Interested in building a home network...

[wagex]

xbmc with an htpc is awesome
we just canceled our dish and are using sickbeard tpb version / netflix so we dont have to use a usenet account, you dont get the awesome download speeds but in general i have tv shows within an hour of them showing on tv still with most of the shows being set to HD.

although i have sickbeard and couch potato running on my main server and just stream everything over gigabig i was using wireless G for a long time till my HD movies started to peak 10gb or so then they started buffering alot, and i have had the worst luck ever with wireless N, i have 3 wireless routers and several wireless N adapters none of them i have ever got to work right, like less than an mb/s not right. i havent tried AC but it seems feasible il have to look into that

i do need summore storage only a 2tb raid5 but with a server doing all the heavy loading / transcoding / downloading you can get away with a very light machine running the media center / xbmc.

only thing i didnt like about plex was when some one told me to check out the folder in appdata, i about crapped a brick apparently no one ever thought those guys what sql was lol the database was made of hundreds of thousands of folders 80% of them empty.

both of my htpc's are older low power c2d's but ive heard of people having luck with the newer atoms / APU all in one boards, even raspberry pi's.

i need to look into prime video, netflix is already starting to throttle my connection

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Prime video is rather poor. Fine supplement to other services.

Going 5GHz should get you out of really bad congestion/interference problems that would leave you with 1mbps bandwidth in wireless. With a lot of interference, your client connections will negotiate down at 2.4GHz... 5Ghz is very unlikely to have that same problem because it has more channels available and its channels don't overlap at all like 2.4Ghz does.

 

[wagex]

perhaps the 5ghz thing was my issue il have to get another wireless N adapter to try it out, intel did some update to the drivers on my intel centrino 2200N and the drivers got stupid, i dont even have the option for wireless N settings anymore. i may give it another go soon, would save time from the gigabit networking i was about to do through the house.

 

[funsoul]

Drivepool actually does seem to support hotswap. From their page:
"You can actually disconnect a hard drive even while the server is running, but only if the hardware supports it and you use the safely remove hardware option in Windows."

On the streaming thing....I use it only when the user is connecting from outside the home network (our kids in college use it pretty heavily). Works like a charm and quality is generally excellent.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Funsoul: Do you actually like the media center frontend? I tried to.

In my experience, it was a bear to get content presented nicely and it required addons for handling metadata. Thats part of the reason I'm so positive about Plex - it streams very well, it has a front end mostly the same as XBMC which looks nice and is usable by my wife, and it handles the library/metadata seemlessly without any configuration. Works on PCs, devices, and phones. Both plex and xbmc allow library setup with multiple drive letters or folders, so drivepool isn't necessary (unless you want data protection, which raid would conserve storage better)

I tried WMC, boxee, and something else I'm forgetting. Plex ended up as the one I kept coming back to.

 

[wagex]

Funsoul: Do you actually like the media center frontend? I tried to.

In my experience, it was a bear to get content presented nicely and it required addons for handling metadata. Thats part of the reason I'm so positive about Plex - it streams very well, it has a front end mostly the same as XBMC which looks nice and is usable by my wife, and it handles the library/metadata seemlessly without any configuration. Works on PCs, devices, and phones. Both plex and xbmc allow library setup with multiple drive letters or folders, so drivepool isn't necessary (unless you want data protection, which raid would conserve storage better)

I tried WMC, boxee, and something else I'm forgetting. Plex ended up as the one I kept coming back to.

only thing i use WMC for is the netflix app on it so i can use my remote. i could never get it to handle the movies correctly, hoping this netflix app for xbmc is finished soon then il just make my wmc button a xbmc button

 

[funsoul]

Hiya I.M.O.G.!

Yeah...have to admit...I do definitely like the wmc front-end.

It does need a fair amount of initial tweaking. I added mymovies for the metadata and customized the menus with media center studio (also added mychannellogos). We use pretty much all the libraries...movies, tv shows, recorded tv, music, music vids, pictures, etc as well as all the tv functionality, shoutcast and netflix.

Have 6 OTA and 3 cablecard tuners available on the network...I balance the access across all the clients (generally I give each client 2 cablecard and 2 OTA tuners). I set the wmc primary source to the OTA tuners for everything we get off the antenna (keeps the cablecard tuners available for non-OTA stuff). We also love having access to boatloads of trailers from directly in the movies sub-menu.

Imho...clean (once I made all the tweaks), simple front-end. Everyone in the house gets the same front-end and user experience from any tv and computer in the house. Wife and kids, after a little walkthrough, have never had an issue getting it to do whatever they want.

For whatever reason...I wasn't SO crazy about plex or xmbc. Haven't looked at them for a couple years so am sure they're improved, though.

I really like drivepool and not really worried about being more or less efficient on space (still have about 5T free out of 18T total and am running full duplication).

Every client has a nice wmc remote except for the main setup in the den where we use a harmony one.

Did I mention that it integrates beautifully with whs?

 

[TransformedBG]

Guess im going to have to look into some of these front ends. never heard of a few of them.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

@funsoul: Cool, thanks for the perspective. Nice setup.

@TransformedBG: Windows Media Center, XBMC, and Plex are likely the most worth looking at. I personally wouldn't bother with WMC, however it has differences that some people may like better (like funsoul mentioned).

WMC and Plex are both media centers and servers - they can stream to other WMC/Plex players on the network, in a fairly elegant fashion. I say elegant, because in the case of Plex for example this is how it works:

1. Install Plex Server on the system all your storage is connected to, configure the media library (this is simple)
2. Install and run Plex client from another device, just configure it with your Plex server settings (this is simple)
3. Choose media and hit play... It will stream and buffer in the background, making viewing smooth and easy from anywhere.

WMC may be fairly similar but I'm not sure, though it requires customization to get the metadata, trailers, and things like that (Plex has built in agents setup by default which will pull in movie/show data - these can be configured if desired). Plex you just install the server, tell it where your media files are, and you go... Clients require almost zero config, just point them at the server and you are set (there are many network, quality, and other options if you want to tinker).

XBMC in contrast can play files across the network, however with remote media it isn't that cool in my experience - you have to use SAMBA or FTP or some other connection to the remote files, and it doesn't handle transcoding or buffering in a modern way as far as I am aware. Where XBMC is strong is in its multitude of options, and the interface customization and quality... I use XBMC to watch things on my HTPC, even though it has Plex installed and I could use that. I stick to using Plex in other rooms. XBMC does support UPNP and DLNA I guess, but I don't know if that offers a similar streaming experience to better options.

There's also devices you can use in other rooms - to play from your HTPC. Roku is one example. You can also use a raspberry pi and install XBMC on it. You could also use any tiny computer mostly, and install Openelec (customized linux designed to run XBMC on modest resources).

Mainly, I think your project is going to be awesome - but I think you will end up happier if you look at your options first. Decide what interfaces and setups you like, then get a better understanding of what it takes for them to run well. Wiring the whole house would work, but you may find it isn't necessary and you can spend more on other gear.

 

[funsoul]

@Funsoul: Cool, thanks for the perspective. Nice setup.

Yvw and thanks

 

[TransformedBG]

So i started piecing together my server today.. picked up a nice "new to me case" for 10 bucks on Craigslist:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3198497