Media Server, Video Editing Server, Audio Server- the evolution from HTPC

Well, you can see my new HTPC build in my recent build thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/t/1427049/htpc-make-that-ht-gaming-workstation-build-thread

I use it to run an Epson 8350 and have a Dell 2407 connected as well. On the audio side, I am 2-channel, since my condo is size-limited. I output to an H/K 990 CD player through spdif. The player has a great DAC, so I use that to go analog to my approaching vintage Rotel receiver which is driving some KEF Q65s, from the days of UK manufacture and racetrack drivers. The media lives on a Mediasonic 4-bay box connected by USB 3.0. I haven't taken to ripping the blu-ray collection yet (so I really do use that Blu-Ray drive on a regular basis) so the 4-bay has plenty of capacity holding probably 500 CDs ripped at 320kb MP3 (I ripped most of them when using an older Creative MP3 player, and was optimizing for that player) and a few dozen DVDs that my son watches over and over, so I don't have to dig the disks out eery time.

I don't have an Oppo or other top-end blu-ray player. I find PC better than the cheap ones, but not by much - mostly ability to tune it. No plan to go HDMI in the near future - my receiver is all analog and while I had a 6.1 system in a prior house, I'm really happy with 2.0 in my current condo. If/when life moves me again I may be back to multi-channel and would be looking for a new HT receiver, but would still keep the ol' Rotel for 2-channel music. The 105s were very cool, but I'd never fit a pair in my current space. My setup isn't perfect, a bit too close to side walls (I had to pull trim off next to a 3-step rise up to the dining room just to fit in the Q65s next to my equipment cabinet/screen.

I have recently taken the plunge into the HTPC realm as I want to see how it wil stack up against dedicated components (mostly to hold movie collection and be a cable box/DVR). I will say I am a video/audio phile first (I had a GREAT teacher in my father getting me hooked on 2-channel which progressed from there). Still waiting for my HTPC case to be deilvered so I can put together my NEW toy. I am anxious to see how it will stack up to my Sony ES5000 Blu Ray. I am constantly tweaking and changing gear out and my wife "cringes" every time she sees the brown UPS truck roll on the street as she knows IT will be stopping at the house Biggest change for me is eliminating the 2 400 disc carousel Sony DVD changers and ripping them to the HTPC. Yes I know "not Hi Def" content but I use a Denon DVP-602ci for scaling to 1080 which makes it watchable.

When I change out a cable and start listening for the improvement, ask my wife if she can tell a difference - she looks at me says I'm crazy. Then asks the question "How much was that?" Yet, when we have a gathering on the weekend, she is the first to suggest firing up the HT for demos

To the OP - yes I frequent all those sites you mentioned and then some (dont for Videogon). Spend countless hours reading material online on how to improve my system. I foresee myself doing reasearch looking for upgrades to my HTPC that isnt even built yet - ohhhh yeah, I am a electronics junkie and I have a problem

Toys

Windows Home Server 2011
Core 2 Duo E6320 (1.86 GHz, 4MB cache)
2GB DDR2-800
Areca ARC-1222 (8-port SATA II RAID Controller)
4 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM (currently 9TB RAID-5, online expandable)
Dual Intel gigabit ethernet (teamed)

I use MakeMKV to rip all my Blu-rays, HD-DVDs, and DVDs to MKVs and I can serve four simultaneous Blu-ray streams across the network (I've only tested four, but I'm sure it can do more). I primarily use XBMC 11.0 (Eden) with the high-res audio pack, but VLC and Windows Media Player work just as well for the PCs. So far, I'm extremely pleased with the performance of the entire system. I'm planning on tweaking the server with MySQL to keep all XBMC installation syncronized (progress, library, skins, etc.) via this tutorial.

For music, I've got all my MP3s, FLACs, WAVs on the server as well. I don't use anything special to organize those other than making sure the metadata is accurate before moving it to the server. From there, anyone with just about any music player can listen to music.

We don't currently do anything with TV - we don't even have a cable TV package or an antenna connected to any of our TVs. We really only watch stuff we own or watch Netflix/Prime. I've been thinking about installing an HDHomerun on the network to record some OTA programming or the occassional live sporting event, as HDHomerun works well with XBMC.

I also use the server as a central repository for our Steam library. Games download on the server and then just copy the games to whatever computer you want to play on. It's especially useful for our computers with smaller SSDs.

For actual HTPCs, the devices connected to the displays, we have a couple cheap laptops and desktops around the house that are plugged in using HDMI via either NVIDIA or AMD GPUs. The only stipulation is 1080p24 playback with lossless audio. I've also got a more competent gaming desktop/HTPC in the primary home theater. I'm planning on replacing the laptops with some ultra-low power ITX builds when I save up some cash.

The whole house is wired up with CAT6 cable, so I'm ready for 10Gbps or 40Gbps if it ever becomes affordable. So far, the gigabit network is the bottleneck for the server as sequential reads hover around 120-130MB/sec (writes are around 100MB/sec, limited by the array). The Wireless-N connections are also able to stream Blu-rays, but some movies (Avatar) have to pause and buffer occasionally.

Overall, it's been a great experience.

Do you mean CAT6A? CAT6 can do 10Gbps over shorter runs, but I doubt it will do 40Gbps.

Yes, 6a. And by shorter runs you mean 300 feet. Unless your house is a football field in length, you don't have to worry. LOL

10GbE is probably the max I'll achieve for a lot of reasons. Primarily, what would I need anything more for? (I remember asking that question in 1997 after upgrading from my 14.4 modem to a 56K...) The other side of it is simply that I don't see anything over 10GbE getting affordable for home use - at least not in my home in the next 10 years.

More realistically, I would not ever achieve 40GbE (certainly not "true" fiber 40GbE), even using two dual-port 10GbE NICs with link aggregation enabled. Right now, 10GbE NICs ($600) and switches ($2,000) are very expensive. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that if I upgraded the whole house with fiber, I would still need a computer and storage system capable of delivering over 5,000MB/sec to saturate that. Unless SSDs get a lot bigger, faster, and cheaper in the next couple years, I think 10GbE will be fine. Well, they probably will... so who knows, right?

I mean that Cat6 can only do 10GbE over shorter runs (though it is debatable whether 37m/121ft is considered short). From wiki:

"When used for 10GBASE-T, Cat 6 cable's maximum length is 55 meters (180 ft) in a favourable alien crosstalk environment, but only 37 meters (121 ft) in a hostile alien crosstalk environment, such as when many cables are bundled together. However, because the effects of alien crosstalk environments on cables are difficult to determine prior to installation, it is highly recommended that all Cat6 cables being used for 10GBASE-T are electrically tested once installed. With its improved specifications, Cat6A does not have this limitation and can run 10GBASE-T at 100 meters (330 ft) without electronic testing."

10GbE seems to be a good target for now. Even if we have mediums that exceed that speed, it's unlikely that we'll be too worried about the wait... unless you are talking about raw 4K video feeds, which in any case would require not only very fast media, but very large capacity media and the way things are going, you can get large or you can get fast, usually not both once you are price restricted. Of course we could have a storage breakthrough so yeah, don't want to rule it out. Then you have to remember that more and more homes will be opting for fast wireless over fast wired for the typical consumer.

So, Toys, do you find the Denon actually scales better than the HTPC? I've been happy using the PC to scale, but I've also not had a "quality" upscaling player.

Most commonly, I connect my HTPCs and laptops to my AVRs with HDMI, playing the FLAC directly from the server. Sometimes I play them over the network to my Android tablet or phone with headphones. My Yamaha RX-A3000 in the main theater room can play FLAC natively over the network without any other device in the chain, but I rarely use that function as its GUI is cumbersome and has difficult with large libraries. For software on the computers, either XBMC or Windows Media Player/Center with FLAC plugin.

Well...I'm probably not the audiophile you are, but here's my humble setup.

I have...well...a couple of servers that handle my media storage/conversion/streaming etc. Specifically:

- A Windows Home Server 2011 based storage server for storing all media. This has about 45TB of space available to it. All it does is provide a pooled storage model to dump my media into.
- A "streaming" server - This handles my streaming needs when I'm away from the house and need to access my media. I run a couple of streaming apps on it, like Air Video, Air Playit etc.
- A "tuner" server - This hosts my two Ceton tuner cards. This is a separate server for a number of reasons, but networking issues are the main reason apart from keeping the TV traffic dedicated to it.
- A "conversion" server. This does my video transcoding, comskip, format conversion etc. I run a home brew engine on this that is somewhat similar to the Windows Scheduler (in fact it uses it), but it extends the task handling by adding in rules based processing, that allows it to chain tasks together. Even though it's kinda clunky, it still works.

I just finished a revamp of the servers, since I had to migrate from WHS v1 to WHS 2011, and in the process I wanted to rework some of the servers. The servers are all S3 sleep enabled, and sleep most of the time, but wake up (based on static IP access) as soon as they are accessed. I used to shut down my servers before and/or use programmed turn on/off times. The new setup is heaven. Almost instantaneous access, low standby power draw (all four of the servers when sleeping, consume about 22 watts), not having to worry about whether the server is on or not - priceless.

On the client side, I pretty much have HTPCs throughout the house. I'm running 6 right now (not counting the carpc) and counting. I considered going to Extenders, but we have Fios, and with Fios, other than the premium movie channels, everything else is "copy freely", which makes the extenders kinda a moot point. I have looked at media "streamers", but since I'm running HTPCs at all locations, they can do everything that a streamer can.

In the main theater, I was running a custom modded Auzentech X-Meridian connected to a Fosgate FAP T1 connected to a Sunfire 7 channel amp out to Axiom speakers. Since then, I have gone HDMI out from the HTPC to a Denon 4311 to Behringer amps out to JBL Cinema series speakers. The JBLs are better than the Axioms...I think.

Other than the HTPCs around the house, everything is contained in my equipment rack, and I have hard wired CAT6 running throughout the house. Since the heavy duty stuff is in the rack, I don't have to worry about "AV like" cases etc. I just use heavy duty rack mount cases. No worries about cooling in these cases.

I'm running a pfsense based router, and that offers way more functionality than your typical consumer router. With that, I run specific port based rules, as well as a VPN, that allows me to access this entire setup away from home, on my phone, in the car (dedicated carpc), on my iPad etc.

I'm rambling now....

I'm using three IBM Serveraid M1015 cards (flashed to IT mode) in the storage server. Gives me 24 ports for storage and the OS runs off of the motherboard sata ports. No raid at all.

All native HDD pass through to Windows home server, which also runs Stablebit Drivepool, which pools all these drives into one giant pool. Within the pool, I have certain folders marked for duplication (which means their contents get written to two separate hard drives).

Oh, and I have a backup server with 3TB of storage for really important stuff, which is duplicated from the main server. And for the real real critical (I'm gonna fall down in agony if I lose that data) stuff, it gets backed up from the backup server to Carbonite (after getting encrypted...can't trust anyone these days) for off site backup.

Well, been an HT buff for years. And IT IS my trade...(I own a small IT company)

I would love more details on your conversion server. How are you doing the commercial skip? Also what other processes are running? Are the automatic or manual? I'm trying to do something a lot like what you have but am overanalyzing every aspect of this...

You sir, are a great candidate for virtualization.