Tekforums
Chat => Entertainment & Technology => Topic started by: Rivkid on January 13, 2011, 20:44:38 PM
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Saw this in Dooms sig - what an awesome solution for fast boot up media on the netbook! Just putting on my Acer One now. This is great - been looking for something like this. I did try Android but that didn't work out so well...
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If your after window's based HTPC type software try media portal: http://www.team-mediaportal.com I find it a lot more polished than XBMC :)
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Ive tried most of them and ended up at XBMC, its a bit more of a bitch to get working as wanted but once its done it's a much better system (IMO). I used it standalone on netbook and within Windows 7 on PC.
For those running on the ION chips the latest XBMCfreak seems to run a chunk better than the standard XBMC live from out of box. I've switched to using Aeon MQ2 Skin (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=81601) which is a doddle to install using the install from zip and looks much better than the stock one... its not running perfect on the ION netbook but someone is working on a lite version which is looking promising.
One of the downsides of XBMC i've noticed is that its internal scrapes are a bit crappy. Bit of a problem if your media isn't lovingly organised or if you don't manage it seperately. I use a combination of Sick Beard (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=63591) - CouchPotato (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=75960) & Media Companion (http://mediacompanion.codeplex.com/) for managing newsbins, file naming, metadata, fanart & posters. You can do it in the media software of choice but I like to be able to pick and choose what fanart / posters are displaying and confirm everything is a-ok before importing the library.
Oh and the Android Remote for XBMC is AWESOME :)
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(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2008/02/2-22-08-nmt.jpg)
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(http://www.avforums.com/forums/attachments/streamers-network-media-players/131955d1249240380-ahhh-how-hard-can-get-yamj-working-untitled.jpg)(http://mediaplayersite.com/system/files/58-Kendo76/NewBoxes2.jpg)
+(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qbeSdHHmL.jpg)
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Plenty of off the shelf options out there... Popcorn hour, WDTV, Boxee, AppleTV, Sumo-Vision to name a few.
Same as there are plenty of PC based applications... XBMC, Windows Media Centre (good if you add Media Browser + some codecs), Boxee, Media Portal, Tonky to name a few.
Guess the best thing is to try a few and decide what you want. I've played with WDTV (including custom firmware), Tonky + PS3, Media Portal, Windows Media Centre + Media Browser, Boxee PC and XBMC - only XBMC did everything I wanted and looked how I wanted :)
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Couple windows screenshots of my current XBMC:
(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/5804/xbmchome.jpg)
(http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/8413/xbmcmovie.jpg)
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1254/xbmcmovie2.jpg)
(http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/9374/xbmctv.jpg)
As every picture / image is 1080 it doesnt look so good in the small window but you get the idea :)
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For what Im after xbmc is perfect - I just wish I could get my wireless working on it grr!!
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Mixture of This thread (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=81858&highlight=wifi) and this guide (http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/xbmc-ion/module/8) got me working. Did all my configuring via Putty
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Right cheers - strong coffee and an all nighter I reckon. Worth the input as once wifi's working its perfect.
Ta
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Any reason you used Putty rather than local terminal btw?
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Mixture of This thread (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=81858&highlight=wifi) and this guide (http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/xbmc-ion/module/8) got me working. Did all my configuring via Putty
Hero! That got the bastard!! You were right too had to use a combo of both threads but now she's cooking! Really like this - its so much more efficient on this netbook.
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Loving this more and more now. Just got Firefox working through the launcher plugin - using it to post this actually. Had to use some command line arguments to set the window size as it was just defaulting to a small box in the corner of the screen but all working in full screen goodness now!!
Right - now for the flash plugin.....
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Plenty of off the shelf options out there... Popcorn hour, WDTV, Boxee, AppleTV, Sumo-Vision to name a few.
Same as there are plenty of PC based applications... XBMC, Windows Media Centre (good if you add Media Browser + some codecs), Boxee, Media Portal, Tonky to name a few.
Guess the best thing is to try a few and decide what you want. I've played with WDTV (including custom firmware), Tonky + PS3, Media Portal, Windows Media Centre + Media Browser, Boxee PC and XBMC - only XBMC did everything I wanted and looked how I wanted :)
Thats a great looking skin. Im running XBMC on old Xboxs, using the Apple TV skin but this blows it out of the water. I assume the screens are from Aeon MQ2 as you mentioned earlier? Wonder if its Xbox compatible.
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RivKid I use putty to do the terminal work as its much easier working on a 24" Monitor with all the reference websites open and a proper full size keyboard at my desk instead of faffying around with the netbook ;)
Yep thats AEON MQ2 more or less at out of the box, just changed from list view to showcase and changed the backgrounds on the menu to cycle through the collection instead :)
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Sounds good, you two could put together a good tutorial for this and post it here :D
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In response to my own question, no Aeon MQ2 isnt available for XBMC, i did get off my arse and install the latest version of XMBC i could find though. Have opted for the Confluence skin which looks decent for now.
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When you say XBMC i guess you mean XBMC running off the original xbox? Depressingly looks like a lot of support is dropping for the original xbox as it won't handle HD content which is sad but understandable ;)
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Just trying that Aeon MQ2 skin - looks nice but its ever so slighty slow on my Acer One (they're a little underpowered). Its not bad though - might keep it haven't decided yet. How do you get all the movie info to populate is that one of the movie db add ons?
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Yer the skin is slow on my netbook, waiting for the lite version to come out which should be soonish but it works great on the PC :)
As i said in my previous posts I dont use XBMC for media scraping, I sort everything out on the PC with media companion so I pick, choose and confirm the details, post art, screen grabs and fan art before importing.
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As i said in my previous posts I dont use XBMC for media scraping, I sort everything out on the PC with media companion so I pick, choose and confirm the details, post art, screen grabs and fan art before importing.
Ok completely missed that on account of not being aware of the term 'scraping' - I've never really kept media organised TBH. Just letting the built in scraper do its stuff now actually - seems ok as long as your file names are simple and accurate enough. Had a quick play with Media Companion but found it a little fiddly
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When you say XBMC i guess you mean XBMC running off the original xbox? Depressingly looks like a lot of support is dropping for the original xbox as it won't handle HD content which is sad but understandable ;)
Ah yes, didnt make that clear, XBMC for Xbox.
It is annoying that support is dropping off but as you say, no HD makes it inevitable. I feed 3 TVs in my flat from a NAS and it would be a pretty pricey operation to upgrade to HD capable hardware. Im sure it will happen in time.
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I use an old appletv running a live xbmc installation. Its excellent.
Got a CrystalHD card, means I had to take out the wireless card but now I have the ability to run HD on the appletv.
XBMC is excellent, imo. Plays anything I throw at it.
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Like Adrocks setup I've been trying to get hold of a cheap AppleTV for the living room... was hoping with the 2nd gen out now people would be flogging their 1st gens cheap but still going for £100ish on ebay :P
Apple TV, CrystalHD & XMBC for a small & cheap HTPC :)
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Given up on Aeon MQ2 and gone back to Confluence (for now). Aeon MQ2 was just to much for the Acer One and I was getting ready to throw it out the window (especially when I pressed escape on accident and binned out to the root menu!!)
Seeing what you mean about the scraper being a bit iffy - its got very picky about file names with the last few series I've added, but its not too much hassle to amend and the info and gfx it pulls down is pretty cool. Overall I'm really happy with this netbook setup now - TBH for the first time since I've had it. :rock:
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heh not quite that bad on my netbook but mines slightly better specced. I'm keeping track and will tell you once the lite version is out of Alpha and availble for all... that should work a lot better :)
Pete take a look at Sick Beard (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=63591) when you get some spare time, think it's something you might like to have setup. It will also rename and grab the NFO, Posters and Fanart for your collection on download once configured with newsbins etc :)
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heh not quite that bad on my netbook but mines slightly better specced. I'm keeping track and will tell you once the lite version is out of Alpha and availble for all... that should work a lot better :)
Pete take a look at Sick Beard (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=63591) when you get some spare time, think it's something you might like to have setup. It will also rename and grab the NFO, Posters and Fanart for your collection on download once configured with newsbins etc :)
Yeah cool definitely want to check out the lite version. Have to say Confluence is so fast though I'll probably not want to leave it unless its as fast or very close.
I had a quick look at Sickbeard yesterday but isn't it more of a tracker/download tool? Remember we use Newsgroups not torrents so not sure it would suit us. I will have another look at it though.
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I use sickbeard, and it integrates with the black hole in Sabnzbd.
Doesn't use torrents.
It can even update XBMC via Growl.
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Yep sick beard doesnt work with torrents (apart from post-processing) its uses NZB's itself either by dumping the NZBs into a blackhole directory for your newsgroup program to pickup (which i do for newsleecher) or intergrates with Sabnzb+
Its awesome for keeping everything up to date, redownload your backlog as better quality rips come out etc etc the only problem I have noticed is that if you tell it to go get older stuff it picks the newest posts which sometimes can end up being the german dubs. This isn't an issue with new episodes or series, just older stuff it seems.
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Guy at work has asked me for some details on installing XBMC, SickBeard, Skinning, Library orgnastion and stuff so going to write something up for him. If i can put it all together I'll post it up here for anyone whos interesting.
He's not really a tecky so bits will be a bit dumbed down but hey guides are meant to be idiot proof :)
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Guy at work has asked me for some details on installing XBMC, SickBeard, Skinning, Library orgnastion and stuff so going to write something up for him. If i can put it all together I'll post it up here for anyone whos interesting.
He's not really a tecky so bits will be a bit dumbed down but hey guides are meant to be idiot proof :)
Yes a few good tutorials on this forum would be good :D
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Ahh I misundersood then. If it deals with NZB's then we're definitely in business :)
Will take another look when I get time. Suspect my progress will slow now though its work time again booo!!!
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I cannot believe I've only just noticed this thread. I use an Acer Revo as my media centre and server. It's on 24/7/365 and handles all my download, organisation and 1080p playback. I used to use Windows and Mediaportal but a friend pointed me at XBMC Live and I've never looked back.
I've just upgraded my Acer Revo to Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick), XMBC 10 (Dharma) and I have Sickbeard (http://sickbeard.com/) and SabNZB+ (http://sabnzbd.org/) installed.
I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 10 32bit Desktop edition (http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download). Thus giving me access to a desktop PC on my TV if I ever want it.
* At this point it's worth making sure Ubuntu is up to date.
* Install and configure any 3rd Party (nVidia) drivers.
I then installed XBMC Dharma using this guide. (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubuntu,_a_Step-by-Step_Guide)
Next I used this guide to setup SabNZB+. (http://www.ainer.org/sabnzbd-install-setup-and-configuration-guide-for-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx)
and finally this guide to get Sickbeard. (http://www.ainer.org/sick-beard-install-setup-and-configuration-guide-for-ubuntu-10-04-lts-lucid-lynx)
It's all pretty straight forward but there were a couple of things, blowed if I can remember what now, that needed me to go off and google for an answer.
The only caveat is that I keep my media well organised which enables a painless migration between media players.
I have:
HDD0 -> OS
-> User
-> Temp/Downloads
HDD1 -> Pictures -> Album0
-> Album1
-> Music -> A -> ArtistNameA0
-> ArtistNameA1
-> B -> ArtistNameB0
-> TV ->SeriesName
HDD2 -> MoviesVol1
HDD3 -> MoviesVol2
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Had a play with this last night after all. I like Sabnzb its quite cool. Not sold on Sickbeard yet - I got it working but it seemed really awkward as to what it would and wouldn't see / then download. I'm probably not setting it up right but I ran out of time to mess with it :)
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Again same with xbmc it uses thetvdb.com to scrape your show information and if its not well orgnaised it can go a bit iffy. I woke up this morning to find new epidoes of house, lie to me and chuck on download so it definatly works :)
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It wasn't an issue with the media as XBMC had scraped the existing content for this stuff just fine. I did get it working a bit though - I got it to pull down a shed load of south park - but it definitely got confused as to what was already downloaded and what it still needed to do.
It also refused point plank to find any episodes of 'By Any Means' despite having my logins to the same NZB sites I eventually manually downloaded them from. Theres probably a 'knack' to this that I'll get with some playing around.
I'll give it a test tonight from scratch (without trying to point it at any existing downloads) and put in something more current and see how it gets on.
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Oh yes, back catalog stuff can be hit or miss. It keeps grabbing german dubbed stuff for me because its newer - As BluRay & New episodes are released its fine tho (as they come English 1st :P)
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on my popcorn, you can make an NFO with the IMDB number for problems with scraping - or you can rename the title to match the imdb name - maybe its the same for xmbc? I assume they are pretty much built the same & just output xml files & an index.html
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on my popcorn, you can make an NFO with the IMDB number for problems with scraping - or you can rename the title to match the imdb name - maybe its the same for xmbc? I assume they are pretty much built the same & just output xml files & an index.html
Yes I solved all my scraping issues into xbmc by just hanging the names - doesn't help with sickbeard though. I gave up with the sabnzb / sickbeard set up. It did work but I just didn't get on with it and prefer newsleecher. I also had issues getting Sab to transition between files efficiently - it would d/l a file fine but then take forever to finish it off and move to the next file. No idea why but I got bored troubleshooting it.
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I'm just getting back into XBMC after a long departure. It's changed a lot!
Even more from the more humble beginnings of XBMP.
I'm hoping that some gifted soul will port this over to the PS3 now it's hacked, but in all honesty, I'll probably just buy a Boxee.
The PS3 Media Player is utter garbage compared to this dedicated stuff.
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i see they've released it for mac now too. might be worth looking at for the mini i won on ebeg last week.
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News from the other day is they got it working on the Apple TV2 - meaning having a tiny 1080p XMBC player for £100 is doable :)
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News from the other day is they got it working on the Apple TV2 - meaning having a tiny 1080p XMBC player for £100 is doable :)
Doesn't do 1080p. It downscales.
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Yep just been reading about that. Sigh 720 max. Still not bad for £92 but not what I'm after :P
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Yep just been reading about that. Sigh 720 max. Still not bad for £92 but not what I'm after :P
try & pick the old one up
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Old 40GB ones are going for £70-80 on ebay/gumtree - Add a crystal HD card (£30-50) and it adds up :P
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That's what I was looking at doing, but then I thought I may as well just get an Atom/CULV based PC.
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Thats what I was thinking... at the moment I'm waiting for the new Sandy micro-ATX mobos to come out (the new zotec one is expensive & comes with a lot of stuff I don't want) so maybe can look at getting a Sandy i3 setup sorted for cheap and have a few more options but not sure atm.
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That's what I was looking at doing, but then I thought I may as well just get an Atom/CULV based PC.
just get a popcorn hour
tons ebay
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_trkparms=65%253A12%257C66%253A2%257C39%253A1%257C72%253A3444&rt=nc&_nkw=popcorn+hour&_mPrRngCbx=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_sop=1&_sc=1
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went though this at the start of the thread, I've tried popcorn hour and for an off the shelve option its not bad but lack of customisation, way it handles custom fanart / posters and limited addons means I would rather have a full HTPC with something like XBMC, Media Browser or even Boxee on there.
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went though this at the start of the thread, I've tried popcorn hour and for an off the shelve option its not bad but lack of customisation, way it handles custom fanart / posters and limited addons means I would rather have a full HTPC with something like XBMC, Media Browser or even Boxee on there.
What does it do though, other than play movies?
I need a low power PC to run SABnzbd, CouchPotato, Sickbeard, AND play movies + tv.
Can a Popcorn Hour do that? If so, I'm tempted.
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Haven't seen anything about them running on Popcorn hour, you couldn't when I first looked into it but things may of changed now.
People have got NZB running on the WDTV custom firmware but thats about it for them at the moment.
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went though this at the start of the thread, I've tried popcorn hour and for an off the shelve option its not bad but lack of customisation, way it handles custom fanart / posters and limited addons means I would rather have a full HTPC with something like XBMC, Media Browser or even Boxee on there.
YAMJ + the AEON Skin http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=25534 (http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=25534) does fanart, posters, etc. Group by season/series & there are plenty of addons for nzb & torrents. Supports Twonky & Ihome, as well as an Iphone app to control your box. You can also use the box as a NAS or FTP or Samba Server.
You also have the MSP (media service plugin) that gives access to :-
Video : YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, VideoCast, DL.TV, Cranky Geeks
Audio : iPodcast, Radiobox, ABC News, Jamendo
Photo : Flickr, Picasa
RSS feed : Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Traffic alerts, Yahoo! Stock, Cinecast, Traffic Conditions.
What else.. well theres PVR plugins, LastFM, WebBrowser,Ngrab support for Dreambox Users, Gmail apps, googlemaps, photobucket,
shoutcast, weather, etc.
Most importantly, their silent - which is the reason ive abandoned so many HTPC projects in the past.
Apart from a TV tuner, Ive not seen anything an XMBC can do that a popcorn hour can do... unless it can do spotify.
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What does it do though, other than play movies?
I need a low power PC to run SABnzbd, CouchPotato, Sickbeard, AND play movies + tv.
Can a Popcorn Hour do that? If so, I'm tempted.
dont think it has them apps specifically - I dont download anymore TBH
worth looking & asking in the nzb/torrent forum on the official forums http://www.networkedmediatank.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=64 (http://www.networkedmediatank.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=64)
popcorn runs linux & is developer friendly, so maybe someone can port them.
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Oooo popcorn hour has come a LONG way since I looked at it then. Will start doing some research again methinks :)