minimum hardware requirements to stream HD?

[hertswenip]

I have an old Athlon thunderbird 900mhz/1gb RAM system I was thinking of using as a home file server, I plan on streaming uncompressed HD videos from it, but have read conflicting information and am unsure if this hardware is adequate.

On one hand, I read one guy saying he used a P3 750mhz system to stream HD flawlessly. However when I read the system requirements for freenas and other server OS's, they all recommend multicore processors or even i5 and i7 systems.

What's the real deal? What's the lowest system specs you've used to stream HD without a hiccupm and what OS were you using?

 

[RealBeast]

You can stream video from a server with minimal CPU power and your Tbird may well be adequate for that. I have one NAS box that streams full BR images to multiple simultaneous devices using the an i3-3220 and that is huge overkill. It runs Window 7, but any OS will do.

The real issue is having sufficient bandwidth for the streaming -- wireless N does not do very well for uncompressed HD. What is your current router and do you have any additional wireless APs? Can you use Ethernet? Do you have a budget for new network gear?

 

[hertswenip]

One of the reasons I loaded win7 is cos quite a few online article stated it ran faster in old machines than XP when they tested out different aspects- it does seem slightly more responsive than XP. (I think the bug-ridden original XP ran well on old machines, but sp2 and sp3 made it more demanding).

I actually loaded lubuntu onto it a few weeks ago after reading how great it was for old machines, but I was not happy with the results- it only used about 250mb of ram at any given time, and actually accessed the HDD a lot more than XP or Win7 did bogging it down, it didnt seem to take advantage of the extra ram for caching like windows did.

I also didnt like the fact I had to google a bunch of console commands to get it working; Im glad the DOS days are over, I dont want to relive them lol. I was thinking of trying NAS4Free if it comes down to necessity, do you have experience with it? I have read it is good for older machines.

 

[RealBeast]

Windows 7 and Server 2008 may be too much for that machine, it's probably best to stick with XP or a lightweight Linux build. The ASUS is a great wireless radio and gives you two bands so you can stream better. If you need a third streaming connection, you could set up the WRT54G on a different 2.4GHz channel with a different SSID.

 

[hertswenip]

One of the reasons I loaded win7 is cos quite a few online article stated it ran faster in old machines than XP when they tested out different aspects- it does seem slightly more responsive than XP. (I think the bug-ridden original XP ran well on old machines, but sp2 and sp3 made it more demanding). Plus its what you were using, I like the UI if I could use it, would be great.

I actually loaded lubuntu onto it a few weeks ago after reading how great it was for old machines, but I was not happy with the results- it only used about 250mb of ram at any given time, and actually accessed the HDD a lot more than XP or Win7 did bogging it down, it didnt seem to take advantage of the extra ram for caching like windows did. I think lightweight linux distros are probably faster in old systems with low ram, but in old systems with higher ram windows is faster.

I also didnt like the fact I had to google a bunch of console commands to get it working; Im glad the DOS days are over, I dont want to relive them lol. I was thinking of trying NAS4Free if it comes down to necessity, do you have experience with it? I have read it is good for older machines.

 

[RealBeast]

I find that Win 7 is quicker if you have enough memory, 1GB is pretty tight. When you add more it will speed up.

I like FreeNAS and the ZFS raidz2, but it requires a lot more work than just slapping a nice Adaptec 7805 controller in a newer board and sticking in 8 3-4TB drives, then waiting a week for RAID 6 to build. Just for fun last month I migrated a 7x3TB RAID 5 to 8x3TB RAID 6 using the adaptec console (since the GUI has a bug and will not do it without adding 4 drives), with the starting array about half full and on a 6805 adapter it took 21 days including a failed drive rebuild. lol

On the dos days -- me too, although I just loaded freedos on an old Shuttle SFF machine to run some engine tuning software for Mazdas that will not run in any emulation, or even in Windows 95.