Home media centre ideas

codechris · 24 Aug 2018 at 15:42

Hi, sorry if this is not the best board, I wasn't really sure where this fit so we can move it if need be.

I am trying to find the best solution for my home media centre plus backup. I've done some research but I am not convinced in any one solution so hoping someone/some people could point me in the right direction. I will list everything I think is relevant to try and make this quick, To set the scene, we have a flat we live in by ourselves;

We Have:
- Very fast broadband
- Cabled and wireless in the flat
- 1 TV in the living room which is not a smart TV, has HDMI and VGA
- 1 Gaming PC in an office
- Several laptops, tablets, and phones between us. Of Windows, Android and Apple
- Only us in the flat, nobody else to consider
- 1 XBox 360 under the TV
- A good router with a eSATA and USB ports as well as 1GB interfaces
- We use Netflix, YouTube, iplayer/4oD, watch films/stream music from my gaming PC to the TV through the XBox
- We don't have a TV connection (sat, cable et al)

We Want:
- Backup location for our PC and laptops (file folder stuff)
- Storage for all our music, films, and TV we have on disk. This is all in a variety of formats and the XBox cannot cope with quite a lot of the files
- Ability to watch youtube, iplayer, 4od whatever on TV. Ability to stream our music and films to TV and devices (portable music player in the kitchen is a possibility, like a sonos et al)

Constraints:
- I don't want my gaming PC on 24/7
- I can use Linux/BSD and Windows so I won't rule out either option.

I have considered these options;
- NAS connected directly in to the router which has the ability to transcode video/music files on the device. This will host all files, the problem comes down to the TV.
- NAS and using a RPi or the Xbox connected to the TV to act as a middleman between TV and NAS
- Some sort of media centre PC which is connected directly to the TV and has a bunch of disks. This can run Plex/Kodi
- Buy an XBox1 and a NAS. I find the 360 poor with video files, most of my films I can't watch, but I don't game on it and the 360 was given to me for free so I don't complain. I did wonder if the XBox1 would be better for this and I know if we had it, we'd play things like RocketLeague etc but I'm not desperate enough to watch to buy one just for **** games we play when bored together.

I'm looking for high flexibility, but also something that doens't involve me spending £2k. My worry about a NAS is disk space is constantly increasing so one day it will be full, and then what do I do? Ideally all our DVDs will be on disk, a good chunk already are now.

I did see someone with a MacMini connected to the TV and then a keyboard mousepad at their sofa. But that seamed a little clunky to me. This idea could be done with a Windows PC to.

Any advice is appreciated

Cheers!

Nikumba · 29 Aug 2018 at 16:00

NAS option would be the best bet, then for the non-smart TV get something like a FireTV stick that can run Plex client (server runs on NAS) or Kodi and point it to your NAS

NAS with FireTV sticks is what I have in my house and I use plex as I prefer it over Kodi

codechris · 30 Aug 2018 at 10:04

Nice, thanks for the response! I avoid Amazon for everything I can, but I didn't think about putting Plex on a small device. Having a look around there are a number of choices I can do that with, in much the same way. Sounds great, and easy to me.

Time to start looking for a NAS!

PaulCa · 30 Aug 2018 at 10:56

Remember a NAS is just a PC with some disks and a management interface for the various services.

The downside of buying a "canned" NAS is... they are expensive for what they are. They have a limited number of drive bays, limiting expansion. You are often stuck with their management interface. The advantages are of course, small form factor and low power consumption.

Just bear in mine that another option is to buy a small form factor case and build a PC. There are NAS cases with 8 or more drive bays. In fact if you search for "Server Case" on e bay you will find rack NAS cases for less than £100 which have 16 or 32 drive bays.

Most of the services are easy to set up. NFS, SMB, DNLA, transcoding, Plex etc. etc.

I used an old gaming PC with the GPU removed and replaced with a minimal NVidia GT710. The only downside is it uses about 100W idle. However I have no put power saving on the disks yet to spin them down when idle which will save another 10 or 20 watts.

On the client side. The RaspberryPI 3 running Kodi is a valid option, but it's slow. So if your use case is to open the media centre on the TV, find a movie and play it, then the PI is fine. It's let down is that browsing around and opening movies then closing them, trying to find something can be frustratingly slow waiting on the menus and lists loading.

codechris · 30 Aug 2018 at 12:08

That is my overall concern with a NAS. What happens when I run out of disk space? I may look in to cases though and do some comparisons. See if I can find one that fits in the TV table.

We had a Pi connected to the TV previously and I do remember it being a bit annoying, but it did the job. We moved before I had a chance to see if I could fix it though. But if your suggesting that it was just this way and there is nothing to fix, maybe the Pi way is not to go. In that case I can still go with using some sort of stick in the TV as Nukumba suggested above. I actually find the Xbox360 painfully slow with browsing files as well, so anything faster is nice. I've been looking at the Roku with Plex, but there are a few options here.

In terms of power, it's not a huge concern. Per KWh, electricity is cheap in Sweden, because **** me everything else is expensive, so I can easily run a small PC and not worry a great deal. What are you running on your small PC? Windows or Linux of somesort?

bimbleuk · 30 Aug 2018 at 12:48

I use a QNAP as it can run PLex client/server via the QTS server service which runs in the background to provide file sharing and other services. Currently though I run Kodi (manual install not an official app) on the HD Station which is like a cut down desktop running in addition to the QTS interface to connect directly to my AV amp and UHD TV. I started with some 3TB desktop drives but they are noisy when spinning up and in use. The process for upgrading was to pop a out a drive install a WD Red 4TB NAS drive and let the system rebuild the RAID 5 array. Do this for each drive until the array is rebuilt on all 4TB drives and then expand the array to the new capacity. One advantage of an integrated system and software.

For other streaming services I've found it's just much easier to run an LG UHD TV and use the smart services as they are very capable devices now. nVidia shield was also another option considered with an external drive bay.

Asustor and Synology also do some pretty good NAS devices too so don't rule them out. My QNAP is expensive but has PCIe upgrade slots for for NVME and 10 gbe Ethernet.

Nikumba · 30 Aug 2018 at 12:48

You could get a Xbox One, then run Plex app on it that is what I did before got the Firestick

PaulCa · 31 Aug 2018 at 08:08

codechris said:
We had a Pi connected to the TV previously and I do remember it being a bit annoying, but it did the job. We moved before I had a chance to see if I could fix it though. But if your suggesting that it was just this way and there is nothing to fix, maybe the Pi way is not to go. In that case I can still go with using some sort of stick in the TV as Nukumba suggested above. I actually find the Xbox360 painfully slow with browsing files as well, so anything faster is nice. I've been looking at the Roku with Plex, but there are a few options here.

I had a thread asking for more powerful alternatives. I use my Samsung laptop in the bedroom and it's like a 3rd gen i3 and it's absolutely fine. As it's a PC there is no messing about getting things like YouTube or Netflix to work either, no clunky semi-pirate Kodi apps.

So after a few suggestions I ordered a Dell Optiplex ultra small form factor mini PC for £100 on ebay, s/h.

Hopefully that arrives today, but it's a 2nd gen i5 with 4 or 8Gb, so I'm expecting it to as powerful as the laptop and much better than the PI. Of course it can and will run Kodi also.

Note however that Kodi itself is a bit slow, there are ways to tune it up by changing to a different skin, I'm told.

codechris · 10 Sep 2018 at 17:26

Thank you for everyone's response, sorry for the delay I was on holiday.

I started with some 3TB desktop drives but they are noisy when spinning up and in use. The process for upgrading was to pop a out a drive install a WD Red 4TB NAS drive and let the system rebuild the RAID 5 array. Do this for each drive until the array is rebuilt on all 4TB drives and then expand the array to the new capacity.

I had forgot you could do this with RAID, and his gets around my issue of upgrades. I like this idea more then doing it with probably non hotswap MDADM configuration. This is plug and play.

For other streaming services I've found it's just much easier to run an LG UHD TV and use the smart services as they are very capable devices now

We had considered this but another TV is out the budget so we left it.

On the client side. The RaspberryPI 3 running Kodi is a valid option, but it's slow. So if your use case is to open the media centre on the TV, find a movie and play it, then the PI is fine. It's let down is that browsing around and opening movies then closing them, trying to find something can be frustratingly slow waiting on the menus and lists loading.

I found this running through the 360 and shares on my gaming PC. Loading everything was horrendously slow. So I am still left with a bit of a quandary of what to do with the TV. The QNAP can do the on-the-fly transcoding which makes connecting the Pi to the TV as a middle person, that should work. But if it's slow it's annoying. But, that could be a good start at least. I can put up with slow for the time being, since we do already with the 360 and my PC

Jonnybmac · 10 Sep 2018 at 18:13

Might not be what you are looking for but I have an acer veriton n2620g. You can get a more updated model I'm sure but this one does me just fine. You could get an external HDD if need be for extra storage. I actually use this for uni work when i can't be bothered to sit at my pc so lay on the bed to type out assignments is word etc.

I use a logitech k400 plus for the keyboard and mouse, and the unit is usually kept behind the bedroom tv but i take it easily downstairs as its just literally one plug and disconnect the hdmi(i keep a spare hdmi plugged in downstairs) and then ready to carry downstairs as its so small.

Don't think I would need anything else to be fair. I guess you could do the same with a laptop if need be but you dont have to leave screens open to view stuff etc with this and it can be tucked away nicely.