Rob’s Media Center Setup

Posted on May 12, 2013 by rob — No Comments ↓

FYI this is a work in progress.

For many years I have been using different file sharing apps to pull content from the internet. During those years I watched my cable bill reach upwards of $200. I would call in from time to time to see what i could take off to make the bill less. Never got the bill down under $150. So as I sat there watching content I downloaded, I wondered if there was a way to automate the manual process I was doing. A few google searches later I had my answer.

This is a list of what you need to automate your media collection. First thing is first, get a UseNET account. I can’t stress this enough, stay away from bittorrent! Just google bittorent crackdown 2013 and you will understand. I use usenet.net, safe and encrypted.

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SabNZBD

I use sabnzbd for my usenet client. I have it setup with categories to dump TV to a staging TV directory and movies to the movies directory, then sabtocouchpotato.exe or sabtosickbeard.exe runs it’s magic and moves to to the TV/Movie drive. This is the list of newsgroups I have started for movies movies_newsgroups. This is my TV list tv_newsgroups.

Sickbeard
The ultimate PVR application that searches for and manages your TV shows
Automatically finds new and old episodes for you and it works with your current download client!

CouchPotato
An automatic NZB and torrent downloader, just fill in what you want to see and CouchPotato will add it to your “want to watch”-list. Every day it will search through multiple NZBs & Torrents sites, looking for the best possible match. Once a correct release is found, it will send it to uTorrent, Transmission, Sabnzbd or any other app you like.

Headphones
Headphones is a SABnzbd add-on that automates your music downloading. It’s written in Python so it works on pretty much all systems, and it’s easy to setup and configure. You can import all your favorite artists from iTunes, and keep an eye out for any new albums they might be releasing. It can be configured to work with a few search providers, including NZBMatrix, NZBs.org and Newznab servers. Just enter your account details and you’re ready to go. Installation is just as easy, just download it, and run “python headphones.py” (you can add a -q or -d in there to daemonize the app)

I installed the three of these on the same windows 8 box. I dedicated a 1 TB drive to movies, 1 to TV and the 3rd I use for Music and a download staging area. To keep storage space low, I am converting MKV to MP4 with Handbreak. This is copy of my script. I run it with a scheduled task, it runs from the root of the drive and searches for *.mkv then re-encodes to filename.mp4. mkvtomp4

I am happy to say I have been without Cable for almost two years now. I get what I want nothing more nothing less. It’s my media, my way. I also use Netflix to suplement my collection. I stream it off my Xbox 360, just as I do with Media Browser. So all in all, I pay under $80 for FiOS, Usenet and Netflix. I told the cable company I would get my bill under $100.