I would say retard questions instead of noob
#1
Heard about XBMC in September 2011. Downloaded installed and played with it for a few weeks. Read XBMC forums for months after that. Discovered and use Makemkv as the movie file format. Use Media Companion for all the “pretty” stuff (fanart, thumbnails, etc). Heard of Ember media manager, just never played with it. Currently using my Gaming system as the “test computer” after I discovered XBMC and have learned a lot! I am starting with a blank slate and read numerous stories of how media wasn’t scraped/found/etc and opted to have each movie inside separate folders like this.


Ex. Jaws (1975)
Folder.jpg
Jaws.mkv
Jaws.nfo
Jaws.tbn
Jaws-fanart.jpg
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Folder.jpg
Reservoir Dogs.mkv
Reservoir Dogs.nfo
Reservoir Dogs.tbn
Reservoir Dogs -fanart.jpg

I think I am ready to go down the HTPC build arena but feel like there are 17 forks in the road!

The Lian Li "cube" seemed to grab my attention but I am at the beginning phase of planning so all options are on the table.

1) According to Eskro’s Builds I am a #5 (no need for 3D movies and I don’t understand what bit streaming audio is anyway, nor do I care at this moment. Maybe another time for that).
2) Must be windows machine. I believe there is MUCH more flexibility with linux but I am a rookie at linux and if I understand eskro’s builds correctly streaming Netflix is a “windows only” thing so no linux, correct? (remember I am a rookie at linux “tweaking”Wink.
3) Must boot up in equivalent time to turning on Blu-ray/DVD player the “Manual way”. (Ex, opening drive, put in movie, close drive, let it spin up, let menu pop up, then hit “PLAY”. Turned out to be about 30-35 seconds.)
4) Now I am “ASSUMING” that if I were to build any one of eskro’s builds (which are friggin awesome by the way), I can fit only 1 to maybe 3 HDD’s inside the case? I am lost when you need more storage space and need to expand. What do you do then?
5) I am ASSUMING that when storage space expansion is an issue it is time to build a bigger machine (This is why I ask these stupid questions now to save a step and maybe just build a bigger machine now?)
6) So far I have about 300 movies (all Standard Definition) and about 5 TV shows that have almost filled a 2TB drive. I am going through my collection slowly getting them in digital format and have come up to the 2TB limit of the current drive. This is why I am at this point of expanding and looking to you guys for input. Total current space/needs are approx 700 Movies in total and 8 TV shows all greater than 5 seasons. Of those 700 movies about 100 are blu-ray.
7) When I watch movie then go to bed I TURN OFF the TV and Blu-ray player. With a buy off the shelf HTPC or one of eskro’s HTPC builds are they “always on”? I just need a understanding of how much it costs to leave things “always on”. (ex. Are we talking an Extra $5/month vs extra $25/month in electricity depending on the cost of electricity in your area)


I read the forums a lot to try to figure it out myself but after a while it is like youtube…you watch one 30 sec clip then 4 hours later you wonder where you started and forgot how to get back to what you were looking for.

You see why I feel there are 17 forks in the road?
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#2
I also have been down your road and the paths to take for getting my media onto the tv with out having my monster gaming rig in the family room whoosing out the fans noise from 8-120mm fans.

What I did was figure out a game plan for what I wanted now and what I thought I might want in the future and built my HTPC on that. I was lucky enough to have an old case laying around that was pefect for my XBMC machine. I went with the AMD A6-3500 Llano, ASRock A55M-HVS FM1 AMD A55 and Kingston HyperX 8GB ram. I already had a 120 psu and a 80 laptop harddrive. I installed Win7 and haven't looked back yet.

Now that I had my HTPC up and running, I now was looking for a NAS solution. My gaming rig held all my media and I did not want that serving up the media with all the noise, so I built somewhat off of eskro's 6 HDD build.

These builds I did probably cost close to 500 dollars (excluding hard drives) for the parts but I now have a HTPC and Nas server running in my living room that no one hears at all.

For the speed on booting my HTPC up, and this is without a SSD drive, I would say is about 50-60 secs. I do not leave mine running 24/7 since I have only time at night to watch it. Getting back to the speed of the boot and such, I walk over to the HTPC, press the button, walk to couch, turn TV on, hit input to the HTPC and the HTPC is in XBMC, so I really don't see a need in my instance for a SSD drive.

Now for your expandability, I went with the 6HDD drive as a starter, but will start turning my gaming rig into a larger Nas server (15 drive) once I am ready. But for now i use it to rip my movies and do work related things on it.

I hope this helps somewhat with your thinking. Take one step at a time and plan things out for your needs and money. I made alot of wishlists at newegg. Big Grin

My next goal is getting LG 65" 3-D Ready , then a larger popcorn popper and drink dispensor. :p
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#3
All share a little of my history with XBMC. It was about a year ago I found it. I knew I wanted to build a HTPC but have only build gaming rigs. Im almost done now adn its W 7 based. Just a few more tweaks with a fan controller and its done. My build was dictated mostly by a few free parts I got my hand s on. An H55 1156 MB. So I bought a i3 550 and 4 Gb ram and used the onboard graphics and away I went. I have about 350 movies about 40 on them are HD and 50 Gb music and Im about 3/4 full on a 2 Tb drive. I just got a new case (Silverstone GD05) and a SSD 64 Gb and I have about $600 invested. Not counting a Yamaha receiver / speakers. I played around with Eden. 3 different versions and now have gone back to Darhma 10. None of my movies are in folders (I don't know why you did this) But all the bugs are worked out and it is amazing. After i get the fan controller in I will post pics

I leave it on most of the time. All the parts are low power and it will boot in about 20 sec. Eden was just too buggy. It looked better but would lock up 2 X a day and starting a movie would take longer to load.

It is crazy how many options there are
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#4
Partly repeating what Harro said, this is what I wrote just yesterday and to a related question:

Quote:One machine as fileserver, located within network reach, preferably somewhere where it's not heard, which can be allowed to be bulky'ish in order to allow good cooling and flexibility/expandability. Alternatively an off the shelf NAS. Details/performance according to skills, ambition level and budget. This machine is left on 24/7.

2x small, nice looking, power efficient and quiet (+inexpensive'ish) playback HTPCs, both streaming content via XBMCbuntu/XBMC Live/OpenELEC from above fileserver/NAS. These can independently be shut down or suspended when not in actual use.

If budget permits, I'd go for SSD on the playback machines (for speed/silence). OpenELEC from a USB stick may also be a good choice if you only want playback and a nice set top feel.
HTPC: LibreELEC 7 on Shuttle XS35GTv2 & Raspberry Pi 3
NAS: NAS4Free 2x 3TB Raid1
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#5
Jetster Wrote:None of my movies are in folders (I don't know why you did this)

It's required if you want to use extrathumbs / extrafanart / disc images
My name is Erier, Humf Erier
Image
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#6
As you mention, there are at least "17 forks in the road". One big decision you have to make is how much work you are asking your HTPC to do. For example, in my situation I chose to make the htpc as small and quiet as possible - meaning I want it to do nothing other than display video. This lead me to a fanless, diskless OpenElec build. It gets content from a NAS I keep in my spare bedroom - well out of earshot of the living room.
OpenElec won't work for you, since you want Netflix (meaning Windows) and therefore you would need a disk. You could use a SSD and keep it silent and fanless still.
On the other end of the spectrum are people who want a "everything-in-one" htpc. They want to store all their content on it, play video games, browse the web, download content, play emulators, etc. This is somewhat simpler (one machine to maintain instead of two), and more flexible with all the additional features. It's also larger, less expandable (assuming you use a small case to look good in your living room), and much much louder. Additionally, this "all-in-one" solution doesn't scale well - what do you do if you want two (or 6) televisions in your house? This solution does probably have benefits with regards to power consumption - maybe.
Both options are fine solutions - you just have determine which one works best for you.
My biased advice is: get a Shuttle XS35 and SSD for the frontend, then build an Unraid server for the backend.
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#7
Teaguecl (nick sounds remotely Aztec btw) has summed it up pretty good.

Haven't quite thought about it before, but in many ways it would make sense to talk about either HTPC or Home Entertainment PC, where the earlier is for playback only and the latter for a number of other things such as gaming, surfing etc.
HTPC: LibreELEC 7 on Shuttle XS35GTv2 & Raspberry Pi 3
NAS: NAS4Free 2x 3TB Raid1
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I would say retard questions instead of noob0