XBMC Media Server

[Horribilas]

TBH, you're probably fine using WIFI with media streaming. I know there's a way to increase the cache settings in XBMC, so I'd just bump that up pretty high and that should handle any network hiccups.

I will have to keep that in mind, thanks for the heads up Joel.

 

[Horribilas]

Also streaming from the server to XBMC clients with a centralized library takes very little CPU. With XBMC you are not transcoding the files on the server just streaming over the network. I would just go with a build that at least has ECC memory support. Really unless you are running many plugins or transcoding video, you do not need a high end CPU. I would worry about purchasing reliable components as cyberjock suggested.

Edit: As far as WiFi AC speeds, you will see about 20-30MB/s max. I have an AC router and 30MB/s is as much as I have seen, and that is very close to the router. Still that is very fast for WiFi standards, there is a lot of overhead with WiFi.

RaidFlex Do you think your mobo, cpu, ram combo would work in a node 304?

 

[cyberjock]

Uhh.. on that first test you had 64Mbit. If you assume 50Mbit for your video stream, you can stream 1 video in your house over wifi, and NOTHING ELSE without the stream skipping. Just as an aside, I get better throughput on my 802.11n that isn't even that good!

So you're basically walking a thin line trying to stream a single video. You want to do 2+... hahahaha.. not much of a chance there unless the bitrate is MUCH lower than 50Mbit.

 

[Horribilas]

Uhh.. on that first test you had 64Mbit. If you assume 50Mbit for your video stream, you can stream 1 video in your house over wifi, and NOTHING ELSE without the stream skipping. Just as an aside, I get better throughput on my 802.11n that isn't even that good!

So you're basically walking a thin line trying to stream a single video. You want to do 2+... hahahaha.. not much of a chance there unless the bitrate is MUCH lower than 50Mbit.

Apparently the data transfer rate for bluray is 36Mbps according to these guys:
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

I also just streamed Public Enemies (11G) to my little NUC and did a client side speed test (1Gb) to my router from another client an N card ASUS laptop. I watched the movie while I conducted it (no lag) and got a dload of 70Mbps and uload of 50Mbps on the speed test again all through two walls. I do think my AC cards are running at N speed due to OpenELEC not compiling the drivers in an update yet.

Either or really all I need to do is hit each device at more than 36Mbps which my router seems to be capable of. You say the constraints on my ac card means I wont be able to support other streams, I find that odd because the gurus running that rock show say it is capable of up to 8 spatial streams. I am assuming that means more than one device.

 

[cyberjock]

Either or really all I need to do is hit each device at more than 36Mbps which my router seems to be capable of. You say the constraints on my ac card means I wont be able to support other streams, I find that odd because the gurus running that rock show say it is capable of up to 8 spatial streams. I am assuming that means more than one device.

There's nothing "odd" or mystical about it at all. This is all very explainable...

-Depending on your MIMO support you may be able to do more than I mentioned. I don't try to predict what settings people have, what settings they use, so I assume lowest common denominator. More often than not that seems to not be too far from the truth.
-Also the mode in which your devices are running in, along with your router and its firmware have an effect. For example, on an old router I have, if *any* device is 802.11g then the entire network is downshifted to 802.11g. That's a theoretical 54Mbit, which is for your whole network. In that case, you'd be in trouble because there is no 802.11g MIMO support.
-If you are like some people, you could setup a mesh network in your house and cheat the system in all new ways.
-Still other routers do other things like beam forming to break down the network into zones and other things, so any advice given must be applied to your exact hardware.

Overall though, wifi is and always will be a convenience technology. It's not meant for speed. It's meant for convenience. Just look at your speeds over 802.11ac. You got less than 5% of the theoretical limit. You wouldn't be happy if you bought a computer and then it came with a sticker that said "performance not typical" and you boot it up to find out that your 3Ghz CPU won't go past 150Mhz. That's literally what people are buying into with 802.11ac, and by golly people are buying! That's also why I haven't spent a dime on 802.11ac(and I have no ETA on when i'll even consider it), and I don't generally recommend it to my friends when they ask either. I usually recommend they go with the same device I have because most people are less concerned with throughput and more concerned with range(since it's a convenience and not for performance).

My configuration is a single hotspot that has a range of about 500 feet, even through my walls. I often go outside and across the street to the park and still have a very strong wifi signal. I'm a wifi aficionado of sorts, but I'm no expert. I'm well versed in the theoretical aspects of wifi, and I know some of the challenges that wifi faces between theory and actual. But I don't have the money or time to buy the necessary spectrum analyzers and stuff to be big into it. ;)

 

[Horribilas]

There's nothing "odd" or mystical about it at all. This is all very explainable...

-Depending on your MIMO support you may be able to do more than I mentioned. I don't try to predict what settings people have, what settings they use, so I assume lowest common denominator. More often than not that seems to not be too far from the truth.
-Also the mode in which your devices are running in, along with your router and its firmware have an effect. For example, on an old router I have, if *any* device is 802.11g then the entire network is downshifted to 802.11g. That's a theoretical 54Mbit, which is for your whole network. In that case, you'd be in trouble because there is no 802.11g MIMO support.
-If you are like some people, you could setup a mesh network in your house and cheat the system in all new ways.
-Still other routers do other things like beam forming to break down the network into zones and other things, so any advice given must be applied to your exact hardware.

Overall though, wifi is and always will be a convenience technology. It's not meant for speed. It's meant for convenience. Just look at your speeds over 802.11ac. You got less than 5% of the theoretical limit. You wouldn't be happy if you bought a computer and then it came with a sticker that said "performance not typical" and you boot it up to find out that your 3Ghz CPU won't go past 150Mhz. That's literally what people are buying into with 802.11ac, and by golly people are buying! That's also why I haven't spent a dime on 802.11ac(and I have no ETA on when i'll even consider it), and I don't generally recommend it to my friends when they ask either. I usually recommend they go with the same device I have because most people are less concerned with throughput and more concerned with range(since it's a convenience and not for performance).

My configuration is a single hotspot that has a range of about 500 feet, even through my walls. I often go outside and across the street to the park and still have a very strong wifi signal. I'm a wifi aficionado of sorts, but I'm no expert. I'm well versed in the theoretical aspects of wifi, and I know some of the challenges that wifi faces between theory and actual. But I don't have the money or time to buy the necessary spectrum analyzers and stuff to be big into it. ;)

Even with an 11Gb mkv file (biggest movie I had) being streaming to my NUC the ASUS laptop was able to do the same transfer rate as the NUC did earlier. Now if I was wanting to do HDD backups over the air I can imagine I would have speed issues but simply streaming media to 3 TV's and 2 Tablets (not all of which would ever be on at the same time) in my 4 bedroom house I can't see a problem. I will (if possible) throttle each device to 50Mbps and up the cache as another mentioned earlier so they aren't fighting one another for excessive bandwidth. W

What I am saying essentially is that I am just building a media server, each device should only need 36Mbps (POTC2 maxes out at 49Mbps for 3 minutes) I don't need a big pipe I need 2 or 3 medium pipes and a few Mbps for other use. As far as I can see for what I want it for (media server) there would be no performance bonus and wireless is only going to get better. :D As an aside here is a snippet on a popular HD movie streaming service:
Netflix recommend a 1.5Mbps download speed as a minimum, 3Mbps for DVD quality, 5Mbps for HD, 7Mbps for Super HD and 12Mbps for 3D streaming. Not all devices or titles support the highest quality streams. Netflix’s announced support for 4K streaming will use the H.265 codec and require a 15Mbps connection.

Anyway I am pretty much done with testing/researching, this weekend I want to order my components. If I get the Node 304, Asrock E3C224D2I, Pentium G3220, 8gb Crucial ECC ram, 2 x WD 3TB Reds as Joel has suggested what is a good PSU to order and what other components am I going to need? Does this setup seem okay?

 

[joelmusicman]

PSU - Seasonic SSR-360GP. 80+ Gold and you're golden. :)

The only other component you need is a USB flash drive.

 

[raidflex]

Since WiFi-AC is used on a 5GHz spectrum you can have other devices on the 2.4GHz running on WiFi-G and not slow down the throughput on 5G. I have doubled my throughput on 5GHz going from an N router to my AC one, yes there are a lot of loses in WiFi but I would say that doubling my throughput is a pretty good upgrade from N.

I would split the devices up between 2.4GHz and 5GHz to spread out the streaming, the devices closer to the router should be on 5GHz.

 

[Horribilas]

First off thanks for the advice guys.

OK so I got this:
Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX/DTX Case USB3.0 / No PSU
Western Digital RED WD30EFRX RED NAS- 3TB/INTELLIPOWER/DDR2/3.5
ASRock E3C224D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224 DDR3 1600/1333
Kingston 8GB DDR3-1333MHZ Reg ECC KTD-PE313/8G
Intel PENTIUM G3220 3.0GHz/3MB CACHE/LGA1150
SeaSonic 350W OEM V3 80Plus Gold PSU
Sandisk 8G Cruzer CZ50/CZ51/6CZ60 Blade USB Flash Drive

Close to a grand and I only got one hardrive and one stick of ram. Wifes going to be pissed (I'll get another HDD in a month or two when she's forgotten )

Anyway two points the Crucial Ram was a no go (I'm Australian, a backwater town it seems for component makers), have I stuffed up with my replacement ram being the Kingston variant (I can always change it if I have), also the PSU wasn't in stock so I replaced that with a lesser model.

Also why the hell aren't US stores shipping to Australia, I got royally screwed by dstore.com.au on the Asrock mobo ($330). The only place that both have it and ships it to Oz.

 

[joelmusicman]

Wow. That's crazy! I paid $500ish for all of the above less drives. 5x 3TB Seagate (desktop hdds) were another $550, and I pulled one from another PC to donate to the server.

Off the top of my head (US$):
304 - $92 (walmart.com of all places)
Asrock 224 - $190 (amazon)
Crucial 8gb - $87 (amazon)
G3220 - $75 bought locally for retail $$
Seasonic - $58 (amazon)
USB drive (already owned a spare)

 

[joelmusicman]

Oh yeah, I decided to try something fun. I played videos from my raspbmc, PC desktop and MBP all at the same time. The only wireless connection was the MBP though. All three videos played without any hiccups and the ethernet meter on FreeNAS was barely registering much of anything (2-3 mbit/s). Two videos were SD, the MBP was playing a 1080P file. All were shared from CIFS.

 

[Horribilas]

Yeh I tried Amazon but they wouldn't ship half the order to a non-US address, I was tempted to use a reshipping service but at $90 almost half the savings are gone. Australian retailers have always had inflated prices, I'm used to it.

I had my own little play on the weekend, I got two TV's and my laptop streaming Public Enemies at once from my old XP box through the wireless router. I also had my S4 streaming internet radio to my bt speaker at the time. Watched the outgoing Gbps connection zigzag between 3-8% load. The router handled it fine but my old XP computer started crawling a couple of times, not sure why, I use Syncback for backups which regularly puts a much bigger load on the connection.

I've heard about Raspberry PI's over at XBMC, I'll have to get one and have a play. They sound like you could pretty much network any speaker or screen with it.

 

[joelmusicman]

Regarding pricing, as a logistician by trade I'm betting it has a lot to do with the shipping costs + smaller market = no economy of scale...

Raspbmc On the Pi works great though. The only real weakness is the interface speed while browsing titles, but that can be totally solved by running mySQL from a freeNAS jail.

I wish I could get optical out myself but thats just because of my setup. Rpi HDMI > TV, TV optical > receiver, but the TV only sends 2.0 channels to the receiver. My receiver is older and doesn't have HDMI ports.

 

[joeschmuck]

RPI is a fun little toy but don't expect it to be a put together item. If you want to save the pain and possibly some money, by a Roku. But if you like to tinker then the RPI is fun to play with. I have one and although I don't use it anymore for video streaming using XBMC, it was a fun device. I may put it into one of the guest bedrooms for the kids to use, I just need to make a better wooden case for it.

Also there is a problem with the RPI, you could scramble the SD card when powering off or even rebooting. It's a risk you take with tinkering projects.

 

[joelmusicman]

As a counterpoint, my Rpi has had very few issues. I bought the version with 512mb, if that matters. I've only recently had to reformat the SD card and that was related to the Rpi hanging from a video that I later found out was corrupted and wouldn't play at all about an hour in on any machine.

The scrambling issues are also only for improper shutdowns, but I leave mine on full-time with a dedicated 1A wall wart as it idles at about 3w so that issue is moot for me. Although now I'll make a backup of the SD card so I don't have to reconfigure mySQL. Details here...

 

[joeschmuck]

Oh yea, I wouldn't buy the 256mb RPI, the 512 is worth the tiny extra cost and there is more that a RAM capacity difference. That is also true about the shutdowns and I too would rather run it full time than cycle power on and off. I wasn't trying to bash the RPI, I really had fun with mine.