400 dvd's, 30 Blurays and 800 CD's on home system?
Discussion
i have the above media (approximate numbers and growing all the time)
i was watching an episode of cribs the other day where some NFL player had his entire collection of films (over 1000 i recall) on his home TV system. all could be called up using a single remote control and could then be watched with no loading of discs or changing of leads etc. the best bit about his system was the fact that each film seemed to be viewed by its DVD cover and a little synopsis - and all according to genre.
simple question - how do i do this?
i guess the CD's wouldnt be too much of a problem as i use Itunes for that but the films is where i'd like to start.
i was watching an episode of cribs the other day where some NFL player had his entire collection of films (over 1000 i recall) on his home TV system. all could be called up using a single remote control and could then be watched with no loading of discs or changing of leads etc. the best bit about his system was the fact that each film seemed to be viewed by its DVD cover and a little synopsis - and all according to genre.
simple question - how do i do this?
i guess the CD's wouldnt be too much of a problem as i use Itunes for that but the films is where i'd like to start.
pidsy said:
i have the above media (approximate numbers and growing all the time)
i was watching an episode of cribs the other day where some NFL player had his entire collection of films (over 1000 i recall) on his home TV system. all could be called up using a single remote control and could then be watched with no loading of discs or changing of leads etc. the best bit about his system was the fact that each film seemed to be viewed by its DVD cover and a little synopsis - and all according to genre.
simple question - how do i do this?
i guess the CD's wouldnt be too much of a problem as i use Itunes for that but the films is where i'd like to start.
Windows media centrei was watching an episode of cribs the other day where some NFL player had his entire collection of films (over 1000 i recall) on his home TV system. all could be called up using a single remote control and could then be watched with no loading of discs or changing of leads etc. the best bit about his system was the fact that each film seemed to be viewed by its DVD cover and a little synopsis - and all according to genre.
simple question - how do i do this?
i guess the CD's wouldnt be too much of a problem as i use Itunes for that but the films is where i'd like to start.
A normal Windows machine such as what you are probably using now, with a lot of disk space. I expect at around 2-4GB per movie, you are looking at 1.2TB of DVD space, blueray is 8GB each, so that's 240GB, and CDs are 600mb each (you dont want to lose quality just because it's on a media centre, so this is without compression), would be 350GB - so you need at least 2TB of storage (with more if you plan to increase).
I'd recommend this
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164258
Using Raid 5 (which puts a portion of your data on each of the 4 drives, allowing a drive to fail without losing any data), you will get 3TB of usable space.
This can then be hooked up to a normal computer via the network (you'd plug this box next to your router), and you browse it like browsing another computer. You then "stream" the media from a mapped drive on your media centre.
Make sure the media centre is a PC that has a decent graphics card (not onboard), or is something like an Atom ION board with HDMI out. You need HDMI out to take the picture and sound to your television.
If you want really nice sound, then get yourself a Soundblaster FX card (£35) with Optical out - for your amplifier set up.
You can get a graphics card to do what you want for about £90. I built a media centre based on an Nvidia ION board. It's a micro-pc, and it uses around 30 watts of power at full speed. I have an SSD drive running the operating system, 4GB ram, and a NAS storage box attached. It can output 1080p to my TV without juggering, but you need a decent codec pack on the Windows 7, so that the graphics card performs the decoding and not the CPU.
Hope this helps...
Anymore Q let me know.
I'd recommend this
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164258
Using Raid 5 (which puts a portion of your data on each of the 4 drives, allowing a drive to fail without losing any data), you will get 3TB of usable space.
This can then be hooked up to a normal computer via the network (you'd plug this box next to your router), and you browse it like browsing another computer. You then "stream" the media from a mapped drive on your media centre.
Make sure the media centre is a PC that has a decent graphics card (not onboard), or is something like an Atom ION board with HDMI out. You need HDMI out to take the picture and sound to your television.
If you want really nice sound, then get yourself a Soundblaster FX card (£35) with Optical out - for your amplifier set up.
You can get a graphics card to do what you want for about £90. I built a media centre based on an Nvidia ION board. It's a micro-pc, and it uses around 30 watts of power at full speed. I have an SSD drive running the operating system, 4GB ram, and a NAS storage box attached. It can output 1080p to my TV without juggering, but you need a decent codec pack on the Windows 7, so that the graphics card performs the decoding and not the CPU.
Hope this helps...
Anymore Q let me know.
Edited by stuart-b on Tuesday 24th May 12:21
You need a nas: Netgear readynas Ultra 4 or 6 (or the equivalent from another vendor). Capacity can be increased as your collection gets bigger.
Remember to back it all up somewhere - re-ripping that amount of stuff would be heartbreaking!
Mike...
ETA: you need to decide on what formats you want to store it in and whether you want to keep everything. CDs are not much of an issue as they take up around 350-400MB if reipped to (lossless) flac. DVDs will be 4-8GB uncompressed and BluRays could be 20GB if you store the iso. This will have a significant effect on your storage requirement.
Remember to back it all up somewhere - re-ripping that amount of stuff would be heartbreaking!
Mike...
ETA: you need to decide on what formats you want to store it in and whether you want to keep everything. CDs are not much of an issue as they take up around 350-400MB if reipped to (lossless) flac. DVDs will be 4-8GB uncompressed and BluRays could be 20GB if you store the iso. This will have a significant effect on your storage requirement.
Edited by mike_knott on Tuesday 24th May 12:28
I'd like to add that my Nvidia ION board cost £115, and that includes CPU, GPU (HDMI out), and I just added the case, ram + disk. I expect if you want a truely awesome media centre with 3TB of storage (that isn't a normal hard disk, and without dataloss if a drive fails), budget £750 for the NAS and computer.
pidsy said:
thats just a streaming programme isnt it?
i need the storage, system, software etc. i'm thinking i'll start with around 5TB and it needs to be expandable. i'd like a stand alone system rather than one thats dependant on me having the best PC available at the time.
D.
If you don't want to go down the media centre route you are then talking PS3 with a NAS or something simliar, but it will cost you a lost more. You don't need a cutting edge PC to stream the stuff and HDD are so cheap 5TB plus backup will be far easier than any other system. Also a PC is adaptable over the years if things change. Not only that it's far more open than any other system.i need the storage, system, software etc. i'm thinking i'll start with around 5TB and it needs to be expandable. i'd like a stand alone system rather than one thats dependant on me having the best PC available at the time.
D.
pidsy said:
simple question - how do i do this?
I have exactly that setup. As do many others around here I'd imagine.And I doubt any of us have 100% identical systems.
It's a simple question, as you say, but with many different answers.
Split the problem into two chunks :
- Expandable mass storage for the amount you're talking about. I'd agree with others and go down a NAS route although that opens it's own can of worms.
- A seperate front end(s) for playing streaming media from your NAS above. You want this to be quiet and have all the features you want. I use a small Asrock ION system (Intel Atom CPU and Nvidia graphics chip set) running XBMC. It's quiet, easy to setup, maintain and use and will do all the things you've mentioned.
You could bundle this all together in one box - if you have space near your TV and can keep it quiet enough to not intrude (once you start spinning lots of disks this gets difficult).
You can also run dozens of different bits of software to get the same end result on the frontend system.
I've found the real answer to the question you've asked is 'How handy with computers are you?' or 'How much time do you have to burn?'
In years past (I've been doing it this way for a long time) the frontend was always the hardest thing to configure and set up. With XBMC as it is these days that's pretty much a no brainer.
On the flip side previously the amount of storage needed pre-HD and when you were happy to compress your 'master' DVD's was trivial. Whereas now you want to store lossless HD images really, and the storage side of things has become the most complicated bit - lots of it, backed up where appropriate, some element of redundancy, easily expandable.
Grab a copy of XBMC (there are ports for Linux and Windows...you want to look at Plex if you're on a Mac) and just install it in your current OS.
Stick some films on your hard disk and point XBMC at them - see how you like it and go from there.
You should be able to do at least that with no real fuss and you'll get a feel for how things might work when you start to scale.
Edited by eztiger on Tuesday 24th May 14:00
pidsy said:
thanks for the replies guys. seems like there isnt an off the shelf solution so i'll be making my own up. i'll do some reading on the bits suggested above and start building it up.
thanks again.
D.
Being brutally honest you don't want an off the shelf solution (or at least I don't think you do thanks again.
D.
).The nature of the beast is that as it's pulling together so many different things into one place, it's a very fast moving target. I'd be concerned an all in one solution doesn't cover it all, isn't updated enough or ceases to exist after a year or so.
Most of them will be cobbling together the bit and bobs most of us have mentioned anyway and rebranding - so you may as well go direct to source.
If you're looking at a hassle free frontend you could look at the popcorn hour stuff ( http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/ ). It's come on a long way since it's first inception and has done a good job of staying up to date.
Not my preference but it might be easier than building a PC for a frontend and sorting out XBMC / remotes etc.
It won't fix your backend storage problem though. You used to be able to stick a local disk into the old popcorn hour a-100 so I imagine you still can with the newer ones - but that will only take you so far.
pidsy said:
thanks for the replies guys. seems like there isnt an off the shelf solution so i'll be making my own up. i'll do some reading on the bits suggested above and start building it up.
thanks again.
D.
Yes there is! And if the one you saw was on MTV Cribs I'd be pretty certain its the same off the shelf solution that E31shrew pointed you to earlier.thanks again.
D.
http://www.kaleidescape.com/
pidsy said:
seems like there isnt an off the shelf solution
There are plenty of off the shelf solutoins, it just depends if you have the stomach for the cost.Kalidescape, as recommended at the beginning of the thread is a good place to start. Plenty of companies who'll rip your data for you too if you can't face doing it yourself.
i recently switched over to server storage for everything. i now have a server in the loft, running 3 seperate pcs in seperate rooms (my main bedroom, the little one's room and our living room). it has 4 x 3tb hard drives, using just over 1 full drive at the moment, it holds all my films (mixture of 300 dvds, 150 HD/BR) all our music (300ish albums) and also pictures of our hols etc.
its great because i have seperated the kids films so that the little one cant view anything above her age group.
also with the server being in the attic there is no need to make the machine pretty on the eye so no need to splash out on a swish case.
running XBMC as the front end on all the systems, you can choose different folders to access for the librarys. The majority of my tim e was getting XBMC to work as i wanted it, now i can download tv series/programs automatically, it will download the infomation about what episode it is, thumb nail picture of the series and then move it to the correct folder.
same is done with films, when they get added to a folder XBMC will scan it, download the film info, dvd cover art, backdrop picture and also a trailer for the film if there is one.
its great because i have seperated the kids films so that the little one cant view anything above her age group.
also with the server being in the attic there is no need to make the machine pretty on the eye so no need to splash out on a swish case.
running XBMC as the front end on all the systems, you can choose different folders to access for the librarys. The majority of my tim e was getting XBMC to work as i wanted it, now i can download tv series/programs automatically, it will download the infomation about what episode it is, thumb nail picture of the series and then move it to the correct folder.
same is done with films, when they get added to a folder XBMC will scan it, download the film info, dvd cover art, backdrop picture and also a trailer for the film if there is one.
The amount of research you have to do depends on your budget.
I went to an av dealer, told him what I wanted to achieve, and a few days later he came back with a quote. I said yes, and 3 weeks after that it was fully installed, working, and my entire collection was on 3 tvs with full backup and support if I need it.
All I had to do was tell them what I wanted, and write a cheque.
Granted, these solutions are not cheap, and some people prefer to Debbie and understand how stuff works. For my family I just wanted a fully supported solution where any one of us can throw a disc in a machine and without any messing make it available via a hard disk to anywhere in the house. That's exactly what we got. There are definatley cheaper ways to get there, but in total it has taken less than an hour of my time, and that includes making coffee for the installer.
I guess it's like people who choose a Porsche over a kit car. The end result may not be any quicker, or have better handling, but they chose to pay more for an easy, reliable, supported solution rather than spend hours of their own time researching, building, and even fixing it.
I went to an av dealer, told him what I wanted to achieve, and a few days later he came back with a quote. I said yes, and 3 weeks after that it was fully installed, working, and my entire collection was on 3 tvs with full backup and support if I need it.
All I had to do was tell them what I wanted, and write a cheque.
Granted, these solutions are not cheap, and some people prefer to Debbie and understand how stuff works. For my family I just wanted a fully supported solution where any one of us can throw a disc in a machine and without any messing make it available via a hard disk to anywhere in the house. That's exactly what we got. There are definatley cheaper ways to get there, but in total it has taken less than an hour of my time, and that includes making coffee for the installer.
I guess it's like people who choose a Porsche over a kit car. The end result may not be any quicker, or have better handling, but they chose to pay more for an easy, reliable, supported solution rather than spend hours of their own time researching, building, and even fixing it.
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