RAID setup?

[JET]

Big thanks to mikefromMN for trying to get any info off my bad HD, unfortunately he wasn't successful after a valiant effort.

I have all of my HD's now and have one of these on the way:

http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-821-011-TS?$S300W$

It hooks up via USB 3.0 and will dock 2 HD's as well as clone from one to another without a computer. I will leave the main HD's in the computer and then copy them on occasion to the docked HD's. This way they are only powered up when the backup is taking place and they should last for ages.

[scheides]

Here's an interesting DIY media player project based on raspberry pi:

http://www.raspbmc.com/about/

For about $50 you could have yourself a nice little video player streaming from nfs or cifs/samba.

[mikefromMN]

If I were going to do a small set-top unit, raspberry pi wouldn't be the way I would go. It sucks. 700mhz processor (you can overclock to 1ghz) and 512 mbs of ram just doesn't cut it. I was using an xbmc build and, while it "worked", it was janky as hell; slow to respond and just very inconsistent performance over all. If anybody gets serious about this, look into a pandaboard or the beagleboard. Both have better hardware and are only marginally more expensive.

[JET]

I am going to have to check in to those set top boxes soon. I have the dock and it works pretty slick. The only downside is that it is not hotswappable. It has a separate power button so that works great too.

Hit the power switch on the dock and reboot the computer. When it comes up just do a ctrl+c and ctrl+v and tell it not to copy anything that is already there. I will probably do the backup every couple of weeks. Library is being rebuilt pretty quickly now.

[A//// Guy]

Buy a Roku, stream netflix, done. haha

Thats what I do. I stream movies from my computer to Roku wirelessly as well using the PLEX app. Dont have time to manage a full on server and putz with all that crap.

[AJ]

Buy a Roku, stream netflix, done. haha

Thats what I do. I stream movies from my computer to Roku wirelessly as well using the PLEX app. Dont have time to manage a full on server and putz with all that crap.

A boxee box is amazing as well, plays anything and everything you toss at it and still want to fuck the dog when you aren't looking.

[scheides]

If I were going to do a small set-top unit, raspberry pi wouldn't be the way I would go. It sucks. 700mhz processor (you can overclock to 1ghz) and 512 mbs of ram just doesn't cut it. I was using an xbmc build and, while it "worked", it was janky as hell; slow to respond and just very inconsistent performance over all. If anybody gets serious about this, look into a pandaboard or the beagleboard. Both have better hardware and are only marginally more expensive.

Good to hear, thank you for the honest review! I have one on my desk at work and I was tempted to dick around with it in this arena--I will not waste my time now! :)

Buy a Roku, stream netflix, done. haha

Indeed, very simple and it works!


Thats what I do. I stream movies from my computer to Roku wirelessly as well using the PLEX app. Dont have time to manage a full on server and putz with all that crap.

Yet you digress like the rest of us :)

A boxee box is amazing as well, plays anything and everything you toss at it and still want to fuck the dog when you aren't looking.

boxee is pretty decent too! I used to run that for a while on my appleTV.

WDTV is still the best all-around IMHO, it can be so simple and do so much more with just a little bit more effort. Roku is nice but you can't mount NFS or SAMBA shares, and that's just pewpie.

[JET]

Netflix's streaming library is just way too limited, we tried that and it sucks. Maintaining the library is really easy, but I just don't have much time for researching a set top box right now.

So if I get a WDTV (the one with ethernet port) it will scroll through the movies on my server and pull them up? What type of menu system is it? We have to be about 150 movies right now and adding fast.

[curt_gendron]

I did a little digging around on the WDTV. It looks like it will play most formats, but for a menu system, it would be similar to trying to play something using windows explorer. You'd have to drill down to the directory that has the movie and then start it. Sounds like the player is a little sluggish at navigating around too. Probably gets slower as your collection grows.

Its not nearly as cool as Media Browser on a Media Center PC.

later,
Curt

[scheides]

Yip it's a simple interface but it offers previews and with only a little effort towards organization, it's easy to browse. I'm sure there's videos of it on YouTube. For $100, it's pretty easy to just try it,,that's what I did and then was so happy I just stopped looking :)