Tech127 20 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 Hey all- I am the wiki guy for ServerWMC and pvr.wmc on XBMC. Krusty has mentioned recently that he is working to bring support for the ServerWMC backend to MB3. (You all are going to love it!) Anyway, this has me quite interested in what you guys are doing here and raises a couple questions. I have been lurking for a few days now but haven't been able to conclusively find the answers so here we go: Does MB3 transcode on the fly? I ask because in my vision of how this would work for me would basically be a replacement for the SlingBox/STB I used to have only with a much better interface. I would be able to watch live tv (all HD) on Android and Windows clients. I would also be able to watch any of the media in my library (untouched BD rips in MKV) as well. Obviously to not have to deal with buffering and lag, the streams would have to be re-encoded to a suitable quality on the fly. I have a 15mb up pipe but that isn't going to handle what I have to stream in it's native format. If the first answer is yes, how much horsepower will I need? I have a tv server now that runs on Win7x64sp1. It's main function is to run ServerWMC and act as the backend to all of my XBMC clients. I would also like it to run XBMC simply to handle library updates and the sort. It was thrown together out of spare parts and desperately needs to be rebuilt. I had intended to do an i3 with 8gb. Would this be enough to handle those tasks and run MB3 server in the manner described above? If it needs to be a i5/i7 so be it. I only want to do this once in the near future. I typically rebuild servers every 5 years and would like this to fall into that category as well. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to your responses and further investigating this project! 1
Luke 42077 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 Yes we do encode on the fly, but we use all kinds of techniques to try and avoid it when we can. But live tv is generally going to require encoding. I would go with the i5, but if you really intend to get five years out of it, i7 might not be a bad idea. 1
trusselo 225 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 encoding will also heavily depend on input and output... No? getting 1080p DTS (theoretically) and re-encoding to 480 2ch mp3, takes alot more HP than an input/output thats closer matched. not sure you will need XBMC to "handle library updates and the sort"... our server handles library updates and sorts of things...
Luke 42077 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 encoding will also heavily depend on input and output... No? getting 1080p DTS (theoretically) and re-encoding to 480 2ch mp3, takes alot more HP than an input/output thats closer matched. not sure you will need XBMC to "handle library updates and the sort"... our server handles library updates and sorts of things... Yea but even still, encoding audio is small potatoes compared to video. In fact the difference is so great that it's rarely even worth mentioning. If your live is h264 there's chance it will be possible without encoding, but that hasn't been determined yet.
Lee 212 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 I'm currently upgrading my 3ghz haswell pentium as it doesn't cut the mustard so I'd go i5 for sure. If you plan to use tv the likes of dvblogic all state at least core i5 for live tv on the fly.... Sent from my Windows Phone 8X by HTC using Tapatalk
CBers 7450 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 (edited) Currently run an old 2.4Ghz Core2 Quad-Core PC with 8Gb RAM as my server. You also need to have a good lan (Gigabit) at home, with a good wireless network as well. I don't have any issues playing full HD Videos via multiple MBC and Android sessions. Edited January 11, 2014 by CBers
Deihmos 169 Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 I have an i3 and it works without a hiccup. Previously used a q6600 which is a cpu from 2007 and had the same results streaming full HD.
all4dom 101 Posted January 12, 2014 Posted January 12, 2014 I have an and trinity quad core processor & no issues with pic quality & streaming capabilities.
Tech127 20 Posted January 12, 2014 Author Posted January 12, 2014 Thanks to all of you for the quick responses and great info. It has made my decision much easier. I think I'll do a minimal i5 build that I can easily upgrade to an i7 if I need to down the road. I can always find a use for a spare processor lol. I really appreciate it and am very impressed with what a great community you have here! 2
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