Media Center / AV Considerations / 12v Networks

[WotEver]

14 hours ago, Mohsen said:

Im assuming cat7 being unshielded means its susceptible to interference? Would putting it in conduit solve this?

Cat7 is shielded. The shielding connects to the case of the (metal) plug at the end of the cable. 

[Johny London]

Another for the pi here. I was using Kodi for many years before I got the boat and going from xbmc (as it was then) on a pc to the pi was fine. You really ought to have all your media backed up so why not have two pi's, each with their own hard drives with the same stuff on both, in case (or rather, when) one drive dies?

I recently picked up a ps3 as they are quite media centre capable and can record tv too, but it uses more power and I haven't really gotten into it so far.

The only thing I would say about Kodi is don't even try to get live tv working on it. I have succeeded a number of times (next pvr on a windows system worked) the tv options for linux (pi) are hideously complicated/unsupported and don't stay working for long. I recommend a good set top box ie Humax dtr1000 which are fairly low power and just work.

I'm just using a 240v amp at the moment but one thing I might do is to put my music collection onto something else so I don't need to fire up the pi, the hard drive and the tv just to select a track. At the very least a usb powered small hard drive to save wear and tear on my main media drive, but possibly a dedicated small device, some sort of portable usb player with its own display. Or maybe the pi but with its own tiny display.

The kodi thing is so close - if only they had it out of the box with tv working. I think media portal does but not sure what devices you can run it on.

PS; - make sure you use drives that spin down on their own - kodi doesn't support disc idle so it needs to be  something the drives can do on their own