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Building a Video Server for TV Viewing

post #1 of 10
6/30/08 at 11:34am
Thread Starter 
It has been a long while since being here last, but I have a question I would like to ask and get some info on.

I would like to find a way where I can put all of the shows I like to watch, my DVD collection, TV shows I have on tape and other media sources. I want to be able to store all of my movies and shows on the PC and view them on my widescreen TV set (which is connected to the HT system). Kinda like a server, where you can either pick what movie or show you want to watch via an menu screen or have it where i can just randomly play shows (like episodes and such).

I am very computer savvy as I have built many computers in the past, so if its possible to say to build an inexpensive PC to use as a server, what would some ideal components be? And how would I be able to interface the server to the TV set (or receiver)?

Is there some server software that can be used to support menu functions? I heard of NAS-based stuff but I am not certain if that would mean the same thing.

Thanks for any help, I will try to do as much research as needed.
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post #2 of 10
6/30/08 at 11:37am
www.freenas.org i love my freenas server, simple and small footprint
others will suggest unraid also, which is another great stuff for nas.
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post #3 of 10
6/30/08 at 12:03pm
- Well when you say TV shows and such what format are they in?
- With your VHS tapes do you plan on ripping/capturing them via a tuner/capture card and get them in a digital format onto the pc?
- you planning on doing any DVRing? if so what tv provider do you use?
- Is it just your media/theater room you plan on using this in? or do you want to have this on multiple TV's?


DVD's are easy, you can rip dvd's to Folder (Video_TS) format, or ISO format, then use pretty much any playback source you want, except when multiple TV's come into play.

ripped TV shows via AVI (divx/Xvid), mpeg4, ect... are a little harder when you have multiple TV's but its much easier than streaming DVD's to multiple tv's.

post back here what your final goal is here and we can certainly help you out.

- Josh
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post #4 of 10
6/30/08 at 1:41pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by umdivx View Post

- Well when you say TV shows and such what format are they in?
- With your VHS tapes do you plan on ripping/capturing them via a tuner/capture card and get them in a digital format onto the pc?
- you planning on doing any DVRing? if so what tv provider do you use?
- Is it just your media/theater room you plan on using this in? or do you want to have this on multiple TV's?


DVD's are easy, you can rip dvd's to Folder (Video_TS) format, or ISO format, then use pretty much any playback source you want, except when multiple TV's come into play.

ripped TV shows via AVI (divx/Xvid), mpeg4, ect... are a little harder when you have multiple TV's but its much easier than streaming DVD's to multiple tv's.

post back here what your final goal is here and we can certainly help you out.

- Josh

Hi Josh,

Alot of the TV shows I have, mostly older stuff is mostly on VHS, Hi8, D8 and some on DVD. As for VHS conversion, I use my D8 camcorder since it has a DV passthrough to Firewire to the PC. I most likely will convert the VHS and other external material to Divx as having AVI files will take up a ton of hard drive space.

At this time I do not have a DVR, and I am not subscribed to any TV services. In the past I have used my laptop as a DVR when I had Dish Network via my camcorder to record my shows directly. Then I would convert to Dixv afterwards if I didn't want to keep the large AVI files.

Ripping DVD's of course is the easiest, and have the software to take care of that. I only have 1 HDTV that I will be using the media server with as I don't plan on using multiple TV's right now. If in the future I decide to do that I will look into it then. I may consider doing BR content too, but I will need to do more research as far as good ripping software and decent BR drives.

So for my end goal, I would like to build a media server to house all my movies, TV shows and possibly audio too if I wanted to listen to all of my tunes from one place (though I could possibly build an audio server seperately). I want to be able to output all the audio and video to my receiver and then from there to the television. It would really beat having to switch DVD's each time a movie or show is done.

If you need more clarification let me know.
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post #5 of 10
6/30/08 at 2:02pm
What you really need to do is figure out what you want to use as a "front end" or to put it more generally, what you want to use to get the video to the TV. There are of course a number of options available, from media streamers (Popcorn Hour, TViX, etc), HTPCs, Extenders (VMC, SageTV, etc).

Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, but they each bring with them slightly different "Server" requirements. For example if you're using an HTPC, then you can use whatever you want as a media server as the HTPC can pull content off anything that supports file sharing.

Content streamers are a little different, I think a lot of them need UPnP servers on the server to provide a listing of the content to the streamer/player device.

And finally there are extenders, which have the strictest requirements, usually needing a specific server software running on the media server.

So you really need to konw what you're using for the player/source before you can make a good decision on what your server will need to be.
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post #6 of 10
6/30/08 at 2:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AVTechMan View Post

It has been a long while since being here last, but I have a question I would like to ask and get some info on.

I would like to find a way where I can put all of the shows I like to watch, my DVD collection, TV shows I have on tape and other media sources. I want to be able to store all of my movies and shows on the PC and view them on my widescreen TV set (which is connected to the HT system). Kinda like a server, where you can either pick what movie or show you want to watch via an menu screen or have it where i can just randomly play shows (like episodes and such).

I am very computer savvy as I have built many computers in the past, so if its possible to say to build an inexpensive PC to use as a server, what would some ideal components be? And how would I be able to interface the server to the TV set (or receiver)?

Is there some server software that can be used to support menu functions? I heard of NAS-based stuff but I am not certain if that would mean the same thing.

Thanks for any help, I will try to do as much research as needed.

That's basically what I'm trying to do also. I purchased "MSC Windows Home Server" from newegg for $150 and took an older system that I had laying around and installed (for now) 1.5TB of disk space into it. Since I use "Beyond TV" and "Beyond Media", I have those programs read and write to the "WHS file server". Since the system is on my home network, any computer including the wireless, can read any of the shared file directories that I have setup. (TV/Photos/LPs/CDs/DVDs). I also have a system with Vista ultimate (it contains a media center program), but I have not tried accessing the file server files to see if their were any problems, but in theory it should work okay. The only thing I have done out of the ordinary was to replace any 10/100Mbs items to an all gigabit ethernet products solution, including the wireless router (DLink DIR-655).
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post #7 of 10
6/30/08 at 2:30pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stanger89 View Post

What you really need to do is figure out what you want to use as a "front end" or to put it more generally, what you want to use to get the video to the TV. There are of course a number of options available, from media streamers (Popcorn Hour, TViX, etc), HTPCs, Extenders (VMC, SageTV, etc).

Each has their own strengths and weaknesses, but they each bring with them slightly different "Server" requirements. For example if you're using an HTPC, then you can use whatever you want as a media server as the HTPC can pull content off anything that supports file sharing.

Content streamers are a little different, I think a lot of them need UPnP servers on the server to provide a listing of the content to the streamer/player device.

And finally there are extenders, which have the strictest requirements, usually needing a specific server software running on the media server.

So you really need to konw what you're using for the player/source before you can make a good decision on what your server will need to be.

A front-end, or player/source eh? Hmm ok, guess that would need to be the first link of the chain I need to figure out then before deciding on type of server. If you or anyone have any examples of such or know of some links for reading material let me know. I will do some googling and forum searches and see what I can find.
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post #8 of 10
6/30/08 at 2:43pm
As a front-end I'm using another small computer with two tv tuner cards Hauppage HVR-1600 and a Leadtek PVR2000, and a ATI HD2600 video card. Windows XP and BeyondTV. Two DVD-DL drives.
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post #9 of 10
6/30/08 at 3:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AVTechMan View Post

A front-end, or player/source eh? Hmm ok, guess that would need to be the first link of the chain I need to figure out then before deciding on type of server. If you or anyone have any examples of such or know of some links for reading material let me know. I will do some googling and forum searches and see what I can find.

I mentioned a few above, lots here just use and HTPC, and if you go that route, then really anything will work for a server as the HTPC contains all the "brains".

Personally I have SageTV running on my media server, and use their STX-HD100 Media Extender to play my media. Extenders have the advantages of being cheaper than HTPCs, offering "more reliable" performance. By that I mean that since they use hardware decoders, there's no fiddling to get them playing smooth. Of course they have the downside of not having quite the robust media support.

I really like extenders as they sort of bridge the gap between an "HTPC" and a "content streamer". They offer the integrated interface across devices, access to things like metadata, TV guides, scheduling, etc, while avoiding some of the "fiddlyness" of HTPC software decoder playback. Of course this requires you run their server software on the PC.

Of course if you've just got a bunch of media files, with nothing tying them together (no metadata, etc) then maybe a content streamer like a Popcorn Hour is your ticket.
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post #10 of 10
6/30/08 at 3:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AVTechMan View Post

A front-end, or player/source eh? Hmm ok, guess that would need to be the first link of the chain I need to figure out then before deciding on type of server. If you or anyone have any examples of such or know of some links for reading material let me know. I will do some googling and forum searches and see what I can find.

Stanger basically beat me to the punch of what I was getting at. Really if you setup a "HTPC" (basically a PC with a gui front end connected to your TV/Display), you wouldn't specifically need a "server".

you can store all your content in the HTPC, using internal or external drives. My first setup I had I had 4 500gig HDD's in my pc. Then the next setup was I had two external eSata enclosures both of which housed 5hdd's each. One enclosure had 5 x 500gig hdd's, the other had 3 x 320gig hdd, and 2 x 750gig hdd's.

Last came the conversion from that to a dedicated Windows Home server box (as already mentioned) in which the eSata enclosures were just swapped over from my HTPC to my WHS box.

but to say you need a "server" really isn't all that meaningful if all your trying to do is provide that content to a single source, IE the PC. Now if you wanted to stream that said content to multiple sources/tv's/displays then yes a centralized server makes more sense.

but again if your just getting into this, I'd say built a HTPC, put a couple HDD's into it, and then go from there.

Now as Stanger said, trying to figure out the right setup, the right front end, is half the battle.

- Josh
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