Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup? • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by squarefoot » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:15 AM UTC

Raspberry PI 3 plus LibreElec. Cheap, consumes a lot less than a PC and plays everything I can throw at it. I would definitely use different boards for non video related tasks, but in this context the RPi still is the one to go for non trivial reasons such as full CEC support and video acceleration.

The home NAS is a MiniITX board with multiple SATA ports and NAS4Free.

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

#32

Post by nailer » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:19 AM UTC

I've had a variety of XBMC, Plex, Windows Media Center (hacked to run on Windows 10 and with a variety of mods), various multichannel TV tuners, cable card readers, DLNA devices, dinovo mini keyboards, reprogrammable remotes, etc.

I currently use an Amazon Fire TV, as fighting an endless war with content creators to steal their content is a waste of my time (I also really like the voice search on the Fire devices).

I pay for films, and most TV, but steal Game of Thrones since, bizarrely, it's not available in full HD via Sky's app. In that case, I play it via DLNA.

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

#33

Post by m1sta_ » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:34 AM UTC

qerim wrote: post #27

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 vi…

Do I assume you pay for safe access to content but not for the content itself?

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

#34

Post by jlebrech » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:36 AM UTC

Android TV with Plex and Kodi, and a Mac with Plex server installed. I really need a Plex capable NAS to not have to wake up my mac.

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

#35

Post by pjc50 » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:46 AM UTC

Mini PC: http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_376410.html (not especially fast but it will just about do 4k)

I have a slightly different requirement: I want to

a) watch and record broadcast TV

b) watch youtube/iplayer/amazon

c) watch other random TV and streaming websites (Eurovision selection shows, my wife is a huge fan)

This leads to Windows, and the best solution for recording TV there actually seems to be Windows Media Centre ("ehome"). Unfortunately this is 7 only, so I'm going to try installing a version that's been hacked by the community to run on Win10.

Most of the HTPC software seems to have PVR as an afterthought, where it's either very hard to set up or unreliable. I never want to see tvheadend's web interface again.

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

#36

Post by 8draco8 » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:47 AM UTC

abrookewood wrote: post #7

Pretty simple: XBMC/Kodi on Amazon FireTV, connected to Samba share running on my NAS (Ubuntu with ZFS running on HP Microserver). Kodi pretty much plays anything.

I have almost the same setup, one difference being that I have Synology DS215j NAS. I've transited recently from NoName Android box (had it for over 2 years) to newest Amazon FireStick. There is one huge draw back of that. I can not use Amazon Firestick when there is no internet connection. So forget about searching for movie in your library when there is no internet.

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

#37

Post by mavidser » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

Raspberry Pi 3 running OSMC. Connect an external HDD and plug it to your TV. I use Yatse on Android to control it. It also doubles up as a NAS if you want to watch movies on other devices.

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

#38

Post by mavidser » Mon, May 08, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

Raspberry Pi 3 running OSMC. Connect an external HDD and plug it to your TV. I use Yatse on Android to control it. It also doubles up as a NAS if you want to watch movies on other devices.

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

#39

Post by tuananh » Mon, May 08, 2017, 10:09 AM UTC

swalladge wrote: post #3

I have an Intel NUC set up with Kodi (formerly XBMC) on linux. Able to connect to remote samba shares for serving media, kodi has plenty of extensions and features so you can use it with youtube, radio streams, weather, photos, etc. when not watching video. Also the NUC I have has an IR receiver so a normal tv remote can be used to control kodi (big plus). Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer ov…

> Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

Exactly. This is the reason I went for Intel NUC as well. I don't always use PC but when I do, one is always available.

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

#40

Post by qerim » Mon, May 08, 2017, 10:34 AM UTC

m1sta_ wrote: post #33

qerim wrote: post #27

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 vi…

Do I assume you pay for safe access to content but not for the content itself?

Guilty on some of the non-paid content. Make use of a VPN when needing to download.