XBMC Media Center : Setup Guide, Knowlege Base & Support - Page 14

HI
OKAY here is my question
I know lot of people might ask this but please help me

i wanna make a mediacenter with HDD's(tower) and i don't know about raids and stuff
all i want to do is get tower and put 5-10 HDDs (2tb) and wanna store and from my main pc and i wanna transffer whenever whereever Hd i want

please help me

hey u got server will befine but wanna do transfer from htpc to server whenever and where ever Hd to i want

i have quadcore for playback
Thankyou
please help

With a mediaserver/nas you just map the drive on your HTPC, no need to copy back and forth.

I pretty much want to do the same thing. Are there any economical suggestions you guys can make ?

WHat do you consider economical? Media Storage is not "economical" once you factor in drives

I know. LOL. I understand fully that the drives them selves will run at a minimum $100 for 2TB's. I mean for the box/system itself. I don't worry to much about streaming. But would not mind a Raid of sorts maybe.

----------------

Also:

I tried the Aeon theme, and it would not let me choose the subtitles when playing foreign film files, but in Backrow it does. And rather easily.

Any ideas ?

I already have 3 2TB 's i just bought one more for 79.00 and ready for another 2to 3 more
so iam looking server
another question is if its raid mapping Hd means detect on my htpd!!!!!!!!!
what if its server do i have to take as an external HD and hook it up as usb/e-sata!!!!!!!!!!
pls help

1. Check unRaid, they have cost efficient build specs in their Wiki. You can build a box based on their specs for ~250 if you don't get the hot swap bays.

2. When I last used the subtitle plug-in certain skins enabled it by default and others you had to go into the skin settings to turn it on in the skin

Ok guys,

I have a dedicated home theater front projection setup. I was going to go the control4 route and purchase a sony blu ray changer 400 disc. I would have been able to control the changer, etc., from an ipad or touchscreen interface. Down the road, I planned on implementing some degree of whole house automation. Issue: I'm not particularly impressed with the control4 cover art for movies and really like what I've seen regarding xbmc setups. I am interested in mostly blu ray movies but do have a considerable amount of dvds as well. Lately, I've been thinking about trying to build an htpc setup along with a server and just run everything off of a network.

I've seen a few youtube videos on how to build an htpc and it doesn't look too difficult but I know that probably won't be the case when actually doing it.

My questions are:

1. Is it very difficult to build an htpc for a person who is somewhat computer knowledgeable?
2. If I rip blu ray movies, would I be able to view them in 1080p or would they drop down to 720p.
3. Would I be able to rip high definition audio, or are there limitations?

Any information you can provide is greatly appreciated!!

Regards...

No.
1080p.
Yes.

I haven't used MCM, but definitely want to try it out after reading this thread. Having a unified library seems important.

Also, the front page of MCM states:

That seems like a pretty smart addon... a broadcatching bt client that automatically downloads your episodes, then renames them and builds metadata/art.

For those who haven't heard yet, dsplayer is officially dead:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p...postcount=4140

I was in the same boat a couple of months ago and did my first pc build. There are a couple of threads in this forum that pretty much lay out all of the specific parts to purchase. I went for a 3D HTPC. The only issues that I ran into were I purchased a processor fan that was too big to fit inside the case and I wish I had purchased a different graphics card. Regarding the latter, I purchased an Nvidea GTX 470 (gotta be better than the 460, right?) and found out that it will not bitstream HD audio. I will probably exchange it at some point for one that does but right now I am using XBMC and it doesn't support it yet anyway.

There are youtube videos for just about every part of the process and the motherboard manual was helpful. If you do deviate from any of the parts lists on the forum, make sure they are compatible such as the processor fitting the motherboard or cooler fans fitting inside the case.

At this point two months later, I'm not quite there yet for having everything work seamlessly but I have enough small victories to keep me from getting frustrated. Good luck.

Gotcha.

Where is that in Aeon ? I just checked and did not see it .

Thanks for the reply. That makes the decision a little bit easier.

Thanks so much for the detailed information. The task does seem a bit daunting but I have looked at the youtube videos and it doesn't appear all that difficult. I think I am going to give it a shot.

I am leaning towards the windows 7 media center as opposed to XBMC. Do you know whethere there are major advantages/disadvantages regarding the two?

The software side of this has proved to be much more difficult for me than the hardware end. I mentioned before that XBMC doesn't yet handle bitstreaming of the HD audio formats although I have read it is coming. The main reason I chose XBMC was I ran across the Cinema Experience plug in and it was exactly what I was looking for. Basically, it mimics the typical format a commercial theater would have starting with trivia slides, movie trailers, concession commercials, movie intros, and then the main movie. There are also ways to set it up so things are a bit random and you aren't always watching the same videos over and over.

There are many on here that could detail the differences better than me though. Hopefully, they will chime in.

I'm not sure, I never used Aeon. I was using Confluence or Transparency when I first got it.

Try going into settings > skin settings and their might be an option in there. If not check under Video.

Last resort, find the thread about the plug-in and it should identify what you need to do.

I really like the xbmc interface and that is actually what got me to thinking about building an htpc as opposed to doing the blu ray changer setup. I also like the mymovies interface that can be integrated with windows7 to provide a similar experience. I hope others chime in and help me out on this one....

Thanks again

For those who want a HTPC, you might want to look at the Zotac ZBox or something similar,
I bought it and at first was disappointing, then I read where I can tell XBMC to use hardware acceleration, as every movie was choppy, even 720P.

All movies play excellent now, but they do not play well outside XBMC using WMC, WMP or VLC.

I think I am probably missing some codec's, I hope

As far as a Server goes, if you plan to stream to more than one room I highly recommend a Windows Home Server or NAS. I have movies streaming to 3 different rooms in my house. I have 5 T of storage and will be adding 2T very soon as I am running out of space. My collection is at 772 movies, and still have 800 DVD's to convert.

If you go this wrought, wire is much better than wireless if you plan on streaming HD. All my 1080P movies were choppy on wireless, but not on wired. I have a Gigabit network infrastructure.

Also think ahead, I started with a 5 port giga N-router, then added a 8 port giga switch, then 2 more 5 port giga switches. But then again why would you think you would need a 24 port switch Well everything today seems to have a Ethernet connection (TV, XBox, BluRay, Amp...etc)

Someone had mentioned that XBMC does not stream HD audio, please explain? Because all my 1080P movies use HD audio and my amp decodes them. My amp will switch to 2 speakers if it is only stereo, I do not use simulated surround.

Finally can someone tell me how to load up AEON, I downloaded it, but when I try to import it into XBMC, it fails every time.
I am using the latest build of XBMC, and it seems the only way to import Skins is through XBMC Skin menu, and it does not list Aeon.

Thanks

Why not try both?

Right now I use WMC + Media Browser (see my writeup here). I have MPC HC launch for my mkvs and TMT for my BluRay folder rips. This allows me to get full HD Audio support without having to hack up WMC. Ideally you would want to do this all from the internal player, and i think that is where the hope is once the new AudioEngine comes into XBMC.

If you are doing any sort of PVR then WMC does make sense over XBMC. However, if you don't need PVR functionality then they both make fine front ends.

I would recommend giving both a shot. You could even add XBMC to your WMC strip to easily navigate back and forth.

The one item worth mentioning. Media Browser and MyMovies requires all your movies to be individual folders, whereas this is not a requirement with XBMC.

I also use MPC-HC. The one thing I really dislike about it is that I can't FF or REW my hi-def MKVs. Also, REW of a DVD folder rip just freezes the last frame during rewind. I'm assuming that happens to everyone else too, right?

I'm thinking about switching to TMT5 as my external player. Any thoughts?

For mkvs? If so you will lose HD Audio support

No bitstreaming from MKV using TMT5??? Well, that would be one good reason not to switch!

I rip to MKV to avoid the menus and other junk that are otherwise between me and the movie. Is there a reliable way to skip those using a Blu-ray folder rip instead?

So, no FF/REW of 1080p MKV using MPC-HC for you either?

Yeah, TMT does not support HD Audio for mkvs

I just use the step feature in MPC HC instead of FF/REW

I don't watch trailers, so I don't know about the audio. Think "small & cheap," so I'd guess they are 2.0. Your AVR can synthesize 5.1 or 7.1 from 2.0 using the Dolby ProLogic IIx and/or THX listening modes. It does a surprisingly good job.

I've learned quite a bit just today from you, dbone1026, and others willing to chime in, was just wondering, would it be possible to use TMT or PDVD with your xmbc setup and bitstream the hd audio with xbmc? Or am I way off??