A little home media server and Vero help please

General Discussion
1

Hello everybody,

Long-time reader, first time poster.

I’ve got one Vero 4K at the moment, but I’m looking to get a Vero 4K+ in the next couple of days. The 4K+ will be used to replace my main Kodi device which is an old x86 PC running LibreElec and OSMC remote. This HTPC has proven adequate over the years, but it is currently unable to play a few newer file formats including 4K 10bit HDR files. It’s pretty long in the tooth, so is due an upgrade. I’ve been pleasantly surprised and very pleased with the 4K we have in another room (a much less used device), so I’d like to upgrade where I can to get the best out of my TV, a LG TV 55SJ810V.

My questions revolve around advice for the best streaming media setup around the house, and setting up OSMC and my “server”. I am purely using Kodi devices at the moment. I have a “server” running Windows 7 (details below) just storing files and running SABnzbd, Sonarr and Radarr. All shares are done through Windows and I have setup one user with a password to access these shares due to the recent changes in Kodi’s SMB support, which in all honesty is a bit over my head. Anyway, I’ve read the Wiki about file sharing with a NAS and it recommends mounted NFS shares and I’m happy to go down this route, but would like to see if there are any better ideas for my current setup I’m open to pretty much any suggestions, including changing the server OS to something more NAS orientated (OpenMediaVault?) or upgrading hardware, but I’m basically looking for the best performance across the network for viewing 4K video and using a new 4K+. My library is pretty expansive with all movies (2031) and TV shows (94 shows and 9296 episodes) having locally stored metadata and images. Most files are SD or 1080p at the moment, but I am in the processing of upgrading to 4K where and when available.

Current Server Specification

CPU
Intel Core i5 750 @ 2.67GHz
Lynnfield 45nm Technology

RAM
4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 667MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P7P55D-E LX (LGA1156)

Graphics
ATI Radeon HD 5450

Storage
119GB SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series ATA Device (SATA (SSD))
1863GB SAMSUNG HD203WI ATA Device (SATA)
1863GB SAMSUNG HD203WI ATA Device (SATA)
698GB SAMSUNG HD753LJ ATA Device (SATA)
2794GB Western Digital WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 ATA Device (SATA)
2794GB Western Digital WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 ATA Device (SATA)
1863GB Seagate ST2000DL 003-9VT166 SCSI Disk Device (SATA)

Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected

Audio
AMD High Definition Audio Device

Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

Generated with Speccy v1.32.740

So that’s my setup, any and all suggestions or recommendations will great. Thanks to Sam and the OSMC team for a great device and fantastic support.
Thanks for reading. Darren.

2

You should be OK with Samba shares. I wouldn’t worry about NFS.

If Windows works, stick with it.

Sam

3

You shouldn’t have any issues at all with SMB shares. I use very similar hardware to provide well over 3Gbps to multiple devices using SMB shares. You’ll be restricted to 1Gbps because of the moherboard LAN, but then you won’t need even 200Mbps to play back movies (even 4K) on both Veros at the same time.

4

Thanks guys.
New Vero 4K+ ordered! Hopefully I’ll get to play with it over the weekend while the missus is away on a hen do.

5

Convert your long in the tooth PC into an “Unraid” NAS headless box https://unraid.net

Stick as many HDD’s as you can in it and put it in a cupboard out of the way with a gigabit ethernet cable.

Then just set up your “Shares” using NFS or Samba or both.

Enjoy