All In One or Separate Storage for best power consumption?
#1
Hi all

First post from a newbie, so please be nice!

I'm considering XBMC as a new MediaPlayer and PVR solution for home, probably based around a Linux Master machine with a mix of Windows and Linux clients.

Currently I have a WD Live Media Player and a Qnap NAS, with a standalone Topfield PVR. The first step in my scheme would be to build a HTPC to replace the WD Live, but whatever I create, I want it eventually to take over the PVR duties from my trusty Topfield (so I can get HD). The WD Live sits in the living room by our TV of course, but the media is saved on the NAS in another room, and that's on 15 hours a day (it switches off at night to save power, as we rarely use it then).

What I need advice on is this: what's the best way (for performance and power consumption) to set up a new XBMC based system?

The way I see it, I could either:

Keep the Qnap NAS as a media store, and build a HTPC with no local storage, just recording everything to the NAS. That would mean that both devices would need to be on all the time for PVR duties (unless there is a RELIABLE way to get the HTPC to wake up for scheduled recordings and shut down again). Even if the two devices both consumed a total of 100W, that's getting on for £100 a year in electricity.

Or should I build a HTPC which also replaced the NAS, so I'd have the "master" HTPC in the other room with the storage attached. That would then need to be "always on" (or waking and sleeping automatically either for a timer recording or a WOL request), but the living room client could just be switched on when we wanted to watch something.

What are the drawbacks to each method technically and environmentally? I'm not a complete eco-warrier (although we do have solar panels which would mean maybe a quarter of the electricity required to run an always-on device would be free to us), but I do want to find a solution which minimises the financial and environmental impact of the system.

Any advice would be welcome. I know PVR support in XBMC is currently Beta-only, but from what I can see of the rest of the software, I'm quite confident that the devs will make it work well, and I'm in no great hurry to have my HTPC take over these duties so long as I know it will be able to do so eventually (and do it as well as my current PVR does!)

Thanks
Andy
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#2
I went through exactly the same thought process as you. I'm in the process of upgrading my NAS + external drive + 2xATV system to an all-in-one HTPC in the living room and client in the bedroom.

As I understand it if you get rid of the NAS you're planning to have a master PC hidden away somewhere and a client in the lounge? Have you considered using the master PC as the HTPC in the lounge - you reduce your client count by one and energy bill. This is what I'm doing, although it does require a few things like WoL signals from the clients if the master PC is sleeping like you said, although if you plan on leaving it on all the time this won't be an issue.

Adam
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#3
Thanks Adam

Yes, I'd thought of that. Perhaps I should have explained further. The room in which the NAS currently lives is a sort of kids playroom, where there's a small TV already. They don't notice the whirr of disk drives constantly, whereas in the living room, I do!!!

So if I went for the Master HTPC in the lounge, then I'd have to put a client in the Playroom anyway, and I'd have the whirr of the disks where I don't want it. Swapping them, or keeping the storage on a NAS (and also having a client in the PlayRoom) seems to make more sense.

Power-wise I guess it would make more sense to ditch the Qnap, and have the Master HTPC in the PlayRoom also acting as the NAS. I don't have very complicated requirements from the NAS, so I guess I could set up the webserver type things I want on a XBMC HTPC without adversely affecting its performance.

I would love to think I could have it wake and sleep when required by either a PVR-recording timer, or a WOL request. We probably only watch TV for 3 hours or so each day between all of us in the family (although I guess that'll go up as the kids get older and have more films and music of their own), so leaving it on for the other 21 is ridiculous. But I've seen various comments suggesting that the auto-waking doesn't work too reliably, and I wouldn't want to lose PVR reliability or have to go and kick the HTPC manually if it didn't wake up when I wanted to play media from another room.

I may be able to argue the financial case for this HTPC/PVR if it's better than what we've got at the moment, but not if it's worse!
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#4
you make a good point in that regardless of how you do the storage you're still going to have to find a way to reliably wake the PVR. I've heard this can be done by setting a scheduled task to run - maybe you can set something to automatically set one when you schedule a recording?

The bits for my build arrive today/tomorrow so I'll have a play with WoL signals from clients this weekend.
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