Xbmc Client, What Do I Need
#1
Hi Everyone,

Currently, I have a full on Win7 HTPC setup in my living room, with a couple of big hard drives in it, running XBMC.

What I'd like to do, is get some sort of streaming device for my bedroom TV (1080p preferred, remote neccessary, wifi preferred) that will allow me to browse and play from the XBMC library on my HTPC.

Reading through the forums, I'm seeing a lot of threads about which devices support an XBMC installation; but from my understanding, this would entail it holding it's own library, settings, etc.

Does XBMC have capabilities for a client-server relationship?

Reading through the options, there seems to be a lot out there. With my goal in mind of keeping it simple, needing a remote, and ideally cheap, what would be a good solution?
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#2
Well, if you leave the Win 7 HTPC in your living room running 24/7 (or at least have it on when you want to use the bedroom system) you can share the content from the Win 7 HTPC with Windows file sharing to a remote XBMC system. This will allow it to access the content on the living room system without needing local storage for it.
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#3
(2014-08-18, 22:25)Stereodude Wrote: Well, if you leave the Win 7 HTPC in your living room running 24/7 (or at least have it on when you want to use the bedroom system) you can share the content from the Win 7 HTPC with Windows file sharing to a remote XBMC system. This will allow it to access the content on the living room system without needing local storage for it.

I do have it on 24/7, or at least, pretty well.

Does XBMC have inherint sharing permissions / capabilities, or do I have to manage it separately? (and have duplicate libraries stored on each xbmc?)
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#4
Or, you can install MySQL on your Windows PC. This will involve you having to rebuild your libraries using network paths instead of local paths, but once it's done, both machines would share that one library. This means that you can stop a movie in one room, and resume it from the same point in another. If you watch something on one machine, the other one will also show it as watched.

It can be a little cumbersome coming from a local library to a shared one, but once it's all set up, adding a client is as easy as loading XBMC onto another machine and pointing it to the shared library. Your content will be available as soon as XBMC starts.

This works for both the video library and the music library.

Another option, particularly if you are going to be using Kodi, is to use upnp sharing to share the library between clients. Whilst this works in Gotham to a degree, there is more support in Kodi Helix for it.
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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#5
(2014-08-18, 22:35)jfried Wrote: Does XBMC have inherint sharing permissions / capabilities, or do I have to manage it separately? (and have duplicate libraries stored on each xbmc?)
No, XBMC on Windows does not have any inherent sharing capabilities that I'm aware of. However, Windows itself does.
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#6
I run a windows 8.1 setup in the livingroom that is on 24/7 that is also my server, and I have a fire tv in the bedroom. I have the server setup to share the media over the network and just access the files over the network on the firetv. I dont have a mysql database setup so watch status doesn't sync between the two, but I dont care about that. I know what I've watched.
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#7
(2014-08-18, 22:36)black_eagle Wrote: Or, you can install MySQL on your Windows PC. This will involve you having to rebuild your libraries using network paths instead of local paths, but once it's done, both machines would share that one library. This means that you can stop a movie in one room, and resume it from the same point in another. If you watch something on one machine, the other one will also show it as watched.

It can be a little cumbersome coming from a local library to a shared one, but once it's all set up, adding a client is as easy as loading XBMC onto another machine and pointing it to the shared library. Your content will be available as soon as XBMC starts.

This works for both the video library and the music library.

Another option, particularly if you are going to be using Kodi, is to use upnp sharing to share the library between clients. Whilst this works in Gotham to a degree, there is more support in Kodi Helix for it.

Interesting. That seems like the desired behaviour here.

As far as I understand, the newest release uses MySQL (Gotham?), so the first thing I should do is upgrade from Frodo to Gotham?
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#8
Frodo can use MySQL too. There is a guide in the wiki to setting up MySQL (wiki). Do note though that support for this probably will be dropped at some point in the future, although I think it'll be later rather than sooner.

I used MySQL with Frodo with no issues, upgraded to Gotham and still use it. Probably will until support for it is deprecated.
Learning Linux the hard way !!
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