Feeling overwhelmed

[Bacon13 0]

I'm  trying to make the leap into the world of a digital movie library and the more I read, the more confused I get.  In my theater, I use my blu-ray player for movies and for streaming netflix.  I have a USB drive connected to it that has some pre-movie slides and some intros, and while it has the capability of playing .MKVs off an external hard drive, the interface is a little cumbersome and definitely lacking features.  I'd like to streamline it all for the family.

 

Ideally I would like an easy way to navigate a selection of digital movies stored on an external hard drive or two, play intros before the movie starts and possibly incorporate the pre show slides with background music.  I don't need a way to watch live TV, play music, look at pictures, etc.

 

I understand MB3 needs a server machine and a client and I'm trying to minimize the equipment that I need to buy.

 

1.  Does the server machine need to be a dedicated machine, or can it be a laptop that is daily used for other things such as surfing, kid's homework, etc?

2.  Are most of the cool features of MB3 limited to MBC and MBT or can the other clients use them as well (intros, trailers, etc)?  I was thinking a Roku or chromcast plugged into my theater receiver.

3.  It needs to be able to be controlled by iRule.

 

Thanks.

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

1. The server can run on any machine you have. However you are going to want a decent processor if you're feeding content to set top boxes, tablets and phones. This is because the server may have to mold that content to fit what the device can handle via transcoding. Transcoding is very CPU intensive. My server is running on the machine I am using right now though and I don't have a large problem with resources. It is running a second-generation i5 of the Sandy Bridge line.

 

2. Each client is developed separately so the developer chooses what features are available. For instance the Android and iOS apps are the only ones that support ChromeCast currently. The Roku's latest version is supposed to support the MBIntros plugin. Others support different ones. Some plugins won't be supported because they don't make sense. Like GameBrowser. Best is to just ask for each client you use.

 

3. I don't think there is specific support for this remote app. However MBC and MBT should work with standard Windows Media Center controls so if it supports that, then you can probably use it. However if it can be supported, the developers are open to suggestions and feature requests. They may choose to add this in the future.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Wayne Luke

[mranim8or 3]

Keep in mind, too, that its possible to have the server and client just be the same machine if you want to keep things simple.  This is how my setup works, though I also have other clients in other rooms.

[Bacon13 0]

I was curious about that.  If you have the server and client on the same machine, does it need to be even faster to handle both duties at once?

 

And what's the point of Media Browser over XBMC if everything is on one machine?

Edited April 6, 2014 by Bacon13

[Koleckai Silvestri 1150]

If you install your client on the same machine as the server, your probably going to use Theater or Classic. Both of these can run content directly and do not need transcoding. As such they require little additional overhead.

 

The benefit that I see with MediaBrowser is the centralized server. One place to maintain and update media across all your devices is provided through a simple interface. With XBMC, you have to configure each and every client to find the Media and interact with it. You can even use XBMC as your client with MediaBrowser's server if you want.