The GateWorld Cantina MKII

[Annoyed]

And I brought PH's cooking. It comes with a biohazard sign

Nobody will eat that. So it's harmless.

[Falcon Horus]

Explains why you look like a sponge

Coming in all shapes and sizes as it were...

[P-90_177]

And you could not be any less conscious than a passed out drunk.

My personal disputes with you are not a factor here, you gave good advice, why would I argue against that?
I argue with lots of people here, but not when they give good advice, make of that what you will.

You're not wrong but I always feel vaguely dirty when Annoyed and I agree.

[Annoyed]

You're not wrong but I always feel vaguely dirty when Annoyed and I agree.

We do not need to know about your bathing habits.

[Falcon Horus]

*installs bath house next to the cantina*

[mad_gater]

You don't have to break the bank for this. Depending upon how badly your cable/sat. provider rapes you for DVR capability (with a pitifully small capacity), this can pay for itself in a year.

The case for the server is one I had around collecting dust.
Motherboard is an Asus, chips is an intel i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
Memory is 8 G.
Has a 2nd network card added to it, & 4-tuner TV tuner card (https://hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_quadhd.html)
No audio card, only vid. card is the one in the motherboard. It doesn't need sound, and doesn't have a GUI installed anyway.
It lives in the basement scaring the spiders.

That hardware is about 6 years old. Has been running as a head end machine for my home network. Acts as a very flexible yet effective firewall, as well as services to the inside network. I do my own DNS, as well as a file sharing server. It also manages the wireless access point.

TV antenna in the attic has a coax going to a splitter in the basement, one branch of which goes to the tuner card in this PC.

This machine has Plex server software on it so it's a media server & controls DVR functions. Distribution to the TV's in the house is via Ethernet.

Motherboard has 6 SATA ports on it. I've got a very small drive in one of them, this contains the operating system (Ubuntu Linux 18.04 server version)
The rest of it can be filled with various capacity hard drives. And can be changed or added to relatively easily.

So that six year old hardware is rather busy, yet I've yet to see it using more than 6 of the 8 G RAM and 30% or so CPU usage. And that was while it was recording 4 different channels and watching a recording; as heavy a load as I could put on it.

You don't need high end hardware to do this. So you don't need to spend a lot of money. Using this setup, along with Sling, Amazon and Netflix, which I had anyway, I save over $100 / Mo.

For that much free money, I'll do a little work. This setup pays for itself in under a year.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. As for me I don't really watch that much TV. For me, number one once I get out on my own I'd likely be living in an apartment for the rest of my life and only have one TV...so I could just connect an HD-antenna directly into the antenna input on the TV to pick up the local broadcast channels for free (pretty much all I need)...and a BD/DVD/CD player plugged into one of the HDMI input ports on the TV. And that's pretty much it. So my set up could work just as nicely and be more portable. Your set up is good if you have a full-size house to use it in as I'm sure it likely takes up a fair amount of space, and if one day you had to move it would probably be a right pain in the mik'ta to disassemble and haul around LOL (getting an image of you throwing out your back hauling it up from the basement into the moving truck LOL )

As far as watching anything streaming over the internet I could probably just watch it on my laptop computer and pipe it into the TV via the VGA/stereo audio input on the TV (hook in the VGA to pipe the monitor output and plug in a splitter into the headphone port that splits the headphone port into L/R stereo audio output plugs that can be plugged into their respective input ports)

SSD's are also coming down in cost too....and the internal ones are cheaper than the external ones but you can get a kit at Best Buy that turns any internal HDD or SSD with a SATA interface into an external USB drive...though the drawback to that if if you jostle it, esp. while it's plugged in then you could disrupt the USB connection to the computer....ones designed to be external don't have that issue

[Annoyed]

Different strokes for different folks I guess. As for me I don't really watch that much TV. For me, number one once I get out on my own I'd likely be living in an apartment for the rest of my life and only have one TV...so I could just connect an HD-antenna directly into the antenna input on the TV to pick up the local broadcast channels for free (pretty much all I need)...and a BD/DVD/CD player plugged into one of the HDMI input ports on the TV. And that's pretty much it. So my set up could work just as nicely and be more portable. Your set up is good if you have a full-size house to use it in as I'm sure it likely takes up a fair amount of space, and if one day you had to move it would probably be a right pain in the mik'ta to disassemble and haul around LOL (getting an image of you throwing out your back hauling it up from the basement into the moving truck LOL )

As far as watching anything streaming over the internet I could probably just watch it on my laptop computer and pipe it into the TV via the VGA/stereo audio input on the TV (hook in the VGA to pipe the monitor output and plug in a splitter into the headphone port that splits the headphone port into L/R stereo audio output plugs that can be plugged into their respective input ports)

SSD's are also coming down in cost too....and the internal ones are cheaper than the external ones but you can get a kit at Best Buy that turns any internal HDD or SSD with a SATA interface into an external USB drive...though the drawback to that if if you jostle it, esp. while it's plugged in then you could disrupt the USB connection to the computer....ones designed to be external don't have that issue

Oh, yes, moving would be a PITA. The hardware in the basement wouldn't be the problem though. The home theater setup in the living room would be the killer.
But, it's not going to be a problem. Unless I hit the lottery and can just afford to buy everything new at new digs, I won't be moving out of here until they cart me out in a hearse. At my age, I'm done with moving.

[jelgate]

*installs bath house next to the cantina*

Wouldn't work. We don't bathe

[mad_gater]

Oh, yes, moving would be a PITA. The hardware in the basement wouldn't be the problem though. The home theater setup in the living room would be the killer.
But, it's not going to be a problem. Unless I hit the lottery and can just afford to buy everything new at new digs, I won't be moving out of here until they cart me out in a hearse. At my age, I'm done with moving.

server machines to me always seemed far larger and heavier than your typical home computer set-up *shrug*

and yeah the BD/DVD/CD player I'd have would have a USB port for plugging in the drive(s) I use in order to play the rips I make of my disks

also most players and smart TV's are internet capable as well so you could watch streaming content through those too

[Annoyed]

server machines to me always seemed far larger and heavier than your typical home computer set-up *shrug*

and yeah the BD/DVD/CD player I'd have would have a USB port for plugging in the drive(s) I use in order to play the rips I make of my disks

also most players and smart TV's are internet capable as well so you could watch streaming content through those too

In my view, smart TV capabilities are better obtained via add-on gadgets, such as Roku boxes and such. The reason is lifespan.
A $2000 dollar TV is supposed to last 10+ years, often double that. But the apps that provide the smart functions very often sunset after only 2-3 years. You get occasional messages along the lines of "We regret that app_001 will no longer be available after such and such date",
So, in a very short period of time, 3 years or so, all the TV's smart functions are dead, and you have to depend on add-on hardware anyway.
So, there's no point in buying a "smart" TV, just be sure it has USB, HDMI ports and an ethernet port.
You can buy a Roku box for $100 bucks, so no need to pay for that in the TV.

[Gatefan1976]

[QUOTE=mad_gater;14682318]server machines to me always seemed far larger and heavier than your typical home computer set-up *shrug*
They are not MG.

and yeah the BD/DVD/CD player I'd have would have a USB port for plugging in the drive(s) I use in order to play the rips I make of my disks

Of course, I use around 5 1TB backup drives just for my discs, but I always have backups of my backups.
They cost around 60 bucks each.
Your idea is not wrong, Annoyed just gave you a better way to do it.

also most players and smart TV's are internet capable as well so you could watch streaming content through those too

Sure, but in streaming, nothing is saved.
What is it you want?

[mad_gater]

In my view, smart TV capabilities are better obtained via add-on gadgets, such as Roku boxes and such. The reason is lifespan.
A $2000 dollar TV is supposed to last 10+ years, often double that. But the apps that provide the smart functions very often sunset after only 2-3 years. You get occasional messages along the lines of "We regret that app_001 will no longer be available after such and such date",
So, in a very short period of time, 3 years or so, all the TV's smart functions are dead, and you have to depend on add-on hardware anyway.
So, there's no point in buying a "smart" TV, just be sure it has USB, HDMI ports and an ethernet port.
You can buy a Roku box for $100 bucks, so no need to pay for that in the TV.

I don't really mess around with streaming much....just sayin' there's other ways to do it on the cheap if you do want to mess around with streaming...like streaming it onto an internet-capable laptop (for example one can watch netflix on their laptop) then hooking it into the VGA/stereo audio input on the TV

[mad_gater]

[QUOTE=Gatefan1976;14682340]

server machines to me always seemed far larger and heavier than your typical home computer set-up *shrug*
They are not MG.


Of course, I use around 5 1TB backup drives just for my discs, but I always have backups of my backups.
They cost around 60 bucks each.
Your idea is not wrong, Annoyed just gave you a better way to do it.

Sure, but in streaming, nothing is saved.
What is it you want?

a fairly simple set up is all I want or need...I probably wouldn't even get a smart TV since I don't stream much and if I do any streaming at all I just watch it on my computer

so just a regular TV, BD/DVD/CD player with USB port, and indoor HD antenna is all I need plus the storage for storing the virtual disk images and disk rips of my movies and VHS recordings (I have a video capture device that can record VHS playback from a VCR to a file on a computer)

and as I said above his idea is great if you have the living space to set it up...for me though chances are that in a few years me, my mom, and my sis will be selling this house and getting apartments....and apartment space is limited so setting up large machines would be a no-go

[Falcon Horus]

Wouldn't work. We don't bathe

[jelgate]

It was PH's way