What do you have for a home server for multimedia? [closed]

Question

I am starting to warm up to the idea of having a home server that will be used to play movies on my main TV as well as being a print server and to house all my music for playback as well as act as a print server. Does any one have any thing like this - or is the technology not there for home use yet.

UPDATE: another thought occured to me - could the multimedia serve streams to any device in the household. ie - if I wnted to watch a movie on the recroom tv and sombody else wanted to watch another diferent movie on another tv both served from the multimedia box and some how into the HDMI ports of the TV's.

Answer 1

Mac mini is pretty well suited for this, and increasingly popular in such use.

Some points:

• It can feed an HDTV and play DVDs and most video formats like DivX. No Blu-ray though.
• Digital audio output (combined headphone/mini-RCA and optical out through the 3.5 mm minijack)
• Built-in wifi, Bluetooth, etc
• Can be easily remote controlled over VNC or SSH or iPhone's Remote app or a more traditional infrared remote
• Very silent, small, looks elegant
• Good printer support (as you mentioned print server)

More details here.

One additional point that I like about the Mini as a media centre or server: the sleep function. It takes less than 2 seconds to go to sleep (from power button, menu option, or automatically after certain idle time), and only 3-4 seconds to completely wake up. So it's convenient to keep it on, in "stand-by", when not using it. And no need to feel bad about that either, as the device consumes very little power when idle (less than 13W) and especially when sleeping (~1.5W).

About serving several video streams simultaneously: I don't know if that is possible — maybe someone else can comment?

As for downsides of Mac Mini,

• It probably won't be among the cheapest options, especially if you choose a decent amount of RAM and HD space. (For example, 4GB & 320GB model costs about $900, or in Europe €890 which is more than $1200.)
• It can't record live TV or use multiple tuners. (As TravisPUK pointed out in comments.)

I got one recently (along with a wireless keyboard and mouse) and am loving it so far.

Answer 2

I use Mythbuntu for this and have found it copes very well.

Answer 3

I'm using a normal PC with Windows Vista and Media Center, using HDMI and a 720p video projector on the ceiling (but a HD-capable TV would do just as well). I've got 2 tuners and that works fine, to watch one thing while recording another -- or even better, to watch something while it's still recording, and skipping all the commercials!

The radio-frequency remote is great, much better than infrared! Overall I'm very satisfied with Vista Media Center - it's a lot better than XP Media Center.

I'm in Austria using a cable TV signal, and even here the EPG is good. So much better than reading in the daily paper what's on tonight.

It could do music as well, and photo galleries, and stream to other devices on the home network, but I don't use that.

Answer 4

Using a Linux machine hooked up to an HDTV works great as a couch web browsing, media playing system (Ubuntu and their derivatives can play almost any video/audio file I can throw at it). If you use MythTV (available integrated into Mythbuntu, as the name implies) combined with a TV tuner card, it's just one more reason to leave the system on (for recording broadcasts/shows) as it serves up your printers. Also you can't argue against the reasonable price for Linux :-)

Using a Linux machine for your print server may prove challenging (especially if you intend for it to be used with Windows machines on your network) but I'm certain it can be done.

Answer 5

I'm using an old PC my parent's weren't using anymore. This is an old Athlon XP based system with 1GB of RAM and some newish 400GB drives. I've got Vista Ultimate running on it pretty smoothly (thanks to an extra 2GB on readyboost).

I set up Media Center, Windows Media Player and TiVo Desktop to share and stream all my music, videos and pictures. This has been working relatively well, i can access my media through my XBOX 360, PS3, TiVo and any other computer in the house without having to share out folders.

I'm actually rather impressed how well the default streaming in Media Center/WMP works.

Answer 6

At home my server is a sheevplug with an usb hard drive but for a tv/tuner setup forget it and take a decent pc as a htpc an the os of your choice and choose the software you want there is a lot of thems ...

Answer 7

Have you looked at Boxee http://www.boxee.tv ? I currently use Apple's FrontRow but Boxee is something to keep under attention.

Answer 8

I use a regular C2D connected via wireless with the WMC remote control running on Vista. XBMC is a good front end for music, movies, and the like while things like Hulu and Netflix (this is actually a plug-in for WMC) now have their own clients.

If you want to do Bluray or have the ability to stretch most video to 1080p you will need at least a C2D (core 2 duo) as it’s processor intensive. If you have no intentions of going that route then you can get away with far less. It’s also worth noting that any video you watch using Silver Light will use the GPU which will reduce the overhead.

As far as your box serving multiple TVs… The short answer is no, the long answer is yes. While possible it would be extremely expensive, complicated, and difficult to use. You would be better off with 1 box per TV.

Answer 9

I use MediaPortal TV Server. I've got a dedicated 500 gig drive for recordings, and a 1TB drive for my movies (but I'm looking into expanding that with a decent hardware RAID card).

I've got 2 viewer PCs running Vista Business 64-bit, with 30 gig SSDs and a picoPSU (only in one, the other is waiting for me to find some time to install it).

It works pretty well for me. It's not what I'd call consumer quality, but what do you expect for free! I control my viewer PCs with a Microsoft MCE remote, which can also control the TV power and volume, so I have just the one remote. They also wake up from standby in about 1 second.

To save me lots of typing, take a look at my article with all the details.

I hope that helps you out.

Answer 10

I installed Windows Home Server 2011 on a HP Media Smart Server v1 machine. The reason I upgraded the OS is because of speed benefit and $50 price tag. It has 4 bays that can easily expand to 8 Gb. You manage the computer by Remote Desktop about 10 minutes into the installation. No monitor or keyboard necessary.