(Part 2) Top products from r/xbmc

Damn, This got a bit long and didn't really scratch the surface. Sorry.

Here's my setup:

Router: Linksys E3000 running dd-wrt firmware

Media Server/Nas: Re-purposed Dell Vostro 200, Celeron 420 1.6Ghz, 4Gb Ram, Win7 Pro, 6TB Storage (2TB+4TB), Shares are served with Windows SMB & haneWIN NFS Server.

House Has 3 TVs: Living Room, Bedroom, and Basement Office

Living Room: XBMC Running on a Foxconn nt-A3700, Win7, 4gb RAM, 500gb HDD. Connected via Wireless N. Bose Cinemate II Sound System (1080p HDMI, S/PDIF Coaxial)

Bedroom: Raspberry Pi running RASPBMC, Connected with Edimax EW-7811un Wireless Adapter. using NFS shares. (1080p HDMI, TV Speakers)

Basement/Home Office: An old self assembled gaming rig re-purposed as a dedicated HTPC. GeForce 9800GTx+, Sony STR-DH520 7.1 Audio System. (1080p HDMI, S/PDIF-TOSLINK)

Other Devices: WDTV Media Player non-XBMC. Would not reliably see windows SMB shares, but NFS worked well. Not in use.

Thoughts: If you're serious. At some point get a dedicated server PC of some sort. It doesn't need to be much in terms of hardware if all you intend to do is serve media files on your LAN. If you plan on converting the files as you serve them (Plex? not necessary with XBMC), then you'll need some processing power behind your server setup. Mine sits in a locked room with our surveillance DVR. No monitor, keyboard, or mouse. Ethernet plugged directly into the router for the full 1000 mbp/s.

The Foxconn nt-A3700 connected in the living room is a great little box. We bought it back in 2012, and I haven't regretted it yet. I guess a contemporary alternative would be the Intel NUC. We use a MCE IR remote to control XBMC. IR reciever connected with a usb dongle.

The best of them is the basement office HTPC. I have a PS3 Remote control connected via bluetooth for XBMC. It works seamlessly between the Sony TV and Sony Reciever. I play video games on it (Steam Big Picture with an Xbox 360 controller), surf the web, browse Reddit. ect I use a Lenovo N5902 when I need it to act like a PC.

The Raspberry Pi: It's not perfect, but I like it. It runs RASPBMC. The interface (Confluence Skin) can be a little laggy at times, but I kind of expected that from a 700mhz processor (I'm currently overclocked to 900 with heatsinks). You'll have to buy the MPEG-2 license for your board if you plan on playing files using that codec. Ours uses a MCE Remote similar to the Living room htpc but the IR reciever is connected to the GPIO Pins. It was a bit of a pain to find a good wireless adapter. I went through 3 different models before I found the Edimax. That seems to be the theme of the Pi. Yeah it works but only with certain peripherals. Mine still struggles with 3gb+ 1080p movies over wireless (Stuttering/Buffering), but it handles 2gb 720p movies with ease. This feels like more of a wifi/usb power limitation of the Pi. Hard-wired it will play those same 1080p files just fine. If you like to tinker then get it. If you don't want to fuss with it then get a bookshelf htpc like the NUC (or Foxconn nt-A3700) But you're looking at apples and oranges between a 35$ media player(100~ with accessories) and a 300$ PC

The media library is housed on two internal hard drives. 2TB and 4TB. I have windows set to email if there are any issues with the disks as I have had to replace the 4TB once in the last 4 years and nearly lost a metric fuck-ton of data. I use four folders as my shares. 'Television' on the root of that 4TB drive because it needs nearly all of it. Movies and Music on the root of the 2TB system drive. They are shared via windows built-in SMB and hanewin NFS Server. The reason I use hanewinNFS over windows SMB is that the Pi seems to perform better using NFS shares over wireless. Could be lower the overhead or just voodoo. Who Knows?
I use theRenamer to rename all media before I add it to the XBMC library. Then I scrape it using Media Companion and have it store the info on the server with the media. The reasoning behind this is that when I need to repair, rebuild, or add another XBMC client (It happens from time to time) It doesn't have to scrape 1000's of episodes and movies from the web. It's all there next to the file for XBMC to find quickly. You're welcome imdb/theTVDB.com

Hope that gives you a general idea.

1. As others have said, a celeron NUC is more than powerful enough these days for high bitrate 1080p video playback. It will almost certainly not fair well with next gen software-decoded h.265 content. You need a beast for that stuff. Fortunately, hardly any of that exists.
   
   
2. Since you are using Kodi on your Note 2, you don't need transcoding, so it doesn't really matter how strong the CPU of the server is. Your Note 2 is performing the video decoding.
   
   
   I've got the DN2820FYK running OpenELEC. I pretty much never need to restart it. Here's my setup:
   
   4GB DDR3L RAM
   
   Xbox 360 Remote
   
   Rosewill MCE Remote for after I got sick of the 360 remote not having a stop button.
   
   Getting an SSD is overkill, but I like it because it ensures the NUC is quiet and boots about as fast as possible. All of them are small enough. Here's one with decent reviews that's especially small.
   
   
   As far as noise goes, I've never personally heard the NUC. I live in an apartment though. It's possible if you put it in some kind of sound deadened room, you might hear it, if you've got really good ears.

Yeah, surely wireless headphones are a better choice? Even if your iPhone is out of charge/lost/you get a new phone, your wireless headphones will still work, and can be used in more ways. Or, a wireless headphone adapter like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-Ericsson-MW-600-Bluetooth-Headphones/dp/B0038M3H4S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1345935895&sr=8-3

I have this and love it. Works very well in my apartment. Also, if you have a smart phone, you can use that as a trackpad/mouse as your computer.

This is the HTPC build that I put together about 6 months ago which comes in pretty close to the $300 mark at current prices; though I'm confident some of these were on sale when I bought. I have all my media on a separate unraid box which streams to this one.

• M350 Case $43
  
• Celeron G1610 $41
  
• ECS H61H2-TI Thin ITX $75
  
• CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 $46
  
• MyDigitalSSD 60GB MSATA SSD $60
  
  = $265
  
  These are items that I already had but it's only fair to account for them too
  
  
• laptop power supply $8
  
• Logitech k400 keyboard/mouse $24
  
• Media Center remote < $20

my actual purchase - this is the one i have but it isn't in stock. it came with a generic BT dongle that I use for my mouse. It is solely BT because I used it with my fire tv boxes, ps3, ps4 and macbook for presentations. I let my professor use it one day and she loved it and immediately bought her own. Slight learning curve if you use the dpad. it has < and > on the side with a laser light.

different look but BT

looks exactly like mine

I bought one of these and love it. Well, I bought it back when it was called the "DiNovo Mini"

ZOTAC ZBOX-ID41-U (used)

Crucial 64 GB SSD (used)

[Crucial 4GB DDR3 Memory] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001KB21KA/ref=oh_details_o02_s01_i00)

Seagate 1TB External HD

Total Money Spent: $357.48

Using my laptop in another room to rip blu rays straight on to this external HD over wireless network, also to do the compression. Works great!

I use this hdd dock with a 2TB HDD with my rpi (raspmbc). The performance is decent for scrolling through my large library and perfect performance for playback.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1394941488&sr=8-9&keywords=hdd+dock

Would the Leaf antenna be enough?

HERE Is a report from TVFool. I'm about 44 miles away from my primary antenna. I thought I might need something amplified or even roof top. I thought about trying something like THIS first.

I use a splitter on my computer monitor to switch between my PC and an xbox. All in one would be an ideal solution, but too few HDMI ports on the TV can be worked around with one of these.

I was thinking something like this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013V8K3O/ref=pe_385040_30332200_TE_item

But you need something that can send signals via Z-wave, like the veralite. Going through a rasberry pi would also probably work for you for somewhat cheaper, but somewhat more tinkering and work. Although I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has already done something similar. It mostly depends on what else you want to automate I'd say.

Nope! You can buy them on Amazon for cheap though:
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-43036-Cable-Ties-4-inch/dp/B0002GX1XA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1377822338&sr=8-3&keywords=Cable+Ties

http://www.amazon.com/Startech-HC102-Adhesive-Cable-Mounts/dp/B00008VFBE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377822347&sr=8-1&keywords=Cable+Tie+Mount

I have two wii remotes for the wii games. I pair them with the pc using a blue tooth usb. Then I have an xbox controller for windows that works for all the other games.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Xbox-Wireless-Controller-Windows/dp/B004QRKWKQ/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_0

I know this doesn't fit your requirements nor is it modern but this is what I've been using for the last few years. It's outdated but works. Then Yatse and XBMC Remote came along and made it obsolete. Still, nothing beats a dedicated remote.

http://www.amazon.com/Azend-Group-MediaGate-GP-IR01BK-1-Channel/dp/B0028N6XDA/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1415821587&sr=1-1&keywords=GP-IR02BK

A little key remapping to change it from WMC to XBMC and it does almost everything I want.

I know about the failure rate etc (most of it seems to be on 3TB drives)

Does anybody know how this compares to this:
Seagate Expansion 5TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0

it's only $15 more...