
Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup? - joshwcomeau
I currently watch all media (TV shows, movies) through a MacBook connected via HDMI to a TV, but I&#x27;m looking to invest in a better setup.<p>I&#x27;m thinking of buying a mini PC and connecting it to some sort of network storage. Then, I could download content to this network drive on other home computers. I&#x27;d imagine I&#x27;d use XBMC, unless something better has come along in the last few years?<p>Curious to hear how others have solved this problem, and how it&#x27;s working for you.
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devonkim
You can give Plex a try if you have a number of lightweight clients you'd like
to consume your media through. There's several competing media servers with
different priorities but Plex is rather dominant nowadays if you don't mind
spending a little money for some conveniences.

I've used Plex in a VM and a ZFS based NAS for nearly 4 years now and have had
relatively few problems. I've used Android, iOS, Windows, Apple TV, Amazon
Fire TV, and MacOS clients all with decently usable results. The hardest thing
to deal with in Plex is mostly about sizing your server for the amount of
transcoded streams you'll need. With Kodi, this concern is mostly relegated to
the client. While mobile computing capabilities have gotten greater the
fundamental problem I ran into for years was that no one device will play
everything correctly besides a PC. As such, a transcoding server from a PC
(even though Plex has several server options including nVidia Shield and some
NAS devices) makes the most sense for compatibility across all random media
files you could obtain online. Otherwise, your network transfer speed matters
still just like with Kodi and a lot of people's wireless setups are just
really bad that get glossed over when using streaming native media like from
Amazon and Netflix.

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la_fayette
I tried to have a good and not expensive approach on that. So in my opinion i
have a quite conservative setting.

I have a raspberry pi 3 with osmc installed via noobs at startup. Additionally
I bought a DVB-S USB Stick ([http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV-
Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ulti...](http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV-
Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ultimate-6-2016-DVB-S/S2.html)) for germany. A standard
TV is connected via HDMI. I use a KODI android app as a remote control.

Additionally I have bought 1 TB NAS on ebay in the cellar which is connected
via network cable to the wifi router.

Without TV I had total cost of approximately 300 €

I have connected all music services (soundcloud, etc), all mediathek services
of german and austria television providers. Also youtube and vimeo. Everything
works great and was extremely low cost, i would say.

~~~
roryisok
I have a similar setup, Rpi3 with OSMC / Kodi installed.

I turned an old 500GB laptop drive into an external HD for storage, with reuse
of parts I'd say the whole thing cost me €50/€60 - for the Rpi3, Case, PSU
(though most micro USB phone chargers will work so don't buy one unless you
need one), Micro SDHC card, and SATA to USB cable for the hard drive (I milled
out an old Gameboy and stuck it in there for a retro look)

Advantages: Cheap, no remote required (TV remote can control it through HDMI,
or you can use an app), low power, handles 1080p content just fine

Disadvantages: There's currently no way (that I know of) to get Netflix
working on Rpi3 hardware. Netflix has no native linux app, and the only
browsers it works through are Chrome and Firefox, which are not available on
Raspbian or any other Rpi distro. (I would love to be wrong about this. If its
possible, somebody _please_ educate me)

~~~
la_fayette
Yes this is something i found out recently, that the remote control works over
hdmi. This quite astonished me! Also it works out of the box with osmc...

Chromium (open source chrome) definitely works. However if you installed osmc
you have propably the openelec distro. I am not sure if you can run a browser
on it...

~~~
roryisok
I had to change some keybindings to map the "back" button on my remote, but it
largely worked for me out of the box

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nsouto
My setup is based on Roku devices connected to a Freenas server with 12x 3Tb
HDD on a RaidZ2 setup to store all the media which is then served through Plex
Media Server. It works very well and I've had no problems with this setup
aside from a hard drive dying on me every once in a while.

Plex also has an option to use Google Drive or Dropbox and others as a storage
medium through their new (although only for the premium Plex Pass holders)
Plex Cloud (it's also possible to roll your own though, i've written about it
here: [https://nunosouto.com/blog/how-to-install-plex-
cloud](https://nunosouto.com/blog/how-to-install-plex-cloud))

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swalladge
I have an Intel NUC set up with Kodi (formerly XBMC) on linux. Able to connect
to remote samba shares for serving media, kodi has plenty of extensions and
features so you can use it with youtube, radio streams, weather, photos, etc.
when not watching video. Also the NUC I have has an IR receiver so a normal tv
remote can be used to control kodi (big plus).

Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android
based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly
connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

~~~
tuananh
> Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android
> based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly
> connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

Exactly. This is the reason I went for Intel NUC as well. I don't always use
PC but when I do, one is always available.

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trelliscoded
I just have a windows 10 machine plugged into the TV. I have a server farm
upstairs with plenty of storage for archives of TV shows if I want them, but
these days I can get pretty much anything I want from one of the streaming
services online.

I also have a glass table between the couch and the TV, so a dark field mouse
is required if I'm doing anything that needs a real mouse. For everything else
I just use a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo from Logitech.

~~~
Steppschuh
You could check out the Remote Control Collection app. It will allow you to
use your phone for controlling the mouse, keyboard and media players.

------
rcalafato
Synology 1513+ running Plex Server and a FireTV Box stuck to every TV in the
house. All of my media is stored on the Synology (5x 4TB drives).

I also have one of the less used PCs in the house running Plex Server, and we
connect to that for viewing Plex Channels (basically, plugins that front-end
NBC.com, ABC.com, and a bunch of other services) to take some of the
transcoding load off the Synology.

I have a lifetime subscription to Plex.tv and LOVE the service. The only thing
I'd like to improve about my set up is the processor in the Synology, which is
too slow to transcode on the fly so I have to target my encodes to my current
hardware and rerip when my clients get more capable.

~~~
jmathai
+1 for Synology. I've got the DS214play which is the entry-level version that
supports transcoding [1]. It doubles as a backup to all my photos [2][3][4].

[1] [https://www.synology.com/en-
us/products/DS216play](https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS216play)

[2] [https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-
auto...](https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-automated-
photo-workflow-a2ff95b46f8f#.dmwyjlc57)

[3] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-
personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal-
exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec)

[4] [https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-
go...](https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-google-
photos-and-elodie-afb753b8c724)

------
squarefoot
Raspberry PI 3 plus LibreElec. Cheap, consumes a lot less than a PC and plays
everything I can throw at it. I would definitely use different boards for non
video related tasks, but in this context the RPi still is the one to go for
non trivial reasons such as full CEC support and video acceleration.

The home NAS is a MiniITX board with multiple SATA ports and NAS4Free.

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pjc50
Mini PC: [http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-
pc/pp_376410.html](http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_376410.html) (not
especially fast but it will just about do 4k)

I have a slightly different requirement: I want to

a) watch and record broadcast TV

b) watch youtube/iplayer/amazon

c) watch other random TV and streaming websites (Eurovision selection shows,
my wife is a huge fan)

This leads to Windows, and the best solution for recording TV there actually
seems to be Windows Media Centre ("ehome"). Unfortunately this is 7 only, so
I'm going to try installing a version that's been hacked by the community to
run on Win10.

Most of the HTPC software seems to have PVR as an afterthought, where it's
either very hard to set up or unreliable. I never want to see tvheadend's web
interface again.

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mmanfrin
Shield TV. Hands down the best steamer you can get. And on top of the
streaming benefits, the game stream function is legitimately good. Input lag
was not really noticable, even when playing something like rocket league. When
I bought it, I went from three devices (Kodi box, Chromecast, Fire TV) to one.

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PebblesHD
It used to be a 5m HDMI cable from my workstation to my TV with super+p bound
to output all to HDMI. Worked reasonably well but became cumbersome when I
wanted to use my PC whilst playing media. Currently, I have a tiny Linux box
running in my media unit with a Plex client and a Plex server running on my
NAS to store everything. Everything is now controlled from a Bluetooth remote
for the interface so it's generally pretty resilient. So far the only issue
has been transcoding and playing back >1080p media, struggles a bit to keep
up, but I suspect the atom in the NAS is as much to blame as the Linux box.
Kodi/XBMC could work well in this case as a client as long as sharing was
properly configured from Plex server.

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nailer
I've had a variety of XBMC, Plex, Windows Media Center (hacked to run on
Windows 10 and with a variety of mods), various multichannel TV tuners, cable
card readers, DLNA devices, dinovo mini keyboards, reprogrammable remotes,
etc.

I currently use an Amazon Fire TV, as fighting an endless war with content
creators to steal their content is a waste of my time (I also really like the
voice search on the Fire devices).

I pay for films, and most TV, but steal Game of Thrones since, bizarrely, it's
not available in full HD via Sky's app. In that case, I play it via DLNA.

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cdubzzz
RPi w/RetroPi, which also integrates Kodi, and a 4TB USB-powered hard drive.
Also two 8bitdo SNES style controllers for gaming and controlling Kodi. They
are wonderful.

I only recently added Kodi to RPi and it's really nice. I used to have two 2GB
MyBook drives with external power and they were very bulky. I would hook them
up to my Bluray player with it's massively shitty interface. The new drive is
maybe a quarter the size of one of them and Kodi is beyond simple to use.

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ja27
Plex server on an old i3 laptop with a broken screen and some external USB
disks.

Plays in the Plex app or browser on everyone's devices, AppleTV, Fire TV
Stick, Vizio TV, etc.

------
abrookewood
Pretty simple: XBMC/Kodi on Amazon FireTV, connected to Samba share running on
my NAS (Ubuntu with ZFS running on HP Microserver). Kodi pretty much plays
anything.

~~~
8draco8
I have almost the same setup, one difference being that I have Synology DS215j
NAS. I've transited recently from NoName Android box (had it for over 2 years)
to newest Amazon FireStick. There is one huge draw back of that. I can not use
Amazon Firestick when there is no internet connection. So forget about
searching for movie in your library when there is no internet.

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fuzzygroup
All my flat panel TVs have Roku 3 boxes (I don't see the need for 4K video
since most of my content isn't 4K). I took a 2010 15" MacBook running 3
versions of OSX behind Seira and that runs Plex Media Server. This setup gives
us easy access to Netflix, Amazon Prime as well as local content sourced from
DVDs we own. Plex also lets us share videos created from our phones as well
but that's probably its weakest feature.

~~~
fuzzygroup
Another poster commented on network issues and he's definitely correct. In
terms of our network, I'm running an access point from our fiber provider
connected to an Eero wifi range extender coupled to a Circle network filter.
All of our Roku boxes are connected to wifi except for 1 which is hard wired.
The Eero boxes span 3 floors and performance is (finally) pretty good.

------
qerim
HP Microserver Gen8 with:

> Debian 8

> Xeon E3-1260L

> 12 GB RAM

> 120GB SSD (OS), 2 x 3TB WD RED (Data), 2 x 4TB HGST (Movies/TV Shows)

> Plex (Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos)

> CouchPotato (Movie Downloading)

> Transmission (Torrents)

> CrashPlan (backups)

> Raspberry Pi Camera Streams (samba share)

> \+ more stuff

All these applications run in their own docker containers. I used to do local
web development in a virtual machine, now it all sits on this server. Love it
and it works 'magically'.

Connected to the TV is a Quad-core android TV Box.

~~~
joshwcomeau
Sounds like a good setup!

CouchPotato seems neat. Are you familiar with any similar services for TV
Shows? Often I like to enjoy obscure shows that don't make it to Netflix.

~~~
qerim
Thanks!

I haven't had time to use this:
[http://www.sickbeard.com/](http://www.sickbeard.com/)

But a lot recommend it on reddit.

------
jason_slack
Mac Mini with a Drobo (30tb raw space - 6tb x 5). I have it setup with double
redundancy so the space is about 12tb less. Currently using about 11tb. This
Mac Mini also does other things like web hosting, file sharing, XCode build,
cache, Software Update, etc.

Apple TV and iOS devices to view the content.

I have iTunes content from about 2007 along with DVD's I own that I have
ripped

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Gustomaximus
2 Roku's and an old laptop running plex. I'd like to move to a central setup
with general file storage at some point. Potentially even tie in to be more of
a home hub with power tracking etc.

A deal-breaker would be losing remotes that Roku offer (or similar
alternatives) as they make media viewing simple and easy for adults, kids and
guests alike.

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zamalek
Hardware: NAS, Raspberry Pi 2, Logitech diNovo, PC.

Software: Kodi+Exodus, Plex, Moonlight (+ Steam on the PC).

I do everything that the Pi can do directly on the Pi (which is a lot). For
every other purpose (including games), I stream from my PC with Steam in-home
streaming.

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murxmaster
I like MythTV: a client/server based TV-Recording application. Very good at
planning recordings, avoiding conflicts etc. MythTv ss able to handle multiple
sources (Cable, Satellit, IP-TV, DVB ... , to play DVD and much more.

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dagw
Personally I'm using a Playstation 3 and Plex. Maybe not the most sexy of
solutions, but it's cheap, has worked flawlessly for years and I can even play
games on it if the mood takes me.

~~~
amorphid
+1 for cheap and easy. I'm using a Playstation 4 + USB thumb drive. It was the
cheapest & easiest set up I could find that would play files from a storage
device, and give me a remote.

Before the PS4, I was pretty happy with my Google Chromecast, but it can't
play video files unless you stream them over a network. I also got tired of
using my phone and/or browser as a remote.

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mavidser
Raspberry Pi 3 running OSMC. Connect an external HDD and plug it to your TV. I
use Yatse on Android to control it. It also doubles up as a NAS if you want to
watch movies on other devices.

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ionised
I use my gaming desktop as a Plex media server as well. I jut stream to
various devices around the house (like the FireTV).

Works very well, even while I'm playing a game.

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jlebrech
Android TV with Plex and Kodi, and a Mac with Plex server installed. I really
need a Plex capable NAS to not have to wake up my mac.

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pilooch
Rasp3 running openelec / kodi, never looked back. All Open Source, not
snooping on you :)

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cyberjunkie
Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC (Kodi), with a large USB HDD attached. It
doubles as my NAS.

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jdmoreira
I just have the latest Apple Tv

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tony-allan
TV -- Raspberry Pi 2 / Raspbian / Kodi -- 3TB disk

Remote control with Kodi iOS apps.

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drKarl
A 2010 Mac mini connected to the TV and Logitech keyboard with trackpad

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jazzdog
Apple TV and a Mac that I use to stream movies to the Apple TV.

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MihailBurduja
Raspberry Pi 3 + OSMC (Kodi) + 2 HDD connected to the router.

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dominotw
chromecast

