School me on home "server racks"

[killramos]

I ran a long ass HDMI yea hoping this doesn’t bite me in the ass this winter when HDMI 2.2 is a thing.

[Buster]

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Im also curious on the xbox, are you just using a long ass HDMI cable from your various TVs in the house to the receiver in the rack to play the xbox, or what black magic is used here?

Depsite being in the tech field, I'm pretty low knowledge on home theatres and consoles besides plug it in direct and play it.

The XMC-1 (which is a processor, not a receiver ) is power the home theater, which is on the other side of that wall. It doesn't feed anything to any TVs in the rest of the house. My rack runs my whole home audio system, my networking and APs, my server, and my home theater. The home theater part is just local to that room.

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I ran a long ass HDMI yea hoping this doesn’t bite me in the ass this winter when HDMI 2.2 is a thing.

dude...conduit

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

Do you have issues swapping inputs on the receiver at all? I'd love to clean up my home theater so it's just TVs and speakers, and hide the xbox/ps4/receiver with my network stack.
How do you charge the controllers? I'm still cheap and use the USB ports on the front of the console.

[Buster]

The xbox controllers are just AA, so that's not a big deal. Otherwise you can get a charging stand for the main room if you dont want to run a charging setup at your rack.

I drive the home theater with a Harmony Elite remote. You can see the hub attached to a blank panel near the top of my rack. It's plent powerful to bounce the signal around the room for the receiver. My nVidia shield is hidden behind a blank on a shelf in the rack with one of the harmony wired remote emitter things sitting in front of it.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

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The xbox controllers are just AA, so that's not a big deal. Otherwise you can get a charging stand for the main room if you dont want to run a charging setup at your rack.

I drive the home theater with a Harmony Elite remote. You can see the hub attached to a blank panel near the top of my rack. It's plent powerful to bounce the signal around the room for the receiver. My nVidia shield is hidden behind a blank on a shelf in the rack with one of the harmony wired remote emitter things sitting in front of it.

I have a fairly simple setup.

Android Sony TV with ARC to a Denon Receiver, so they play nice.
Xbox and PS4 into the receiver.

Receiver turns on/off with TV. Can adjust volume using Tv remote. Really only need something to change input between xbox and ps4 on the receiver.

You have me rethinking my setup. I could go with a super simple wall mount, and just pass through ethernet/hmdi/power to the tv itself.

[killramos]

Rack setup starting to come together.

Got my patch panel on the weekend, got it all wired up (6 ports to spare if I ever need them). Once that was ready to go starting building my rack. Went with UDM Pro up top, monoprice 24 port cat6 patch panel, then my USW-16-150W POE switch.

Had a shelf arrive today so consolidated my Telus Gateway, a legacy 3TB time capsule I have had forever that refuses to quit (use for backups of my wife’s MacBook), and behind the time capsule are my sterling home hub and my Lutron caseta pro controller.

That’s essentially all I have for the networking side of it right now. The Unifi switch is powering 2 AP AC Pros, centrally swirling mounted one on each floor. Has made a heap of difference getting that second AP online, I no longer have my lone AC pro Propped on a box in the middle of my living room to get wifi to my Apple TV in the bedroom

I have one more shelf coming in tomorrow on which will (hopefully) fit my Marantz receiver and I can start migrating my HT into the rack.

Long term desires are a rack mount UPS, some kind of NAS to replace the time capsule once and for all, maybe a hobby server ( I thought picking up and old Xserve on eBay might be hilarious but I would need to find a bunch more depth to pull that off), maybe some active cooling for the rack and the cabinet.

Ignore the cable mess, once I have things the way I like I am going to cut some custom cables to clean it all up.

It’s given me something to do while I’m crippled.

[schocker]

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Ignore the cable mess, once I have things the way I like I am going to cut some custom cables to clean it all up.

That is what mine still looks like after a year and a half, I need to get on it with no work to do

[killramos]

Started layering in my HT. Further to my question about shelf widths, if you guys are looking for something accommodate a wide unit, the Startech 2U is a good option. My massive marantz amp fits like it was designed for it.

Spaced my shelf above it that the Xbox is on to be able to swap in my series X come big. Fucker takes up 4U based on the released dimensions that little piggy.

Definitely some optimization to be done but it should be entirely functional with another couple hours of work tomorrow night.

[killramos]

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The xbox controllers are just AA, so that's not a big deal. Otherwise you can get a charging stand for the main room if you dont want to run a charging setup at your rack.

I drive the home theater with a Harmony Elite remote. You can see the hub attached to a blank panel near the top of my rack. It's plent powerful to bounce the signal around the room for the receiver. My nVidia shield is hidden behind a blank on a shelf in the rack with one of the harmony wired remote emitter things sitting in front of it.

@Buster Just so you know. Harmony has a new remote.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/harmony-pro-2400

Coles Notes: it’s called Pro

[rage2]

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@Buster Just so you know. Harmony has a new remote.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/harmony-pro-2400

Coles Notes: it’s called Pro

They sold that at Best Buy for a bit. $600 or $700. Repackaged Elite + POE hub haha. All that home automation integration and it doesn't touch HomeKit at all.

I'm kinda pissed off at Harmony, they're migrating people over to their mobile configuration,. and it fucking sucks. Their web based configuration (which was awesome) is gone when they switched to desktop applications, and now the desktop application doesn't even work with Catalina because they won't recompile to x64. So I have a Windows 10 VM to configure my elites.

I'd jump ship if there's a better system out there that's simple for the end user to use. Honestly, I'm closer with simplification to just having an Apple TV remote than to find an alternative.

[Buster]

i dont ask my remote to do much, really. I dont think you can buy them retail though?

[Kavy]

I love my harmony hub except it only controls one tv, and if you get two hubs, still only controls that same one tv that the other hub already covers. Unless I am missing something and someone knows how to set it up so it understand multiple tv's.

In other words = learning to do everything by voice commands in my media room then having the other rooms use a silly remote really takes away the shine.

[killramos]

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i dont ask my remote to do much, really. I dont think you can buy them retail though?

I like that
A) it’s wired POE - gets one more dogshit wifi device off my network
B) I can run individual IR blasters to where they need to go (support for 6 standard size blasters rather than the stupid 2.5mm size Logitech supplies)

That’s essentially it for me haha.

I’m sure they can be found if you looked hard enough.

[benyl]

I just got hutch communications to put this in when they wired the temporary house. Works.

[colsankey]

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The XMC-1 (which is a processor, not a receiver ) is power the home theater, which is on the other side of that wall. It doesn't feed anything to any TVs in the rest of the house. My rack runs my whole home audio system, my networking and APs, my server, and my home theater. The home theater part is just local to that room.

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dude...conduit

I dont know if this needs its own thread, but doing the basment soon and I think I need to do some planning.

With your setup Buster, can the xbox be accessible from any TV? And if so, what's the magic making that happen?
If you had any kind of plan/design or link on how/where to put that together id be super grateful. I looked up your emotiva, but couldn't tell from their site what it really did in layman's terms.

Currently I've got a basic setup upstairs; a TV, pioneer vsx831 receiver, a mini Nintendo, and a shield. Downstairs ive got a tv thats getting replaced, a soundbar and an Xbox one. Then a half rack of pc power for plex, storage, etc.

If I could make devices like the shield or Xbox available on multiple tvs, that would be the dream.

[killramos]

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I dont know if this needs its own thread, but doing the basment soon and I think I need to do some planning.

With your setup Buster, can the xbox be accessible from any TV? And if so, what's the magic making that happen?
If you had any kind of plan/design or link on how/where to put that together id be super grateful. I looked up your emotiva, but couldn't tell from their site what it really did in layman's terms.

Currently I've got a basic setup upstairs; a TV, pioneer vsx831 receiver, a mini Nintendo, and a shield. Downstairs ive got a tv thats getting replaced, a soundbar and an Xbox one. Then a half rack of pc power for plex, storage, etc.

If I could make devices like the shield or Xbox available on multiple tvs, that would be the dream.

You are probably needing either very long HDMI runs from a central receiver or a HDBaseT setup to accomplish that. It’s possible, but has some limitations in terms of picture quality (4K).

I think 100 feet is a pretty hard limit for an HDMI cable so you might need to get creative but using HDMI is the best option.

[Thaco]

maybe it's because i deal with this crap every day at work, but i just don't get how you guys enjoy this stuff so much, lol

[killramos]

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maybe it's because i deal with this crap every day at work, but i just don't get how you guys enjoy this stuff so much, lol

Everyone needs a hobby, I hear some people on here like growing grass in their free time.

[Thaco]

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Everyone needs a hobby

[colsankey]

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maybe it's because i deal with this crap every day at work, but i just don't get how you guys enjoy this stuff so much, lol

I enjoy tech, but havnt been a big home audio/visual person. However since I'm finalizing plans for the basement, and everythings open, if Im going to run cables or plan a design, now is the time.