Options
setting up a server
stringman
Posts: 252
Forum Member
✭
Hi all,
I wonder if you can help me please.
In my old house we had a desktop computer which was connected to the Router via cat5 whilst the other computers were wireless.
I shared the Y drive of the desktop and it acted as a server of sorts.
when i moved the router I tried to run the desktop wirelessly. It did the email and web fine but we could no longer access the shared Y drive.
In this case i just ran a long cat5 and the problem was solved.
Now a new house with a different Desktop and different set up.
Router in the living room everyone working wireless
in a bedroom there is a desk top which seems to have a secondary router ( can you have more than one router on the same phone line?) but although the router shows asdl and internet the computer wont connect to the internet.
But what i was hoping to do was clean all the crap off this computer and then shove it in the loft to act as a media server.
just for storing music and films that we can use on the networked computers.
My first and most basic question is could i do this wirelessly or would I need to be "hard" wired via cat 5?
my second more "future based" question is:
is there a way to cheaply stream music to the home stereo (in the living room) without having to use a laptop.
same question with regards to video
would you be able to use a tablet or even a phone ( my sensation supports hdmi out) as a streaming device.
many thanks in advance
I wonder if you can help me please.
In my old house we had a desktop computer which was connected to the Router via cat5 whilst the other computers were wireless.
I shared the Y drive of the desktop and it acted as a server of sorts.
when i moved the router I tried to run the desktop wirelessly. It did the email and web fine but we could no longer access the shared Y drive.
In this case i just ran a long cat5 and the problem was solved.
Now a new house with a different Desktop and different set up.
Router in the living room everyone working wireless
in a bedroom there is a desk top which seems to have a secondary router ( can you have more than one router on the same phone line?) but although the router shows asdl and internet the computer wont connect to the internet.
But what i was hoping to do was clean all the crap off this computer and then shove it in the loft to act as a media server.
just for storing music and films that we can use on the networked computers.
My first and most basic question is could i do this wirelessly or would I need to be "hard" wired via cat 5?
my second more "future based" question is:
is there a way to cheaply stream music to the home stereo (in the living room) without having to use a laptop.
same question with regards to video
would you be able to use a tablet or even a phone ( my sensation supports hdmi out) as a streaming device.
many thanks in advance
0
Comments
You can't have more than one ADSL router connected to the same phone line. You should immediately unplug this second router from the phone.
It can be done via Wifi, but transfers of media will be much slower than if you hard-wire it. Not sure why you were previously unable to access the shared drive via Wifi, but i'm not a Windows guy.
Probably the cheapest way to do this is with a basic Android phone permanently connected to the power and your Wifi network, with the headphone socket connected to your stereo. You then use DLNA for streaming music from your server and can also use various Android apps, such as Tunein, for Internet radio.
If you run a DLNA server on the server and a DLNA client on the tablet/phone it's possible, but video streaming boxes are relatively cheap (£50 and up) these days and many of them support CIFs (the Windows file sharing protocol).
Now, servers don't need to be hard wired and should be able to share files over wireless but it does make sense to connect it with a network cable if possible as its more reliable and quicker. Also remember with wireless that capacity is shared amongst all the connected devices. So if you have your Server and a laptop and a tablet connected for example and say you start streaming from the server to the laptop, then that will effect the tablets internet connection even though it is not accessing the server or laptop. And even if you are only transferring data between laptop and server each will only get half the capacity.
I would stick with windows if that is what you know, there are dedicated server operating systems like windows home server or various flavours of Linux like freeNAS but windows XP. Vista or Win7 will all be fine.
The common standard for video streaming is DNLA. There are various free DNLA servers that you can install on the PC and then you can access the video from a variety of devices, e.g. laptop, smart TV, tablets, phones, media streamers. Anything that supports DNLA. This Roku box is quite popular and can stream from window shares,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roku-XS-1080p-Streaming-Player/dp/B006VTASW4/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1356874626&sr=1-2
For audio, many of the video streamers can attach to home stereos though a dedicated hifi streamer that can work with a display like this denon unit is around £200 http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005G2CM76/ref=asc_df_B005G2CM7611251309?smid=A16D1Q3U7G1XSE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22218&creativeASIN=B005G2CM76
or you can get something like Sonos range of streamers
Make sure before slapping it up in the loft its protected from dust/debris etc as that sort of thing will cause overheating and failure
sorry to be thick but what is DNLA as on the old system i just played the files from the remote machine via windows media player.
the other thing i was thinking of ( which i know is going off on a huge tangent) is just binning the desktop and then getting a media player which could sit in the living room
do such things exist with hdmi out and wifi capability
or another step forward would a smart tv be able to integrate with a server and/or media player?
thanks
http://www.dlna.org/
Most Smart TVs have it, Most dvd players have it, and even some mobile phones have it.
You could certainly just use media player and play the media directly from a share and it would be the simplest solution, however DNLA while not absolutely necessary would allow more different types of devices to playback the media.
The roku box I linked to has wi-fi and HDMI out.
Another option to combine storage and playback into one box would be HP microserver which costs around £120 plus the cost of hard drives. You would need to add £30 video card, operating system and wireless keyboard/mouse but that would could potentially offer terabytes of storage and stream and playback to a HD TV.
the ROKU box is that just a streamer ( ie acts as an interface between the hard drive and the TV)?
if so wouldnt a tablet or phone connected to wifi to the desktop in the loft do the same job?
my stepdad has a media hard drive thing which seems to be a hard drive with a graphics card ie he downloads films via usb to it and then plays films or music through the tv ( via component or vga)
I was thinking that if there is a similar device with hdmi and wifi for file transference then that would be ideal
any ideas?
thanks
The Roku has a USB socket if you want to plug in a USB hard disk. Alternately western digital do some hard drive / streamer type boxes, like this one which has a built in 1TB drive,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Live-Hub-Media-Center-1TB/dp/B00466IEXE/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1356916232&sr=1-4