for tank and other techies
#1
Tue, 08/14/2012 - 00:43
for tank and other techies
ok here is the deal. i have a cable modem that goes to me dlink wireless router. i have a 1TB HDD connected with my Dlink. i keep movies, music pics, porn ect on it. i have 3 laptops in the house. 2 that are in use and an older alien that we dont use but does work. i also have my netbook that i use for travel and when im at work. I'd really like to be able to access the HDD and watch/ listen to it on my TVs. I dont want to hook the laptops up to them though. Is there a devise that does this? I do have Rokus on each TV if that helps,
also ive heard about people wanting to use and old laptop for a home server. what does it do? and how does it work?
Thanks everyone
what dlink router do you have?
Expensive option,
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Player-802-11n-Wireless-Enabled-Ethernet/dp...
So if I read your post correctly, you have basically a dumb usb drive connected to your network that you can access with your other pc's but it wont autonomously serve content to clients like your roku?
Im not sure about other network storage devices, but I know the drobo fs can run apps as well as just do storage. apps that make it a xbmc or itunes server. Its a pretty neat little appliance, but for the price, you could repurpose an old pc or build an atom based server. I think the drobo offers a premium experience on adding/modifiying drives over time over what you would have to do with a pc..but if your mostly just looking for a light weight server and not storage, maybe its too much.
How much electricity do you want to pay for and how much fan noise can you tolerate to have it be on 24/7 is a biggie. Little stand alone appliances win on that front..otherwise I just run in and start media center on my desktop when I want to watch a movie through xbox.
The only way to do what you want with your setup the way it is, is to install VLC on one of your machines and leave it on as a server. Otherwise there are three options:
1. A router that can stream media off of a USB drive. Dlink has a number of 'Cloud Routers' , you mght want to look into those and see if they'll work or there are other vendors to consdier.
2. Get a NAS that is capable of running apps and streaming media.
3. Add a server to your setup like Windows Home Server or if you want to recycle something you have already VLC can stream over the internet http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/ch01.html#id304156
No matter what way you go however, you need to make sure whatever solution you go with is capable of streaming the audio/video/container formats of your videos. Otherwise then you need to start doing realtime transcoding and thats' going to need some horsepower.
I actually am currently working on the samething. I am working on turning an old laptop into a home server. Currently I a 2 TB drive hooked to my main PC and the household xboxes and a couple western digital TV live (http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330) hooked up to TV's in the house access the media files on it. might be worth taking a look at them.
I think this is going the wrong way.... That device is designed to take internet based sources and put them up on a tv.
My understanding of the goal here is to take home sourced videos and stream them out over the internet. As a side note, that is going to require some heafty upload speeds. Usually ISPs give you monster download speeds but realy skimp on the upload speeds. So you won't want to try and stream HD media over the internet with a 1meg upload.
yea I must have mis read, I thought he was trying to build a home network tying in his computers and TVs from home use.
i PM'd Tank cuz im so confused right now.
depending on your roku you can plug in a flashdrive or usb hd and select the stuff off of that.
I had the old school xds and the new hd one and I can do it on those.
For playing videos from your laptop thru your xbox 360 to your TV here is some information that will help:
Here are two on how to use media center with the xbox 360
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/audio-video-setup-and-use/windows-media-center
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Support/Mediacenter
and here is one on what audio/video/container combinations are supported on the xbox 360, just scroll down past the playing DVDs stuff
LInk Here
And if you wish to break out of the very confining restrictions of what the Xbox 360 will support in a video file, there's TVersity. It'll in real-time convert whatever format your video is into something your xbox 360 will be happy with. I believe this would be used instead of Media Center on your PC
http://tversity.com/