Home Cinema / Media Streaming Discussion

arad85 said:
I know it seems expensive, but it will do everything you throw at it AND be a proper computer too (so adding & upgrading it over time) becomes worth it IMHO.
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hmm.

i'll definitely have to sell some bits to fund that and pass the GAF. i'll see what i can get for the Yamaha and the WDTV (annoying thing its theyve dropped the price on those a load recently).
 
Front Room

TV - Panasonic 42" Plasma - Wall Mounted
Av Receiver - Yamaha DSP-A5 (spectacular oldie :thumbs:)
PC - 4TB storage, VLC player through AMD 6950's HDMI, Sound is Digi Optical through Auzentech MystiqueHD
Blu-Ray - Panasonic BD60
Sky+HD
PS3
Wii

All HDMI'd to the Panasonic, Sound either Optical or Coax to the A5.
I plan on getting either an Onkyo 606 or Yamaha 922 in the new year, Seen them come up very cheap in the sales ;)

Speakers
Front Centre - Acoustic Energy
Mains - Acoustic Solutions Tall
Sub - Gale Sub10

These may not appear to be beastly, but my front room is small and these can make the whole house shake..!
I used to have a pair of Eltax Liberty 3's as big rears, until the Wife kicked one of them...

Bedroom

TV - Goodman 32" LCD (One of the first LCD TV's and still going strong)
Humax DVR HDMI'd to the TV
 
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arad85 said:
I know it seems expensive, but it will do everything you throw at it AND be a proper computer too (so adding & upgrading it over time) becomes worth it IMHO.
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This. Mine boots straight into XBMC with 2 accounts, one with content suitable for my 12 year old and the other with everything available. I don't think Plex could do that when I tried it.

Have also used the pc for YouTube too. Not done a slideshow of photos (it's a photo forum after all ;)) but could do easily.
 
PaulF said:
This. Mine boots straight into XBMC with 2 accounts, one with content suitable for my 12 year old and the other with everything available. I don't think Plex could do that when I tried it.

Have also used the pc for YouTube too. Not done a slideshow of photos (it's a photo forum after all ;)) but could do easily.
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which one do you have paul? can you give me an idea how it is connected in your system (i.e. 1 HDMI straight to AV Receiver etc)?
 
Just a FYI, you may want to check on the xbmc ability to output HD audio. I know there were some issues with earlier systems (not sure about Intel). I've never looked into it as I get the box to downmix to stereo before output.
 
arad85 said:
Just a FYI, you may want to check on the xbmc ability to output HD audio. I know there were some issues with earlier systems (not sure about Intel). I've never looked into it as I get the box to downmix to stereo before output.
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apparently "hd audio will work on kernel 3.7 and greater"
 
neil_g said:
which one do you have paul? can you give me an idea how it is connected in your system (i.e. 1 HDMI straight to AV Receiver etc)?
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I'd have to check when I get home but pretty sure its the DC3217IYE, can't remember how much memory I stuck in it, 8gb I think.

It's just connected to the TV via HDMI and uses gig ethernet through a gig switch to the nas box, also gig ethernet so works pretty well with full 1080p bluerays. Largest film I've streamed was around 14gb!
If you do get one remember they don't supply the power lead, just the adapter! it's a clover leaf lead same as the HP laptops and luckily there are loads of em at work.
 
Vettahead said:
Used to rock xbmc then I found plex. Amazingly sturdy and out the box brilliant.
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That's cos plex is a fork of xbmc :) Looks like xbmc on screen too. Why did you change out of interest? I've not found anything that xbmc can't do yet....
 
arad85 said:
That's cos plex is a fork of xbmc :) Looks like xbmc on screen too. Why did you change out of interest? I've not found anything that xbmc can't do yet....
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Is a fork yes. But has moved quite far away in its delivery on mobile devices.

Moved over because plex has a server client and then host clients, and the server client can recode video to mobile devices on the fly.

Wife watching gossip girl on iPad while I watch a film in the home cinema without a hiccup. And the wife feels it's a doddle to use too!

It is simpler than xbmc but that's to its benefit in an environment where wife's don't understand technology!
 
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Vettahead said:
Moved over because plex has a server client and then host clients, and the server client can recode video to mobile devices on the fly.
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I don't like recoding unless it's to squeeze on space on the HDD... so don't see the need for client/server systems (I won't touch DLNA with someone elses bargepole - too many issues for my liking). All my mobiles can play the full HD file off the server if needs be (no iPads, just PCs and Android tablets that can play SMB mapped mkvs natively ;)). Although we effectively have an xbmc for everyone here (3 xbmc systems, 3 TVs, 3 rooms, 3 people) plus tablets and PCs....
 
arad85 said:
I don't like recoding unless it's to squeeze on space on the HDD... so don't see the need for client/server systems (I won't touch DLNA with someone elses bargepole - too many issues for my liking). All my mobiles can play the full HD file off the server if needs be (no iPads, just PCs and Android tablets that can play SMB mapped mkvs natively ;)). Although we effectively have an xbmc for everyone here (3 xbmc systems, 3 TVs, 3 rooms, 3 people) plus tablets and PCs....
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Still prefer my master system in a other room tucked away and it remuxing on the fly. Supper handy and virtually set up :-)
 
Vettahead said:
Still prefer my master system in a other room tucked away and it remuxing on the fly
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One filestore in the office - everything sees it. All xbmcs are silent ;) The problem with devices that can't play stuff natively is that you are completely dependent on the server doing all the work.... Add another device and it doubles the processing load.
 
I just want something that works and plex is great for that.
 
I ahve started today... got an android tv box with xbmc ...streaming films is great.. BUT having massive problems with jdownload doing my head in.. cant connect to mserver... no idea whats happening :(
 
I've gone 'el cheapo with a Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc connected into our Panasonic 32" TV and controlled by our iPhones. Movies are all on a WD 2Tb NAS and everything's networked up up using Homeplugs.

We don't watch a lot of TV :)
 
Yup. Rasp-pi is another option.
 
I have a Zotac AD41 Atom/ION with 4GB/128GB SSD running Win Server 2012 with some external drives hanging off it....runs home network, Spotify, XBMC etc.

Bedroom has a Zotac AD11 running OpenELEC, bit overkill hardware wise really, but it gives a nicer UI experience that the Rasberry Pi, although performance on that is much better than it was initially now.
 
While this thread is up and running I wonder if you could help with my situation.

I'm concerned only with playing music, for films I'm still in the dark ages of putting dvds in a did player.

All my music is on my pc, in Apple lossless format. So if I ever want to play it through there then I just use iTunes.

But I want to play music in my front room. Easy solution is to use my ipod straight into my amp. But it is inconvenient as my ipod lived in my car and I don't want to have to run out every time I want to use it indoors.

I want to avoid having to turn on my pc to listen to music, so I have it all copied onto a network attached hard drive in the front room. At my disposal I also have a ps3 and a nexus 10 tablet.

Can either of these be uses to access the music on the hard drive and feed into my amp?
 
Bass junkie - apple airport express, £50 off eBay and you can control from iTunes or iOS/Android
 
6 year old 42" Philips plasma...been a fab tv and when the other sitting room is redecorated from the kids playroom back into a sitting room it will be upgraded
Yamaha STR-KG800 Receiver
PS3
Virgin Tivo
Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC....Icefilms and 1Channel covers all my streaming needs but this isn't really the place to discuss them :)

As long as you run XBMC on the Pi via usb drive, it's plenty fast enough with no lag....no DTS decoding either but passing this through to a DTS receiver means this isn't an issue
 
Oooooo this was my main hobby for a long time, as you should be able to tell my kit is a bit old hat now :D

My Cinema/Living room
  • Sony Pearl PJ
  • 120" tab tensioned screen (in lighting pelmet)
  • Samsung 59" Plasma (for every day use)
  • Onkyo receiver TX-SR875 running 7.1
  • Monitor Audio RX6, RX centre, 4 Radius 180 surrounds and R720 sub
  • Blu-ray panasonic US and UK
  • HD-DVD :suspect:
  • Sky+ HD
  • PS3 - Wii
  • Lutron lighting
  • Pronto TSU9600 running all the above
  • Sonos Audio
  • NAS
Currently I don't have movie streaming, thinking of one day adding into the system, but still prefer Boxed Media, although Sky On Demand is getting much more use than I was expecting
 
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arad85 said:
We use a £12 remote control to operate xbmc. Fundamentally, up/down/left/right, OK and VCR controls (pause/ff/skip/stop) are all that is needed.

Once set up (by you - and that may take a little time ;)) xbmc is by far the easiest interface to use IMHO. The box boots into xbmc and you are in a media player without even knowing you are running a PC underneath. We have a list of unwatched films, all populated with IMDB info to choose from by default on the movies page. The TV page just has a list of programs and when you enter a particular program, it is broken into series together with a tick next to the episode if you've watched it. Pressing play on a partially watched movie/TV episode just asks you if you want to start from where you've left off or start from the beginning. Not only that, the UI is the same on all 3 boxes and I can partially watch a film/episode on one box, stop it, move to another and it will ask me if I want to resume from where I had stopped on the other box.

Audio is always supplied by the TV, so no need to swap inputs on the amp either. Input 3 -> xbmc, Input 4 -> TV.

Simples - as I believe the kids say these days ;)
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I can remember installing XBMC a long time ago and having numerous problems and giving up on it. I've just installed it on an old PC and must say it has come a long way since then.

After playing with the settings for ages the music side of it behaves exactly as I would wish - select an individual track and it plays, go browse to another single track and it adds to the now playing playlist and so on building your playlist on the fly. The PC has a remote control as well as keyboard and mouse so using that works well too. Playing albums or saved playlists is easy too.

Problem I'm having is with the XBMC remote ios app. I can't get it to do the same behaviour as controlling on the PC directly. Choose a track and the whole album goes on the playlist. If I could sort that problem then I'll try a more permanent setup. I have the HP microserver on all the time so I guess with a video card that could become the XBMC host and live within reach of the TV.

Not worried about video as that is just pick a file and play it.

Thanks for the suggestion... I'll keep playing with settings.
 
RobertP said:
Problem I'm having is with the XBMC remote ios app.
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I don't use ios, but the "official" xbmc remote is rubbish compared to yatse on Android. Keep looking for a better ios remote.... xbmc is truly worth it (I got it running natively on my Android tablets with proper h/w acceleration last week which was great - same experience tablet/tv/pc)
 
Xbmc with Ras Pi Running Raspmc, using Yatze controller on phone and tablet. Works a treat
 
Well I'm starting to think xbmc is what I've been looking for :)

xbmc commander is also available as a windows 8 app with touch. Both versions on the iphone and win 8 laptop are working properly.

Just gave up on xbmc remote for android but will try the recommended app above tomorrow - thanks.
 
Dale_tem said:
Bass junkie - apple airport express, £50 off eBay and you can control from iTunes or iOS/Android
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Cheers. Turns out I already had all my music converted to flac which I had forgotten about.
I ended up getting an app called bubbleupnp (£3) on my tablet which streams the music from my nas drive. The same app on my phone let's me use it as a remote.
 
Just been reading that Pioneer are re-entering the TV market! Unfortunately no plasma's though... And they will be sold exclusively by Dixon, which I find a bit odd :/
 
antihero said:
Just been reading that Pioneer are re-entering the TV market!
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shut-up-and-take-my-money-20f32600fe40935970e3a912cab29ff9.jpeg


Unfortunately no plasma's though... And they will be sold exclusively by Dixon, which I find a bit odd :/
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dog-dude-wait-what.jpg
 
Marketing...
 
antihero said:
Just been reading that Pioneer are re-entering the TV market! Unfortunately no plasma's though... And they will be sold exclusively by Dixon, which I find a bit odd :/
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WHAT !!! no Plasma :nono:

Only LG and Samsung left :( I must say though I thought they would die out a bit quicker when Sony stopped producing them a few years ago

If my Samsung Plasma dies I'll have to get another heater put in the room, use the PJ more or turn the receiver up a few notches :D
 
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My system consists of:

Control 4 system to control everything. Lights, heating, TV/media etc.

Samsung 55" Full HD LED TV, fitted flush in the wall.
Buffalo 4TB media storage.
Synology 2TB storage.
Dune media player with 500gb HDD with capability to add more storage.
Bose T10 surround system and amp.
Samsung 3D Blue Ray player

Everything is in a purpose built cupboard under the stairs including SKY box. Only things on show are the small cube Bose speakers and the sub in the corner.
All the kit is hard wired using cat 6 cable back to the control 4 system. As it's all wired through Cat 6 cable I can stream full HD Blue ray without any problems. It can all be controlled via the control 4 remote or via apps on laptop, iPhones or iPad and I have a 7" touchscreen pad on the wall as back up. I can control the whole system from anywhere in the world so long as I have an internet connection. Handy when your away from home, you can turn the TV and any light on making people think there is someone at home.
No kit in the bedrooms but they are wired ready for future should we decide to do so.



Not the best picture, taken with iPhone. Taken just before the project was completed and a lot of the furniture has changed now.
 
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arad85 said:
And... your impressions?
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It is :)

It does need a PC to run it properly as far as I can make out. All the small box solutions seem to have some negative or other to them. Replacing the WDTV live with a Intel NUC running the linux version is on the todo list. Quite like the idea of the slightly larger cheaper NUC due out next year. takes a normal SSD instead of msata and has built in IR.

Got some building changes that will move my server and wiring etc happening early next year so the cheap NUC should be available by the time I get round to it.... or there will something else new and small on the market to do the job.
 
Yay for xbmc! Small PC (often in a large case!) is what I've always built too.... until the i3 system I'm building. I, too, think that whilst rasp pi works, there will be something that would just annoy me (whether that is the speed of rendering of menus, processing large directories or even worse, inability to play certain material). I know that with a PCI-e slot and optical out, I am futureproofed.
 
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