HTPC and Home Network for friend

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Kelvarr

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So my friend contacts me about wanting to set up a home network of HTPC's. I know a decent amount about this, because I've had my HTPC for about 5 years. However, his household is full of non-IT people, so things have to be dead simple. My setup is a bit more complicated.

Here is the setup so far. I am open to suggestions.

  • Note: There is not currently any High-speed Internet in his house, and there are no immediate plans for any
  • TV's x3
  • He initially wanted to go wireless for all of this. I talked him into running Cat5e to the 3 TV's, and if he still wants wireless (for tablets/phones), then we can plug in a wireless AP.
  • I suggested a 4-disk NAS to house his movies/tv shows
  • 2x HGST NAS 4TB drives. This will give him some expansion in the future also
  • 3x Harmony 650
  • Netgear 8-port Gigabit switch in basement

That's where it ends so far. Due to my configuration, I am not sure of which head unit to use at each of the TV's. Something miniITX-size is probably preferable. Budget is $150-$200 for each unit. Units I have heard of: WD Live TV, Fire TV (maybe side-loaded with Kodi?), Intel NUC (although it is out of price range), Gigabyte Brix. Maybe I am missing some. I am definitely open to suggestions here.

For the wireless, I am undecided whether to go with something like 1-2 Ubiquiti UniFi AP or whether I should get something like an Asus Dark Knight (N or AC...not sure yet) or Netgear Nighthawk R7000. I am open to suggestions here also.

For movie ripping, I will probably have him use MakeMKV since it is currently free while in beta. I assume ripping to MKV will be a fairly universal container. I am not 100% sure though, as I rip to ISO using AnyDVD HD.

No DVR. They have DirecTV (and their associated DVR's) that they will continue to use for TV viewing. As far as I know, you can't DVR satellite with WMC can you? At least not without a cable card...and those are not fun to try and configure.

This will solely be used for media consumption of DVD's/Blu-ray's that they have ripped.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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Is this going to be a DVR system? If so, 1 PC running WMC and Plex at the main tv and 2 Xbox 360's at the other 2 TV's is probably the simplest solution.
 
xLokiX said:
Is this going to be a DVR system? If so, 1 PC running WMC and Plex at the main tv and 2 Xbox 360's at the other 2 TV's is probably the simplest solution.
Click to expand...

No DVR. They have DirecTV (and their associated DVR's) that they will continue to use for TV viewing. As far as I know, you can't DVR satellite with WMC can you? At least not without a cable card...and those are not fun to try and configure.

This will solely be used for media consumption of DVD's/Blu-ray's that they have ripped.
 
Then a NAS that supports Plex and a few Roku's or Fire TV's would be the most elegant solution. They will obviously need a PC or laptop to do the ripping and uploading to the NAS. As far as the wireless goes, if they already have a decent router, then you really can't go wrong with Unifi AP's. One on each floor should suffice, unless its a huge house.

Cable cards aren't that bad to setup anymore, the biggest PITA is getting on the phone with the cable company to get it activated. Having said that, I don't have first hand experience setting one up for satellite, so I'm not sure if that works. I've setup a few on cable and FIOS, and those were a cakewalk.
 
xLokiX said:
Then a NAS that supports Plex and a few Roku's or Fire TV's would be the most elegant solution. They will obviously need a PC or laptop to do the ripping and uploading to the NAS. As far as the wireless goes, if they already have a decent router, then you really can't go wrong with Unifi AP's. One on each floor should suffice, unless its a huge house.

Cable cards aren't that bad to setup anymore, the biggest PITA is getting on the phone with the cable company to get it activated. Having said that, I don't have first hand experience setting one up for satellite, so I'm not sure if that works. I've setup a few on cable and FIOS, and those were a cakewalk.
Click to expand...

With no broadband, will he even need a router?
 
If you want to make it as plug and play as possible for them, yes. Otherwise you will need to manually configure IP's for everything, that includes anything that might get added in the future.
 
xLokiX said:
If you want to make it as plug and play as possible for them, yes. Otherwise you will need to manually configure IP's for everything, that includes anything that might get added in the future.
Click to expand...

I didn't consider the DHCP aspect.
 
I was thinking a little more about the recommendation of using the NAS. Since there is going to be transcoding going on, you might want to consider one that's a little beefier. Maybe something like this. That NAS has a HDMI port, so you can actually use that at one of the TV's instead of a Roku, it uses the XBMC media player, and you can control it with a smartphone or the built-in IR reciever.
 
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xLokiX said:
I was thinking a little more about the recommendation of using the NAS. Since there is going to be transcoding going on, you might want to consider one that's a little beefier. Maybe something like this. That NAS has a HDMI port, so you can actually use that at one of the TV's instead of a Roku, it uses the XBMC media player, and you can control it with a smartphone or the built-in IR reciever.
Click to expand...

I was actually leaning towards something like that NAS for him. I am not sold on the ARM or Atom CPU's for the amount of streaming he will be doing from it.

I am still in the process of putting all this together. Any ideas?

FireTV vs FireTV Stick? Roku? Pi2?
For the NAS, should I stick to one of the appliances for the simplicity of it?
 
If you want it to be easy on the storage side I can't speak highly enough about Synology products. I use to build my own server and messed with zfs, windows home server, freenas, openindiana. You name it I probably tried it at one point. While the initial setup wasn't too bad (at least not for an experienced sys admin) one thing that I suffered from is data loss. If the controller went bad it was a pain in the ass to get the same one again. And don't get me started with having to rebuild arrays if hard drives died. I bought a Synology DS1511+ with expansion unit from someone here on [H] about 2 years ago. I populated it with shitty Seagate 3tb drives. I think I have had 5 of the 10 drives die on me. Not once did I lose data. I just replaced the bad drive and the software took care of everything. I even had 2 fail on me at once. After that happened I slowly started replacing the drives with WD 6tb Red drives. Upgrading and expanding the volume was stupid easy. A couple of clicks and the software took care of everything. My unit is at least 4 years old and they still provide firmware and software updates. It supports the newest drives within a matter of weeks of release. I am going to end up upgrading to a DS2415+ soon (12 bays) and the migration procedure is going to be simply to move drives from one chassis to the new one. As long as the number bay matches nothing will have to be recovered. Also Plex (which makes server package for Synology) and Samsung Smart TVs are a match made in heaven.
 
morgwon said:
If you want it to be easy on the storage side I can't speak highly enough about Synology products. I use to build my own server and messed with zfs, windows home server, freenas, openindiana. You name it I probably tried it at one point. While the initial setup wasn't too bad (at least not for an experienced sys admin) one thing that I suffered from is data loss. If the controller went bad it was a pain in the ass to get the same one again. And don't get me started with having to rebuild arrays if hard drives died. I bought a Synology DS1511+ with expansion unit from someone here on [H] about 2 years ago. I populated it with shitty Seagate 3tb drives. I think I have had 5 of the 10 drives die on me. Not once did I lose data. I just replaced the bad drive and the software took care of everything. I even had 2 fail on me at once. After that happened I slowly started replacing the drives with WD 6tb Red drives. Upgrading and expanding the volume was stupid easy. A couple of clicks and the software took care of everything. My unit is at least 4 years old and they still provide firmware and software updates. It supports the newest drives within a matter of weeks of release. I am going to end up upgrading to a DS2415+ soon (12 bays) and the migration procedure is going to be simply to move drives from one chassis to the new one. As long as the number bay matches nothing will have to be recovered. Also Plex (which makes server package for Synology) and Samsung Smart TVs are a match made in heaven.
Click to expand...

I may have to look into something like that for my usage in the future. I was smart about my HBA and bought a spare, so I have identical hardware in case of a failure. I'm not sure how much I want to monkey with stuff though. At this point, I kind of just want it to work with minimal effort.

As for the Synology...can it handle multiple streams at the same time from, say, 3 different sources?
 
These days an HTPC as a player is overkill, especially for a Novice. I would suggest a client player system using Plex as a server for rips. That way they can also access canned streaming services too which are growing in popularity. I would suggest a Roku or Fire TV/Stick or even Apple depending how their new box will be.

A big deciding factor are they more likely to go cord cutting or become big streamers in addition to cable or more likely to rip a huge library and play their rips.
 
jpm100 said:
These days an HTPC as a player is overkill, especially for a Novice. I would suggest a client player system using Plex as a server for rips. That way they can also access canned streaming services too which are growing in popularity. I would suggest a Roku or Fire TV/Stick or even Apple depending how their new box will be.

A big deciding factor are they more likely to go cord cutting or become big streamers in addition to cable or more likely to rip a huge library and play their rips.
Click to expand...

From my OP:
Note: There is not currently any High-speed Internet in his house, and there are no immediate plans for any.

To be honest, I'm not even sure broadband is available to him unless he went the satellite route.


Accessing canned streaming services is a moot point. To answer your last question...more likely to rip a huge library and play their rips.
 
Kelvarr said:
I may have to look into something like that for my usage in the future. I was smart about my HBA and bought a spare, so I have identical hardware in case of a failure. I'm not sure how much I want to monkey with stuff though. At this point, I kind of just want it to work with minimal effort.

As for the Synology...can it handle multiple streams at the same time from, say, 3 different sources?
Click to expand...

I havent had any issues streaming to 3 different Plex clients. None of my clients needed any transcoding so the Synology device was just providing data streams. That is why I love Samsung Smart TVs. They can handle 1080p streams with DTS without transcoding. Other clients include an Xbox one, a couple of Amazon Fire Stick, and a Roku Stick. The Roku stick is the only one that needs any type of transcoding. We rarely use that TV and the times we do its late at night when no one is awake since its our bedroom TV.
 
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