Home Media Server?

If this is truly a media server that you're building, and sorry if this is a dumb question, but why are you putting XBMC on it? XBMC is typically more of a front-end piece...

Strangely enough, I just posted a thought about using a Linux server running XBMC as a Terminal Server. Maybe we're thinking the same thing(?)

Its not a dumb question at all. My answer is, why not. Why have a separate computer for a server and one for xbmc? Why not combine the 2. It would save money to just have one computer. With GPU offloading, and the speed of newer hardware it shouldn't be a problem to run both.

The intention is to make that htpc in your living room do a lot more than just play music and movies. I know in my home I have limited space, and a computer that is already in the living room is in the perfect spot to run 24 hours a day. If it was in my room I wouldn't be able to sleep. Plus they kind of go hand and hand. Its all about media. Being able to access that media from anywhere you like, including your TV.

It might be best to somehow prioritize xbmc, because some of those web apps can be resource intensive.

I found another online file browser Ajaxplorer. Edited original post to included it.
http://www.ajaxplorer.info/wordpress/

giantjoebot Wrote:Its not a dumb question at all. My answer is, why not. Why have a separate computer for a server and one for xbmc? Why not combine the 2. It would save money to just have one computer. With GPU offloading, and the speed of newer hardware it shouldn't be a problem to run both.

The intention is to make that htpc in your living room do a lot more than just play music and movies. I know in my home I have limited space, and a computer that is already in the living room is in the perfect spot to run 24 hours a day. If it was in my room I wouldn't be able to sleep. Plus they kind of go hand and hand. Its all about media. Being able to access that media from anywhere you like, including your TV.

Oh no doubt - real computers (read: not the iPad) are built to be multitaskers, but from an architecture standpoint, in my mind at least, the machine we're talking about would be an HTPC/Media server - which is what I have my XBMC machine is doing. The way I had read the OP was that he was talking more about a dedicated back-end server like a Windows Home Media server.

Well sorry If I didn't describe it that well. Its all in my head, and sometimes its hard to put it in words.

NickB you totally do get it, and I really appreciate that. Do you have any suggestions for me?

What would be really cool is to make the online stuff look like xbmc, but thats maybe something for the future. What I'm going to do for now is just have a simple home page with links to all the online apps, so you only have to go to one place to access it all. A very basic web page in http with hyper links.

There is one more web app that people might want, and thats EyeOS, but honestly I kind of would rather leave it out. In my experience web apps that try and do everything run slower, and the ones that just do one thing, do it really well and a lot better, like Ampache.

Also thinking about having 2 file browsers. MyDisk and something else. One simple and one more complex. Maybe even the old version of MyDisk, MyDiskServer
http://hostyourself.net/

GJB,
I know exactly what you mean so no worries! I'm always having to remind/ask myself, and my guys at the office "what problem are we trying to solve here". I've been brainstorming a similar solution, just haven't gotten very far with it yet. For me the idea is to have a centralized repository for all our "stuff" - backups of the machines in the house might be nice too. Low power set driver boxes for the bedroom tvs could be interesting too, which is why I was thinking about an X-Term type solution but so far it looks like a Revo type machine running XBMC would probably do just as well. MythTv and a centralized bittorrent are also something I've wanted to chew on... as-is some research on UPnP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_P...components)

For now, I'm relying on good old fileshare mapping to access content across my network and it works decently... but I really would like to make the leap to a "personal cloud" type of concept for the house. I hadn't run across ampache before, but it looks really interesting and there appears to be an integration with something called coherence that would allow you to stream content to a whole range of devices (http://coherence.beebits.net/wiki/SupportedDevices - even some smart tvs)... but on further review it appears that XBMC has a UPnp server built into it too (http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=UPnP_Sharing). It's even DNLA certified, which I never really paid attention to before... I'm pretty sure I've seen those stickers shopping for TVs before.

Wow! Ok, I'm an idiot


Holy cow, so there really are some interesting options that could come into play here - including your original list of software. Now the question is how to put it all together, and what are the best pieces to use(?) I think this is a topic that REALLY needs to be fleshed out a little more for public consumption. I know I, for one, and constantly running across neat bits here and there - hey TV X can stream Netflix... hey Hauppage makes all sorts of neat DVR stuff... XBMC plays every movie format I can throw at it REALLY, REALLY well... hey, iTunes and WHS and Windows Media player all have ways of sharing content across a home network somehow... hey there are NAS devices that apparently can double as UPnP servers... and while I have run across a number of really interesting specific implementations, trying to put it all together into a "what do I want my cloud to look like and do" sort of vision is still a challenge (yeah I think the word Cloud is overused too, but I'm not really sure what else you could call it if it's pumping out content direct to TVs, mobile devices, etc).

For me, next steps are a serious dig into UPnP and DNLA

is there a reason you're not going to just start with minimal ubuntu, or a xbmc installation instead of starting with full blown Ubuntu? You could just add what you want to it rather then starting with bloat and trimming it down.

Fluxbox is a good graphical manager and it comes with XBMC, it also is smaller then GNOME desktop and it runs on Xorg which is what XBMC runs on. You can terminal into it and it is lightweight on VNC servers with the low graphics.

I am open to the idea. I'm just more familiar with the regular Ubuntu. I'm going to try and put together a test system today. I'll give that a try, and see how it goes.

Do you guys want itunes sharing? I could probably do that if you want. Shhhh, keep it a secret, but I don't use itunes, and don't really care for it.

EyeOS anyone?

XBMC has a UPnP server, but I don't think it transcodes like Mediatomb, so it looks like its going in, unless I hear otherwise. Like I said before, I don't have a PS3 or a Xbox 360 to test it on. So all I can relly do is install it.

I'm going to be using a remastering tool to make this, and I'll leave it in there. So if you want to add, change, tweak this thing you can. I
http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/
http://utux-utux.blogspot.com/2008/11/si...-with.html

just want to get the ball rolling, and hopefully start getting other people onboard. The first one that I put out won't be perfect, but a picture is worth a thousand words, and you'll be able to see where I'm going with it.