What to do about a home server?

[Anprionsa]

I have had this on my mind for over a year now, and in the next few months I will be putting it together. However I am very curious to know what others have in mind. If you have a similar setup please let me know, or you have also thought about what to do or have any links or references also let me know.

Purpose: Store, stream, and manage content from a central location that can be viewed on a wide variety of devices. More specifically to make sure that my Blu-Ray Collection (that I will start to rip here soon) will be able to be used by my TV at max resolution (whether via cord or not I don't care, as long as I can do it). Music to be streamed to any device, as well as pictures, and other documents.

What I have been thinking. I have been looking into HTPC's and NAS as the primary driver (or a combination, whatever makes it work). Specifically the Synology DS1511+ (with 5, 3TB HD'S) for storing and managing, this tied with either a PS3 or some other device on the receiving end to play it to the TV, or use the existing DNLA services if I can. However, I have been unable to truly find anything of value in linking these types of systems together, especially for HD Videos (dvds I have seen have no problems). This is because of the MKV format (if you know of another format that allows no lossless from ripping let me know) is a hard format for Xbox and PS3 as far as I have read.

Simply: I want to watch my Blu-Ray rips on my TV from a server, listen to music on any device, pictures, and other documents as well.

[Abram]

I too, was looking at a couple Synology NASes, but since i upgraded my desktop, it was a great excuse to build my HTPC using my old parts, along with Silverstone HTPC case and an IR receiver for my Harmony remote. a new case I use that to stream all of my content.. Since most of it I view in my living room HT, this made the most sense. I have 1x 1tb and 1x 2tb 5400rpm drives in there, and it works great, and can play locally, and stream two other HD videos just fine. I use XBMC on my living room and desktop PCs. That program is wonderful.

Everything uses gigabit LAN connection to a gigabit router (DIR-655) and i use simple Windows SMB networking.

FYI - I use MakeMKV to rip my Blu-Rays. Very easy to use, and great results. The 1080p's usually come out to about 28gb. There's a trail version, but until mid-October you can use a serial you can find in their official forum for use with the current Beta.

[Anprionsa]

Hmmm,That sounds like something I might look into. I have used MakeMKV and loved it, but I'm thinking of going the full ISO route.

After a little more digging I found that using a NAS with a Boxee Box has some great things going for it. Namely that by enabling DLNA I can read the ISO files from the NAS and it should play them perfectly, at least that is what I have been reading. (There may be some other Media devices that do the same, but the Boxee looked intriguing).

[Abram]

I mostly use MakeMKV because XBMC won't play .ISOs without a lot of fuss. And leaving out the non-original audio languages saves a lot of space. I've run into problems tryign to get BD discs on my PCs :/

I spent a couple weeks checking out devices like WDTV, Boxee, and Popcorn Hour. Each one had at least one or two drawbacks, and I as never quite sold. I heard they they were most all awesome, but every time i dug into features adn capabilities of those thing, they all came up short in different areas. I really could not suggest one over another... You can do soooooo much more with a PC than you can with any box. Plus the television is large and sharp enough tp use for surfing, which i use a Promini 2.4ghz keyboard/trackpad for.

I have a friend that keep an old case in a closet, and filled it with 6TB or so of hard drives and runs XP on it. 4gb of DDR2 and a lower dual core AMD CPU.

For the record, my HTPC has a q9550 Quad and 4gb of DDR2 , and a 1gb 9800gt GPU. A GPU with HDMI is essential. The 9800 is a older card, but it runs all teh 1080p stuff i have just fine. Even most newer games

[Gilly]

I am too looking at a home server solution, but getting past 6TB usually entails using some sort of RAID, as after 3 disks, things seem to get a bit sticky. Looked at various hardware RAID 5 cards, with up to 8 slots, which would give large amounts of storage, but they are quite expensive! And of course. RAID is not a backup!!!

[Anprionsa]

Abram, your solution is looking more and more viable, I might just have to look more into that.

[Abram]

Not the easiest solution, but it made the most sense and has the most flexibility..

If you start watching that media in your living room, give XBMC a good look. It's free, and their support forum is very good and helpful. It's beats teh pants off any program like WMC, MCE, MEdia Portal, etc.

[TJdehya]

I use XMBC and its awesome. If you have an Iphone be sure to get the XBMC app. I dont know if they have apps for other smart phone but they probably do.