Media Libraries

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adanath
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Posts: 505
Joined: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:36 am
Location: Lynchburg, VA

Media Libraries

#1 Post by adanath » Wed Nov 02, 2011 1:43 pm

Years ago I decided I would start digitizing everything. Today I have a Media Center that I built with a 2 Terabyte Music Partition and a 7 Terabyte Media Partition. It works wonderfully, I store games on it for consoles, as well as all DVD's, Blu-Rays (some at costs of upwards of 17GB each) or any media that I may buy or download. It certainly makes it very handy to store all of my DVD's and Blu-Rays and CD's and such in my attic and never need to use any media that I purchase again due to having it accessible easily through my Media Center hooked up throughout my house.

I am having serious issues with organization of files however, I use My Movies for my movie Libraries which does a fantastic job of pulling covers, actors, film synopsis and trailers so that I can easily browse through Windows Media Center there, or any extension computers or Xbox's throughout the house. I am very satisfied with this solution as it takes some care, but I do not have near the number of movies that I do music.

What do you guys use to manage your music, I have a massive amount of files and I want to get it neater, organized, and more concise as well as less duplicated (as tends to happen with thousands of files). So just looking for suggestions?

Drayn
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Re: Media Libraries

#2 Post by Drayn » Wed Nov 02, 2011 2:25 pm

XBMC

It's got a lot going for it:

- Free
- Cross platform
- Works well

It's HTPC software (home theatre pc) for cataloguing and playing media files. You can specify multiple sources of the same type of content (movie/tv show/music etc.) and they'll be scanned and catalogued. XBMC also uses scrobblers to get information on the content like movie synopsis, dvd covers etc.

XBMC can be customized with plugins to allow you to get stuff like BBC iPlayer (assuming you live in britain) and similar web feeds which is really handy :)

There's also Boxee, but I've never had much luck with that one. Boxee is a bit too opinionated for my liking, lots of extra services you can't shut off (at least not in a way I can see) and the UK content sucks much ass (though I hear they're working on it).

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