- Dec 7, 2011
- 3
- 0
- 18,510
This kind of crosses into multiple different topics, but hoping some of the experts here can lend some guidance on a network setup for streaming. I'm looking to move to more of a streaming process for my multimedia. Goal here is to create a network solution that allows me to stream multimedia files to
Current Setup is two rooms, next to each other.
Office
Shuttle SX58J3
■Intel i7
■6GB RAM
■WD Raptor 250GB HD (Boot Drive)
■1TB WD HD
■2TB WD Caviar Green HD (2x)
FIOS Wireless Router with 4 Wired Ports
Living Room
Panasonic P60S30 60" Plasma
Denon AVR-2112CI
Western Digital HDTV Live
XBox 360
Wireless Devices
iPad 2
iPhone
Work Laptop
Basically, I have all of my movies and music on my current computer, using the 2TB WD drives. To watch a movie on my plasma in the living room, I copy it onto an external drive and connect that external drive to a WDTV HD Live. That process is lengthy and kind of problematic as the copy of the file to the portable drive often gets corrupted and the WDTV won't play it or hangs. So then I have to copy the file back to the drive again and it works fine. I'm looking for a cleaner solution to share my multimedia throughout the house.
I currently have one ethernet cable running to the living room and basically have to move it between devices when I need one of them on the network (the AVR, WD HDTV Live, and XBox 360 all have ethernet ports). So really I'm looking at two or three things:
1) What is the best way to tie the living room into the network? Nothing there now is wireless as-is. Some have wireless accessories, but not really interested in that route. Figuring there's less latency and better speeds by just adding a four port gigabit router or switch to the living room. Benefit of the router would be upgrading to a Wireless N standard, instead of the 802.11g that I think the FIOS router uses. But the router I'm looking it is around $190 (Netgear N900) and a gigabit switch seems to run around $50. I hear the Netgear GS605 has a high failure rate, so any opinions on a good gigabit switch? And any opinions on going router vs switch?
2) Best way to share media across the network? Windows Home Server? NAS? Windows 7 Media Center? I'd kind of prefer to move the large file storage out of the Shuttle PC and into something with some redundancy (already lost 2TB of files previously when two other drives died on me). Also, I had originally intended to use the XBox to stream from the Shuttle as a Windows 7 Media Center Extender, there are a number of problems with streaming MKV HD files to extenders (http://markknijnenburg.blogspot.com/2011/01/windows-7-media-center-xbox360.html) without transcoding. Not sure if that issue's been fixed yet, but I know the WDTV hasn't had any issues playing the MKV files. Of course with the iPhone and iPad, I've got all my music managed by iTunes at the moment, so I'm sure that adds some complexity to the sharing of my music. Any thoughts guys?
Edit
If it matters, the CPU is a i7 930 and my GPU is an ATI 5700 series.
Also I forgot to mention that I'm looking at building an HTPC to replace my FIOS DVR (using a Ceton cable card tuner). Unfortunately I'm in one of the FIOS markets that got sold to Frontier and what's left of the tv service is a shell of what Verizon offered/offers. Mentioning that now in case it will impact the approach to the sharing of video files.
Current Setup is two rooms, next to each other.
Office
Shuttle SX58J3
■Intel i7
■6GB RAM
■WD Raptor 250GB HD (Boot Drive)
■1TB WD HD
■2TB WD Caviar Green HD (2x)
FIOS Wireless Router with 4 Wired Ports
Living Room
Panasonic P60S30 60" Plasma
Denon AVR-2112CI
Western Digital HDTV Live
XBox 360
Wireless Devices
iPad 2
iPhone
Work Laptop
Basically, I have all of my movies and music on my current computer, using the 2TB WD drives. To watch a movie on my plasma in the living room, I copy it onto an external drive and connect that external drive to a WDTV HD Live. That process is lengthy and kind of problematic as the copy of the file to the portable drive often gets corrupted and the WDTV won't play it or hangs. So then I have to copy the file back to the drive again and it works fine. I'm looking for a cleaner solution to share my multimedia throughout the house.
I currently have one ethernet cable running to the living room and basically have to move it between devices when I need one of them on the network (the AVR, WD HDTV Live, and XBox 360 all have ethernet ports). So really I'm looking at two or three things:
1) What is the best way to tie the living room into the network? Nothing there now is wireless as-is. Some have wireless accessories, but not really interested in that route. Figuring there's less latency and better speeds by just adding a four port gigabit router or switch to the living room. Benefit of the router would be upgrading to a Wireless N standard, instead of the 802.11g that I think the FIOS router uses. But the router I'm looking it is around $190 (Netgear N900) and a gigabit switch seems to run around $50. I hear the Netgear GS605 has a high failure rate, so any opinions on a good gigabit switch? And any opinions on going router vs switch?
2) Best way to share media across the network? Windows Home Server? NAS? Windows 7 Media Center? I'd kind of prefer to move the large file storage out of the Shuttle PC and into something with some redundancy (already lost 2TB of files previously when two other drives died on me). Also, I had originally intended to use the XBox to stream from the Shuttle as a Windows 7 Media Center Extender, there are a number of problems with streaming MKV HD files to extenders (http://markknijnenburg.blogspot.com/2011/01/windows-7-media-center-xbox360.html) without transcoding. Not sure if that issue's been fixed yet, but I know the WDTV hasn't had any issues playing the MKV files. Of course with the iPhone and iPad, I've got all my music managed by iTunes at the moment, so I'm sure that adds some complexity to the sharing of my music. Any thoughts guys?
Edit
If it matters, the CPU is a i7 930 and my GPU is an ATI 5700 series.
Also I forgot to mention that I'm looking at building an HTPC to replace my FIOS DVR (using a Ceton cable card tuner). Unfortunately I'm in one of the FIOS markets that got sold to Frontier and what's left of the tv service is a shell of what Verizon offered/offers. Mentioning that now in case it will impact the approach to the sharing of video files.
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