My Media Center Pictures and Component Specifications
Specifications
This whole fireplace and media center area was designed by me and custom built by my brother.
That's an Xbox 360 S Kinect mounted between the TV and cabinets. On screen is the XBMS Aeon Nox skin with Avatar fanart.
Below this rack of components are 4 drawers that can hold about 300 DVD cases. The drawers hold mostly my action adventure, Disney DVD's, Blu-rays and box sets. The components making up this 7.1 sound system from top to bottom are: Xbox, VHS player, Dell PC, Cox cable box, LG DVD player, and the Receiver. I've listed the detailed specs after all the pictures.
My Logitech K400 combination keyboard touchpad is resting on top of the DVD case.
Lots of storage for DVD's and CD's in the cabinets below the TV. With close to 1,000 DVD's I copy most of my retail DVD's (originals are perfectly preserved this way) and then store them in storage tubs. The upper shelves in the cabinets hold
hanging DVD sleeve cases as shown here.
Hanging sleeves aluminum cases are definitely the best longer term solution, especially if your library will continue to grow! I started with the binders and quickly got frustrated with the constant shuffling of discs in each binder to keep them alphabetical. Also no concerns about them warping depending on the binder type that might be used. I don’t bother tracking the sleeve numbers since they are alphabetical. Keep in mind that the aluminum cases are heavy! I keep the case covers alphabetical in a single cardboard box. I suppose one of those picture storage boxes would be a more elegant storage method that you could keep in easy reach on a self for easy reference as needed. For a while I was coping each disc and storing another set of aluminum cases of site at my brothers in case of fire or theft, but I got tired of that and stopped.
The DVD's and Blu-rays in the drawers will eventually go away once I've copied them. However, the box sets will be displayed above the blinds for arcadia door on a wood shelf matching everything else.
I have a door on my patio to access a walk in media room behind the media center. This provides easy access to the back of the components and it's where my modem, router, NAS and stuff are. It also gives me some storage space. There's a small monitor mounted to the framing behind the LCD. A full keyboard and mouse are also available. I also use Radmin on my laptop to remote in.
Back of components.
Every room of the house is wired with coaxial and cat 6 Ethernet cable and fed via this tube into media room.
COMPONENTS AND SPECS
- Sony 52" LCD KDL52W3000
- Xbox 360 S Model 1439
- JVC VHS player HR-S7600U
- HTPC - Dell Optiplex 7040 Small Form Factor
- DirecTV
- LG BD630 Blu-ray
- Sony STRDA5300ES Receiver
- Speakers (7.1): Mirage AVS-500 Series
- Subwoofer: Velodyne VLF-1012
- Logitech Harmony Elite Universal RF Remote with Harmony Hub
- Chromebit auto loads MoviePoster HTML5 page
HTPC
- Dell Optiplex 7040 Small Form Factor
- Intel Quad Core i7-6700, 3.4GHz
- Intel On-Board Graphics HD 530
- 16GB DDR3 RAM
- Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
- 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
- LG Blu-ray RW BH14
- Logitech Wireless Touch Keyboard K400 with Built-In Multi-Touch Touchpad (920-003070)
- Official XBMC Remote for iOS
- Mobile Mouse from www.mobilemouse.com
- Flirc FL-09028 USB Universal IR Remote Control Receiver for Media Centers
- MoviePoster App Server
NAS
- Synology DS1813+ 8 bay using 4TB drives
- Synology DS513 5 bay Expansion
- 47TB useable space
Network
- Linksys AC1900 Wireless 802:11a/c/g/n Router
- Netgear 8 port 10/100/1000 Mbps Switch GS608
- Wired cat 6 Ethernet throughout house
Logitech Touch keyboard K400
If you want to use the K400 with the Raspberry Pi, than you should read this post to learn how to get it working due to a timing issue.
Media Center Programs
Scraping Artwork
I use Ember Media Manager to scrape all artwork and trailers, etc. This way I'm not relying on Artwork Downloader or 3rd party site as much to always be available or work properly. Because many movies have the trailer on the DVD I extract them to use as high quality trailers from VOB's and then convert to mp4. I keep "VOB" in the name so I know it was created from the original. I'm slowly converting my movies are to digital format, so I use the the EMM OffLine manager a lot.
I use a custom vbs script to create daily dated backups of Kodi as well as all artwork and trailers from Media Library. So the actual movie files (mp4, mkv, iso, etc) are ignored.