[eclein]

Thats great info al2002 and exactly what I was looking for, do I get the parts and build a box? or buy a box?.....as storage prices go down like they usually do I could see the price edging down a bit. But like you say, for an all in-one solution they are pretty reasonable.

[soundnoob]

Do we need to install Vortex? I have a WHS setup which also doubles up as a fileserver. Would like to stream music and movies to a media player without getting rid of WHS if at all possible.

[al2002]

This is a difficult question to answer as I cannot put myself in your shoes and don't want to mis-advise you.

My recommendation is that if you have not built your own computer before then spend the extra $ 100 or so and buy a ready to run VB appliance. OTOH if you have put together your own computers in the past and don't mid a bit of trouble shooting just in case the install does not go smoothly then get a set of parts and DIY.

Thats great info al2002 and exactly what I was looking for, do I get the parts and build a box? or buy a box?.....as storage prices go down like they usually do I could see the price edging down a bit. But like you say, for an all in-one solution they are pretty reasonable.

[al2002]

If you already have WHS there absolutely is no need for you to go with VB. Squeezebox server can be directly installed on WHS, as can a DLNA server such as PS3 server (google this)   and a good ripper like EAC or dbpoweramp.

Do we need to install Vortex? I have a WHS setup which also doubles up as a fileserver. Would like to stream music and movies to a media player without getting rid of WHS if at all possible.

[sfraser]

I tried a HTPC a few years ago, had a lot of video issues. Eventually I built a Ubuntu server with a 2Tb drive for music and a 8Tb LVM for video. The server is installed in the basement it has both Squeezeserver  and NFS server software installed on it.  I have 6 squeezebox's throughout the house for music distribution. I also have 2 Popcornhour media tanks acting as STB's that mount the Ubuntu server via NFS and stream video over the gigabit LAN. I would suggest this method VS a HTPC. The popcorn hour media tanks are about the same price as a good video card.

[lcrim]

I tried a HTPC a few years ago, had a lot of video issues. Eventually I built a Ubuntu server with a 2Tb drive for music and a 8Tb LVM for video. The server is installed in the basement it has both Squeezeserver  and NFS server software installed on it.  I have 6 squeezebox's throughout the house for music distribution. I also have 2 Popcornhour media tanks acting as STB's that mount the Ubuntu server via NFS and stream video over the gigabit LAN. I would suggest this method VS a HTPC. The popcorn hour media tanks are about the same price as a good video card.

Getting all the devices that could be noisy away from the environment for listening or watching is an excellent model to follow.  The playback devices are the only parts that need to be on your rack. 
Using a linux based system is impressive and perhaps very daunting for those who grew up w/ Windoze.
Did you have help or support in setting this up? 

[sfraser]

Getting all the devices that could be noisy away from the environment for listening or watching is an excellent model to follow.  The playback devices are the only parts that need to be on your rack. 
Using a linux based system is impressive and perhaps very daunting for those who grew up w/ Windoze.
Did you have help or support in setting this up?

I set it up myself... sort of. It has seen a few iterations over the past few years. It started as a fanless platform w/squeezeserver running FREENAS w/1Tb drive and a boot stick. When I got into the distributed video game i realized the above platform would not scale, so  my neighbor and I each built a new  server with Ubuntu as the OS. This allowed us to share/flatten the learning curve. He tackled NFS and permissions etc. I tackled CIFS,  LVM and tuning ...that sort of thing. My latest server config  is a 12 bay tower with a i7 CPU, 6G RAM, and a SSD boot drive. We have a buried Gb Ethernet cable between the house's and we use rsync to back up each others data. It also allows us to take one server off line while the other is available for both households. As you can guess we both have telecommunications/networking backgrounds.

[eclein]

sfraser- That's a cool setup!!! We never do s_it have ass "..12 bay tower etc...LOL.
 What happens when somebody moves??
I'm teasing....nice stuff there!!!

[lcrim]

Yeah, I'm impressed too.  Troubleshooting in Ubuntu forced me to spend a lot of time on line asking questions.  Very humbling but people are generous.

[etcarroll]

Do we need to install Vortex? I have a WHS setup which also doubles up as a fileserver. Would like to stream music and movies to a media player without getting rid of WHS if at all possible.

Do not install vortex on WHS, Vortexbox performs a complete wipe of the drive it goes on.

I have WHS as a media server, and have a MCE based htpc in my ht setup, I stream via the htpc for tv, movies and background music.

However, a few months back I got a SB Duet and use it to stream music, (had to re-rip .wma files to flac), installed Squeezeserver on the WHS box, (there's a version of squeezeserver for WHS if you look), and now use my 2-channel system and Duet for serious music listening .

[Martyn]

It's interesting how this thread has evolved. As a further up-date on my original post, my new PC is working well and I've just added (today) a new monitor, but that's another story (and another thread). Streaming audio to my squeezeboxes has not been a problem, nor has streaming Internet video or playing DVD movies to my 50" plasma TV which I have set up as a second monitor. The overwhelming problem has involved recovering all my digital photographs and getting them reconected in Photoshop. In short, only about half of them showed up after the computer store had migrated my files from my old Windows XP IDE HDD to the new Windows 7 sata drive. My "old" version of Photoshop barely tolerates Windows 7 and I essentially blew my Christmas week off (and then some) restoring and reconnecting all the images. I will not do this again! Furthermore, my Adobe video editing software refuses to run in Windows 7. I skipped Vista and Microsoft is punishing me for it (but I'll get my own back).

So here's the familiar story unfolding yet again: a hardware failure necessitates a hardware up-grade, an operating system up-grade comes with it, which forces an up-grade of one's software. It's not as if the software wasn't functioning perfectly previously! I hestitate to use the C-word (in this case, "collusion"), but this looks like a pretty good revenue model to me! Anyway, I'm tired of this game and am refusing to play. Here's what I did next...

With the help of a colleague who's much more knowledgeable than I am, I "rebuilt" my old IDE HDD, put it back in my old machine, and installed both XP and Ubuntu. The XP was slightly painful just because it takes so long to deal with the service packs and up-dates, but at least I can run my video editing software again (and I have, and it works). Installing Ubuntu was an education in itself, but I managed it single-handedly (eventually) and it works. So now I have a bonus machine that saves me from unnecessarily "up-grading" my software in the short-term, and might help me to make a complete transition to Linux in the long term.

Needless to say, when my wife's PC croaks, she's getting a Mac!

[skunark]

Sadly if you are unwilling to pay to stay current it can turn into a headache. 

If you have the old OS and data files you could also try virtualization on the new machine next time.    Select a virtualization software like "virtual box", set up the virtual machine with minimal settings required to run the application and OS, do the OS and application install, open the datafile and start the migration process.   

I've done this with an old Linux distribution and works well and one nice perk is that I can just copy the virtualization container to a new machine and be running in seconds.     This is a very handy way to restore old backups as well.

[Martyn]

Thanks! I'll take a look at that.

So much to learn, so little time...