Making the "Bacon Race" Theater - Page 53

It was an easy decision for me, seeing as I had the case, and the hardware to run the NAS minus the hard drives themselves from a previous PC build. The nice things about the stand alone enclosures though is that they don't really require any computer skills to get setup. AND the whole device is under one warranty. A lot less headache in case of hardware failure. Plus they are smaller.

It's 22TB or so + a 3TB parity. I actually have more titles than that, but I didn't put any of the 3D titles on the array. Several of the 3D titles have their 2D versions ripped, but things like IMAX: Under the Sea I am only going to watch in 3D and just play off of my Oppo.

Exactly. This was a huge issue for me before. I had 2 Hardware Raids running off of 2 different cards. My external enclosure was pure crap, and had major heat issues. So drives kept failing. I wanted to rebuild it to something like a RAID-6 to give me more stability, but I couldn't put the files anywhere. At one point I just nuked it and re-ripped my media. I am using 4 of the drives from that array in my new array and haven't had a single issue with them now that they're in the new enclosure, so I am very sure it had a lot to do with the heat. Some raid cards will allow you to do a raid rebuild or expansion with data on it, but this is very risky and if something goes wrong or you get a power outage during the process, all of your data is gone. A lot of people have never had a hard drive

Again, it's not for everyone. There are tons of benefits for HW raids and other pieces of software, I am only pointing out my personal experiences and preferences for my NAS/HTPC use. I've personally used HW Raid 0, 1, 4, 5, 5E, 6, and 10 either at home or at work. At least the ones at work are SCSI drives and I have never lost data from the server enclosures. What we tend to do at home is buy the biggest hard drives we can at the cheapest prices. Most people aren't going to pay the extra money for the higher-quality drives. The last couple of 3TB I purchased were actually Western Digital RED drives, but only because there was a great sale on them and they were $10 more than the green drives. Another thing I really like about unRaid is that your hard drives are barely used. I have 9 discs + a parity drive (10) in my array. When not in use, none of my hard drives are spinning so they don't receive wear. When I watch a movie, only the disc with the movie spins up. It's actually much less abuse than a standard PC hard drive takes.

Guests love Media Browser. There is something about being able to just click on a movie title and watch it that is so cool to them. And I love my guests not touching my media! It is funny though to bring up all of the movies and tell them to pick one. The all get a stupified look like.. "Uhhhhhhh". What's sad is that on MY end, when I have all of those titles and I think that there is nothing I want to watch. I'm weird like that, I don't usually re-watch a movie by myself, I need to watch it with someone else.

I do both.

In my theater, I use a dedicated HTPC as a front end, which uses Media Browser, and that plays on Media Player Classic - Home Cinema using LAV Filters.

On my two TVs in my house, I have PS3 hookups and I stream using the PS3mediaServer plugin

The non-wires thing sucks by the way, sorry to hear about that. The house I am renting out is one I had built, and every room had 2 CAT-5E jacks in it. More and more things support network use, and although more and more also support Wi-Fi, I am not a fan when it comes to any sort of media streaming. I like my toys wired! Especially when I have to transfer an MKV over the network! When my wife and I purchased our newest home, the homeowners look like they skimped on the media connections. The absolute minimum. There was 1 network jack in the office, one in the kitchen, and one in the master bedroom. (All in TERRIBLE places) - I swear when they built this house they were idiots on where they put jacks and switches. So the first thing we did moving in was fish cables everywhere, moved some switches, added some lights. Better sooner than later. Fortunately our house had a basement to attic PVC conduit (Which I heard they no longer allow builders to put in due to fire-stopping) and we could run several cables upstairs that way. Still, other than email and web browsing, I don't like wireless networks. I'm just picky.

I had one builder who let me run all of the LV wires myself. Another builder we snuck in and added recessed lights to the living room since they were charging like $250 per light. On the final inspection they tore them out. (Though that builder also put a vaulted ceiling on one room instead of a tray in another so when I corrected them, they just added the right one and left in the wrong once since it would be too much work) It just sucks having to run them after the walls are up when it is SO easy to do it when they aren't.

So we hosted an X-mas party at our home this past weekend for my office, and one thing we ended hooking up at the last minute was Karaoke off of my HTPC. (Using Winamp and the CDG plugin) I had to use a "Rock Band" USB mic instead of a normal mic, but one thing I noticed was that the vocals coming through the mic were delayed by about a half second. In music, that is a lot. It didn't occur to me until afterwords that it might actually be my amp's delay settings. I've never tried something like that before, and wasn't sure if it was the fact I was using a cheap USB mic or the amp settings that could be causing the delay. Has anyone ever done that before or experienced that issue before? People were having a blast and I'd like to figure out the issue for future events.

My setup is my PC has an HDMI cable, which goes to my Onkyo Pre-Amp, and the audio/video comes in over HDMI. I also have a USB cable that runs to a hub in my rack, so I can hook up USB devices in my theater. I dont belive the Onkyo pre-amp has a MIC input on the front.

So I'm considering buying a Lumagen Radiance Mini 3D + Chromapure. But I'm not sure what meter I should get, and if I should be getting the normal or advanced auto-calibrate. If it was only for calibration, I'd just get a meter and figure out how to use the Sony's CMS, since it is halfway decent I hear... but I also want to use the Non-Linear stretch capabilities to fix an aspect ratio for multi aspect movies, etc. Any input on package choices would be appreciated.

No problem. Once you get it setup it should work without problems. Did you run pre-clear on all of your disks prior to building the array? Did you add any add-ons?

Well, other than the non-official tech support guide, the forums are not easy to find information on there. It took a lot of digging to find what I needed. I am still running beta 5 r 13 I think. I haven't upgraded to a later release candidate... mostly because each version seems to have a different little nuance of one kind or another. What I have works for me, and I am sticking with it for now.

Running the whole OS off of a USB thumb drive (and in memory) is pretty awesome. Gotta love the Linux kernel!

I don't run a cache drive. I have read the benefits of it, but there are also downsides to it, and I didn't want to deal with them. I don't use my NAS like I use a hard drive. I only write to it one stream at a time, and it's usually for something like an mp3 album or blu ray disc i rip. Then it's just reads. I had no need for a cache drive.

I have 3 kinds of hard drives, 1.5, 2, and 3tb drives. So I used a 3tb drive for a parity. The nice thing is, you don't have to destroy your array to add new drives, and even upgrading your parity drive isn't that difficult. All of which require almost no use of linux to do.

Yes, I have had experience with Linux in the past, but it is not really necessary to use unraid. Most of the guides you will find (Once you find them) will tell you step by step every command you need to run.

I'll re-iterate the most important thing of any NAS... cooling is your top priority. No matter how you stack your drives, make sure they are kept cool. Have a good fan (or fans) and good airflow. It will save your data, and keep your drives living a long time.

So here are a few tips (I have all of the links at home, I can maybe add them for you later)
1) Install unRaid. Pretty simple.
2) Make sure your key (license key) is installed so you can use all the drives (if you have more than the free version allows).
3) You will want to pre-clear all of your discs. You will want to do more than one drive at once, and to do that you will need to use "Screen". I ran 4 drives at a time with that on preclear. You can also set up the system to email you when it is done.
4) Not sure if it comes installed or not with the latest RC, but you will want to get the "MyMain" page also (It's the port 8080 web page vs the standard port 80 screen) This web page will be a one click option for many of your add-ons/plugins. It lists many standard ones, and you can just click them to download and install.
5) Build your array.
6) Plan your shares. What do you plan to store? Movies only? Music? You need to come up with a file distribution plan. My distribution plan for movies is VERY different than for music, since the folder trees are much deeper. Movies only go /movies/movietitlefolder/moviefile so each subfolder of the movies folder is its own film, and thus was my distribution threshold for swapping what disk gets written to based on % full. (I think this is the "high Water" setup) For music, many of my folders go /music/flac/folders or music/mp3/audiobooks/folders or music/mp3/albums/A/foldername/songs so you can see lots of different folder levels. You need to think of the perspective of "Loss". If you lose one drive, you don't want all of your music to be on that drive. Distribution should be based on minimizing losses.
7) Create your shares (Decide if your shares are visisble, hidden, or require user authentication)
8) Run a parity check once a month or so overnight. Just to be sure all of your writes worked. I haven't encountered a problem in a year of use, but who knows.

I spent quite a few hours up front getting it all configured correctly. I added several add-ons, such as the myMain, the APC (Power management) plugin, Java JRE, and ps3mediabrowser. Once it is setup and your array is configured, you don't really need to worry about it.

Figure out the structure is worth the time. You can always change the High Water Level of the share later. I had to do this after I realized what I had for music was all going on the same disc. I also have a share I use for backing up the PCs to, like you plan to do. What I would suggest though is NOT to backup music to another drive in the array. If you do an additional backup, move it off of that computer completely. You do have failover protection from the parity drive already, and the best backup is a backup in a different physical location. I'd suggest either 1) A Blu Ray burner with media or 2) An external USB Hard Drive. You can also backup to the cloud depending on the space, which would all have its own failover. I'd suggest looking for a deal on some 2TB or 3TB external USB hard drive. Back it up there, and then just leaving it unplugged somewhere until you need it. The less you use your backup, the longer it will last.

Backup of my movies is too expensive. I'd rather re-rip them if it came to that. But the music is worth it. Especially with all of the crap like downloading from itunes, or re-ripping cds that might be scratched, etc. It also takes a lot less space. Pictures are also worth it. I think a lot of people forget to backup their digital photos, but it would crush you if you lost family photos that you didn't ever have printed in film like people used to do. I lost all of my college digital photos and I am still mad about it.

So after seeing Cinemar's build, and now Vanice's, I am entertaining the idea of adding nosing along my riser/steps vs the wrapped carpet, and then installing LED light strips under the nosing vs using the step lights which are currently installed. I may also change my rope light to LED lighting too.

1) The step lights are way too dim. I've had several people mention that it is still difficult to notice the steps with the lights off.
2) I like the look better. Plus the under-nose lighting is something you could leave on during a movie and not wash out the screen.
3) I don't think I'd re-do any wiring, or need to. I actually still have a spare z-wave plug which I could use if necessary, but I know they sell remote-controlled single outlet plugs. There is an outlet behind the front row of chairs anyway.

So this would involve cutting the carpet. This is a thick carpet and it has a pain-in-the-ass pattern. It might be difficult. The nosing itself wouldn't be hard, but since the carpet is already installed, we'd have to be very careful. Plus the location of the tack strips to hold down the carpet would need to move. Not sure if we could do the carpet work on our own or if we'd need help.

Thoughts big?