to run these programs then I can just add large HD's to it to hold them?

The vast majority of his movies are on DVD, I'd guess maybe 20-25 are Blu-Ray. Glad to see the TV series will work, he's got a ton of seasons of DVDs for shows he watches.

So will he be able to watch on any TV in the house of they all have like a Roku or Apple TV unit?

You will need either multiple drives, or some sort of cluster configured into a raid. Right now I have JBOD (just a bunch of disks) inserted into a box that my PC looks at for the files. As of now my one drive dedicated to TV is at about 500 gigs left out of 3TB and my movies are at 1.1TB left out of 3TBs. This is with 536 regular movies (mix of DVD and 720/1080 rips) and 69 animated movies. Ripping TV shows from DVD is a PITA with handbrake IMO since the episodes arent numbered and you have to figure out which one is which in order to name it correctly. Its possible, but I found it to be a little time consuming. Took me about a month and a half of ripping and file setup to get our entire collection done.

FWIW, here is the box I have all my drives in. They also make a RAID version, and I will be most likely buying one along with 4TB drives to fill it with and transferring things to that in the future to protect data.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X26VV4/?tag=tcg21-20

A roku device, smart tvs with the plex app, ps3/4 and xbox 360/1 all have the plex app. The 4th gen Apple TV only has the plex app since it is the only device that is capable of accessing the app store. It runs really nice.

Here is a quick vid of plex running onto my ATV4 via WIFI.

Any mediocre PC will run Kodi and Plex.

Roku will pull from a Plex server with the Plex app, not sure about Apple TV

Plex wants some HP to transcode when it needs to. I dont know jack bout Kodi.

Apple TV4th gens will run plex. Ive heard people modding the ATV2 to as well, but those are going at a premium since they are jailbreakable, so you are just better off getting a 4th gen.

 

[FESTER665]

Handbrake will rip straight from the DVD, since thats what I did when I was setting up my plex. MakeMKV will rip blurays as stated, but you also need a bluray drive on your PC. I currently run plex on my daily duty i5 2500 and see no issues. I view plex on my Sony smart TV in the living room, Apple TV 4th gen in my bedroom, and roku stick in the kids room. The Apple TV is so far the best as far as direct play VS transcoding (IE making the PC do work), and that is going over wifi, where my smart tv is hard wired, and makes the pc transcode everything. The roku stick also makes the pc transcode everything, and seems laggy, but its also probably the weakest device so I wont give it that hard of a time. A Roku 3 or 4 would most likely be vastly superior.



You will need either multiple drives, or some sort of cluster configured into a raid. Right now I have JBOD (just a bunch of disks) inserted into a box that my PC looks at for the files. As of now my one drive dedicated to TV is at about 500 gigs left out of 3TB and my movies are at 1.1TB left out of 3TBs. This is with 536 regular movies (mix of DVD and 720/1080 rips) and 69 animated movies. Ripping TV shows from DVD is a PITA with handbrake IMO since the episodes arent numbered and you have to figure out which one is which in order to name it correctly. Its possible, but I found it to be a little time consuming. Took me about a month and a half of ripping and file setup to get our entire collection done.

FWIW, here is the box I have all my drives in. They also make a RAID version, and I will be most likely buying one along with 4TB drives to fill it with and transferring things to that in the future to protect data.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003X26VV4/?tag=tcg21-20

A roku device, smart tvs with the plex app, ps3/4 and xbox 360/1 all have the plex app. The 4th gen Apple TV only has the plex app since it is the only device that is capable of accessing the app store. It runs really nice.

Here is a quick vid of plex running onto my ATV4 via WIFI.





Plex wants some HP to transcode when it needs to. I dont know jack bout Kodi.

Apple TV4th gens will run plex. Ive heard people modding the ATV2 to as well, but those are going at a premium since they are jailbreakable, so you are just better off getting a 4th gen.

So I can start off just buying an i5 PC, I'm guessing it wouldn't need a ton of RAM or anything (would 8GB work okay?), just need a bunch or airflow since itll be on 24/7, then get a RAID version of the box you have and toss a few HDD's into it? Would I be able to use one PC and just toss the HDD's into that if the tower were large enough to hold them?

 

[Chet Donnelly]

So I can start off just buying an i5 PC, I'm guessing it wouldn't need a ton of RAM or anything (would 8GB work okay?), just need a bunch or airflow since itll be on 24/7, then get a RAID version of the box you have and toss a few HDD's into it? Would I be able to use one PC and just toss the HDD's into that if the tower were large enough to hold them?

i5 and 8GB of RAM will be more than enough.

I run an AMD Athlon 5350 with 8GB of RAM and have no issues running Plex and Kodi. I'm a heavy user too...I don't even have cable anymore...

 

[FESTER665]

So if I buy a PC with room for an extra drive can I just toss a 6TB drive into it and have everything all on the single PC then?

 

[Chet Donnelly]

So if I buy a PC with room for an extra drive can I just toss a 6TB drive into it and have everything all on the single PC then?

Yep. Thats what I'm doing.

 

[Thirdgen89GTA]

So I can start off just buying an i5 PC, I'm guessing it wouldn't need a ton of RAM or anything (would 8GB work okay?), just need a bunch or airflow since itll be on 24/7, then get a RAID version of the box you have and toss a few HDD's into it? Would I be able to use one PC and just toss the HDD's into that if the tower were large enough to hold them?

If its going to be a dedicated server, I suggest doing 16-32GB of ram, and running the FreeNAS OS with the Plex Jail Plugin.

Its super easy to setup, and you don't have to have a monitor, KB, or Mouse hooked up to the box except for the very first boot to find out what IP Address it grabbed.

Then you manage everything from a webpage. FreeNAS will run from a USB thumb drive attached to the box on a USB2 port. USB3 ports are still problematic. But this will give you excellent control of building a RAID array. FreeNAS loves ram, but for straight video stuff you don't need a ton of RAM, 16GB will work plenty.

 

[Chet Donnelly]

If its going to be a dedicated server, I suggest doing 16-32GB of ram, and running the FreeNAS OS with the Plex Jail Plugin.

Its super easy to setup, and you don't have to have a monitor, KB, or Mouse hooked up to the box except for the very first boot to find out what IP Address it grabbed.

Then you manage everything from a webpage. FreeNAS will run from a USB thumb drive attached to the box on a USB2 port. USB3 ports are still problematic. But this will give you excellent control of building a RAID array. FreeNAS loves ram, but for straight video stuff you don't need a ton of RAM, 16GB will work plenty.

This is good advice, but honestly probably overkill for the average person. Eventually I plan on going the route you described. But for the time being, I have no issues just using a dedicated computer for Plex and Kodi.

 

[Flyn]

So if I buy a PC with room for an extra drive can I just toss a 6TB drive into it and have everything all on the single PC then?

Buy two drives and back everything up. You don't want to have to do this twice.

 

[Fish]

So I can start off just buying an i5 PC, I'm guessing it wouldn't need a ton of RAM or anything (would 8GB work okay?), just need a bunch or airflow since itll be on 24/7, then get a RAID version of the box you have and toss a few HDD's into it? Would I be able to use one PC and just toss the HDD's into that if the tower were large enough to hold them?

My i5 2500 w/8 gigs of ram is plenty for 3 local streams. You absolutely could just throw drives into the case and go ham on it. I just showed my setup because I started with one drive, and it got almost full, and no room for another. If I did it again, I would have just bought a raid version of my box and filled it with drives to begin with. You cannot add drives on the fly with a raid. Once its set up, its set up. So if you buy the 4 drive raid box, fill it with 4 drives. Same for a Freenas or standard NAS box.

I did my way because it was cheaper, but no redundancy. I am a failure away from losing work and shows. With raids, you can experience a failure and still have redundancy. With Raid 5 or 10, you can have one fail and the others are still fine and will rebuild everything once you replace the failed drive. If you are going to start, I would for sure just do one of those off the bat. Otherwise you will start, think its cool, worry about failure, then redo it all.

 

[Fish]

FWIW, here is the RAID box.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YFHEAC/?tag=tcg21-20

Whats nice is they are USB3 or ESATA. I just use USB3 and no issues and get an average of 100 mbps transfer when doing gig shows.

 

[Lord Tin Foilhat]

I just run 2 - 2TB drives in a Raid 1. That way you can have one failure and still be ok.

 

[Fish]

2TB. You funny guy.

Im a semi horder though, so thats my problem. Hehe.

 

[Turbocharged400sbc]

Just watch a solar flare is going to scrap a lot of hard drives and the people that still have those ugly-ass CD / DVD towers are going to be laughing all the way to the bank

 

[FESTER665]

2TB. You funny guy.

Im a semi horder though, so thats my problem. Hehe.

I was shocked at how many DVD's my brother has acquired since last I was in his bedroom, so I'm thinking he definitely needs some space on whatever route I take on his build.

Any way to get this all said and done for around $750 does anyone think?

 

[GTvert90]

I was shocked at how many DVD's my brother has acquired since last I was in his bedroom, so I'm thinking he definitely needs some space on whatever route I take on his build.

Any way to get this all said and done for around $750 does anyone think?

Storage is the most expensive part. I run 4 (soon to be 5) 4TB western digital Red NAS drives using software RAID5 so I have ~10TB of storage and 1 drive can fail without any data loss. They've come down in price recently but they still rarely go below ~$145 a drive.

I went overkill on my processor because I got a killer deal. I got an i7 (I believe it's a 4600k) for the same price I'd pay for the new at the time i5 from microcenter. I believe I paid 150 with a 30 dollar rebate and free 128gb ssd for my asrock motherboard. I choose that board because it had dual 100/1000 nic, 10 sata ports (6 Intel driven 4 asrock controlled). I'm running 8gb of ram plenty for my setup plus memory is relatively cheap to upgrade in the future.

I run openmediavault, it runs plex and syncthing to grab from my Seedbox. There are a ton of plug-ins for it. It's controlled by a web users interface. It will send me alerts on storage, you can set quotas per user if you want to allow others in the house to store other files on it. It supports software RAID in multiple configuration (software has its pros and cons vs hardware RAID). It streams to a Amazon Fire stick, multiple Android devices, HTPC, Samsung smart TV, previously used a WDTV live (don't go that route there are much better devices now).