Home media integration / NAS (non-Apple) suggestion pls?

[AcidReflux]

rsv gone! said:

The interface on the Synology drives gets updated regularly. Latest update it like a GUI OS. You can road-test it here;

http://www.synology.com/products/dsm_livedemo.php?...

Thanks for the feedback and the link. I'll have a play with that later on.

ZesPak said:

My 2 cents:

I don't have a TV or any device with a DLNA input capability, nor a screen with HDMI to receive output from something like a Popbox. The projector in the lounge receives a VGA input from the Revo, which works fine. When the bulb blows we'll probably upgrade to a projector with HDMI input. But thanks anyway.
I'll check out the iOmega NAS products too. At the moment the choice of NAS is beginning to come down to the music server software built in to each option, although I'm still not convinced which option I need.

HellDiver said:

I use one of the HP Microservers. It boots FreeNAS 7 off a USB stick (that fits on the dedicated USB socket inside the case). It's currently got two 1TB Samsung drives in RAIDZ1, soon to be upgraded. It runs Transmission, has an iTunes server, web server, SQL server that has the XBMC machines linked to it, so you can see what stuff you've watched no matter what XBMC machine you look at. You can even pause a video downstairs, go upstairs and start playing the same video from the same point.

That sounds very cool. If only I knew what the hell I was doing!



In other news...
My attempt to get XBMC working under Ubuntu on my Revo has ended with frustration. XBMC kindly disabled the nVidia driver so the Compiz effects have been switched off and XBMC itself ran with a frame rate of about 0.2. Now I can't re-enable the nVidia driver even after uninstalling XBMC. No idea what to do or how to debug this. God, I get irritated by Linux sometimes. I don't have the time to learn a new OS.

On a positive note, my Solwise 500AV Homeplugs arrived and are excellent! Rock-solid connection and transfer speeds between the Revo and the office. When I get the correct power brick for my new gigabit switch I hope to see a further improvement.

[14-7]

HellDiver said:

The Microserver only uses about 30W idle with 2 drives in it. I got it for £99 when HP were doing their £100 rebate about 6 months ago.

They are still doing this offer till the end of the month. I know they've been saying that for the past year or so but they are apparently bringing out a new server soon so I imagine this offer will stop once the new ones come out.

Got mine delivered last month complete with 3 2TB drives and a 250GB 2.5 inch as an OS drive running WHS 2011. Still enough room for another 2 2TB drives as well. Good value for money me thinks!

[Goa'uld]

14-7 said:

HellDiver said:

The Microserver only uses about 30W idle with 2 drives in it. I got it for £99 when HP were doing their £100 rebate about 6 months ago.

They are still doing this offer till the end of the month. I know they've been saying that for the past year or so but they are apparently bringing out a new server soon so I imagine this offer will stop once the new ones come out.

Got mine delivered last month complete with 3 2TB drives and a 250GB 2.5 inch as an OS drive running WHS 2011. Still enough room for another 2 2TB drives as well. Good value for money me thinks!

Thanks for the heads up on this - can you point out the best place to get this from? I see ebuyer have some but most are more expensive with additional parts thrown in.

How do you find the noise from it? I fancy stuffing it away in the hallway so that linking to everything else is easier but don't want the gf complaining about the noise.

[AcidReflux]

HellDiver said:

I use one of the HP Microservers. It boots FreeNAS 7 off a USB stick (that fits on the dedicated USB socket inside the case). It's currently got two 1TB Samsung drives in RAIDZ1, soon to be upgraded. It runs Transmission, has an iTunes server, web server, SQL server that has the XBMC machines linked to it, so you can see what stuff you've watched no matter what XBMC machine you look at. You can even pause a video downstairs, go upstairs and start playing the same video from the same point.

I run a PC in the living room, a jailbroken AppleTV2 in the bedroom, an Airport Express in the kitchen, and two laptops.

The Microserver only uses about 30W idle with 2 drives in it. I got it for £99 when HP were doing their £100 rebate about 6 months ago.

OK, given how cheap these are, their expandability, and that Windows Home Server 2011 is only £35 if all goes wrong (?) this is looking more interesting.

What was involved in getting FreeNAS to work? Did it need much messing about with drivers and stuff? And does yours have a GUI front end or is it all terminal-based? How do you install things like the iTunes Server? (Using the web front-end or a GUI?)

So many questions, so little time.

Edited by AcidReflux on Wednesday 19th October 14:21

[scovette]

AcidReflux said:

My attempt to get XBMC working under Ubuntu on my Revo has ended with frustration.

A friend has the Openelec build of XBMC on his Revo - there's a specific ION version on the their website that comes with all the drivers, etc. Apparently really easy to set up and quick in use. Might be worth a try?

[AcidReflux]

scovette said:

A friend has the Openelec build of XBMC on his Revo - there's a specific ION version on the their website that comes with all the drivers, etc. Apparently really easy to set up and quick in use. Might be worth a try?

Thanks for the tip.
I tried creating a bootable USB stick last night with XBMC Live, but I created it on my workstation which is a dual-boot Ubuntu/WinXP machine. All seemed to go well until I plugged it into the Revo to boot XBMC. The Grub loader that the XBMC CD created on the USB stick had all of the kernels from my workstation and no mention of XBMC. I had to laugh.

[The Excession]

14-7 said:

Got mine delivered last month complete with 3 2TB drives and a 250GB 2.5 inch as an OS drive running WHS 2011. Still enough room for another 2 2TB drives as well. Good value for money me thinks!

Have you got a link and price for that please?

[AcidReflux]

So, an update: after taking the plunge and updating the Revo to Ubuntu 10.04, XBMC installed perfectly and runs very smoothly. The Android remote works very nicely so this must be the video solution for the lounge now. The build and playback of a music playlist is a bit clunky with XBMC so I need to see if it can be improved. Maybe a different XBMC skin would be more intuitive. A couple of SqueezeBoxes would be a slick solution but not at £240 each. Maybe I'll hard-wire the lounge XBMC to the kitchen speakers. But then we can't have different things playing in the lounge and kitchen. Hmm.

I considered Twonky for a while earlier but the Android app gets baaaad reviews. Plex is also an option. If only there was an XBMC front-end for Android, but the developers seem to have ruled this out for the forseeable future.

Looks like the HP Microserver will be the NAS though.

[annodomini2]

Lambdatek are the cheapest atm that I can find.

If you buy the microserver for the cashback deal, you MUST buy it from an authorised HP Reseller otherwise the cashback will be refused.

As you want it as a media system, you may want to fit a decent Half-height graphics card to support transcoding, the HD5450 comes recommended for this task. (The processors in the rig aren't up to the task)

Secondly as you are running from a pc currently, the pc may be transcoding (Win 7 does this, automatically without asking you!), so some of your devices may lose capability in the switch if you don't fit this.

Most NAS's don't support this.

[Nimbus]

Goa'uld said:

Thanks for the heads up on this - can you point out the best place to get this from? I see ebuyer have some but most are more expensive with additional parts thrown in.

How do you find the noise from it? I fancy stuffing it away in the hallway so that linking to everything else is easier but don't want the gf complaining about the noise.

I'd get it from ebuyer, then you are sure to get the refund....
Ordered mine on the 7 day 'saver' ( ie free ) delivery and it still came 2 days later...
Got the £100 refund from HP within a month, tho I think you can get it quicker if you email them instead of snail mail.

Mine lives in garage with the rest of my computer boxes, but its as good as silent, and I'd be happy to have it in the house, certainly waaay quieter than the qnap 209 I have...

[Nimbus]

AcidReflux said:

OK, given how cheap these are, their expandability, and that Windows Home Server 2011 is only £35 if all goes wrong (?) this is looking more interesting.

What was involved in getting FreeNAS to work? Did it need much messing about with drivers and stuff? And does yours have a GUI front end or is it all terminal-based? How do you install things like the iTunes Server? (Using the web front-end or a GUI?)

So many questions, so little time.

Edited by AcidReflux on Wednesday 19th October 14:21

get one bought now before the offer ends

seriously tho, there are loads on ebay with people trying to make a small mark up too, so no real rush

Putting freenas on is a peace of p**s.....

I'd do something roughly like..
buy hp server, + 2 2Tb disks..
open server, remove the supplied hd, ( its only small and taking up a bay...)
put your 2 new disks in the caddys and install in first 2 bays
burn freenas image onto usb stick, then put stick in the internal on board usb slot..
plug in keyboard/monitor
boot hp server
install freenas onto usb stick
stick hp server somewhere ( garage ? )
reboot it, then log on from main pc, via web gui..
configure the server options to what you need..
I'd recommend setting the 2 disks up as mirroring raid, so you dont lose anything...
transfer your data
job done...

I had a play with freenas when building my hp box, and reckon it took about 30 minutes, start to finish..

Once you've done the initial install, its all web gui, and you wont need any drivers, it works out of the box for the hp server.

In the end I didnt use freenas, as I wanted to run the server as more than just a nas ( wanted a mythtv backend too ), so configured the disks as a software raid array under ubuntu, but if it wasnt for that I'd definitely be using freenas.

If you want itunes server, then you might need to use v7 of freenas, as it appears thats been deleted from v8, but that's no big deal.

theres loads of good info on the freenas webpages, and a great hp build thread on pistonheads too..

http://www.freenas.org/category/version-comparison

Edited by Nimbus on Sunday 23 October 10:07

[Nimbus]

reminds me, if you are just using the hp box as a nas, then you dont need to upgrade the gfx card.

[Goa'uld]

Nimbus said:

Goa'uld said:

Thanks for the heads up on this - can you point out the best place to get this from? I see ebuyer have some but most are more expensive with additional parts thrown in.

How do you find the noise from it? I fancy stuffing it away in the hallway so that linking to everything else is easier but don't want the gf complaining about the noise.

I'd get it from ebuyer, then you are sure to get the refund....
Ordered mine on the 7 day 'saver' ( ie free ) delivery and it still came 2 days later...
Got the £100 refund from HP within a month, tho I think you can get it quicker if you email them instead of snail mail.

Mine lives in garage with the rest of my computer boxes, but its as good as silent, and I'd be happy to have it in the house, certainly waaay quieter than the qnap 209 I have...

Thanks muchly - at this price it would be pretty daft not to get it. Have been looking at other sites/reviews etc and it seems a no brainer.

This site has the best photos of it I can find, just to have a look at all connections etc, check out the very bottom of the page;

http://www.tenniswood.co.uk/technology/windows-hom...

[14-7]

The Excession said:

ave you got a link and price for that please?

Got the HP server from crescent electronics but for some reason the price has jumped to £270. It was £220 when I bought and was the cheapest I could find. Ebuyer has them at £229 and if you sign up to www.quidco.co.uk they look to be offering free delivery and 5% cashback on purchases.

Be aware though that the cash back offer only applies to the versions sold with a 250gb hard drive. There are still sellers out there that have the 160gb models which are cheaper at around £170.

I got my hard drives from Novatech as they were the same price as everywhere else for the WD Caviar Green 2TB drives (7200rpm). I also picked up WHS 2011 and a 4gb memory stick (£14.99) for the server. I went through quidco and got just under £10 back for going through them. Every little helps!

Remember that the offer ends at the end of the month and unless they have your paperwork by that time you won't get the cashback.

[spants]

Rather than whs (which I moved from) and freenas, take a look at Unraid. Free for 3 disk (2 storage, 1 parity) and cheap for more disks - it will run well on the microserver.

Uses a bootable usb, a brand of linux hidden from the user by a web interface.
It has lots of modules (sabnzbd, couchpotato, sickbeard, crashplan, etc being used here).

The forums are very friendly http://lime-technology.com/forum

I moved from whs after a bad disk failure.

[AcidReflux]

14-7 said:

Remember that the offer ends at the end of the month and unless they have your paperwork by that time you won't get the cashback.

According to this page on the HP website, the paperwork needs to be received by 30th November in order for the cashback claim to be accepted:
http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/campaign/proliantmicroser...
...which gives me plenty of time.

Can anybody recommend a particular 2TB drive for this machine please? I don't think I need to bother with RAID because all my important stuff is already backed up weekly to a USB drive that I keep away from the house, so a single 2TB drive would be plenty. But there's a bewildering range of 2TB SATA drives on eBuyer. Any reason to choose something other than the cheapest options, which for £80 are:
WD: http://www.ebuyer.com/264274-wd-2tb-3-5-sata-iii-6...
Samsung: http://www.ebuyer.com/237908-samsung-hd204ui-spinp...
Seagate: http://www.ebuyer.com/248582-seagate-2tb-3-5-sata-...

[lestag]

14-7 said:

Got the HP server from crescent electronics but for some reason the price has jumped to £270. It was £220 when I bought and was the cheapest I could find. Ebuyer has them at £229 and if you sign up to www.quidco.co.uk they look to be offering free delivery and 5% cashback on purchases.

New model is now the N40L, slightly faster CPU and I think more RAM

[lestag]

AcidReflux said:

According to this page on the HP website, the paperwork needs to be received by 30th November in order for the cashback claim to be accepted:
http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/campaign/proliantmicroser...
...which gives me plenty of time.

watch the part number 633724-421 on that cashback form and make sure you have the right one (it isn't listed on the HP site http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/1535...

its actually teh N36L the old model they are cashbaking on..
http://www.ebuyer.com/253305-hp-proliant-athlon-ii...
which is fine (i have one)

Edited by lestag on Monday 24th October 10:26

[lestag]

AcidReflux said:

Can anybody recommend a particular 2TB drive for this machine please? I don't think I need to bother with RAID because all my important stuff is already backed up weekly to a USB drive that I keep away from the house, so a single 2TB drive would be plenty.

Its not proper RAID anyhow, the OS wil need to support the onboard raid controller. stich to a 3GB/s SATA disk as I have had issues with the 6GB/s disks on the microserver (run like a dog using ESX)

[RobCrezz]

scovette said:

A friend has the Openelec build of XBMC on his Revo - there's a specific ION version on the their website that comes with all the drivers, etc. Apparently really easy to set up and quick in use. Might be worth a try?

Ive got the OpenElec XBMC runing on on my Revo 3600 and it works like a dream, all my HD videos play totally smoothly (which it didnt when runing XBMC on windows 7).

Very easy to set up and install, recommended!