Ask HN: What is your home media PC setup?

My setup is based on Roku devices connected to a Freenas server with 12x 3Tb HDD on a RaidZ2 setup to store all the media which is then served through Plex Media Server. It works very well and I've had no problems with this setup aside from a hard drive dying on me every once in a while.

Plex also has an option to use Google Drive or Dropbox and others as a storage medium through their new (although only for the premium Plex Pass holders) Plex Cloud (it's also possible to roll your own though, i've written about it here: https://nunosouto.com/blog/how-to-install-plex-cloud)

I have an Intel NUC set up with Kodi (formerly XBMC) on linux. Able to connect to remote samba shares for serving media, kodi has plenty of extensions and features so you can use it with youtube, radio streams, weather, photos, etc. when not watching video. Also the NUC I have has an IR receiver so a normal tv remote can be used to control kodi (big plus).

Another thing that's nice about setting up a full computer over an android based media device is that you have a fairly decent computer directly connected to the tv to use when/if you have to.

Shield TV. Hands down the best steamer you can get. And on top of the streaming benefits, the game stream function is legitimately good. Input lag was not really noticable, even when playing something like rocket league. When I bought it, I went from three devices (Kodi box, Chromecast, Fire TV) to one.

It used to be a 5m HDMI cable from my workstation to my TV with super+p bound to output all to HDMI. Worked reasonably well but became cumbersome when I wanted to use my PC whilst playing media. Currently, I have a tiny Linux box running in my media unit with a Plex client and a Plex server running on my NAS to store everything. Everything is now controlled from a Bluetooth remote for the interface so it's generally pretty resilient. So far the only issue has been transcoding and playing back >1080p media, struggles a bit to keep up, but I suspect the atom in the NAS is as much to blame as the Linux box. Kodi/XBMC could work well in this case as a client as long as sharing was properly configured from Plex server.

You can give Plex a try if you have a number of lightweight clients you'd like to consume your media through. There's several competing media servers with different priorities but Plex is rather dominant nowadays if you don't mind spending a little money for some conveniences.

I've used Plex in a VM and a ZFS based NAS for nearly 4 years now and have had relatively few problems. I've used Android, iOS, Windows, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and MacOS clients all with decently usable results. The hardest thing to deal with in Plex is mostly about sizing your server for the amount of transcoded streams you'll need. With Kodi, this concern is mostly relegated to the client. While mobile computing capabilities have gotten greater the fundamental problem I ran into for years was that no one device will play everything correctly besides a PC. As such, a transcoding server from a PC (even though Plex has several server options including nVidia Shield and some NAS devices) makes the most sense for compatibility across all random media files you could obtain online. Otherwise, your network transfer speed matters still just like with Kodi and a lot of people's wireless setups are just really bad that get glossed over when using streaming native media like from Amazon and Netflix.

Pretty simple: XBMC/Kodi on Amazon FireTV, connected to Samba share running on my NAS (Ubuntu with ZFS running on HP Microserver). Kodi pretty much plays anything.

2 Roku's and an old laptop running plex. I'd like to move to a central setup with general file storage at some point. Potentially even tie in to be more of a home hub with power tracking etc.

A deal-breaker would be losing remotes that Roku offer (or similar alternatives) as they make media viewing simple and easy for adults, kids and guests alike.

Synology 1513+ running Plex Server and a FireTV Box stuck to every TV in the house. All of my media is stored on the Synology (5x 4TB drives).

I also have one of the less used PCs in the house running Plex Server, and we connect to that for viewing Plex Channels (basically, plugins that front-end NBC.com, ABC.com, and a bunch of other services) to take some of the transcoding load off the Synology.

I have a lifetime subscription to Plex.tv and LOVE the service. The only thing I'd like to improve about my set up is the processor in the Synology, which is too slow to transcode on the fly so I have to target my encodes to my current hardware and rerip when my clients get more capable.

Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenELEC (Kodi), with a large USB HDD attached. It doubles as my NAS.

I like MythTV: a client/server based TV-Recording application. Very good at planning recordings, avoiding conflicts etc. MythTv ss able to handle multiple sources (Cable, Satellit, IP-TV, DVB ... , to play DVD and much more.

I tried to have a good and not expensive approach on that. So in my opinion i have a quite conservative setting.

I have a raspberry pi 3 with osmc installed via noobs at startup. Additionally I bought a DVB-S USB Stick (http://sundtek.com/shop/Digital-TV-Sticks/Sundtek-SkyTV-Ulti...) for germany. A standard TV is connected via HDMI. I use a KODI android app as a remote control.

Additionally I have bought 1 TB NAS on ebay in the cellar which is connected via network cable to the wifi router.

Without TV I had total cost of approximately 300 €

I have connected all music services (soundcloud, etc), all mediathek services of german and austria television providers. Also youtube and vimeo. Everything works great and was extremely low cost, i would say.

TV -- Raspberry Pi 2 / Raspbian / Kodi -- 3TB disk

Remote control with Kodi iOS apps.

I just have a windows 10 machine plugged into the TV. I have a server farm upstairs with plenty of storage for archives of TV shows if I want them, but these days I can get pretty much anything I want from one of the streaming services online.

I also have a glass table between the couch and the TV, so a dark field mouse is required if I'm doing anything that needs a real mouse. For everything else I just use a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo from Logitech.

Personally I'm using a Playstation 3 and Plex. Maybe not the most sexy of solutions, but it's cheap, has worked flawlessly for years and I can even play games on it if the mood takes me.

All my flat panel TVs have Roku 3 boxes (I don't see the need for 4K video since most of my content isn't 4K). I took a 2010 15" MacBook running 3 versions of OSX behind Seira and that runs Plex Media Server. This setup gives us easy access to Netflix, Amazon Prime as well as local content sourced from DVDs we own. Plex also lets us share videos created from our phones as well but that's probably its weakest feature.

Raspberry Pi 3 + OSMC (Kodi) + 2 HDD connected to the router.

A 2010 Mac mini connected to the TV and Logitech keyboard with trackpad

chromecast

I just have the latest Apple Tv

Rasp3 running openelec / kodi, never looked back. All Open Source, not snooping on you :)

HP Microserver Gen8 with:

> Debian 8

> Xeon E3-1260L

> 12 GB RAM

> 120GB SSD (OS), 2 x 3TB WD RED (Data), 2 x 4TB HGST (Movies/TV Shows)

> Plex (Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos)

> CouchPotato (Movie Downloading)

> Transmission (Torrents)

> CrashPlan (backups)

> Raspberry Pi Camera Streams (samba share)

> + more stuff

All these applications run in their own docker containers. I used to do local web development in a virtual machine, now it all sits on this server. Love it and it works 'magically'.

Connected to the TV is a Quad-core android TV Box.

Apple TV and a Mac that I use to stream movies to the Apple TV.

Raspberry PI 3 plus LibreElec. Cheap, consumes a lot less than a PC and plays everything I can throw at it. I would definitely use different boards for non video related tasks, but in this context the RPi still is the one to go for non trivial reasons such as full CEC support and video acceleration.

The home NAS is a MiniITX board with multiple SATA ports and NAS4Free.

I've had a variety of XBMC, Plex, Windows Media Center (hacked to run on Windows 10 and with a variety of mods), various multichannel TV tuners, cable card readers, DLNA devices, dinovo mini keyboards, reprogrammable remotes, etc.

I currently use an Amazon Fire TV, as fighting an endless war with content creators to steal their content is a waste of my time (I also really like the voice search on the Fire devices).

I pay for films, and most TV, but steal Game of Thrones since, bizarrely, it's not available in full HD via Sky's app. In that case, I play it via DLNA.