RE: Building HTPC Cheap
July 18, 2013 at 9:21 pm
(This post was last modified: July 18, 2013 at 9:22 pm by Jackalope.)
(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: XBMC is indeed very capable, I'm also pretty familiar with Plex as well. Really it doesn't matter all that much to me, as long as video playback is EASY (for the not so savvy people in my house).
Certainly. Roku makes for a nice easy to use client, at least for Plex using their Roku app. I have no idea about XBMC support, though.
My roommate / brother is pretty non-tech savvy and he's had no problems figuring out the Roku once it was set up, same with my 11 year old. Basically just handed them the remote and told them to let me know if they had any questions - none so far.
I've found the biggest downside to to home media servers with respect to non-technical people is getting media onto the server. It's not a big deal for me, and I'm not about to give anyone write-access to the media library, so I do it for them. That's one part of the process that I'm still working the kinks out of. Maybe I'll change the OS (currently Windows 8 Premium) to something that supports remote desktop or install a SFTP server or something. I don't want to expose the media library r/w as network shares if I can help it.
(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: I didn't go with a large capacity drive because I have a 3TB Nas and a 2TB local drive so there's no real reason for me to go larger.
I do pretty much the same, primary media storage is on a USB 3.0 external drive, and I also have a NAS, though it's mostly used for other things. There is, IMHO a huge advantage to using external storage - you don't have to back up a ton of data if you find yourself needing to reinstall the OS, etc.
As inexpensive as external storage is, I actually use two drives and use the second as backup / archive for media in case of a drive failure. I don't have anything irreplaceable, but I don't relish the thought of replacing all of my media when a drive fails.
Were I to build a media server from scratch, I might go with a 64GB SSD big enough to hold the OS etc and continue to store everything external. Faster, noise free, no moving parts to fail, and lower power consumption. What's not to like?
(July 18, 2013 at 8:07 pm)wolf39us Wrote: I don't believe I'll need anymore power than what is allotted on that processor. Intel Celeron's have REALLY come a long way since 10 years ago!
With the small case comes the small (ITX) profile. The ITX boards are a tight fit, so I can't wait for the challenge lol
I would expect the Celeron will be fine - serving media is not a CPU-intensive task at all. It's transcoding that gobbles up the cycles. One of my requirements was to do any necessary transcoding on-the-fly on the server side, and another was that I needed to be able to support multiple simultaneous transcoded streams - for those reasons, I went with a more powerful CPU which in practice is more than adequate. Transcoding on the server was really important to me as nothing is going to kill a battery or chew up bandwidth faster than transcoding HD streams on a smartphone or tablet.
Yeah, ITX boards are a tight fit. That's one of the reasons I opted to not DIY - I don't have any experience with ITX builds. Thinking about cable routing, cooling, etc all became "someone else's problem" buying off the shelf. DIY would have let me choose exactly the form factor, case, etc that I wanted, but I found myself changing my mind and being indecisive about everything.
Looking at the case you selected, it looks to me like mine's comparable in physical size (10.4" x 3.9" x 14.8" vs yours at 5.1" x 8.7" x 11.8").
The only thing that I wish I had with my setup is a traditional IR remote that works with Plex Media Center (for the TV that's directly connected to the server). I use an Android app (Plex Remote or Unified Remote) or standard wireless keyboard/mouse for that.
Anyways, I like where you're going with your build and will be watching this thread.
