ROG Red - PC Build

I've always been a PC gamer at heart and thought I would write a quick post on my PC setup. It's a modest setup built by myself. My previous setup was a few years old, thrown together with out much thought and started to struggle on the new releases. It was also loud and kicked out more heat than a multi fuel stove.


Parts list

Intel 4670k CPU overclocked to 4.0ghz
Asus ROG Gene VIII Motherboard
Asus Strix Nvidia 970 GTX
8GB Corsair RAM
H100i Water Cooler
Colour Coded Corsair SP120 Fans
Fractal Design Midi R2 Case

When picking the parts I wanted the best bang for buck without braking the bank. It also had to be a lot quieter than my previous PC and run cooler. Water-cooling the CPU made a big difference as did the GTX 970 which runs silent at idle due to the fans not needing to spin.

With this build I took a bit of extra time in designing what the inside would look like, sticking to a colour theme and braiding cables.

Roku and the NowTV

The little magical box which turns your normal TV into a smart TV. I have been using the Roku media boxes and the featureless NowTV boxes provided by sky for running the emby client around the house. Roku offers a few different boxes ranging in prices and features. Their latest version the Roku 4 offers the most features namely 4k but with the highest price tag.

Many people have been turning to the £10 NowTV boxes. They are a dumb'd down version of the Roku which also has limits on it, such as the inability to install other streaming apps such as netflix. However the NowTV has a secret, a few presses of the keys on the remote revels a developer mode. The developer mode allows you to side load applications, the only restriction is you can only side load one application at a time.

This is perfect to side load a streaming app such as Emby or Plex. My flavour is Emby and for the purposes of this post will demonstrate how to side load Emby onto the NowTV.

Pre-Reqs

Download the Emby for Roku source files from github.

Extract the zip file and the file you are looking for is called Emby.Roku.Zip

Developer Mode

On the NowTV box you now need to enable developer mode. On the remote press

Home x3, Up x2, Right, Left, Right, Left, Right

Click on Enable Installer

And Agree to the terms. Make a note of the IP Address provided as you will need this for the next step.

Installation 

Head over to your PC or Laptop and open up a web browser. In the address bar enter the IP address from the previous step. If done correctly you will be presented with Development Application Installer.

Click on Choose File and look for the Emby.Roku.Zip that you extracted from the github repo. Then click on install and wait a few seconds.

Once the installer has finished you will see a message that says Install Success in red text.

And that's it. you have now successfully side loaded Emby onto the NowTV box. One draw back of side loaded apps is that they aren't updated automatically, so if a newer version is released then you will have to side load the app again. 

A very cheap and easy way to add an Emby client to another room in the house. I current run 3 of these boxes in various rooms and all perform extremely well.