What is the best setup for using the media

[pcgirl]

What I am asking is what do some of you have setup for using this media in your home? I have WDLive TV with an external hard drive but I have to keep disconnecting the hard drive and connecting it to my PC to copy over the tv shows, movies that I download. The reason I have to do this is because I have WDLive TV using wireless and it would take forever to copy from my PC to the external connected to the WD over the wireless network. I can't get a network cable to the unit because where it is. Is there some other way to do this. I find having to bring the hard drive over to the PC annoying.

[shypike]

I have a NetGear NAS and a miniature PC running OpenElec (contains XBMC).

[pcgirl]

Is there a good site that would explain how to set this up?

[shypike]

The OpenElec site.

[pcgirl]

Do you connect the mini pc to your home theatre receiver? How do you navigate with it? Do you use a remote of some sort? I would like to navigate with my ipad. Is this possible?

[shypike]

The mini-PC came with a remote and it has an hdmi outlet.
But I'm using a fancy programmable Logitech remote.
(I did need to tweak XBMC infra-red codes configuration quite a bit).
Don't know about control-by-iPad.

[jcfp]

If all you care about is not having to move around the external hd, just connect that wd thing to your network using powerlan hardware (this stuff) instead of wifi.

[pcgirl]

Yeah, I have been looking at that option as well but I am kind of interested in setting up a pc server and using XBMC. It looks really nice. Does it play all the formats like WD does?

[scochr]

I also have the WDtv Live. I have it hardwired to my network. I have all my content on a Ubuntu NAS. I stream it over the network to the WD and it works great. I have replaced the stock WDTV firmware with wdlxtv. I then use psycho4 as an on screen display. I like psycho4 on screen display better because it has larger fonts and it's easy to read. The NAS shares are automatically mounted at startup of the WDTV. I like the WDTV because it plays so many file formats.

[pcgirl]

I don't think I can use the wdlxtv firmware because my wdtv live is the 3rd generation and on the list for unsupported devices. I have finally hard wired my WDTV on the weekend and I am working on putting together a media server to run xbmc. As per my previous question....does XBMC play all the formats like WDTV does?

[pcgirl]

I do have an older WDTV Live Plus that seems to be on the list of supported units. I might try this also just to see what it offers.

[tymanthius]

Also take a look at Plex Media Server / Client. It's a little different mind set than XBMC. It's what I use, and it's nice that I can easily share my media out to friends/family or I can watch what's on my server at home via my phone.

[pcgirl]

Very interesting indeed! Thanks for the inputs.