HTPC operating system advice

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adam30k

Gawd
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Aug 18, 2002
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So I've been following this sub-forum for awhile along with reading what I can online. I want to build an HTPC box to make things seamless with the different media I watch and what I have connected. I hate gimme-a-solution threads but I've come to point where I should ask for advice to see what my best options are because I have some varied demands.

What I do right now is over the air TV is played via my normal TV. Netflix plays through my Wii and any video files or other streaming services I play via my laptop connected with HDMI.

Here's what I would like to do in my living room:

Have a small device (not a full desktop) that can play the following, controlled by a remote control like a MCE remote.

Play live TV via over the air antenna. I don't have cable TV.

Play media files. Mostly videos but I don't care at all about 1080p or a particular file extension and I don't have a sizable collection. Usually just a folder of at the most 2 week old TV episodes.

Play Netflix and maybe Hulu/whatever. This seems to be the tricky part.

Play Pandora or Spotify, something for streaming music since I don't collect a music library.

I'd like to do this in as much of a seamless environment as I could so I'd like to have everything through one interface with a traditional remote. What I can do, most likely would need to do, is have the actual files running off of my pre-existing file server. I've played around a little with Plex. My file server right now runs Windows XP just because I've never bothered doing anything else with the box.

So it seems like I can have one or two of my main demands (TV, Netflix or video) but not all three in the same OS. Windows Media Center kind of fits the bill so I'll just see what Windows 8 looks like, since MCE in Windows 7 seems dormant. Something open source would be nice cause I like to tinker and would like to save money and support the open source method.

Any ideas?
 
Unfortunately, non-Windows OSes are basically out since Netflix requires Microsoft's Silverlight tech. Obviously, that Silverlight tech isn't ported over to non-Windows OSes.

Why not keep using Plex as your media center?
 
So the Netflix channel doesn't work on the Linux version? I'm still experimenting with Plex only used it for about an hour of watching so far.
 
I use MythTV. I have mythtvbackend running on my server machine and a couple mythfrontend's serving up the live tv and mkv files on the tv's needed.

Of course, I'm a single guy and love to tweak things around... I'm not sure I'd recommend this setup for a family that just wants to watch tv. An XBMC + MythBox setup adds a prettier/more user friendly ui to the live tv/media experience, but there are compatibility issues to be aware of (i.e. MythTV .25 doesn't just work with MythBox, without tweaks, etc.).

I just use MythTV for videos and tv. I use squeezeslave/squeezeserver for the whole mp3 deal--MythTV and XBMC do that as well, but the simplicity of the sqeezeslave setup does just what I need, quicker.
 
adam30k said:
So the Netflix channel doesn't work on the Linux version? I'm still experimenting with Plex only used it for about an hour of watching so far.
Click to expand...


Plex is really nice. Its mostly just like XBMC on the HTPC, but its really all about the identification and tagging of of your shows. It works really really well if you have Sickbeard, SABNZBD+ and Couchpotato all setup. Those clients all have options to even notify Plex to update its DB.

Its really a slick system when you have a Roku, iPad or Android device.
 
I enjoy the flexibility of a desktop rather than a dedicated device. WMC and XBMC are awesome, then i just bring up hulu in a webbrowser, as i dont really care for hulu desktop. WMC basically just handles my OTA programming, and sometimes netflix. XBMC takes care of the rest of my media needs.
 
Sounds like I'll keep WMC in mind since I don't have intensive media library requirements but do want plugins like Netflix and streaming music. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
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