Accessing media on a Ubuntu server via a Windows pc

Hi all

Have serviio running on a Windows pc accessing media on the pc's local drive(s).

As an alternative and to avoid what appears to a somewhat convoluted installation procedure for serviio on Ubuntu, would like access media on USB drives attached to the ubuntu server, which are available as Windows shares.

Would appreciate comments as to the wisdom or otherwise of this and any practical tips as to how it may be implimented.

TIA

[atc98092]

I played around with network shares early in my DLNA experimentation, but I found that it seemed to generate a large amount of network traffic. I have since bumped my home network to gigabit, and I don't generally stream via WiFi. Unless you have a lot of bandwidth, or none of your videos are HD, I would think it would be easier to add storage to your Serviio box itself. I know that some of my HD videos stream at over 50Mbps, and without wired gigabit, I don't think any of my players could handle it.

I've slowly been adding large (3TB) drives to my server, and feel this is the best way to handle my streaming. I have over 400 movies, 600 TV episodes, and at least 6 streaming devices in my house (not counting phones and tablets), and often there are three or more running. I've never had a bandwidth issue, and my server has kept up with it all. Of course, I doubt that every device was streaming an HD movie at the same time, but Serviio performs fantastically.

atc98092

Thanks for your reply

I would think it would be easier to add storage to your Serviio box itself.

That would appear to be the best solution.

It wll involve a lot of work replacing the local drives on the Windows serviio server with larger ones and copying all the media back to the local drives but common sense says the shorter the route, the better the result.

Even if serviio were to be running on the Ubuntu server, the media would still be on USB drives attached to the Ubuntu server.

So thanks again for your input.