What are your planned HTPC changes over the next year? 2 years?

[bigboxes]

Well, I'm going to be putting one together some time this year. It's all about the money for me. I've got other priorities. However, it is on the radar. I'll most likely get a new case, a SSD, and power supply for the setup. I'll be recycling my last build as the core of the HTPC. My goal for the HTPC is to be able to playback any file I throw at it, on the network and off. That irks me when my smart devices cannot decode the codecs, be it the video or the audio. That and I want to smoothly game @ 1080p. I'll have to add a IR/wireless receiver and remote. It's got to be usuable from the couch. I'm not sold on a UI, yet.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have a Plex server running as a VM on my NAS/home server/minecraft server/DNS server/Crashplan server.

There's an Amazon Fire in the workout room, the Sony Blu-Ray player downstairs can stream from DLNA (Plex works, but without metadata or box art) and the laptops/tablets have the Plex App.

Works great. You don't need big iron attached to the TV.

 

[TheTick077]

I'm currently running several Win7 WMC pcs as individual DVRs (that share recordings when they are not copy protected). For downloaded content, I use Mediabrowser/Emby, as I've always liked their WMC plugin. My recording is stored locally on each DVR, my downloads are stored on my Windows Server.

It mostly works, and the latest mediabrowser is fancy with a lot of new features, but its pretty unpolished. Videos keep stuttering, the WMC plugin crashes frequently. Not sure whats going on, currently debugging.

I've been trying out Kodi on a few machines, and that seems to work better, but Kodi is not as integrated into WMC as MB is. Kodi has a different interface, so if I switch and force my family to relearn, I better be sticking with it and not flip-flopping.

And of course, Kodi does not have DVR of protected content, at least, until the news broke of the SiliconDust DVR kickstarter. If the SD DVR software does most of what they are shooting for, good chance I will be switching to that as I would really love better whole house DVR integration.

For streaming, I've been using Mediabrowser, but it seems like Plex is the bigger player. Not sure which is the more reliable platform, as I've never used plex, but with word that the SiliconDust DVR has plex support on its priority list, I'm considering switching.

Short verison:

Plex vs Mediabrowser for someone that uses WMC but may switch to Kodi?

Do any of you use Kodi for your downloaded media in conjuction with WMC in a manner similar to the MB plugin? Does it work well?

I plan on upgrading my CPU and GPU within the next couple of years.

As far as WMC and Kodi, I use both - WMC for PVR and Kodi for all my stored media. There was a small application that I downloaded that added Kodi to the WMC menu and closed it when selected. Once Kodi closes, it reopens WMC. There is a little transition time, but I have my desktop empty with a black background, so it looks like it is just a black screen when switching back and forth.