Home media heaven

Put away all the DVDs and CDs – it’s time to put your entire media library in easy reach. Nick Peers builds the ultimate media server.

“A media server puts you in control. Enjoy music, movies or TV on any device, anywhere.”

You need a media server, if you’re fanatical about your media – movies, TV, music, photos or whatever else takes your fancy. This is a central file server that puts you in total control of all your media, making it easy to watch and listen from any device that has access to the internet – you’re no longer tied to your living room or even your house. And better still, there’s no faffing about swapping DVDs and CDs, or having to sit through unwanted trailers.

All you need for your media server is a suitably powered Linux machine. While you can add a media server to your main PC, a more convenient option is to allocate a dedicated PC exclusively to the task. Your biggest headache is choosing which media server to run, but don’t worry, we’ve done the hard work for you to find a solution that’s both open source and easy to use while stunning to look at and easy to navigate.

We’ll show you how to get it up and running, with all your media in place, then reveal how you can extend its functionality – for example, you can add live TV, stream music to wireless speakers throughout your home, access your media from outside your local network, and share it remotely with others. You can even set up multiple users, allowing you to give your kids access to their favourites while keeping them away from yours.

Once your server is up, running and delivering everything you want it to, we’ll then focus on accessing it from other devices. You’ll be glad to know that your server doesn’t support just other computers, but also mobiles, tablets, smart TVs, set-top boxes and other devices too. In most cases you’ll even enjoy the same visually rich and informative experience.

One thing’s for certain: once you’ve experienced your media through your Linuxpowered server, you’ll never want to consume it in the same old way again. Read on to learn how to start the media revolution…