Idiot guide to media server centre

Red05

Hi all I have an LG Smart TV.
I would like to have a "media hub" with all my music, tv box sets, movies accessible from primarily the TV but also the Laptop.
Is this possible? I have googled it but I don't really know what I need. Do I need a NAS box?

I should mention I'd like to store all the files on external harddrive as my laptop doesn't have sufficient space on it.

Any suggestions?

Stuxnet

Cheapest & easiest option for you is, in layman terms, you want mini computer that will connect to a standard external hdd, and output too your telly !! simples

Forget NAS for the moment, overkill for your needs !

I would suggest a tiny 30 euro computer like a raspberry pi, use xbian or raspbmc as the operating systems, simple to install on a sd card, and any hdd, preferably a high capacity usb stick, or any plugged in external drive will do for storage

Darcosti

I was told about to raspberry Pi before and it sounds like an ideal solution. I know there are instruction manuals on its website, but is it easy to set up?

Darcosti

thanks stuxnet

superleedsdub

I found the Raspberry Pi fairly straightforward to set up (although I wasn`t new to media players/servers) and it is a great cheap option ( I have 2 of them acting as media players with raspbmc) Full instructions are on the raspbmc website.

Have you checked to see if your TV has a USB port and if it can play files directly from an external Hard drive? Most Smart TVs have this as standard. if the TV is networked you may also be able to share files on the drive across your network while it is connected to your TV.

Tom Dunne

Darcosti wrote: »

I was told about to raspberry Pi before and it sounds like an ideal solution. I know there are instruction manuals on its website, but is it easy to set up?

Hmmm, I don't think it is easy for a novice to set up. I had multiple iterations of setup/fail/reinstall before I got it the way I wanted.

I had a PC running XBMC, so got my hands on a Raspberry Pi to replace it.

One of the issues I had was ending up with a 32Gb SD card that had only 250Mb free. As I know a bit about disks and partitioning, I was able to make the remaining 30Gb available to xbmc as a different partition - not something I would think a newbie would be able to do.

My advice would be to get an old PC first, install Ubuntu on it, download xbmc for it and see how you go. Then, once you are more familiar with it, you can upgrade to a Raspberry Pi, still using xbmc, albeit a different version.

I've also played around with MediaPortal - worth looking at if you are unsure about Linux and are more comfortable with Windows.

Red05

Stuxnet wrote: »

Cheapest & easiest option for you is, in layman terms, you want mini computer that will connect to a standard external hdd, and output too your telly !! simples

Forget NAS for the moment, overkill for your needs !

I would suggest a tiny 30 euro computer like a raspberry pi, use xbian or raspbmc as the operating systems, simple to install on a sd card, and any hdd, preferably a high capacity usb stick, or any plugged in external drive will do for storage

Will have a look at the raspberry pi. Thank you!

Red05

superleedsdub wrote: »

I found the Raspberry Pi fairly straightforward to set up (although I wasn`t new to media players/servers) and it is a great cheap option ( I have 2 of them acting as media players with raspbmc) Full instructions are on the raspbmc website.

Have you checked to see if your TV has a USB port and if it can play files directly from an external Hard drive? Most Smart TVs have this as standard. if the TV is networked you may also be able to share files on the drive across your network while it is connected to your TV.

Hi yes there are two USB ports as far as I can remember.

Suppose what I ideally want is a central location for my files that can be accessed from different locations in the house e.g. tv streaming my movies/tv shows/music, laptop in bedroom for watching a box set before bed etc.

superleedsdub

Red05 wrote: »

Suppose what I ideally want is a central location for my files that can be accessed from different locations in the house e.g. tv streaming my movies/tv shows/music, laptop in bedroom for watching a box set before bed etc.

From the sounds of it a NAS is the ideal device for you, but they are not cheap.
Alternatively, you could use a PC/MAC/HTPC as a server.

Does your router have a USB port? You could then attach an external drive to it and share the contents on your network, but you would need to check if your router allows this

Another option would be a media player like the WDTV live. I have one of these and you can attach an external drive to it and access the drive over your network

FastFullBack

Red05 wrote: »

Hi all I have an LG Smart TV.
I would like to have a "media hub" with all my music, tv box sets, movies accessible from primarily the TV but also the Laptop.
Is this possible? I have googled it but I don't really know what I need. Do I need a NAS box?

I should mention I'd like to store all the files on external harddrive as my laptop doesn't have sufficient space on it.

Any suggestions?

I have this guy with my LG smart tv and it's perfect. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056556502

It has torrent software so is automatically downloads all my tv shows. Once done the built in tv media players can play the files as they are all on the same network. Sweet. Just this week I was able to install Plex server on the NAS which means I can now use the LG Media Link app which has a pretty good interface. The device can also be a iTunes server