Im interested in hearing what your running. im in the process of changing mine and there are so many options out there. currently in running mybook live duo 6tb hooked up to the comcast arris router i have a wd tv play (which is failing) in the living room and an old laptop (windows vista) and wireless keyboard upstairs and also a roku im thinking of buying a mac mini and running plex server on it downstairs and using the plex app on the roku upstairs to read from the server. my hiccup is the price of a mac mini, even used is several hundred dollars and how i would hook up the mybook to it. the my book nas is almost useless as i can have drive connected to the mini my goals are seamless reading of the 3tb of media i have stored between 2 tv's. i can be hardwired to one and wireless the other any advice or input is welcome love to hear what your running as well
Well, I run my main gaming computer on my tv primarily. That is how I read the interwebs, movies, youtubes, and then of course game. I have 2 monitors and then my tv hooked up right now. I have my file/gaming server hiding behind the tv as well. That way i can switch to it if i need to get on it. My fiance has all Apple products and so we run an Apple TV so she can stream to the TV any of her devices she wants. Well to summarize I guess, I run everything to my Pioneer Receiver via HDMI, of which HDMI outputs my audio as well in 7.1 through the Nvidia 980 I run right now. This then outputs to my B&W speakers and TV. The vid card supports up to 4 monitors connected at the same time so i use those for the other 2 monitors. I always prefer wired of wireless, so my router and switches are all by the TV and I use a wired keyboard and mouse usually except when I am sitting on the couch then I use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I usually just switch through devices via the receiver. If you are a mac user, buying a couple Apple TV's might be the cheapest thing for you. I use Apple TV for my Netflix and HBO Now. Main reason I have my setup is because I use Google Play for music, and I enjoy gaming on 3 monitors for driving and flying games mostly. I have a racing seat setup that I also use for flying and driving. Sometimes I forgo the center TV for gaming and just use my right most monitor where I have my desk setup for. That way I am out of the way, but still using my speakers and my PC as a media center of sorts for everything else. Here is just a picture I have of my setup at night. The red is just LEDs that I can make any color and was just red at the time (IKEA). Maybe that will give you ideas but ya, I have about 10TB of media I can access and throw on the TV, and the rest is all on the cloud. Speaking of cloud you can have local clouds stacked up on the network to access from any of your devices too. Personally I dislike Comcast routers as they get to monitor all your devices of sorts since that is their equipment and just own my own modem on a Business Comcast 150/20 account and run that to my own routers and switches.
I picked up a nic box (smaller than a cable box) with a program called kodi on it and watch all my tv off that. Can do sharing off of it from a external drive for anything on the network. If you decide to go this route I can help you configure this (I.T guy) as I spent 6months to make a user friendly version with former business partner. Can do this with a raspberry pi as well. Then just get a NAS storage and load all your files there and you can acess the NAS from anywhere you have Internet and stream/download them. Kodi is pretty awsome can record live tv as well as have acess to cable shows and movies can add live sports channels and tons more. It's designed to cut the cable cords. If it interests you shoot me a message. Also the costs of a setup like this is a low cost. Average to do this is about 250.00 ish if I include Windows 8. Then you have new pc and media server for the price of one used laptop
