Questions about HTCP build

K

kilobyte

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2005
Messages
186
So I finally decided to break down and build an htpc but i have a few questions as far as the software and storage.

I was wondering what everyone would recommend as far as the movie management software/interface? I was really hoping to find something that had an interface similar to Netflix where it would give me a thumbnail of the movie poster that I can select from. Also do not have cable service so I have no need for any dvr/tv guide service if that makes a difference. I have heard of a few such as xbmc or sage, any others i should look at?

Now as far as storage goes, I have a little over 400+ dvds and was not sure what would be the best method. I really would like an option where I can choose between having sub titles or not as well as being able to burn the movie back to a dvd if the need ever came up.

I would like to personally thank everyone who took the time to read this and reply.
 
media browser + windows media center 7.

It will give you thumbnail, poster, coverflow. In addition list imdb rating with summary. And you can find movies by actors....

I use another app called YAMMM, this scrubs my media folder and downloads all the meta data directly into flat files so that the meta data is static.
 
Sage is no more, Google bought it so you can't get it (yet) any more. XBMC is good but I personally don't like it. It is recommended by many though.

I use 7MC with Media Browser. I use Media Studio to customize it to my liking.
 
I also use 7MC with Media Browser. I use Media Center Master for updating the meta data on the files.

Storage wise, are you planning on putting some green drives in your HTPC or do you have a separate storage box?
 
Thanks for all the great responses.

Right now I plan on throwing in 3 2tb seagates in a raid 5 setup til I can get some more money together to build a full file server.
 
I would do XBMC. It's what I currently use. Personally I love how polished it is while being a very low cost setup to do if done on Linux, which is an additional benefit if you should ever chose to do software/fake raid. One of the benefits of doing Linux software raid is that it's completely transportable if something like the MB should die. It wouldn't matter if you were doing RAID5 that would as well survive a MB failure. Something I was completely grateful of last week when a Seagate drive (it was old) died along with the NVRaid bug.

That aside I would say if you were using tuners WMC7 is more cohesive, if you are not though XBMC's flexibility beats it hands down.
 
Thanks for the info kac, i spend a week messing with 7MC but was having alot of issues getting it to read iso files. Kac77 can you tell me do you use a remote with xbmc? or do you know how well a remote would interface with it?
 
xbmc

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I just got my HTPC setup, its the rig in the Lian-Li case in my sig. I'm using XBMC and really like it, other than a mildly clumsy netxflix interface.

It handles the mkv and flac files quite nicely, which was the main thing I was looking for.
 
kilobyte said:
Thanks for the info kac, i spend a week messing with 7MC but was having alot of issues getting it to read iso files. Kac77 can you tell me do you use a remote with xbmc? or do you know how well a remote would interface with it?
Click to expand...

If your on Windows then the MCE Remotes should be fully supported. There's even a plug in within XBMC for customization specifically for it. I'm on Linux and I'm using a MCE remote. It was more work configuring the remote than my previous Streamzap but I got all of the major buttons mapped now. Works pretty well at this point.
 
Thanks you all for the feed back, looks like you all made it easy for me. I am glad to hear the MCE remote works well in both linux and windows since i am thinking of running a stripped down version of ubuntu 10.04 with xbmc in stand alone mode.
 
kilobyte said:
Thanks you all for the feed back, looks like you all made it easy for me. I am glad to hear the MCE remote works well in both linux and windows since i am thinking of running a stripped down version of ubuntu 10.04 with xbmc in stand alone mode.
Click to expand...

10.04 is a good happy medium. Also consider the Streamzap remote. It's one of the best in terms of support with Ubuntu + XBMC as it has the full button mappings for it. The receiver might look a little cheap but it's well made for it's use.

Whatever you choose if you run into problems let me know. I'll walk you through it.
 
kac77 said:
If your on Windows then the MCE Remotes should be fully supported. There's even a plug in within XBMC for customization specifically for it. I'm on Linux and I'm using a MCE remote. It was more work configuring the remote than my previous Streamzap but I got all of the major buttons mapped now. Works pretty well at this point.
Click to expand...

Unless they seriously made some upgrades my experience with XBMC (Win) with a MCE remote was terrible. Half of the remote's buttons didn't work. I understand that the MCE remotes were fully supported in the Linux version.

Anyways it was one of the many reasons I don't use XBMC. This goes back to 8.10 through 10.0 so if that situation has changed I might have to revisit it.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Unless they seriously made some upgrades my experience with XBMC (Win) with a MCE remote was terrible. Half of the remote's buttons didn't work. I understand that the MCE remotes were fully supported in the Linux version.

Anyways it was one of the many reasons I don't use XBMC. This goes back to 8.10 through 10.0 so if that situation has changed I might have to revisit it.
Click to expand...

Well for Windows the problem is that the remotes send keyboard presses instead of key codes that are interpreted. So for XBMC you have to remap just about all of the buttons above the standard stop, play, forward, etc. Which can be painful if you don't know what the remote is sending. For Windows the easiest solution was using the EventGhost plugin it can be done in about 15 minutes. Found Here. Which makes setting up that remote crazy easy that's why I said it was fully supported because if the only thing stopping me from a fully working remote is 15 min, then in my eyes that will work.

For Linux, I believe that distros above 10.04 have the MCE remote driver built into the kernel. However that alone won't be enough. Getting the remote to work goes like this for 10.04 and 10.10 (not 11.04)...

In terminal
1.sudo apt-get install lirc
2. Select MCE / Windows Media Center Remotes
3. Restart

That gives you I would say 50% of the buttons. If you want all of the buttons. Then in terminal : Type 'irw'

Then start pressing keys to figure out what the key codes are so you can map them. Or and this would probably be preferable.... ask someone for their LIrcmap.xml file which contains all of their blood sweat and tears...LOL Otherwise it can take a while to test buttons and see what layout you prefer. But again it can be done......hmmm maybe I should do a write up.....
 
I've used two different MCE remotes. When it was plugged in during install it worked fine with only a couple of buttons not working but they were ones I hadn't bothered to configure like Radio, Guide and Power on/off. Every time I'd tried adding the remote after install I had problems.

There is also the official XBMC remote made by Motorola.
http://www.pulse-eight.com/store/products/96-motorola-nyxboard-hybrid.aspx

Its a bit ugly (its their brick phone model i guess) but it works well.
 
CrimandEvil said:
Ah, so it's not really fully supported then.
Click to expand...

Well in terms of remotes....yeah it is. When I say fully supported I'm talking about at the driver level. No Media Center Remote is going to perfectly map into something else that's not Windows Media Center. You'll always have to remap buttons. The question is can you have ALL of the buttons work and/or perform a function? So far with the MCE remote I finished mapping yesterday..... the answer is yes.

That's not to say somewhere over the rainbow there's not a manufacturer who has key mappings for Windows Media Center and XBMC or whatever other front end you want. I just haven't come across them. Therefore you'll have to remap buttons.
 
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