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Minimal Raspberry Pi server setup

August 21, 2019, 6:52 am
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Let's see if this works!

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*mod edit: Using the 'i' button in the forum editor automagically uploads your pics to imgur.com* Wink

I have had one sort of home theatre setup or another for probably 15 years. I started out using something called ShowShifter, tried Windows Media Center, used MediaPortal for many years and then moved to Kodi. I've always wanted the ability to play/record OTA TV, so TV tuners are an integral part of my setup.

I've had various full-size tower PCs with multiple hard drives to store media, run internal PCI TV tuner cards, etc. For my client systems, these have often been expensive PCs in even more expensive HTPC cases (Antec, Moneual).

Wow, how things have changed!

My 'server' is now a Raspberry Pi 4 running the latest alpha of LibreElec (pretty solid!). I have three 'XBox One' TV tuners, all connected to a signal booster. I'll be tidying the cables some more pretty soon.

All the media (including TV timeshifting and recording) is stored on a Buffalo NAS, which runs nice and cool. Other client systems dotted round the house connect to it using Kodi.

Everything is linked up using powerline networking and a network switch.

Oh, and there's an AppleTV thrown in there for Netflix, etc.

All in one cabinet, drawing minimal power and nice and tidy.

Ideas for improvement?

Best wishes,

Mark
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ITX Box (GA-N3050N-D3H, 4GB, 120GB SSD)

November 2, 2019, 1:44 am
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Just my Setup, since my Apple Mac mini 2011 gave up.

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- ITX cheap case with external power supply
- GA-N3050N-D3H Mainboard passive cooled
- 4GB DDR 3 L
- 120GB Samsung 850 SSD
- actually Openelec 9.1

All at Samsung M6399 Curved TV with Samsung HT-E4500. And yes, Audio Passthrough is working with this TV Big Grin Picture is perfect, no judder or stuttering for now.

Had many troubles with the previous setup. Mac mini with Xubuntu or W8.1 never worked really well.
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OG Xbox PC build

November 9, 2019, 5:00 am
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Hey guys,

This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time but I never really got around to it for various reasons - but its finally happening. This thread is going to be a build log, because I know if I don't start it now, all you will get is a couple of photos of a finished build. I'm still waiting on parts to come and I have alot of other things going on so it will probably take a while.

Why am I doing this? The OG Xbox rocked our world - we still call the media player 'the xbox' to this day. After it was modded it became a media powerhouse that was way ahead of its time. Loading games off the HDD, emulators and of course, XBMP. Unfortunately, due to the march of technology, it had to be retired. With my s912 box giving me headaches and the board I wanted was finally back in stock, I decided it was time to start this project and get the Xbox back into the lounge room.

The hardware I will be using is a Odroid H2. I chose this because of the Intel GPU which has great support under Linux, with HDR support coming soon + the x86 CPU, which outperforms ARM boxes and opens up more software possibilities, such as emulators, Firefox, Steam and Project M visualisations (its not a media player if it doesn't have Project M!). The board has 2 video outs (HDMI2.0 + DP++) and with a passive DP to HDMI adaptor the DP++ port becomes a HDMI port which allows me to send 4k60 video to my TV and send HD passthrough audio to my HDMI 1.4 AVR at the same time. The board runs cool, has an external PSU and is small which will allow me to integrate a few things into the case and keep it uncluttered and quiet at the same time. I did think about a mini-itx board, but the H2 has almost everything I need at a reasonable price.

The plan is to keep the outside fairly stock. I'm not going to use an optical drive, so the DVD faceplate will be attached to the case. The LED will be changed to white and the front buttons will be used for power and reset. The smaller button as a power imprint and the larger one has an eject imprint and I'm going to fill those up, paint them a similar colour and leave them blank, because I want to use the big button for power. I though about attaching power + reset decals to the buttons, but I don't think that's really that important as 99% of the time a remote will be used to power it on. The left two controller ports will be covered with some smoked acrylic, with a IR receiver hiding behind one and I did think about putting a headphone port on the other, but I've never had the need for one and I have a USB soundcard or a USB DAC + amp that can be used if I ever do need it. The right two controller ports will be a USB 2 and 3 port, which again I don't often need, but they'll be handy for the occasional USB drive, wired controllers and charging the DS3 controllers I'll be using with it. I did think about adding some kind of Kodi branding to the front, but I think the textured surface would make it difficult to get a good finish, so I'll probably skip that.

Inside will be the board, 2x 4gb RAM sticks, a 60gb SSD for the OS and a 2.5" 320gb HDD for some backups and media storage. These are drives that I had spare, and the 320gb will fill up very quickly so it will probably get upgraded pretty soon, maybe to an old 3.5" HDD I have. I will be using the NVME slot for a Intel WiFi + BT 4 card (7265ngw) via an adaptor, which will allow me to use dual large internal antennas and provide good BT range for controllers. There will also be a 4 port USB3 hub inside to provide ports for the ir receiver, BT module, an arduino to drive TV backlighting and a Logitech unifying receiver. The front USB ports will be directly connected to the rear ports, which will leave 1 spare USB2 port on the rear. The H2 is about 10x10cm and the Xbox is about 35x30cm so I don't see any issues fitting all that, just cable management. I purchase a 5v 92mm fan with the H2 and it is too big to fin in the same location and the original fan, so I'm going to mount it to the heatsink. It will overhang a bit so it will also move some air around the case which should help keep other components cool. I'll keep an eye on temps and add a rear fan if need be, but many people run these fanless without issue so I don't think it will be a problem.

Software used will be Xubuntu 19.10 for now and I'll upgrade it to the 20.04 LTS and keep it on LTS versions. Because multiple aplications will be used, I wanted a simple, light and customisable deskop environment. I generally run LTS versions for these types of applications, but I had some stuttering issues at first and tried a few versions of Xubuntu + Ubuntu + Libreelec while nutting out the issue and finally got it fixed on 19.10 and with 20.04 so close I decided to stay with it because I didn't want to do another reinstall. If I knew what I know now I'd stick with 18.04 because it has more precompiled software available (eg attract mode, emulationstation and an emulation PPA I found). Because it is a dual monitor setup, though not it the traditional sense as the two monitors are the one TV, I have disabled use of the AVR monitor through some xrandr trickery because having a second monitor that wasn't easily accessible was really annoying. Mirroring doesn't work because of the different max resolutions of both monitors and disabling the second monitor would also disable sound. The only issue I have with this now is that the alt-tab switcher shows up twice, which isn't a big issue because it will really only run one graphical program at a time, but a quick google shows that there are some possible alternatives for workarounds.

So far I am really impressed with this little machine and I highly recommend it for HTPC use - it plays 4k60 content smoothly, HDR coming soon and I don't have to buy a new AVR to get 4k video with passthrough audio. I have a script which automatically switches audio outputs depending on if the AVR is on or off and unlike the s912 box, it doesn't send audio to multiple outputs at the same time which makes operation simpler. 3D performance is lacking, but I was always expecting that. At 4k the Kodi GUI + Project M lag, but they're smooth at 1080p. At 1080p, the 3D map of Broforce is choppy, but the 2D sections are smooth. Super Meat Boy runs smoothly at 1080p. I tried Portal 2 but it loads to a blank screen. I've read that using DXVK can improve performance, but I haven't delved into that yet. And there is always Steam in home streaming for anything too demanding.

Finally, some photos of the H2 in its temporary home. Next will be dismantling the Xbox and I'll be finding a home for the unused parts.

watch gallery
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Mod - My IBM pets (2 x IBM Power7+ 128 CPUs in total)

December 14, 2019, 12:32 am
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Hello guys! Want to share with you what I have beneath the table Smile
2 x Power 7+ servers with 512 Gb RAM total, 128 CPUs! 

P.S. Little guy on top is HMC that control those buddies. 
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My modest setup

May 17, 2018, 12:36 am
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So here is my modest home theatre setup!  Shy

1. Kodi 17.6 Android on a "China box". Works flawlessly though!  Tongue
2. 7 TB media server running Windows 7. Kept on sleep mode, turns on via WOL as soon as Kodi launches. Goes back to sleep after 10 minutes of idling.
3. Samsung 40" Full HD LCD TV.
3. Gigabit LAN network.
4. Logitech Z-5500 5.1 THX speaker system.
5. Samsung blu-ray player for my BD collection (165 movies).
6. OneForAll 6 device Universal remote that controls all my hardware.
6. A pair of smart LED's that are connected to Kodi, so lights elegantly fade and turn off whenever I hit play on any video!

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The "China Box"!  Rofl  Logitech Bluetooth device on top is for playing music from my phone on my HT speakers.

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Samsung Region B blu-ray player. I import all my BD's from the UK. Gigabit LAN switch on top, with the main internet router on top of that.

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The heart of all the sound processing magic! Bought this speaker set way back in 2007, still working perfectly!  Love Love

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File server hidden in a corner of my living room as it is too loud for the HT room! House is on the main road, so living room in front is pretty noisy anyways the whole day.
Old AMD Athlon based system with 4 GB RAM. UPS, WiFi Access Point and external HDD dock on top of it.

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Loooooong term upgrade wishlist:

1. 55" 4K TV
2. Odroid C2 or equivalent dedicated Kodi hardware
3. Modern Lossless audio capable receiver
4. 7.1 Channel speaker system
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My Basement Home Theater

December 20, 2019, 9:59 pm
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So this is my basement home theater that I set up when we moved back from overseas.  Its a bit dated now in the hardware department, but I plan to do some upgrades. 

Since I originally installed this, I updated the house with a lot of home automation, including Hue bulbs in the Front of House light bar, and some barn doors installed on the instruments to keep light overspray on the screen.  The Hue bulbs work great with my upstairs Kodi install, but are extremely buggy when I try to use cinema experience in the theater. Admittedly, I do not have the latest Kodi install on the laptop.

The gear:
Elite Screen 120 inch
1080p projector 3D
Yamaha 7.1 receiver with 1080p pass through
PS3
Toshiba laptop running XBMC, Kodi was buggy for me.
Bose speakers all around with 3 bose subs (AM-7 front and 2 AM-5s for side surround and back surround)
JL 12" LFE sub
18 TB media server running FREENAS

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Re-Built 119TB UnRAID Server

December 27, 2019, 1:47 pm
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This is the 'same' server from this previous thread, but between replacing nearly every component except the PSU and case, the OP was so out of date for photos I thought it best to just do a whole new original post.  OS, Mobo, CPU, literally everything has been upgraded since.

328604 (thread)

Case: Corsair 750D with extra HDD cages installed. (CAD$185, plus CAD$150 in cages, air flow panel and solid panel to replace the windowed panel.  Shipping and exchange really screwed me here)
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 (Free!  A 'hand me down' from upgrading my desktop to a Ryzen 3900X system)
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2, 12 cores. 2.8ghz (CAD$248, recycled part bought from China via eBay.  This is the most powerful CPU that this mobo can support, period.)
RAM: 6x8GB Patriot G2 PGD316G1333ELK 1333mhz DDR3 RAM. (Free!  Another hand me down from the old desktop.)
Graphics: PowerColor PCIE x1 AX5450 512MD2-SH Radeon HD 5450 512mb DDR2 (CAD$74.31  Paid a lot here, I wanted the PCIE x1 variation so I could leave my longer slots free for more important cards.  I coulda gotten the x16 version for like 10bux)
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 650w P2 ($99 CAD)
SAS Controller: LSI LSI00244 9201-16i (CAD$167.94 A lot meaner than the cluster of SYBA controllers my last incarnation used)
Networking: Aquantia AQtion 10G Pro NIC (CAD$104.99)

The Hard Drives
System drives:
1x256GB Samsung EVO 850 (Docker/VMs)
1x500GB Samsung EVO 860 (Cache)
1x2TB Samsung EVO 860 (Download Holding Tank)

Storage Drives:
1x10TB Seagate ST10000DM0004 Baracuda Pro HDD
9x8TB Seagate ST8000DM004 Baracuda Compute HDD
4x8TB Seagate ST8000AS0002 Archive HDD
1x5TB Seagate ST5000LM000 Baracuda HDD

Parity Drives:
1x10TB Seagate ST10000DM0004 Baracuda Pro HDD

This is a lot more kick than the previous incarnation. Smile  It's also running a Plex server and that CPU can transcode like nobody's business.

Since I had to migrate everything, I took the time to neatly label all the drives so they can be maintained clearly and easily as needed

The exterior, including a 4 drive hot swap bay that fits in the 3x5.25" bays.
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The full interior
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Here you can see the additional internal HDD cages in action. I also labeled every drive for my own sake as I had to migrate everything from FlexRAID to UnRAID anyway.
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Top to bottom: LSI 9201-16i SAS controller, a Radeon HD 5450 for basic video output, and a Aquantia AQtion 10G, there's still one long (electrically x4) PCIE slot free if I wanted to add NVME storage or something else.
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I went with a NIB PCIE x1 Radeon HD 5450 made by Power Color, why waste PCIE lanes when this could fit in an x1 slot? It's just doing video so no need for the bandwidth.
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This is a custom 9xSATA power cable made to fit in here. Though the SATA data cables could not be done as cleanly.
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2.5" drives then cover the back of the 3.5" drives. This photo is a bit out of date as Black Friday happened since. So the 2TB mechanical is now a 2TB SSD, same for the 500GB Mechanical being a 500GB SSD cache drive. There was a free slot free so that's where the 15mm 2.5" 5TB drive is mounted too. But you'll have to use your imagination. Smile
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My small deployment in my home.

March 13, 2020, 1:09 am
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Main server is an older Dell Optiplex 3010 with an i5 3470. 8gb of ram. HDMI port is maxed at 1080p. Ubuntu Server 18.04 on a 120gb Samsung ssd. Storage is 2tb 2.5 inch internal hard drive + 2tb usb 3.0 drive. Snapraid parity with another 2tb usb 3.0 drive. This machine is the main HTPC in the living room running Kodi 18.6 currently. Our library currently consists of 1112 movies, 1787 episodes of various tv shows, 3971 mp3 files for music, and 206 videos from my religious organizations website. All media is legally owned or downloaded with a mountain of dvd's and cd's in the garage, with some of the music having been purchased on Amazon. All shared via NFS. 55" 4k Samsung tv in the living room. 40" 1080p in master bedroom. 32" 1080p in the guest room. The living room HTPC also doubles as my wife's desktop which she plays Minecraft on mainly. Due to a head injury at work she isn't supposed to sit right up next to a computer monitor so 10-12 feet away is ok as per Dr's orders.

What I think makes my deployment somewhat unique though is how I have this shared to the bedrooms. This server runs a handful of LXD containers with various services, one being a PXE server using https://ltsp.org/. The remote machines boot from this and have no hard drives. Idea was scalability. By adding the mac address of a new machines ethernet and making a few adjustments on the server I can add a machine to the network without any real difficulty or installations. Single point of managment for theoretically 100+ boxes (my disk I/O can top out at 4-6 machines currently). We live on a couple acres with my parents, and my grandparents. I have a cat 7 running underground in a conduit to my parent's house. Next box will be in their living room. My Mariadb lxd container currently hosts a single music database for all machines. The living room and master bedroom are on their own video db. The guest room has it's own video db. I have also configured for testing yet another db for my parents. All of these share the same source files.

The library is growing daily. My physical media is 99% used coming from various thrift stores, pawn shops, and swap meets. I've debated adding a blu ray drive to my Windows desktop to rip blu ray but so far haven't had a need as dvd is still regularly available. Also saves me storage space and as the wife and I are children of the 80s & 90s we aren't put out by so called "low quality" dvds. Looks just fine to us. Is what we grew up with. Same with the mp3 files. We haven't got the equipment to make lossless worth it. 192 / 190k rips / downloads are just fine and we enjoy it for music.

*No pictures as there isn't anything fancy to see.*
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Linux - My KODI based media entertainment system - Success story

April 4, 2020, 5:28 am
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Hi,

just wanted to share my experiences and components I used to build up my next media entertainment system based on KODI.

I use KODI since years, the last system was a NUC N3700 based system with 55" LG screen (HD), it worked quite well but I now wanted 4K, more inches and more speed :-)

So, this is the hardware I use now:
- LG 75UK6200PLB 75" screen (https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07GFJYKWN/ref=...IEbK2PK0F3 )
- Intel NUC i3 NUC8i3BEH (https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07JB2M5JS/ref=...IEbJE9QEKF ). No special firmware update needed, fan is silent enough for me.
- 2*4 GB RAM CRUCIAL DDR4
- 256 GB SSD Sandisk
- HDMI 2.1 Cable
- HAMA MCE Remote
- Technotrend TT Connect S2 4600 DVB-S2 TV USB Adapter
- Harman Kardon AVR-330 DTS Receiver (kind of 15 years old, but still performing quite well), connected via optical link to ARC-out of TV
- Canton speakers: 2 front full range, 2 rear, 1 center, no subwoofer

And this is the software so far:

- Lubuntu 19.10
- KODI 18.6
- SAMBA Server for accessing media etc. from desktops/smartphones

I tried also (before) setup the system using normal Ubuntu 19.10. This at first sight seems to work quite fine but there weere two big problems, that I was not able to solve even after 2 days of research.
- HAMA MCE Remote was blocked by Gnome or underlying layer, so that most buttons (Stop, Play, Forward,...) were blocked before KODI can get them
- Autostart KODI by using a desktop icon in autostart left me with a power menu in KODI that only offers "Leave", but no power-down etc.

That made me re-install the whole stuff, but this time with lightweigth LUBUNTU, that also performed well on my former installation.

So,
- installed LUBUNTU 19.10 from USB
- installed OpenSSH server for remote shell access
- copied Technotrend Firmware dvb-demod-m88ds3103.fw to /lib/firmware, checked working card with LSUSB and dmesg | grep -i dvb
- Installed KODI the normal way
- Installed TVHeadend using this extra repo: sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://apt.tvheadend.org/stable bionic main'
- Removed Pulseaudio, because I won't get any digital audio with Pulseaudio. By removing it, automatically ALSA became the sound driver and allowed Passthrough audio.
- DO NOT INSTALL any LIRC or other IR stuff, HAMA MCE remote is supported out of the box
- Autostart KODI: Create file kodi.desktop in /home/lmb/.config/autostart
[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/usr/bin/kodi
Name=KODI
Type=Application
Version=1.0

In order to remove stuttering and improve movie / TV performance, added these lines to /home/lmb/.kodi/userdata/advancesettings.xml
<advancedsettings>
<cache>
<buffermode> 1 </buffermode>
<readfactor> 4 </readfactor>
<memorysize> 1048576000 </memorysize>
</cache>
</advancedsettings>

No stuttering at all, even for 4K movies and TV shows (yes, there are UHD demo channels on Astra 19.2). Without those settings, I got stuttering every 10 secs.

Configuring TV card in TVHeadend is kinda complicated and time-consuming (channel sorting,...), pls. check instructions seperately.

In KODI, I configured audio to use passthrough, everything else is plain out-of-the-box as far as I remember

Since the old Harman Kardon receiver does not offer HDMI, digital audio is forwarded via ARC from TV to receiver wired with optical cable.

Results: Perfect!

By the way: The old NUC now serves as Lubuntu based VICE C64 box, kind of weird enjoying old C64 and Amiga games on 75" 4K screen :-)

Let me know, if you have any questions,

enjoy KODI

Ulrich
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Garden/cinema room

April 17, 2020, 6:01 am
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I built a garden/cinema room last summer for a fun project and it turned out really well!

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At the moment it has a 65" Sony TV, cheap soundbar, some LED effect lighting and Kodi running on the latest Nvidia Shield.

Also has a cheap ebay exercise bike that I do pelaton spin sessions with on the screen.

I'm going to upgrade the sounds system next and looking into options.

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I've Lurked on here since Xbox, Finally posting my true budget theater build.

June 5, 2020, 10:44 pm
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First of all this forum has been a asset to me and my kodi adventures, I've always stayed a version or two back but really started opening up kodi for more then just a media organizer.

Also I'm just sharing because like my car its awesome to share with people that get it and not just my girlfriend saying "thats awesome babe" lol

Our house had a room above the garage that had no use and i aquired a projector years ago. So my girlfriend and I thought it'd be cool to watch movies.  started watching movies on a salmon wall. I got tired of that went to a sheet, a screen and it slowly snowballed after many Value village and offer up shopping trips and then upgrades upon upgrades I'd find.

Honestly I've probably spent about 600-700 over 3 years. I'd love a few more curtains to block windows. Girlfriend just recently wanted to change the room color to a dark grey. So its coming out pretty awesome.

Thought I'd share what I thought was true Patient budget build (besides my PC, I'm a graphic designer that works from home so couldn't skimp out on that.)

Only spanking new things I've purchased $40 Screen rolled on amazon, some 1x2s from home depot + hardware and misc small cables.

Most everything else I'd find for cheap (or what i thought was cheap)  on offerup or value village.


Can elaborate on anything you'd guys like feel free to ask.


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Content is King

July 31, 2020, 5:58 am
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I have been using Kodi for quite a while now. I first used it in 2013 when, if memory serves, it was XBMC Version 12 (Frodo).

It has come in leaps and bounds since then and I would not be without it. I started with just a single PC attached to the TV with a USB 500mb drive with about 100 films on it. We have definitely moved on from that. We now have about 2,000 films and, too keep my wife happy, we have moved more into TV shows and have about 700 full shows that include about 13,000 episodes between them.

This did not happen overnight and has been a gradual progression into what we now use. The hardware list has grown somewhat as has the content that we can now consume in Kodi.

Kodi uses MySql for the video and music libraries and all content is on network drive. No local storage at all (or streamed for that matter).
I have 5 Kodi clients using a variety of hardware but they are all setup exactly the same apart from the audio setup on the main system in the front room which is set for 5.1 and audio passthrough.

Before we get to the front end of this we have to understand the infrastructure.
  • Entire house wired for CAT5
  • TP-Link 24 port Gigabit Ethernet Switch
  • Satellite with 8 LMBs
  • TV aerial with 6 way booster/splitter
We can get some servers setup to hold our media. I started off with a single server but this has now become 4 so we end up with the following:

4 of HP Prolient N54 Microservers all of which are setup in the same way
  • Windows Server 2012 R2. End of life will be October 2023 so I will be on Server 2016 by then which has December 2027 as end of life
  • Optical drive removed and the SATA connector used for 250GB system drive
  • 4 x 4TB 3.5" SATA hard drives giving 16TB per server
On paper this gives 64TB of storage but that does not give any resiliency at all and after taking an awfully long time to accumulate all of this content, the thought of losing any doesn't bear thinking about. The HPs are only capable of either raid 0 or 1 which is not worth setting up as it just striped or mirrored data. The way I have chosen to do it there for is to clone 2 of the servers completely and run daily robocopy scripts to keep them in sync. Overkill? probably but the ease at which I could restore data far out ways that. If I lose a single drive I just stop the server, swap it's clone and turn the server back on. If I lose a server, I rename the clone, change its IP address and restart it.

This means I never lose any data and the system is back up again straight away with time then available to replace the drive or server. The downside is of course that my 64TB of storage is only 32TB. I could actually fit 6TB drives to replace the 4TB drives but the cost would be huge - about £2,400 at the time of writing this!

Spread across  these servers I have the following services:
  • IIS Web server
  • Apache web server
  • MySql databases
  • MS SQL databases
  • hMailServer
  • Cloud services also linked to external cloud services on remote hosted servers
We now have our content so we can add the SMB shares to the sources.xml file and in advancedsettings.xml tell it we are using MySql for the libraries.

Front room
  • LG 49" 4k telly
  • Dell Optiplex 780 Intel Core 2 Quad
  • Radeon HD450 PCIE HDMI Graphics card
  • ViewHD HDMI to HDMI with SPDIF Audio extractor to enable 5.1 audio from PC to TV (fakes the EDID response from the TV)
  • Samsung HT-J4500 5.1 Home Theatre System
  • Kodi 18.7 with Estuary MOD V2 skin
  • Cloned Mediaportal PVR add-on to enable the use of 2 MediaPortal add-ons to talk to both Mediaportal servers
  • OneForAll 6 device Universal remote to control all of the hardware
The other installations in other rooms are fairly basic on modest platforms. 3 of them utilise Sumvision Cyclones which are very small fanless PCs which are attached to the VESA mounts of the TVs

I also use PVR functionality within Kodi and I use MediaPortal for the backend. Well, actually I use 2 MediaPortal backends. One has 4 DVB-S2 tuners along with 3 DVB-T2 tuners and the other one has just 4 DVB-S2 tuners.

To access both of these within Kodi, I have had to clone and rename the Media-Portal add-on to enable both to be used together. Kodi does a great job on merging both of these within the UI and it poses no problems at all.

A will have to put some pictures of this setup on here once I sort out the right ones for each section.
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Problema di audio durante la riproduzione di un film streaming

August 2, 2020, 4:05 pm
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[font][font]Salve a tutti, ho un problema, usa kodi windows da pc a schermo tv tramite hdmi e succede spesso durante la visione di un film, l'audio incomincia ad avere e ho, loopparsi, come se improvvisare subentrasse un effetto audio non richiesto , poi dopo un po 'svanisce per poi riprendere in seguito. [/font][font]Qualcuno sa di cosa si tratta? [/font][font]Vi prego se lo sapete, spiegatemi come ad un bambino, non sono molto ferrato e non vorrei fare qualche scompiglio. [/font][font]Grazie  [/font][/font]
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if you have no direct neighbors you can go for bass

August 28, 2020, 12:48 pm
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In one of my ealier setups in a differnt location the subwoofer was under the seats, blasting upwards. You really felt it in the whole body.
Now with a tiny room and different seats I went a bit for looks.
2 car double speaker sub woofers (each 1 aktive one passive)
Since I had not the height to put the Infinity main full range speaker upright, I put them down and as a center I added another smaller Infinity.
I always had problems with the rear speaker setup, I never got the effect I wanted that every place hears the left and right correctly.
I had some old Philips "5.1" surround speakers where they put 3 seperated speakers into one curved case with 6 lines coming out. The Philips setup was the 2 curved surround speakers and on sub woofer. Sounded good but was not really a 5.1
So I installed the Philips over one seat each and connected the outside speakers to left and right each. Since the speakers are 1.3  Meter / 4 feet obove the head, the left and right audio is very well to make out.
An Onkyo 5.1 with enough power to make the windows vibrate takes care of the audio.
An old Sony laptop is used as a Kodi windows PC but will be replaced with an Amlogic  S905x3 Android box what runs on CoreElec. This 26 Euro / 29$ box has power enough to run 4 k, what I will never use, since...

My visual output is an fullHD Epson 3D Projector.
The projection wall is in an angle that the front speakes are in a slight angle towards the right seat, what is fine with me since I can not move them further appart because of the hallway.  

Not too bad when you see the last picture what it looked like when we moved in and I thought, maybe a dining area..

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nvidia Shield Pro + Sony AV + 4K TV + Synology NAS + Kodi -> Works great

September 20, 2020, 6:04 am
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Hi, I just wanted to make a post for my experience making my own setup in the hope someone finds it useful for building his own.

Before I buy my NAS and Shield I used to plug my main computer to my Sony STR-DN1080 and play my movies locally. This was not super practical since I had a big HDMI cable going from one room to the next. And using a keyboard and mouse on the couch wasn't quite as smooth an experience.

So I bought a NAS from Synology. This was my first experience setting up such a device. Luckily Synology's UI is really clear and I quickly figured out how to transfer my files through windows explorer.

Then I had to setup my NAS to be able to be accessed from the Shield. I recommand this page to help you out:
https://kodi.wiki/view/NFS

Back to Kodi, in the files section, browse, add new location, select NFS and enter:
(without double slash or anything)Your NAS IP Adress/volume1/video (assuming you put your movies in the automatic video folder the NAS creates for you)

Oddly enough the same process didn't work for my music folder in volume1/music. Despite the fact I entered the correct parameters for this folder as well.
But in the shield parameters you can give it access to your NAS.
Doing so you can then browse through the folders of the shield and find your NAS back in the "storage" folder. That's how I added my music to Kodi.
If you do that you can also access ROMs from your NAS in emulators.

Conclusion
4K HDR 5.1 sound works perfectly with media on the NAS connected through ethernet.
The AI enhancer is shockingly good. While not perfect it does a great job at refining your image. It can fool you even when watching low quality movies.
No android nor linux based systems are able to play Blu-ray and 4K blu-ray menus and interactivity.
With the shield however you can use the nvidia app "GameStream" to stream games and specific apps from your PC through your own network. Therefore you can launch a full blu-ray from a software like PowerDVD
Playing PC games through GameStream works really well with minimal (yet existant) lag.
All emulators works really great up until PS2 and Gamecube. Gamecube/Wii games are often struggling at 40/50 FPS instead of 60. But a quite a bunch of games are very much playable.

The downsides are you're using an "Android TV" device intended for media consumption first and foremost. Installing a web browser requires manual input/hack and the Voice command redirects your general questions on youtube instead of working exactly like an "ok google" device.
You're probably gonna do a lot of back and forth in the display setting to disable the laggy AI enhancer if you're gonna be playing games. Unless I'm doing something wrong it seems like the feature always stays on no matter what app you're using.
Xbox one controllers only work if you bought one in the last couple of years. Because it works only through bluetooth and it doesn't recognize the Xbox dongle. Check this page to see if your controller is compatible (you'll need a third gen one) :
https://xbox.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Xbo...r_variants

Overall I'm very pleased with my setup and highly recommand it for your ultimate home cinema couch experience! And feel free to ask if you got specific questions about this setup!

Exact devices:
[font][font][font]Synology NAS DS118[/font][/font][/font]
Western Digital WD Gold 18To HDD
French internet provider's own Routeur (from Orange)

nvidia Shield TV Pro 4K
Rii Mini I25
Xbox One Sport Red Special Edition Controller

Sony STR-DN1080
Logitech Z906 speakers
Sony 4K HDR TV KD49XE7077S
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Raspberry Pi UC (Universal Casing) with Touch Display

December 23, 2020, 4:15 am
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Hello,
I developed the Raspberry Pi UC casing for Kodi. A Raspberry Pi 3B / 3B + / 4B with M.2 SSD and Hifiberry Card can be installed in the casing. The interchangeable interface covers support up to 70 combinations. An FDM printer is required for production.

Further information can be found at:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4570624

Homepage Raspberry Pi UC

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My hi-fi and home cinema equipment

April 10, 2021, 2:00 pm
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Being new, I take advantage of this space to introduce myself.

You will find my hi-fi and home cinema equipment here :
*URL REMOVED BY MODERATOR*

I also take the opportunity to greet everyone.
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My Media Server

June 30, 2021, 8:40 am
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An Acer Revo R3610 with 3TB of external storage. It has 4GB of ram with a 500GB internal HDD, which has my Music on it. The externals house the videos. Everything is shared with NFS and I have MySQL database too. It works really well and can serve up 1080p video to 6 Kodi boxes at once.
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HTPC home setups

August 19, 2021, 6:43 pm
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My Gear
Samsung 85" MicroLED HDR 10+ Top of the line.
Klipsch RF-7 ii Front Speakers
Klipsch RC-6 2ii Center Channel
Klipsch RB-81 ii Back Speakers
Klipsch RS-62 ii Side channel
2 SVS PB-13 Ultras
Dell G series Laptop Hex core
Kodi 19.1 Matrix
Titan Bingie Mod skin
6 - 10 TB HDDs Western Digital
All media is local

The bedroom has My media desktop PC.
Intel i9
Nvidia 3090
Kodi 19.1
Titan Bingie Mod skin.

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Kodi on a Steam Deck!

April 26, 2022, 7:42 am
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Obviously not much of a 'Build Log' here as it's an entire preassembled device, but no one had posted before.  This is Kodi, installed from a Flatpak on the Steam Deck, then added as a Non-Steam Game through Steam itself to allow all the controls to work easily.  I copied in all the settings and thumbs from my Windows machines, so it has access to my full SQL library as well.  An odd downside is that while in 'Desktop Mode' VAAPI is exposed, if you're running in Game Mode, VAAPI isn't exposed, so the Steam Deck is using software decoding only.  Though it's CPU does have the performance to software decode HEVC 4K at 24fps.  Hopefully Valve fixes this.

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Someone on Reddit found a solution for VA-API for Chrome and it seems to apply to Kodi and probably anything else in the Steam Deck's Game Mode. The default launch options are like this:
Quote:run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=kodi tv.kodi.Kodi

But adding --env=LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi gives it access to VA-API. This is how I wrote it out and it works.

Quote:run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --env=LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi --command=kodi tv.kodi.Kodi
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