NFT: Home Media Server Questions

make sure to get enough hard drive space to save all your Giants games as well.

Best thing I ever did with my Plex server.

In comment 14294806 Knineteen said:

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In comment 14294799 jcn56 said: Quote: The very first cheapo NAS I thought of that didn't have an ARM processor was on your list - the QNAP 251. Does 1080P hardware accelerated transcoding, costs less than $300. Do I need to keep doing this, or do you feel like reading the stuff you yourself are linking? The SOFTWARE TRANSCODING requirements need to be satisfied. An Intel Celeron J1800 @ 2.41GHz doesn't have nearly the required processing power: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J1800+%40+2.41GHz&id=2167 Try again, please.

Really? Why, when you have hardware capable of transcoding natively, would you fall back to software transcoding?

Do you really think that Celeron processors aren't capable of transcoding 1080p?

i do have an Amazon Fire TV already loaded with Kodi

Can I just get a WD Easystore drive, put all my movies on that and run the server off of my Kodi? Easy to setup? Can I still access my library through kodi from outside my network?

In comment 14294938 jcn56 said:

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Do you really think that Celeron processors aren't capable of transcoding 1080p?

Correct, they can't.

An AMD Athlon 5350 couldn't handle such a task and it has a much better benchmark scores than an Intel Celeron J1800 (2,605 vs. 1,027).
You see, I actually built a rig with an AMD Athlon 5350 and it couldn't keep up with 1080p source material. I wish to hell that it would because it's a super efficient CPU, but it couldn't.

I don't think you understand what transcoding true 1080p source materials entails. It's not a DVD. No one is streaming 640×480 content, it looks like garbage on a 55" TV.

I know because I've done it. I don't know what kind of shitty boxes you're building, but I've built at least 3 low powered (N3050) based NUCs that do a variety of transcoding and I've never had an issue. And that's without getting into tailoring down an Ubuntu build to the barebones to get it done.

For fuck's sake, I've got an ancient Synology box that does a passable 720P transcode after installing FFMPEG, and that thing cost peanuts years ago.

Of course, considering you're new to the concept of hardware acceleration in transcoding, I'm not surprised.

In comment 14294990 ImThatGuy said:

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i do have an Amazon Fire TV already loaded with Kodi Can I just get a WD Easystore drive, put all my movies on that and run the server off of my Kodi? Easy to setup? Can I still access my library through kodi from outside my network?

The Easystore is a drive and not a NAS I believe. So if it is a drive you cannot access the media on the drive on your network without connecting it to a computer first. If it is a NAS you can connect directly to your router and you should be able to access the media from your kodi box, as long as that is also wired to your network. The difference between a drive and a NAS can be googled but a drivbe needs to be connected to a computer or other compatible media device and a NAS can stand alone on your network and serve files.

I think Kodi has the capability to allow access to media from outside the home network but i think it is complicated. That is why people pay for Plex, I believe. Plex has similar functionality to Kodi but I think accessing media away from your network is one of the big premium features and probably works better than Kodi. I'm guessing here as I don't have a need to access movies away from home. I'm sure this can be googled and you would get a better answer, but it's a start.

if the fire box has a usb input (many android boxes do) you can connect your drive directly to it and watch on the tv it is connected to, and it might be visible elsewhere on your network.

In comment 14295039 jcn56 said:

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For fuck's sake, I've got an ancient Synology box that does a passable 720P transcode after installing FFMPEG, and that thing cost peanuts years ago.

Fair enough, I didn't realize we were talking about outdated resolutions. Yes, a NAS could probably support a 720 file; but I like to live in 2019, not 2005.

I wish I'd remembered to put this here before. Plex has changed a bit over the years. I have the Plex Pass version. It's pretty cool, but by default now it requires an internet connection. This is a serious problem, because I often want to watch my digital library when the internet is down for whatever reason. Admittedly that's not a common occurrence, but it actually happened to me twice since September, and the second time was over the holiday break when we were hoping for more home entertainment.

When I say that it requires an internet connection, I mean even the server itself cannot start up Plex Pass, let alone anything on the LAN being able to access it.

I actually had to direct connect one of the hard drives on my home media server to our Roku just to be able to watch anything at all. Really sucked.

It's a reminder to me that this summer I have a project planned to replace Plex with something NOT internet dependent. Not sure what that solution is yet.

In comment 14295466 Knineteen said:

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In comment 14295039 jcn56 said: Quote: For fuck's sake, I've got an ancient Synology box that does a passable 720P transcode after installing FFMPEG, and that thing cost peanuts years ago. Fair enough, I didn't realize we were talking about outdated resolutions. Yes, a NAS could probably support a 720 file; but I like to live in 2019, not 2005.

Of course we weren't - we were talking about how a Celeron processor can easily handle 1080p transcoding since this is 2019 and CPU instruction sets now including specific instructions to enable hardware acceleration. That a 9 year old NAS that cost a few hundred bucks back then is capable of doing close to that entirely in software was just pointing out how ridiculous what you're claiming is.

But keep at it - assuming you stop including information that proves your own point wrong, maybe one of these days you'll sound accurate.

In comment 14295601 jcn56 said:

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Of course we weren't - we were talking about how a Celeron processor can easily handle 1080p transcoding since this is 2019 and CPU instruction sets now including specific instructions to enable hardware acceleration. That a 9 year old NAS that cost a few hundred bucks back then is capable of doing close to that entirely in software was just pointing out how ridiculous what you're claiming is. But keep at it - assuming you stop including information that proves your own point wrong, maybe one of these days you'll sound accurate.

You do realize transcoding load scales with bitrate, right? A lossless blu-ray rip is going to have a bitrate in the 30K+ kbps range. That is going to require significantly more CPU resources to transcode than a blu-ray that has been compressed to a bitrate of 30K+ kbps.

I shouldn't have to tell you this, because you built "3 low powered (N3050) based NUCs" and "cloud instances that run inside of a ThinkServer".
Here's some advice, superfluous devices and technologies don't mean you know what you're talking about.

I'll just have to deal with my $300 dedicated desktop media server that streams my entire 30K+ kbps bitrate library to all devices in my household.
Watched a 40,116 kbps movie last night without issue; but hey, I'll just have to struggle with not knowing what I'm doing.

and that higher bitrates take up more resources.

What you seem to be unfamiliar with is that streaming has become so popular, more and more of the load has been implemented in hardware, resulting in devices streaming at higher bitrates much more efficiently.

That's why you can pick up a networked wifi cam that streams at 1080p for next to nothing, and 'stick' devices are ubiquitous, and how you can pick up OTA transceivers that receive signal, encode and flip it back onto a wireless network for a hundred bucks. You don't need that much processing power any more, because the hardware implementations are much more efficient and cost effective than ones that rely on software alone.

Yet you charge forward cluelessly with some point about needing to do software transcoding as an excuse for looking past the requirements you yourself linked here.

When that doesn't work, you try a lesson on bitrates. Impressive.

was asking specifically about the NAS devices, and his requirements look to be exactly in line with what one of them at the entry level would be able to provide, along with some failover/backup should he decide for his photos.

Never knew that a post about home media servers could lead to an argument, BBI never ceases to amaze.

Thank you all for the info, although now I'm debating htpc vs NAS. Argh

Now all of you please hug it out

Enough already. Again, superfluous technologies...

In comment 14295859 ImThatGuy said:

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Never knew that a post about home media servers could lead to an argument, BBI never ceases to amaze. Thank you all for the info, although now I'm debating htpc vs NAS. Argh Now all of you please hug it out

such an entertaining thread but there is a lot of useful info here too. I think an out of the box htpc solution is going to cost you more bucks. If I'm not mistaken the cost is more than a NAS alone and you still have to get some mega storage. Seriously, check out the synology boards. A lot of people are doing this and you can get insight whether you can go with an ARM processor or something more powerful. If you have Kodi on a front end box you won't need to transcode. good luck!

In comment 14295933 Knineteen said:

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Enough already. Again, superfluous technologies...

No, examples of how devices can encode video on the fly with minimal resources using hardware assisted encoding. To the clueless, superfluous.

In comment 14295859 ImThatGuy said:

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Never knew that a post about home media servers could lead to an argument, BBI never ceases to amaze. Thank you all for the info, although now I'm debating htpc vs NAS. Argh Now all of you please hug it out

This one's pretty simple - you're either on the hook for a prebuilt HTPC (which will run you more) or you're building your own.

A NAS is an out of the box solution. Add a drive to it and off you go.

If you're not sure the NAS is the way you want to go, then try picking one up from somewhere with a generous return policy (like Amazon). Try it out for a week, see if it does what you need it to do. You don't have to spend a ton of time setting it up, all you'll need is a few media files to throw on there to test it out and see if the performance and UX is to your liking. If it doesn't cut mustard, return it and build a HTPC.

... is anybody doing DVR to NAS?

Uggh, now I'm all confused on which route to go... lol. I may just put together a gaming / DAW and keep the home files on a NAS. Would be cool if I could get the DVR to use the NAS.

In comment 14296203 Johnny5 said:

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... is anybody doing DVR to NAS? Uggh, now I'm all confused on which route to go... lol. I may just put together a gaming / DAW and keep the home files on a NAS. Would be cool if I could get the DVR to use the NAS.

I am, have two devices that are configured to drop to NAS, one is a MythTV instance and the other is a HDHomeRun DVR. My situation is a little unique though, and the MythTV box was built a long time ago when it was the best solution. What were you looking to do exactly?

In comment 14296324 jcn56 said:

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In comment 14296203 Johnny5 said: Quote: ... is anybody doing DVR to NAS? Uggh, now I'm all confused on which route to go... lol. I may just put together a gaming / DAW and keep the home files on a NAS. Would be cool if I could get the DVR to use the NAS. I am, have two devices that are configured to drop to NAS, one is a MythTV instance and the other is a HDHomeRun DVR. My situation is a little unique though, and the MythTV box was built a long time ago when it was the best solution. What were you looking to do exactly?

So, that's a good question. I was trying to kill 17 birds with one stone basically... lol

Initially I was going to set up a simple NAS for file storage for the wife and kiddies. Eazy peazy. But then I started thinking, get rid of the cable box and add a home media server, and get rid of the cable box/DVR. Oh and while I'm at it, I won't mind doing a little gaming (I am jonesing to try the new RE2) and you can get RE2 free with a home PC or AMD Radeon card. And did I mention, I want to attach some speakers and run a DAW and transcriber software like Reaper, and rip some audio files from the USB port on my looper? LOL

And all for under $500 bucks!

... looks like I can get a decent gaming PC for about $350 bucks with these specs:

Case Micro-Atx
Intel Xeon X3440
NVIDIA GT 630
8GB dual channel DDR3 memory
Intel LGA 1156 motherboard
1TB HDD
GENUINE WINDOWS 10 PRO
5.1 Channel surround HD audio
Realtek Ethernet controller, WiFi ready
HDMI, DVI Connectors
802.11 a/b/g/n Wireless (WIFI) Adapter
Mid Tower case or a Small Case

Then I can load PLEX, and my DAW software. The only thing I need to decide on is storage for serving pics and home movies... do I want to build out a RAID subsystem in the PC (or as external hard drive system) or just spend the money on a NAS like Synology DS218...

Any thoughts from fellow geekers here? lol

There's many ways to skin the home server / cordcutting question.

My choice has been a full windows "server" made with leftover parts that I've collected over the years. Win10, 6x 3TB HDDs, Stablebit Drivepool to pool them all together. Is it the most elegant solution? No. Is it the easiest for my situation? Yes.

Emby is my go-to choice for media library management.

Now for the "client" devices, I have a mix. I have 2x FireTVs for the bedroom and the office - I don't need anymore horsepower for those. Then in the living room and the finished basement, I have full HTPCs. Partially due to video game emulation w/ LaunchBox (which needs a lot of resources) and partially because when I'm entertaining at the house, I want the system to be nice and zippy. All the clients run Kodi.

Are the HTPCs a bit overkill? Yeah. I could see in the future migrating to something like an nVidia Shield. But for now everything works without any hiccups.

Those specs I listed are apparently not enough to run RE2 remake. And that is a must... lol. Damn this is harder than I thought figuring out a PC to cover everything w/o costing a ton of dough.