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Best way to Create a Movie server and catalog

teamhood

By teamhood
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teamhood Enthusiast

teamhood

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Hey all,

 

I was approached by my father in-law to build a storage server for his movie collection and help build the network at their vacation house. I often frequent said house so I am very happy to help him create such a server as the entire family will benefit from it as we often have extended stays at the house.

 

So I have the basics outlined in my head, but I have some questions from the experts as I really don't use unRAID/ Network streamers for retail video streaming and there are a lot of options out there and figured I would ask everyone here with huge collections to help me out.

 

Storage server:

unRAID - (duh!)

Building a small server - no real questions here about he build as I have built quite a few servers

 

Streamers:

I know... everyone is going to chime in with a million opinions

 

Currently I'm looking at the Boxee Box (which I have and enjoy how it lays out the movies) and WD TV Live.

 

Things to consider:

I don't want to go the HTPC route.

I would like to be able to present the movies in a nice organized fashion that shows the movie covers and information

This house does not have internet access... so pulling data from internet is not going to work

Create a catalog so I know what movies are currently stored on the server and see what I need to bring with to add new movies

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

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kizer Proficient

kizer

Posted
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Depending on how you want it. Things like ATV and WD Live use hardly any power, but if you want movie covers you would have to use something like Ember which is a media scraper from XBMC's website and drop them into your network when you visit.

 

If you use something solely like WD Live plus you don't have to do any scraping just drope the files on it and play.

 

I personally use XMBC in the living room for fanart and all the other movie images and WD Live Plus in my Office and Guest room. I find the WD Live to be rather basic, but very simple to use and plays everything very well and doesn't seem to need any up keep other than a firmware update now and then, but that can even be ignored.

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mcdonagg Rookie

mcdonagg

Posted
Posted

I don't want to go the HTPC route.

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

Why dont you want to go the HTPC route? Just want to get a feel for what you are looking for. If you do change your mind I would highly recommend xbmc, you can buy pre-made system from places like http://www.queegtech.com/Media-Players_c_8.html or you can jailbreak and install it on a ATV2 which is a cheaper but more limited and a less bug free option.

 

With no internet access getting the meta data for your videos may be a pain but as Kizer said Ember Media Manager is great and can be used where internet is available then the data can be transfered at the house.

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teamhood Enthusiast

teamhood

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I wanted to avoid the HTPC route as the last one I had (3-4 years ago) needed so much upkeep. I want something simple that just works...

 

Internet can be had if I'm there and setup a hot spot. I love XBMC, but I have not used it since the original xbox became obsolete long ago.

 

I am also looking at units that are cheaper. Like I said this is a second house and therefore 4x $400 streamers is not something I can 'sell' to my father in-law.

 

What about something that includes My Movies? I've been doing some searching and My Movies seems like such a great application, but I'm not sure which front-end device would be best for my needs.

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mcdonagg Rookie

mcdonagg

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If you are looking for something cheap, look at jailbreaking the ATV2 and installing XBMC. It works ok, is limited to 720 output, and GUI is a bit slow, but is only $99, still has ATV capabilities of communicating with itunes and idevices, and is very small and low power.

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teamhood Enthusiast

teamhood

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Personally if you are keeping it simple I would go with a HD Live Plus. No frills, but it plays everything and there isn't anything fancy you have to do to run it.

 

Right on... Question: does it do any movie organization with cover flow and details about the movie?

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jamerson9 Contributor

jamerson9

Posted
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Personally if you are keeping it simple I would go with a HD Live Plus. No frills, but it plays everything and there isn't anything fancy you have to do to run it.

 

Right on... Question: does it do any movie organization with cover flow and details about the movie?

Last time I looked into the WD HD it didn't do meta data for media.

 

If you can setup a hotspot then why not just use Boxee?

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mbryanr Collaborator

mbryanr

Posted
Posted

I had the WDTV Live for over a year.

 

Likes

It was my first media player and amazed at how easy it was over connecting my PC to the TV

 

Dislikes (probably more - but mine is collecting dust)

High bitrate movies choked the WDTV Live

duplicate jpg issue

lack of a "sort by genre etc" movie wall

Custom firmware required lots of maintenance

The ugly/boring UI required plenty of remote clicks to navigate

FW releases seemed to break more than fix.  The  implementation of social media apps was weak at best.

 

I was spending more time maintaining my movie collection than actually watching movies.

 

I've had the Boxee since November, and it blows away the WDTV Live.  Easy to setup, no maintenance movie wall.  The GUI is improving, and local NFO support will be available soon in the next fw release (available now in the beta)

 

Boxee Dislikes

Music is useless right now. I never played music through the WDTV Live, but it is frustrating not to use it on the Boxee when the potential is there.

 

 

 

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lionelhutz Proficient

lionelhutz

Posted
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The ATV2 with XBMC sounds like a good solution, being you can get all the fancy views and such. You need a solution that supports having the metadata stored locally if you want the fancy views with no internet.

 

Then, you just create the complete movie/TV directories with the nfo info files and image files offsite so once you get there you can just directly copy them into the movie/TV directories right on the server.

 

Peter

 

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DoeBoye Collaborator

DoeBoye

Posted
Posted

I am also looking at units that are cheaper. Like I said this is a second house and therefore 4x $400 streamers is not something I can 'sell' to my father in-law.

 

For the record, you can get previous generation ion barebones system for $149, 2GB Ram for $30, and a refurb drive for $20 (or $40 for new).

 

So you're looking at $200 for a pretty powerful little unit. Also, you may have an old laptop drive or ram floating around that you could re-purpose to save even more cash.

 

It *is* previous generation, but I am using a 1st gen ION (The revo 3610), and I have yet to find content it can't stream (1920x1080, 35 mb/s without a problem).

 

Granted it is still more $ then a WD Live, but combined with XBMC, it would be many times better. The no internet thing is a bit of a probem, as far as the library, but once you have it loaded up with content, you'd only have to use a hotspot to update the system for any new content you added...

 

Finally, if you haven't used XBMC in awhile, it has gotten remarkably more user friendly. For the absolute easiest install you'll ever experience, you might want to give a look at openELEC. It's practically a one click solution (I exaggerate for effect, but it really is incredibly simple to install)...

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Loch Explorer

Loch

Posted
Posted

I would agree with all the above. My 2 cents

 

Quick and cheapest: WD Live  cheap, easy set up but interface is bulky

 

SageTV - can use cheaper extenders ($150) but you still need to run the server on some sort of PC. Nice interface, easy to use. Major benefit over XBMC would be it is easier to watch part of something in 1 room and then move to another to finish. It takes a bit more work to set that up with XBMC.

 

XBMC - whether on $99 AppleTV or ~$200 ION PC, I think this is may be the easiest. It migrated to it because it is now sooo simple to use and looks gorgeous (so many themes to pick from). I put a SSD in an old Dell SFF and it works just like a set-top. My 4 year old can turn it on and choose the movie she wants. They have numerous Media managers to grab media which could be done once with a hotspot.

 

Good luck

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splnut Explorer

splnut

Posted
Posted

Couldn't you just put the media on an external drive (i.e. - 2tb), run Ember Media Manager on an internet connected computer. have it download all the info into the correct folders and then transfer the files to the server. You could also use the Export Movie List option in Ember to create a list of all the movies for your catalog.

 

ATV2 with xbmc to stream the content would probably be the cheapest route.

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teamhood Enthusiast

teamhood

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Couldn't you just put the media on an external drive (i.e. - 2tb), run Ember Media Manager on an internet connected computer. have it download all the info into the correct folders and then transfer the files to the server. You could also use the Export Movie List option in Ember to create a list of all the movies for your catalog.

 

ATV2 with xbmc to stream the content would probably be the cheapest route.

 

I can't do ATV2 as not all the TV's are HD! DOH!!

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teamhood Enthusiast

teamhood

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So I spoke with my father in-law and he confirmed 3 of the 4 tv's have composite component,  but one is an older TV that would need that old composite RCA yellow/red/white connector. So it looks like that TV I would probably have to use the WDTV Live, but the other 3 I could use an Apple TV Gen1...

 

Interesting. I might have to order 1 of each and see how they do...

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neilt0 Community Regular

neilt0

Posted
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So I spoke with my father in-law and he confirmed 3 of the 4 tv's have composite but one is an older TV that would need that old RCA yellow/red/white connector. So it looks like that TV I would probably have to use the WDTV Live, but the other 3 I could use an Apple TV Gen1...

 

Interesting. I might have to order 1 of each and see how they do...

 

Yellow/white/red is STEREO AUDIO + COMPOSITE VIDEO

 

5556hs.jpg

 

Red/Green/Blue is COMPONENT VIDEO

 

2zjerds.jpg

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Johnm Rising Star

Johnm

Posted
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Personally I am a fan of XBMC. I find that the Atom 330 with previous generation ION with XBMC is flawless. it handles everything I throw at it.

 

They only issue is  Netflix HD. Supposedly the latest adobe flash update helps with that. Since you wont be using netflix, it sounds like a non-issue.

 

that Giada sounds like a great deal, it looks like you might even be able to boot XBMC-Live off the SD card and skip a hdd all together.

 

you said you needed Component out, something like this might be the answer http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10235&cs_id=1023504&p_id=2508&seq=1&format=2

 

The apple TV was a route i considered in the past myself and skipped on. there are still a few to many bugs on the ATV2 and some issues with Jailbreaking it for noobs. plus it must have a server behind it since you can not hook any storage device to it. i would want to take it with me for extended hotel visits while traveling for work. The 720p is a bit of a downer, but not a deal breaker. The ATV1 is a better solution but a rare animal now.

 

Personally 1 have 1 Mac-mini 2010 and 4 atoms in my house (mix of 330 and 510's) for XBMC HTPC's.

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