I am getting ready to build a PC server for all my media across the board. Getting to lazy to get up and put a disc in and I have a lot of movies that are not being watched because of it.

I currently have all my music (that took a long time) in FLAC on a external HDD, Movies are next but waiting for the build out.

The PC hardware end of things I have got under control.

Without prejudicing you with my thoughts on OS and related software, streamer and player, I would like to hear yours.

I want all media to be available to approximately 4-5 TV's all wired network. No Smart (hate that word) TV's.

I am looking for validation/better ideas!

Thank All Y'all

Mike

OS for the server: Windows Home Server
[Link: newegg.com]

Plugin for server: MyMovies
http://www.mymovies.dk/

Movie Ripping: AnyDVD HD - Integrates perfectly with MyMovies
[Link: slysoft.com]

Client boxes: Intel NUC
[Link: newegg.com]

Clients software: XBMC You can run under Windows or Linux, your choice.
http://xbmc.org/

Use this to Rip your Movies and unlock DRM.
[Link: slysoft.com]

And this to manage your movies.
http://www.mediabrowser3.com/

Works inside of Windows Media Center.

or

MyMovies to manage your collection.

Don't know much about it but my buddy is running PLEX. It seems to be pretty awesome.

Mac Mini with a NAS.

bcf1963 you beat me to the punch!

+1

I will advise that on some PC builds, using XMBC, can show signs of video tearing.
On my particular build, Windows Media Center was much more stable!

Does Windows Home Server handle Flac now? It didn't when I first started looking to convert CDs to Flac.

For Movies, Plex Media Server + Roku at each TV as client. You could do music that way too, but it might be better to keep that separate if you have a control system that will allow you to browse music without having to use a TV gui.

how many movies are we talking about?I have 28tb server but keep my music separate just so I don't have to keep the beast powered 24/7.

Can't you set up your server to spin down drives when they aren't in use? This saves wear on the drives, as well as power.

If you can't do that with your server, please let us know which it is... So I never consider it! :)

I have a Mac mini in my basement with one 1.5 TB drive for photos, music and TV shows, and another drive for movies. I have five AppleTVs in my house. Each one is hardwired into my network except 2, wires are there but I am lazy.

I have a PC with an LG bd player. I use the pc to rip BDs and DVDs, then encode them using handbrake for AppleTV 3 format using H264. I then drag them to the drives hooked to the network. The pc encodes faster than the Mac, and the pc has a bd drive in it. It's a 6-core AMD with 16gbs of ram.

I can play any video file on any AppleTV in my house very easily. I can also put them onto my iPads, iPhones, and iPods too. I also use a program called air video on the Mac that allows me to stream or download a movie from my server onto one of my iDevices when I am not on my home network. Two of my appletvs are the hacked appletv2, which I really don't use for the hacked stuff anymore.

I just set up plex for a client and they used the WD TV boxes at each location and they worked pretty good too. Either way, you will probably have to rip and encode.

Mike

 If you're not interested in building it yourself, I had a guy stop by my office awhile back, he builds them as a sideline.  I threw it up on the projector and let him demo it for me.  It was pretty impressive.  

It was rack mountable, it had an option to have a screen on the face of it so you could see what you were working on.  He could install as many TB as you wanted and he was using (somebody will correct me on this because I'm not going to say it right) the Xbox XBMC platform for it.  I liked it a lot, but not for my customers.  

Shoot me a PM if you're interested and I'll drag up his info.  
As I recall, I think he wanted $4-700 depending on the amount of storage. 

I have a NAS/PLEX Server and Roku at every TV in my house except the main TV which has it's own box dedicated and it's running XBMC

Love that setup

My Theater is fed by a unRaid NAS currently sitting at 14TB and expandable to 33TB. A Dune HD player handles the movies off of the NAS. The NAS ending up costing about $1200 at the current size and put together in a rack mount configuration by myself. The NAS normally has its disks spun down, and the theater spins them up when it is started. A disk on the NAS will spin down after an hour of no accesses.

A BR movie starts 7 seconds after it is selected. All BR/DVD's are kept in Matroska format (.mkv) using MakeMKV to do the ripping. Previews and "dire warnings" are stripped when the disk is ripped along with other stuff I do not want.

The theater is controlled by an ASROCK PC. The PC controls all components using TCP/IP, RS232, IR in that order of preference. The PC runs my Librarian which is modeled after the Kelaidescape system. Once a movie is picked, it directs the DUNE to play it by supplying the full path name. The PC is controlled by a PRONTO PRO 9800 over wi-fi or an iPad also over iPad. i like the Pronto better because of the hard buttons.

The AVP is an Anthem 50v and the PJ is a JVC 56R running in pseudo 4K mode.

TV is via a TIVO elite unit able to record 4 channels at the same time and with its own internal storage of 2TB.

There is a VUDU player as one of the inputs to the AVP.

Audio amp is a 7 channel Outlaw unit and speakers are by B&W, with the Subwoofer by Velodyne.

I keep all the original disks in a closet just because of my moral compass and the fact that I have family in the film business, and I have developed software for sale.

More info on the theater can be gotten at www.the-gordons.net

What is your control system of choice?

Vortexbox running Squeezebox and Plex server. Roku clients at the TV's.