How much would you charge me to set up my HTPC for me?

R

RavinDJ

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 9, 2002
Messages
4,448
I have a WHS v1 box with movies and TV shows. The movies are DVDs in AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS folders and the Blu Rays are in BDMV folders. I also have a WHS 2011 box. I also have an HTPC with an SSD and an HDMI video card. I also have an Onkyo receiver and a projector. HTPC is connected via HDMI.

I'd like to get all my movies to have metadata on the server and be able to add a future HTPC.

Ugh... I spent hours working with Win8 and WIn7. I tried Windows Media Center. Which is painfully slow for a large collection. Or maybe I'm doing it wrong. I tried MediaBrowser inside of MCE. Ugh... can I just get someone to help me streamline this and I'll pay you for your time.

Thanks!
 
Ever tried the MyMovies utility to tie into Media Center?
http://www.mymovies.dk/products.aspx

Free for personal use. Last time I used this though was 2007, and I see a lot of changes have happened since, naturally. I'll look into it myself as well since it's been so long.
 
Theres two options MediaBrowser or MyMovies. I think if you could put them in an ISO it would make things easier.

You can use this link setting up mediabrowser http://mediabrowser.tv/community/index.php?/topic/733-mb-classic-setup-and-configuration/

Here is my setup. I have a computer running mediabrowser server, it scans my bluray isos and downloads the metadata, automatically for majority of the titles. For some I can go in put the ID# on IMDB then it will download the proper metadata. The server is where all the data gets accessed, best option is to share the folders, and use the network id when adding the folders to mediabrowser.

On my HTPC i downloaded mediabrowser classic, and setup it up with the proper IP of the server. Then you can browse and access the media in your library. But you need to setup ISO mounting in mediabrowser classic. You'll need a virtual drive that will mount ISOs. I use virtual clone drive. Then when you access a movie all it does is mount the ISO and the HTPC thinks a blu ray disc is put and it plays through the respective player, which for me is Totalmedia Theatre.
 
I used MyMovies for a couple of years and it was a good solution. It definitely works well if you keep your rips in VIDEO_TS and BDMV folders - however, with the blu ray rips you will need a 3rd party player like TotalTheater or PowerDVD for playback. MyMovies is free to use, and you can unlock paid features for free by submitting metadata info for needed titles.

A Qban mentioned, you can also .iso your movies and playback via MyMovies if you have a virtual DVD/Blu ray drive (Virtual Clone Drive). I never tried this, but some people prefer it.

I switched over to mkv's and Plex late last year, and haven't missed MyMovies one bit. The metadata support and accessibility is so much better in my opinion, but it does lack support for VIDEO_TS/BDMV playback as far as I know. I'm not a fan for menus and blu ray extras so it's perfect for me.
 
Thanks guys... I'm debating whether or not to go to MKV. I got Media Browser to download all the posters and backgrounds. Now, to what OS and what to run on that OS.

Win7? Win 8.1 w/ update? MCE? Something else? Ugh. I tried XBMC. I tried Plex. Either I'm doing it wrong or they don't look right and they don't work right. I see setups in the HTPC Gallery thread and you guys have such nice HTPC setups (meaning the actual GUI and UI)
 
I run mediabrowser 3 server as the backend and whatever I want as the front end. For my ancillary system I just run openelc XBMC and then install the XBM3C addon which connects right to my mediabrowser server.


On my main HTPC I also use XBM3C with windows XBMC which has an external player for most of my content.

Things are extremely configurable, it's all about what you want and how you want it. There's a lot of different things you can do with HTPCs, you have to decide your main usage. For you, it sounds like you just have a bunch of movies you want organized decently. You have MB3 server setup by the sounds of it, just use either WMC, the mediabrowser video player (think it's still in alpha or beta), or XBMC with XBM3C.
 
I would go MKV and XBMC.. I have setup many HTPC's for customer's and they have all liked XBMC better.. Have done the MyMovies with PowerDVD and TotalTheater. MyMovies isn't bad per say but it can be a pain. You can setup MyMovies where it auto rips movies on your WHS which is nice. So you can littery open the bluray drive on you WHS drop disk in and walk away. It will spit it out when it's done. But it's an ISO and it's huge lol. If you go with MakeMKV you can have a lot smaller files also no annoying menu's and previews and all that crap.. Also on average your bluray files will go from 40ish gigs to 25ish gigs. I have done this a lot lol. If you want some help just hit me up.
 
I can't speak for XMBC or MB, but your plex setup probably wasn't working properly because you have your media in VIDEO_TS or BDMV format: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/ar...S-and-other-Disk-Image-Formats-Not-Supported-

For Plex to work properly, you would need to do the following:
  1. Have a media library in a supported container format (.mkv or .mp4 being the most common). MakeMKV is awesome for converting Disk Images (VIDEO_TS or BDMV) into .mkv format with your selection of audio streams and language subtitles. The main disadvantage (or advantage for some) for this is that you lose disc extras and menus.
  2. Have Plex Media Server software installed on one of your WHS systems. This server will need to be able to scan your media library.
  3. Organize and configure metadata/content information via Plex Server web interface.
  4. Have Plex Home Theater installed on your HTPC, or use a streaming player like Roku or Fire TV with the Plex application
 
I use MediaBrowser but I don't let it automatically download metadata. For that I use Media Center Master. You can set it up so it watches a folder and it will automatically download metadata along with posters and backdrops. Best thing is that if you already follow the recommended folder and naming conventions for MediaBrowser you don't have to do anything else.
 
I'd like to get all my movies to have metadata on the server and be able to add a future HTPC.
Click to expand...

I used to use metabrowser, but then he started charging for it, and IMHO, it isn't as good (I tried the demo of the paid version). I then started using MediaCenterMaster to grab the metadata. It is pretty robust, but there are some things I don't like about it. The free version of Metabrowser was the best/easiest, IMHO.

I cannot stand to use the scrapers that are built in to XBMC or any other solution. I realize it is probably due to my naming convention, but it just is rarely accurate for me. I would rather use a 3rd party product to manually scrape the metadata and verify it first. Seems to work well for me that way.


For me, I have it broken down like this:

<Volume>
-Kids
- -Individual Movie Titles ("Frozen", "Little Mermaid", etc)
- - -Movie title.ISO
-Movies
- -Individual Movie Titles ("Matrix", "Iron Man", etc)
- - -Movie title.ISO

I've been contemplating moving everything to MKV, but not sure whether it is worth the time investment since XBMC/PLEX plays ISO just fine.
 
Kelvarr said:
I've been contemplating moving everything to MKV, but not sure whether it is worth the time investment since XBMC/PLEX plays ISO just fine.
Click to expand...

If you have the space for the ISO why bother with MKV? Does the transition to MKV bring any benefits?
 
Other then only using half as much space with MKV. As I stated above you remove all the crap , fbi earrings, previews you have to watch now, stupid menus. I want to pick my movie hit play and be watching it. Not hit play and 15 minutes later it starts
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Other then only using half as much space with MKV. As I stated above you remove all the crap , fbi earrings, previews you have to watch now, stupid menus. I want to pick my movie hit play and be watching it. Not hit play and 15 minutes later it starts
Click to expand...

Mine are in .ISO, but they are only the movies. Menus, ads, trailers, etc have already been stripped out of the .ISO.
 
You can use TsMuxer (assuming you open the right playlist in the source BDMV folder) to remove all of the extra menus, subtitles and audio streams and output to BDMV folders, and then change to .iso's . This is what I used to do, and honestly, I see little to no benefit of using this method over muxing to mkvs, with the single exception of 3D support.

If you do not plan on using 3D playback, or using menus and extras - .mkv is the way to go in my opinion.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top