Help setting up a Video Server

[William1]

Still here. Have been doing LOTS of reading, and was given a gift from work.
I was handed a server unit (condition yet unknown) and was wondering what is was and what it could be used for. Have not had the time yet to tear into and see what components there are, but will soon.
Decided to put off the video server part for now because we are in the process of renovating the house and guess where all the money is going! LOL!

 

[William1]

this is what works for me: custom built pc(2yrs ago) AMD 2400XP CPU | ATI Radeon 9700 Pro | 1GB PC3200 RAM | and a little over 700GB of storage spread over 3 7200RPM IDE HDDs | i use vidomi to compress all dvds and turn them into divx format no larger than 1GB(most are between 600MB-750MB). I currently have about 250 movies on one 200GB hdd with room to spare. They look just fine on my 53" Hitachi HD bigscreen.

BTW, I went wired in my house so my roommates could also access the movies and mp3s, never had a hiccup while watching a movie and letting them stream over the network instead of copying to their local pc's...

This sounds almost like what my original intenet was. After reading a lot of info on the net I was going to plan something like a highend system with a couple of 8 port routers all connecting to NSDs.

 

[systeq]

This sounds almost like what my original intenet was. After reading a lot of info on the net I was going to plan something like a highend system with a couple of 8 port routers all connecting to NSDs.

well, if that server can be configured as a raid 5 array, you will have the speed to do what im doing and the redundancy so you dont easily loose your movies...which is what my setup lacks

 

[aff1993]

oh, oh i know, use ClickView, like a network where you can search for videos on your own network, and play them as you wish, you can also use a network search for lots of files, my school uses it, its pretty good