To separate or not to separate? - Printable Version +- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv) +-- Forum: Discussions (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=222) +--- Forum: Hardware (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=112) +--- Thread: To separate or not to separate? (/showthread.php?tid=130597) |
To separate or not to separate? - cwide - 2012-05-03 Ever since I have owned an HTPC running XBMC I have always just ran XBMC over Windows and then created SMB shares to access with my laptop. A few things have changed since then: - I live with a lot of people so there may be times where 5+ people are trying to play media (while the HTPC itself is playing something). - I live with a few people who really enjoy gaming (I have yet to try any sort of emulators or roms... so not sure if this will affect the decision). - I just started using Couch Potato, Sickbeard, Headphones, etc... - I will be transferring files between every kind of popular device (PCs, Macs, phones, apple tvs). - I have also started using Plex Media Server to access remotely (if there is a better way while using XBMC I would love to know). Here's my beef with my current setup: - XBMC gets minimized A LOT. I set up my remote to relaunch it though so it's not that annoying, but still somewhat of a nuisance. - The GUI sometimes has slowed to a halt if SAB is unzipping large files. (is this unavoidable no matter how powerful my CPU?) - Plex Media Server is somewhat unreliable. Not sure if that's mostly due to my internet speed, the program, my CPU, or just Windows. My original thought was to just make a separate server and HTPC. This seems like the least cost effective solution but most rewarding. However, I don't live in the most cable friendly house (and not really a house I can work on anyway) so the HTPC and server would essentially be in the same 5 foot radius. I could hide the server in a cabinet. I actually had the thought of just building two systems into one cabinet drawer. Still a WIP. My second thought was to see if Ubuntu or some other linux flavor was better at doing all of these things simultaneously without bogging down or minimizing XBMC all the time. I guess I am just looking for some opinions. Is it worth the extra hundreds of dollars to build separate machines? Did it REALLY improve your experience? Would I be better off saving a few bucks and buying a better CPU and maybe adding some RAM? Windows or Ubuntu for performance? Thanks. |