Setting up movie distribution to several TVs
#1
I'm fairly new to the subject of media centers and have a few questions regarding what I can or cannot do. What I would like to do is to store my collection of Blu ray discs and DVDs on a server and then be able to watch these videos from a couple of TVs.

So my first question is this possible or better yet feasible/reasonable? I'm pretty sure it can be done but wondering if it's reasonable to do.

The bigger question is what hardware should I get or do I need, especially at the displays. I want to base the system on Macs. Can I just place a Mac at each display and pull from a Time Capsule or other hard drive storage. Then use a Mac mini at the displays using xbmc? Or better yet can I just have one computer as a server and client that distributes the video via the network to the different displays?

Thanks,
Jeff
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#2
Welcome to the forums.

With xbmc, you're gonna need a box hooked up to each display. It can be a mac mini, pc or even an apple tv. Xbmc works on many platforms and operating systems.

Your movie library can reside on a server, network attached storage, Time Capsule or a bunch of external hard drives. As long as the computers can access the media through the network or directly, it will work.

I suggest you start reading the xbmc wiki. There is a lot that you can do.

What many people (including me) are doing is building a media server (I built an "unraid" server). All the media (movies, tv shows, music, photos. . .) resides on this computer. Each xbmc computer is hooked up to a tv and accesses the content on the server through the network. Xbmc boxes also use a mysql library that is hosted on the server as well. And since it is a centralized library, you can update the library on one box and all the other ones will automatically be in sync. You can stop a movie on one box, then resume on another, etc.
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#3
Thanks, aptalca. I'll check out the wiki.
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