Ongoing Singleseat to multiseat setup (1 Viewer)

[wijnand]

Hello, fellow MP-ers,

I want to change my setup for the future. Now I have a single seat setup, but want to upgrade to a multi-seat setup.
Currently there's a pc in the basement with a raid 5 3Tb storage for movies etc.
The streaming works very well (even HD content) via a Netgear prosafe FS108 100Mbps switch.

Here's my current situation:

Pc livingroom;
Asus p5k-vm
2Gb ram
E2180 @2gHz
500Gb seagate 7200rpm
2x Floppy DTV s2 + 2 Aston dual CAM's and Canal Digitaal Cards.

Basement PC:
p4 @ 1.2Ghz
512 Mb Ram
40Gb seagate 7200rpm
Highpoint Rocketraid 1740 PCI
4x 1Tb Samsung F1

My plan is to put several Atom based MediaPortal Front-ends in the house ( livingroom, bedroom, study),
and migrate the basement PC with the current livingroom PC.

New config for the Basement PC:

Cooler Master Elite 335 Black
Be Quiet! Pure Power L7 430 Watt Supply
p5k-vm
2Gb ram
E2180 @2gHz
500Gb seagate 7200rpm
2x Floppy DTV s2 + 2 Aston dual CAM's and Canal Digitaal Cards
Highpoint Rocketraid 1740 PCI
4x 1Tb Samsung F1

I need to re-run the cables from the sat. dish to the basement, which is a project for the summerholliday.
What I not know is how the setup behaves when I want to watch on 2 or 3 clients a HD channel. Is this very proc. speed depending?
I'm wondering if the server is fast enough to serve several clients HD content.
Probably I need to upgrade my switch to a Gigabyte one. The cabling is already prepared to handle Gb networking.
What do you guys think? Is this a good working config?

 

[ThaClown]

Whow that is a very nice setup!
I dont think you would have any problems..
(but then again I have never tried or wanted to play 3 different HD schannels on 3 different clients!)

 

[mr viggo]

I remember reading about the bit rate of my channels a while back. I can't remember the exact numbers but the SD channels where between 4-5 Mbit and HD channels around 20-22 Mbit. This of course varies with different channels but can give you some guidance to what your home network is capable of.

 

[dm15644]

AW: Singleseat to multiseat setup

I had issues with 3 SD streams. They were gone when I upgraded the switch from 100Mbps to 1Gbps. I'm not saying that it is impossible, but given the little extra cost for the switch I would go for 1Gbps straight.

You wrote your cabling is already prepared (Cat7 ?) so the big part of the investment is already done.

 

[wijnand]

Thanx everyone for reading my project! I'm now searching for a small frontend. Something like a AsRock ION330HT (I only want to have a slot loading DVD unit like a Sony AD-7670S) or for in the bedroom one without DVD player like a Zotac MAG.
Any other suggestions?

@ Jayrock, Issues? like stuttering, glitches etc?
It's indeed a good idea to upgrade to gb switch to avoid problems and faster .iso copying..

I'll keep you updated!

 

[druid9]

I've just installed an Acer Revo 3610 as a small client. I love it.

 

[wijnand]

Found this one.. Good WAF factor..

Giada Mini PC - SLIM-N10 in White/Pink Colours
very nice..

 

[naich]

Client Frontend PC ...

I use two Asus EeeBox EB1012 as FullHD (+ one EeeBox B206 720p) clients and for me it is a perfect solution.

absolut Silent, less power consumption, very fast standby and resume, and small like a book

cu

 

[wijnand]

I decided to start with the livingroom frontend and ordered yesterday a Asrock ION330 HT 2gbram and
250Gb WD Scorpio Black WD2500BEKT. (one of the fastest 2.5" drives..)
I can't wait to test this setup!

 

[dm15644]

AW: Re: Singleseat to multiseat setup

@ Jayrock, Issues? like stuttering, glitches etc?
It's indeed a good idea to upgrade to gb switch to avoid problems and faster .iso copying..

Specifically, stuttering and very slow channel switching. Note that this is like a year ago, so MP itself may have improved things by now.