Okay ladies and gents, I have attempted to surf the forums here and been unsuccessful to find a few answer I need to figure out, so figured I would post. You guys are light years ahead of me on this stuff, haha. Quick background though, I am a SysAdmin, so I've done some work with servers, but those servers cost a lot more than I'd ever spend for a house, lol. So I'm not completely lost, but also understand this is NOT Server 2008 and don't entirely understand what they scaled back for the home version. And I'd be mortified to invest a bunch of money and stuff doesn't work how I want it to.

First, let me explain my goal with the setup. We have a lake house that is wired with CAT 6 throughout to every TV jack. I have just a generic non-DLNA 37" LG LCD in 5 bedrooms. We have Dish network TV and Hughesnet Satellite Internet (Dear God NEVER EVER BUY Hughesnet). What I want to be able to do is have a central server that hosts DVD quality movies. I am after recommendations as to how to be able to handle 4-5 streams at any one time within the local network. I understand I'd have to buy some sort of media player at the TV end for each TV, and while I'm a WD nerd, I would like recommendations to the best available solution without destroying my bank account. I am after low maintenance as it is a lake house and not my house.

This has left me with a few major questions:
1. Can WHS 2011 handle up to 4-5 streams over a local gigabit network without degradation? No recoding or anything should be involved I don't think.
2. Server-wise: Should I attempt to convert an HTPC into this? Buy one of the HP ones? Or build my own? For example hot swap would be cool but I don't want to pay extra money for it so it gets punted. Pics/Music/etc. would be perks, but aren't essential.
3. From a Windows 7 laptop, can I use the Play To... to send movies from the Server to a TV? Would I have to remote into the server? Again, would be cool, but not that important.
4. I'd assume RAID 5 with maybe 4x 2TB HDD? Haven't RAID'd a machine in a few years, so is there a better RAID to use? I like the "remove a failed hard drive, slap in a new one, and it will rebuild" concept.
5. Would trunking two ethernet CAT 6 gigabit ports on the motherboard into the Router help the number of streams I could effectively use?

You guys are the experts, so figured this was a good place to start. I am sure I'll have more questions, but this seems like a fair starting off point. Please let me know if I left out any useful information, tried to give background and stuff. Price-wise I'm flexible, under $1k would be great, but will entertain all options.

Thanks
-Hartman

Hartman,

First off, welcome to the forum

Unfortunately I would say that a SageTV setup would be the best/most cost effective. Unfortunately Google just bought out SageTV so they are going bye bye. Here is what I know off the top of my head regarding your questions:

1. I have only ever tested 2 streams at once (using WHS v1). I have heard though that trying to get to 4+ streams causes a lot of issues. Hopefully others can give some input here
2. Really up to you, you don't need a powerful server in order to stream media unless you plan on having the server do CPU intensive processes. unRAID is a popular option, you could build a W7 server, WHS 2011, WHS v1, etc... The big question is what type of redundancy do you want.
3. Not that I know of. You would need to initiate playback from whatever media player is connected to your TV. HOWEVER, several media players also have Apps where you can start a movie on that player remotely via an Android/iPxx
4. I am still using WHS v1 which is essentially RAID1. Of course it is not as efficient as RAID5 or other, but it is a simple plug n play. A drive goes bad, I simply remove, slap i the new drive, and never miss a beat. As I mentioned, a popular alternative is unRAID or maybe even FlexRAID
5. That I don't know, maybe someone else can answer.

To give you an idea of my setup at home:

WHS Server - currently 16 HDDs @ approx 26TB
- House wired with cat5e/cat6
- Various media players throughout my house (Dune BD Prime, Dune Smart D1, PCH A200, PCH C200, SageTV HD300, 2 HTPCs, etc...)

I think the biggest challenge you will face is to keep the price under 1k.

Let me know if I can help out further.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin