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Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup?

#23

Post by amorphid »

dagw wrote: post #15

Personally I'm using a Playstation 3 and Plex. Maybe not the most sexy of solutions, but it's cheap, has worked flawlessly for years and I can even play games on it if the mood takes me.

+1 for cheap and easy. I'm using a Playstation 4 + USB thumb drive. It was the cheapest & easiest set up I could find that would play files from a storage device, and give me a remote.

Before the PS4, I was pretty happy with my Google Chromecast, but it can't play video files unless you stream them over a network. I also got tired of using my phone and/or browser as a remote.

Re: Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup?

#27

Post by qerim »

HP Microserver Gen8 with:

> Debian 8

> Xeon E3-1260L

> 12 GB RAM

> 120GB SSD (OS), 2 x 3TB WD RED (Data), 2 x 4TB HGST (Movies/TV Shows)

> Plex (Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos)

> CouchPotato (Movie Downloading)

> Transmission (Torrents)

> CrashPlan (backups)

> Raspberry Pi Camera Streams (samba share)

> + more stuff

All these applications run in their own docker containers. I used to do local web development in a virtual machine, now it all sits on this server. Love it and it works 'magically'.

Connected to the TV is a Quad-core android TV Box.

Re: Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup?

#30

Post by roryisok »

la_fayette wrote: post #12

I tried to have a good and not expensive approach on that. So in my opinion i have a quite conservative setting. I have a raspberry pi 3 with osmc installed via noobs at startup. Additionally I bought a DVB-S USB Stick ( http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV-Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ulti... ) for germany. A standard TV is connected via HDMI. I use a KODI android app as a remote control. Additionally I have bought 1 TB NAS o…

I have a similar setup, Rpi3 with OSMC / Kodi installed.

I turned an old 500GB laptop drive into an external HD for storage, with reuse of parts I'd say the whole thing cost me €50/€60 - for the Rpi3, Case, PSU (though most micro USB phone chargers will work so don't buy one unless you need one), Micro SDHC card, and SATA to USB cable for the hard drive (I milled out an old Gameboy and stuck it in there for a retro look)

Advantages: Cheap, no remote required (TV remote can control it through HDMI, or you can use an app), low power, handles 1080p content just fine

Disadvantages: There's currently no way (that I know of) to get Netflix working on Rpi3 hardware. Netflix has no native linux app, and the only browsers it works through are Chrome and Firefox, which are not available on Raspbian or any other Rpi distro. (I would love to be wrong about this. If its possible, somebody please educate me)

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