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Groups: Member
Joined: 2/29/2012
Posts: 1
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Hi everyone, I've just started work on creating an online movie service for the house. I bought the full license for MyMovies based on a friend's recommendation, so i have access to any components that i might need.
What I'm looking for here is some help understanding the architecture. I've never used MCE before, I've seen it and played with it, but never used it for a production system at home.
My first step in this journey was to rip my hard copy DVDs to ISO. I have about 500 or so now ripped and sitting in their own directories. The reason I chose ISO is because it works with XMBC and some other media players that I have around the house. I've had issues in the past with VOB files not playing correctly, like with movies that have multiple VOB files, the player will stop after each file and then restart again.... I'm haven't made up my mind on the ISO front, but that's what I did first. I can always go back and rip them to VOB if that's what I decide is a better format.
After ripping, i put every file in it's own directory on a NAS server. I have everything running from one central server in the house. It's a linux server with some very fast RAID disk. I like it because it's flexible and very fast. I can copy from my desktop to the storage system at about 100MB/s sustained which is almost line speed over gigabit. I have an infrant, but only get about 20MB/s to that one...
The plan is to keep everything in a single directory "Video" with subdirs for "TV", "Kids" etc... This way, when I'm playing movies from my appleTC (XBMC) i can easily find what I'm looking for.
I have build a simple HTCP that will go into my media center for the main MyMovies server. It's an old e8400 server with ssd boot disk and about 2.5TB raid 0 for data. I plan to use this, eventually to replace my cable DVR, but that's a phase 2 effort. Right now I just want to get the MM service working well.
right now I have the catalog manager running on my home system (which is where i rip). and the client server running on the mediaPC. I'm not sure how they sync up however. Do i need to have a "master" server with the collection and have clients that syn to that? I assumed that I would have the mediaPC just update itself based on what files it finds on the NAS system...but I'm not sure this is the correct way to go.
I've imported the movies into the MediaPC and it pulled all the artwork and extras in with it. And I did the same thing on my workstation that I'm using as the collection manager. I noticed that i was getting a ton of duplicates, which is probably just user error in the original import.
So back to my questions:
1) Controlling the PC -- I would like to use my Harmony remote. I just bought a cheap windows remote from amazon so I would have an IR receiver. Is this the right way to go? Is one IR receiver better than the others? Will a harmony work well for controlling my movies?
2) How do I add video files that are just random downloaded movies? Do i need to setup folders for each of those too? Do I add everything to the NAS folder and then MM just finds them and adds them to the catalog?
3) Am I crazy to stick with ISO for DVD movies?
4) what is the correct way to architect the client/server portion? Am I right to use the MediaPC as a pseudo Server that relies on the NAS for file storage?
5) I will likely add a media extender at some point if this works well for me, but can I use something I already have like an appleTV? What a good cheap extender?
That's all I have for now. Thanks for reading and helping if you can.
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Groups: Administration
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Joined: 11/2/2008
Posts: 4,530
Location: UK
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1. no idea depends on your setup and what you want the remote to do, i use a real microsoft media centre remote and the one in the mm app
2. you talking retail film or what exactly?
3. yes, we strongly recommend video_ts rips for dvds.
4. should be fine if i understand right
5. extenders are stupid, go with something like a small low power pc with a atom processor, i.e. acer revo 3700, you get all the power of windows to play 1080p video without the limitation of a extender or stand alone device.
My Movies Head Moderator
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Groups: Member
Joined: 5/15/2011
Posts: 87
Location: Houston
Rank:
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I can only add a little more to your first question...
I use a Harmony 900 remote with my HTPC and it does just fine for most things. Yes, you will want to have a Windows Vista Certified Media Center MCE Remote that you "map" the Harmony to. However, if you download the MyMovies iPhone/iPad application the remote works very nicely, including mouse control. Mouse control is difficult to get working with a Harmony, so I use my iPad when I need this. You may want to also look at IntelliRemote, works nicely too.
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Groups: Member
Joined: 10/24/2009
Posts: 2
Rank:
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From my experiences...
1) I use a low-end Harmony and it's been great. Even the little kids can handle it. My IR receiver is one that came with my HP Media Center PC but I did not like it's remote. I've not tried the iPod/iPad methods yet, but have a wireless Adesso keypad I pull out when I need to do anything beyond WMC work with the remote (like typing this or needing to mouse around - it has a track ball built in).
2) Don't now what you have in mind, but one thing I'll do sometimes is have a movie I have recorded from TV and will catalog it to MM if I want to keep it long term, by manually pulling the DVD title from the MM server and point to the DVR-MS file. There's probably a better or automated way to do this, but it works so I've not looked further.
3) I also started down the ISO path, but switched after reading the recommendations on the forum. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I could use WinRAR to unpack an ISO file to the VOBs without having to moun the ISO file and run it through my ripper again (that's how I'd started). It sped the process to unpack all the ISO's I'd previously done by hand.
4) Don't think MM cares. I am lowtech with just external HDD via USB to add space and it runs just fine from there, even at USB2.0 speed (older Vista machine), so NAS should be good enough.
5) Haven't done anything with extenders yet, but it sounds like XBOX is a popular choice (don't have one yet, and was thinking this could be more reason to justify it to my DW ;-)
Enjoy your new system!
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Groups: Member
Joined: 12/4/2009
Posts: 34
Rank:
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5) imho, don't get an XBOX for MM unless you want the other features the XBOX has to offer. WMC on the XBOX has been all but abandoned by MS, and it is a pain to use. XBOX WMC doesn't support VOBs or ISOs, so you will have to transcode. Even on gigabit, transcoding is usually unwatchable because of skipped frames and unsynched audio (many others here seem to have this problem, too), crappy FF and rewind. I had to rip a separate copy of all my VOBs into dvr-ms just for use on the XBOX. Even then, you get no subtitles and no DTS audio tracks, super sluggish (sometimes frustratingly unresponsive) UI, and random WMC crashes every other day.
I built a tiny HTPC using a Zotac AD02 for less then $300 that doesn't have any of the above problems. The one problem I have had with the E-350 platform (and this should apply to all Atoms as well) is that Netflix STILL has not upgraded their software to enable GPU HW acceleration in Silverlight 5, so Netflix HD streams (through a browser) will choke out the CPU. No other HD streaming problems- just Netflix. This has been an issue for a long time, so don't count on it being fixed, and spend a little more to buy a competent CPU if you like to stream Netflix. Maybe the Ceton Echo will be a good extender, but its not out yet.
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