Need direction in regards to XBMC expansion
#1
I recently dived into the world of XBMC in the living room.

Here is my setup...

This computer stores media to stream & plays media on the TV:
Windows7 Home Premium running on the following hardware:
Gigabyte H55M-2SH Intel H55 Socket LGA1156 MB
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 Dual Channel 1333MHz RAM
Intel Core i3-530 2.93Ghz 4M LGA1156 CPU
WD Caviar Blue 160GB 7200rpm booting the OS
WD Caviar Green 1TB 64MB/SATA-3G + 2 additional WD Caviar Green 2TB 64MB/SATA-3G drives holding the media (unRAID ~600 movies & ~200 TV episodes)
EVGA GeForce GT 220 1GB DDR3 w/DVI/VGA/HDMI

I have this connected to my 42in Samsung TV in the living room via HDMI for video & S/PDIF optical to my receiver for Surround Sound. I installed XBMC and have added all of my movies. At the moment, I am only streaming SD content through my house, but am looking @ expanding to BluRays soon.

In the living room, I have a Harmony Logitech remote set up to control all the systems (TV, Surround Sound, & HTPC) via using it as a WindowsMediaCenter Keyboard (so X = exit, Pause = spacebar, Info = i, etc.) I also have an activity for Boxee so I can watch Netflix (no extension in XBMC yet... :[ )

I recently decided to expand it to other rooms of my house, so I have ran Cat6 Ethernet wiring up through the attic to all other rooms, with a Linksys 1 Gigabit Switch. All the wires are operational and everything is a go, so I set up an old laptop in the mean time to play XBMC in the family room. So my question is, in regards to this set up, what is the best way for me to stream my media?

I am currently using SMB sharing to share the files. Is this the best way to go? So I have smb://192.168.1.140/.../... to the appropriate place drive to find the Movies & TV Shows. Is there a better option? I am not interested in doing Linux, because I use Netflix (running through Boxee).

I am looking for recommendations or how others have shared there content with success... also, if you see a flaw in my setup, please yell it out & be critical! Let me know how I can improve this.

Also, I need to purchase a Nettop box to add to the other rooms, though, I want a Nettop box that is good (economical preferred, but definitely not looking for the cheap alternative, I want good box.)

O yeah.. last note, the fiancee would kill me if it became complicated to run it. Smile Always have to cater to those non-techie geeks in the family!
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#2
Short answer is yes SMB sharing will work. Share the folders that have your media on the "server" computer. I like to map network drives on the "client" computer. Then in XBMC when you add a new source browse and select the drive letter that you just mapped.

Search the forums for Nvidia ION boxes there are lots of good recommendations. Zotac makes some really good ones.

P.S. Netflix on XBMC
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#3
finish.06 Wrote:I also have an activity for Boxee so I can watch Netflix (no extension in XBMC yet... :[ )

There are several ways to view NetFlix in XBMC. http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Usi...nal_player describes one method, and there is another related method mentioned in this forum somewhere (try a search for "NetFlix").

JR
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