CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[stefuel]

I have two 400 disc changers 1 Sony 777ES/Escient combination for SD and a 400 disc BD changer. Non of this stuff is available should one break. The other day I salvaged some office electronics. One of the things I came home with is this huge Dell PowerEdge 2800 server. I'm going to try and turn it into a media server. This sucker holds 10 hot swapable hard drives and two hot swapable power supplies. I have the protocol and can control it via tcp/ip from my Crestron processor. There is a ton of free DVD and BD ripping programs available along with Handbreak compression software that is also free, although I don't think I'll need to compress anything. There is also a ton of free front ends to choose from. I think I have everything to make this work but a external BD rom drive and some flavor of cat6 or better ethernet cable. I have been told that cat5e is only reliable for single streams. That's OK from my gigabit switch to each display but I need something more robust between the server and gigabit switch. I know some here rip and save. So, what is your favorite ripping software and front end? This will be my first attempt at a network video server so I'm open for suggestions.

[jask]

If you have not tried XBMC you need to check it out, the
xbmchub.com site has a fast and painless setup via fusion and gives you a solid platform for movie/TV shows, pics,music,programs and games add ons galore and it works across tons of devices. Good cat5e properly terminated and installed should give you gigabit in a residential run, you can buy shielded 5e that specs up to 400MHz - but a badly stapled wire, bad kink or tight turn will ruin the connection.

[CIR Engineering]

What size hard drives do you have? How much total space.

I use AnyDVD and DVDFab primarily. I rip to may NAS and watch everything through DUNE players around the house.

craigr

[stefuel]

[CIR Engineering]

I guess one question you need to answer is whether you want to watch the movies through the server using the server for video playback, or whether you want to watch the movies using the server to just serve the files. If you are thinking of using a PS3 or something than it seems like you are leaning towards using the server just to server the files. If this is the case than you will be using the server as a NAS.

For an OS I would suggest FreeNAS or NAS4Free. I use Freenas.
https://www.curtpalme.com/forum_archived/viewtopic.php@t=32320.html

You can use whatever playback device you want, but the type of playback device (such as a PS3) will dictate what type of file format you can use. I think you will most likely use MKV with a PS3. I like media players like the DUNE models because they can play back BD and DVD with full menu support just like a regular disc player.

craigr

[ecrabb]

Craig... I don't think the PS3 or Xbox will play MKV's natively; I think they need to be converted, either non-realtime, or real-time on the fly by the server.

SC

[CIR Engineering]

[Tom.W]

Chip my advise would be to just buy a Dune player and a couple 2tb WD green external drives to start out. Blu rays require about 40gb per movie or about 24 BDs per TB. So far I have 12tb of HD and SD movies already

For just doing full copy's of SD and BD discs I use AnyDVD only and save as ISO files...

[Tom.W]

Has anyone ever tried one of these ?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Signage-BLURAY-ISO-GIGABIT-Realtek-1186-3D-1080P-WIFI-HD-TV-Media-Player-/271105958103?pt=US_Internet_Media_Streamers&hash=item3f1f2ca0d7

[CasetheCorvetteman]

What video capabilities does this server have? Are you using a media capable operating system or server operating system? Does it even have a PCI-E slot?

Or are you planning to use it as a file server only?

What hard disk interface does it have? Is there provision for a SATA controller? Are those 72GB disks 10,000rpm or 15,000rpm? Last time i looked at Cheetahs they were not cheap...

This is starting to sound like alot of effort here!!

CAT6 has to be properly terminated to see the most advantage, CAT5e STP will do you just fine provided you terminate it nice and neat and observe segregation, but you really SHOULD use STP and not just UTP.

[stefuel]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

I dont reckon its the machine for the job, but that is my opinion too. At this point, youve got 720 gigs of capacity, minus operating system and redundancy, which is simply not enough to really make this a viable project, again though, in my opinion.

If its got two XEONs in it itll probably still be gutless compared to an i7, although if there is enough RAM in there itll still easily be enough power for the task. If there is only one CPU in there it probably wont really be grunty enough.

What expansion slots does the mobo have?

[CIR Engineering]

You can use a PCIx SAS card which would be cheap. You could get one on eBay for about $30 that would provide 8x SATA connections. But that being said, you really are trying to put lipstick on a pig. The server is old, slow, and using a lot of electric power to do very little. You can build a whole FreeNAS system for less than $300 that would be better.

It takes between 30-70 minutes for me to rip one BD to my server without compression. I usually add discs as I get them.

craigr

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Yeah itll take alot more than 70 minutes with that stone age machine too.

[stefuel]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Not much you can learn from it though really. Craig may have another opinion on that. Crestron control will quite like be totally different on a newer machine and different operating systems.

Im not concerned about power consumption, the amount itll use is somewhat insignificant, although itll use a hell of alot more per task you give it to complete.

[stefuel]

[CasetheCorvetteman]

Extra 30 minutes to process? Youre optimistic!!


You got a pic of the mainboard and some specs of what its currently got in it?

Adding anything like that to this machine is abit like tipping money in the toilet unless itll be up to the task in a new machine...

[CIR Engineering]

The thing is that if you use the server as a NAS server there is no Crestron control required and I can't think of why you would want any. The NAS should be setup to spin down the HD's when they are not in use for some time (I use 20 min). The HD's will spin up once you try and access data on the server.

Your PS3 or whatever will access the server and this is what you need control over. So figure out what media player you want to use and then you just have to control that. The NAS just follows along.

craigr

[Jeremy112]

I think using actual servers for HTPC servers are an excellent idea. I use two servers in my configuration as well. Both are HP, a DL385 G2 2U rackmount that holds 6 SCSI hot swap drives, and a HP DL140 G3 that holds 2 SATA hard drives.

I have the SCSI unit at 600+GB storage, use it for everything computer related in the house from installing windows on new PCs via the LAN, to web server, FTP server, etc.... The brains of this machine are 2 Intel Xeon 3.8GHz single core with hyper threading processors.

The DL140G3 is actually my home theater PC/server. it uses 2 1.5TB hard drives (not nearly large enough for HD video) 16GB DDR2 Fully buffered dim, NVidia Quadro FX1800 PCI express graphics card (currently working on a PCIe sound card) and uses 2 Intel Xeon Quad core 2.33GHz processors.

Now, some might think the biggest con: Holy power hogging! - Not so. Almost any server in existence only uses ONE of the multiple hot swap power supplies that are installed in its chassis. The rest are there PURELY for redundancy, they DO NOT engage unless one fails or is pulled out while the machine is on. And even then if theres more than 2, only one more will power on in place of the removed/failed one.

Most servers (such as mine and I'm sure the PE 2800 series is similar) use 350 Watt -750 Watt power supplies. This is an average PC power supply these days. Also you MUST keep in mind, the system will not use that power unless you are literally maximizing what the machine can do, which on a server can be quite the task to do unless your running it for a gaming server and theres a bunch of people doing things in the game server. Even then its pretty hard to get a full load on a server in a home setting.

The biggest con of any server: They are LOUD, they cannot be quieted down, they are designed specifically like this to ensure they stay running at peak performance. I have read and heard of people modifying their machines to make them quieter, but in the end this is very harmful for any server due to their extremely packed together design. So if you intend to use this machine, either make a dedicated spot for it that it can be out of the way and not heard, or put up with the sound.

Anyway... in the end, servers are NOT for everyone. Most find them to be not worth using in home due to the noise and "lack of uses compared to normal computers" around the house. If you know what you're doing, they can be used for anything, and they are quite a lot of fun to work with too once you get them setup.

Stefuel, I have to agree with most of the posts above regarding the age of your machine. It is fairly similar to the DL380 G4 I have here, which is a great machine, but really unless you are using it for processing and storage only, it is rather antiquated, and the performance of the machine would probably less than what you would want from it. However, since you are using it only for experimenting, it is a VERY good learning system. I learned how to work on servers for the first time with a pallet of Dell PE 2600 servers, even more outdated, but they taught me a lot of invaluable information for future work with servers.

Hope some of this has been helpful and not totally pointless , I just woke up