Tekforums

*UPDATE 11/06/2012* - I've been out of the country for the past 6 months so have not been around to update the guide, I am currently working on it now however it may take some time. Not much has changed in the past year - new versions of software but settings are mostly the same so don't worry if your thinking this is 'out of date'.

Change Log
27/09/2011 - Few small changes, realised I started setting up XBMC without mentioning where to download from or to install it first.
03/06/2011 - Missing a couple images, updated.
03/06/2011 - XBMC install and some setup. TBC
17/05/2011 - Added Managing shows in Sick Beard
17/05/2011 - Updated 'Advanced Sickbeard' install as I seemed of missed a step (Git in Windows Command Line)
11/05/2011 - Just noticed I completely missed Metadata from Sick Beard Setup - Added.
11/05/2011 - Added Advanced Sick Beard install (Via GIT)
11/05/2011 - Added Couch Potato setup
11/05/2011 - Added Sick Beard setup & changed version from 485 to 487.
11/05/2011 - Added SABnzbd setup.
10/05/2011 - Started again within Windows 7 & re-wrote parts of this introduction post.

Software @ Time of Writing (10/05/2011)
OS - Windows 7 SP1
SABnzbd+ - 0.6.0
Sick Beard  - Alpha 487
Couch Potato - r31
XMBC - 10.1 & Aeon MQ2

I started off setting up the following all on a single box running Linux (Ubuntu) and while I didn't finish the guide completely I did put most of it into the PDF which is available here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Linux%20Automated%20Media%20Server.pdf) - I ran into a few problems within the Linux environment which meant switching back to Windows 7 instead - the need of logmein, accelerated flash support, post processing over network, uTorrent, and a few other things that while might be get working within Ubuntu I cba to faff that much.

*note* HUGE thanks to everyone who has posted guides and useful information on forum.xbmc.org, it's one hell of a community when it comes to anything open source HTPC / Media related.

I would also ask that if anyone wants to use the contents of this guide please either link directly to it or at least put a reference to it somewhere in the information you provide, this is hopefully going to be an ongoing project with continuing updates as I modify my own setup (plus image links may change etc). I did the following to try and gather all my information into one place, plus as a thanks to give something back to the community that helped me get this setup and to hopefully bring some much needed love to TekForums.net (http://www.tekforums.net)

What will the finished project look like?
You will have a computer that auto-downloads your TV shows (via Sick Beard) and Movies (via Couch Potato). Manages your existing shows by downloading Fan Art, Posters, Plot, Summary, Trailers, Actor info, and if setup to do so will re-download archived shows if found at a requested higher quality.

This computer will also be able to play 1080p content from XBMC which has been setup to look something like the following:

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/1.JPG)
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/2.JPG)

Which takes full advantage of the fan art & posters and looks damn good on a big TV!

Prerequisites

Knowledge
As this guide has switched to Windows over Ubuntu the required knowledge has reduced! Hurray! But you still need some basic know-how... Some understanding of some technical terms, how to extract files, and being able to keep note of the required API's and account details we will be using within our selected programs - I can't hold your hand for that, it's your personal data.

Media Collection
Unless you're starting your collection from scratch (great idea if you can!) you will need your current collection to be in some sort of sensible structure...

• Movies - These should be in correctly named folders. The files can be named anything what so ever but the folder name MUST be correct.
• TV Shows - There is some leeway on this but generally you want your series to be \TV Shows\<Show Name>\<Season 0x>\01x01 or S01E01 <insert random stuff>.<extension>

To those with the really messy collections let's see what we can do for you... For Movies I'm not sure myself (maybe someone can post their experiences) because I started my movie collection from scratch as I saw it as a good opportunity to go from the low quality rips I had up to 720p/1080p - Some googling will give you plenty of options for creating folders based on filenames but that's under the assumption that your filenames are anything close to the movie name.

I'm going to do a small section on some of the external media managers that are available however these use the same scrapers (the 'lookup' that checks online for what the movie/show is and downloads the meta data) as XBMC, Sick Beard and Couch Potato so if it's not found in one it's not going to be found in the others - the collection sorting has to come first!

TV Shows you have a couple options... If your shows are still named the original release name (eg. House S07E21 720p HDTV X264 DIMENSION) you're in luck! Sick Beards post processing scripts should be able to figure it out, move into correct structure, rename, grab meta data and all that jazz! Similarly if your shows follow as basic structure like \House\S01\E01.mkv or \House\01x01.mkv or even \house\1\1.mkv Sick Beard should pick it up straight away without the need of post processing... but much more on that later - just giving you an idea of what to expect.

Hardware
There are plenty of useable options. If you are not planning to use this as a HTPC as well then you can basically use anything you can throw together with enough storage space for your needs, however if you want to run 1080p video  you need a bit of graphical power.

Personally I'm using one of the HP MicroServers (http://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk/hp-proliant-n36l-1p-1gbu-int-sata-cold-plug-sata-2-xnto63372442170bd.html) with an extra 2GB Ram (3GB Total), 4x 2TB Hard drives, and a Zotec 512MB nVidia 210 GFX card.
You can find a good hardware setup guide for the MicroServer Here (http://www.tekforums.net/guides-projects/hp-proliant-microserver-purchase-upgrade-setup-guide/).

Here's is a sample system from picking the cheapest (brand) components from Scan:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/3.JPG)
The above thrown into any case will be more than enough (overkill actually) for what we are doing.

*note* There are plenty of hardware options out there like Zotec's prebuilt micro PC's designed for HTPC use (not so great for our server) and you would be surprised how little power you need to play 1080p. For a full range of options do a Google or check out the hardware section on forum.xbmc.org - For example I run a full version of XBMC with my 1080p library within Windows 7 on a HP-Mini 311c which is a single core ATOM (1.2Ghz), ION1 Lite GFX chipset and 2GB of Ram without any problems.

Services

Internet - Faster the better and you don't want a cap. While a lot of ISP's won't care unless you REALLY take the piss, at time of writing, the only ISP's that don't do fair usage is Virgin's largest package (XXXXXXXL or whatever it is) and surprisingly SKYBB's Unlimited. More information on these things can be found via Google.

NZB - Newsgroups used to be (and still are for some) confusing and seemly over the top for a lot of people when torrents seem to offer the same service for free but that's what this guide will hopefully help with. The server setup I go through below rely on you having a newsgroup subscription, they do have some limited torrent support but I've not tested it.

Plenty of people will have their own recommendations but I use AstraWeb (http://www.news.astraweb.com/) for £7.60 a month (3 month DSL Unlimited package) which offers 900 retention & SSL.

• Pros: Max your connection for everything you download, SSL so ISP can't see what it is you're downloading, quick releases and general high quality of releases.
• Cons: Costs money, Confusing for first time users (I will hopefully solve this).

You will also need to become a premium member of either Newsbin (http://www.newsbin.com/) or NZBMatrix (http://nzbmatrix.com) (or both, more the merrier) - They are dirt cheap and are needed for Sick Beard & Couch Potato to search for items. I use NZBMatrix.

SABnzb+
This is our NZB download software

Download: Offical Website (http://sabnzbd.org/download/)
I recommend downloading the Alt: Windows Binaries, zipped as I will be basing the guide on this.

Once the file has download, right click and Extract All
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab1.jpg)

Choose a location to extract to. I will be putting all of the programs into a single folder on the system drive, so typed in C:\HTPC\ so that it will create a new folder called HTPC and extract the SABnzb files into there.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab2.jpg)

Once extracted it will open up the new folder and show the extracted SABnzb-0.6.0 folder. To make things easier (and neater) I'm going to rename this folder to SABnzb so you end up with the following structure:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab3.jpg)

Great! Now run SABnzbd.exe and your web browser should automatically open to the SABnzbd+ quick-start wizard.

Choose your language:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab4.jpg)

Next step is to setup your NZB server details, these are the details from your newsgroup provider. As mentioned in the section above I use AstraWeb so have the following setting:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab5.jpg)
If your provider allows I recommend using SSL. I also recommend using 2 less connections than it officially allows, this saves our error log filling up when it tries to make a new connection before fully dropping the last.

Next: I change the setting to allow me to access SABnzb from any PC on the network... this allows me to view and manage my downloads from my other PC's or Phone. I don't bother setting a username and password.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab6.jpg)

This is the last step and requires details from either Newsbins or NZBMatrix (or both) - I recommend getting a premium account on either or both of these to save yourself some hassle down the line. I only use NZBMatrix at the moment.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab7.jpg)

SABnzbd will now reboot and then give you a page with some links on it. Choose one of these (I'm using http://localhost:8080/) and you will be taken to the SABnzb homepage! Congratulations.

Bookmark this page so you can access it later without having to remember the address!

We need to do a bit of configuration so click Config at the top of the screen. I'm not going to go through each setting as a lot of it is personal preferences but I will highlight certain things in each section.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab8.jpg)

General

You can change the skin in here, each time you will need to restart the client for it to take effect - try a few and see what you like. For the moment I'll be staying with the default skin.

This is also where you will find your SABnzbd API key which we will need later.

The only options I would recommend changing here are:
Download Speed Limit - Setting this to 90-95% of your max download speed with stop SABnzbd raping your connection to the point where even websites won't load.
Article Cache Limit - If you have at least 2GB of RAM set this to 128M
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab9.jpg)

Folders
*note* - Replace %username% with your login name. If you are un-sure what your username is it's the name of your profile folder in C:\Users\<name!>

These set the locations where SAB will download & watch from. You can leave most as default if you wish but by default they don't follow the new folder structure in windows 7 (they by default create files in C:\users\%username%\documents\downloads\ instead of C:\users\%username%\downloads)

Temporary Download Folder & Completed Download Folder are pretty self-explanatory... these are the locations SAB will use when downloading a file and then move it once extracted. Realistically both these locations are tempoary as Sick Beard and Couch Potato will move the files from the completed folder once they have been extracted.

Watched Folder is where SAB will look for .nzb files to add to the download queue. I set this as my browsers default download folder so if I manually download anything from NZBMatrix SAB will pick up the file and add it automatically.

Post-Processing Scripts Folder is used for Sick Beard, we will come back to this later on!
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab10.jpg)

Switches

Only thing I bother changing here is Ignore Samples set to Delete after Download. I don't use samples and so I don't want them. I've had issues with the 'do no download' option with it not downloading files that the actual movie/show requires.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sab11.jpg)

Categories
We will be coming back to this during the Sick Beard install

Sorting
Awesome tools if you are only using SAB and not Sick Beard / Couch Potato but as we are using them make sure everything is DISABLED otherwise it breaks things.

Finished!

Sick Beard
Manages and Downloads TV Shows



Simple - Download: Official Site (http://sickbeard.com/downloads.html)

Again download the binaries in a zipped folder and Extract:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick1.jpg)
See I also have my SAB download folders in my downloads now!

Again I'm going to extract to C:\HTPC\
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick2.jpg)

And rename the folder to SickBeard
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick3.jpg)

Go into the autoProcessTV folder and rename autoProcessTV.cfg.sample to autoProcessTV.cfg
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick11.jpg)

Then simply run SickBeard.exe and again your web browser will run and open to the Sick Beard homepage
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick4.jpg)

Now we need to do some configuration so click Config
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick5.jpg)

General

Nothing to change here!

Search Settings

Usenet Retention - This number depends on your newsgroup account. AstraWeb give 900 days so that's what I changed it to.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick6.jpg)

NZB Method: - SABnzbd
SABnzbd URL - http://localhost:8080/
SABnzbd API Key - You need to get this from SABnzdb+ > Config > General Settings
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick7.jpg)

Search Providers
Put a tick next to any providers you have an account with (Womble's Index & Sick Beard Index don't require one) and then scroll down and put your account details in the box below.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick8.jpg)

Post Processing

Keep Original Files & Move Associated Files should be disabled to limit the amount of duplicate / random files cluttering our drives.

Rename Episodes should be enabled to keep everything neat and tidy.

Scan and Process need to be DISABLED due to using processing scripts in SAB.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick9.jpg)

Metadata
This is all the show information & pretty pictures... you will want this!

Select XBMC from the drop down and then tick all the boxes. I prefer posters so don't select 'use banners'
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick14.JPG)

Episode Naming is purely down to personal preferences. I would recommend disabling Air-By-Date forum as XBMC doesn't seem to like it too much, also if the database entry isn't very up to date you end up missing information. Enabling Quality will save you some hassle if you ever need to import your collection back into another program or if you need to re-add to Sick Beards database.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick10.jpg)

Notifications
We will come back to this later once we have setup XBMC

Last steps... Go back into your SABnzbd+ > Config > Folders page and add C:\HTPC\SickBeard\autoProcessTV to the Post Processing Scripts
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick12.jpg)

and go into Categories and set up like the following:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick13.jpg)

Making sure that tv is setup to run sabToSickBeard.exe

Depending on your collection size and state of organisation this can either be a lengthy mainly automated process for a really lengthy manual process! Let's cross our fingers shall we...

First please make sure that your TV shows are AT LEAST put into folders with the correct TV Show name, you don't have to use Season Folders but it helps a great deal.

Existing Shows

Ok so you have Sick Beard up and running. Go to Home > Add Shows then click Add Existing Shows
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb2.jpg)

Click the Manage Directories tab at the top and add the root folder of your TV shows:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb3.jpg)

Click Customize - I'm working under the assumption that you want to set the same standards for all shows - So select what you want in this menu...

• Season Folders - Recommended, I'm not sure if you have to disable this if you are not currently storing in season folders, it would have to be tested, however if you tick this any new episodes that are downloaded will be put into season folders.
• Initial status of missing episodes - I like to set this to skipped and then manually choose which episodes/seasons I want, feel free to change it to wanted or something else.
• Anime - I have this option because I'm running a custom branch of Sick Beard with Anime support (see Advanced install) - Most won't have this so can be ignored however if you are running with this branch be warned that most existing shows have to be added as Anime & and then switched over after being scanned.
• Quality - Switch it over to CUSTOM and then you will be able to set it as you want.
• Inital quality is where you set the minimal quality for SB to download... It will always attempt to download the highest quality option but sometimes these just don't exist.
• Archive is basically the quality it will continuously try and find during its weekly backlog checks until it has it

I find the below works well for me. Most shows are downloaded as HDTV or 720 WEB-DL as they are shown but it has SD DVD in there for the older shows (BBC stuff comes to mind) and 720 BluRay for the stuff over the last couple of years... but end of the day I want my whole collection to be 720p BluRay so that's my Archive choice. Hope that makes sense?

Click Save Defaults
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb4.jpg)

Ok once you have done the above scroll down a bit and you will, hopefully, see a list of the folders SB has found in your TV root we added before. Stick a tick next to the shows you want to add and then hit submit:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb5.jpg)

Unless you already have metadata for the shows (tvshows.nfo to be exact) in the folders it will prompt you to confirm the show - If the show is the correct one simply hit Add Show and it will add with the defaults we set up before, if the show is incorrect simply type a new name in the box and search again.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb6.jpg)

Congratulations you have added your collection to Sick Beard, it will now take an age to scan, process, identify and download metadata for all your episodes... go grab a coffee, there is still things to do!

Managing Shows
So your shows have been added, SB has scanned your collection and tried to piece together what episode is what. If you're lucky (or well organised) it's found all the episodes correctly.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb7.jpg)

Click on a show name and you will see what it's found and how its identified it.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb8.jpg)



Unless you had the quality in the name SB will assume all .MKV's are HD TV and all .AVI's are SD TV. You can change the status of episodes using the drop down menu at the top of the season listing:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb9.jpg)

• Wanted - Setting an episode to wanted will set SB to look for and download that episode(s) using the quality standards we set when we added the show.
• Skipped - If set to skipped SB won't download it but it will still show as a missing episode.
• Ignored - SB will ignore it, not marking it as missing but not search for it either.
• Archived - Not sure actually, can only assume it assumes you have it somewhere that SB can't scan - I never use this.
• Quality - If it has identified the quality of the episode incorrectly you can change it using these options.

Once you have confirmed that SB has identified your episodes correctly and you have set them to the correct quality you can hit 'Rename Episodes' at the top of the page to rename all your episodes to the naming scheme we setup in the general config.

WARNING - I have messed up whole seasons of shows by hitting rename BEFORE I had fully confirmed that SB was looking at the correct files for each episode!

So there we have it, you have your shows added, you know how to set missing episodes to wanted and change the listed quality. Any show that is still on-going will now automatically update when the episodes are released (you don't have to manually set unaired episodes to wanted).

This part of the guide is a bit rushed but you will hopefully get the jist until I get time to rewrite it.

Couch Potato
For all your Movie download needs!

Download: Offical site (http://couchpotatoapp.com/)

You should be getting good at this by now... Once again download the zip file and extract it!
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp1.jpg)

This time CP doesn't extract to its own folder so we need to extract to C:\HTPC\CouchPotato
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp2.jpg)

and then run CouchPotato.exe in the new folder - eventually (it takes longer than the other 2 programs) it will open your web browser to the CP homepage.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp3.jpg)

We also need to do some configuration so click the cog at the top of the page... again I'll do this section by section only high-lighting the important things.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp4.jpg)

General
Nothing to change here.

NZBs / Torrents
I haven't used torrent support so I cannot comment on it. We will be setting it up to use NZB's and SAB.

Retention - Whatever your newsgroup provides. AstraWeb is 900 days.
Download to - Sabnzbd
Host - localhost:8080
Apikey - API key found in your SABnzbd+ Config > General > API Key (not NZB key)
Category - movies

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp5.jpg)

Providers
Again fill in the details of the accounts you have. I only have NZBMatrix so thats all I did.

Quality
It's worth setting up a personal quality profile. Simply give it a name and add the qualities you will accept and arrange them in the order you want.

Personally I only want to download 1080p or 720p films and I'm happy with either so I have the following:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp6.jpg)

But if you just want it to grab any quality available but keep looking out for a better one all the way up to 1080p you could do the following:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp7.jpg)

If you want your profile to be the default one to download all movies you have to save your settings after creating your profile and then it will appear in the drop down to the right:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp8.jpg)

Renaming
I enable this so that movies are downloaded, renamed and moved onto my archive drives automatically!

Download folder - Where SAB is downloading to, for me that's C:\users\leon\downloads\complete\movies
Movie Destination - Where all your movies are kept, for me that's D:\movies
Folder Naming - I leave this as default.
File Naming - I don't like the <cd> part of the scheme so I remove it.
Cleanup - Enabled, I don't want all the random files and folders remaining after download.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp9.jpg)

Extras
I don't use downloaded trailers, instead I stream inside XBMC (more on that later) but I do like having the subtitle files if at all possible so that's enabled.

Metadata is the only thing in here I would recommend everyone enable. I know XMBC scraps the data itself but it doesn't create the files within the movie folder.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp10.jpg)

Notifications
We will come back to this after XBMC is setup.

Userscript
If you are using Chrome or Firefox you can install this Extension/Addon so that you can get 'add to couch potato' button at the bottom of IMDB.org pages making it that much easier to quickly add movies to your wanted list.

Done! You can now search for movies from the search bar in the top right, or if you added the userscript go browse around the IMDB website!

As long as you setup the movie categories in SAB like i said at the end of the Sick Beard install everything should be automated, just note that it can take a bit of time before CP kicks in and moves the movie file after its downloaded.

XBMC
Download the latest version of XBMC from the Offical Website (http://xbmc.org/download/) and the install is just Next Next Next Finish etc.

Once it open we can play with some of the settings.

Settings
There are quite a lot of setting here but most are personal preference and I'll leave you to have a play around later. Below I'm going to do a quick run through of the changes I make from the default and why.

Appearance
We will come back to skinning in a bit, I want to get the rest of it out of the way and some media added first.

You may want to go into International and set your Region to UK (12h) or UK (24h)

Video
Playback .::. Allow Hardware Acceleration (DXVA2) - You want this to enabled, if supported by your GFX card will allow the GPU to do the work instead of CPU, its how 1080p works fine on my Atom :)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc2.jpg)

Network
These setting will allow XBMC to be updated by Sick Beard & Couch Potato and also be controlled by external devices.
Allow Control of XBMC via UPNP - Enabled
Allow Control of XBMC via HTTP - Enabled

• Port - 8082 - this can be anything you want long as its not already in use. I have SAB on 8080, SB on 8081 and XBMC on 8082
• Username & Password - Set this to whatever you want, we are going to setup notifications in SB & CP so will need to add these details to there
• Allow Programs on this System to Control XBMC - Enabled
• Allow Programs on Other Systems to Control XBMC - Enabled

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc3.jpg)

Now would be a good time to add those details into Sick Beard & Couch Potato (before we forget).

Sick Beard - Configuration > Notifactions > XBMC
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sick15.jpg)

Couch Potato - Config > Notifactions > XBMC
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/cp11.jpg)

Adding Media to XBMC
About time we actually added out media to XBMC, I'm going to add my TV Shows first... From the main menu go into the Videos menu and select Add source

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc4.jpg)

Select Browse

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc5.jpg)

then navigate into your first media folder, in this case it's an example of a TV Shows folder (as I'm on my work computer and can't get access to my home media server). Once you have navigated into the folder select OK

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc6.jpg)

*NOTE* - You add separate sources for Movies & TV Shows so do them one at a time. However if your TV shows (or movies) are in multiple locations, like spread over multiple disks, then select Add from the sources list and navigate to folder 2, 3, 4 etc.

Once you have added all your TV Shows folders give it a name, such as TV Shows, select OK

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc7.JPG)

It will ask you to select what kind of content is in the folder(s) - Choose TV Shows and Run automated scan and then OK

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc8.jpg)

Last of all select Yes to refreshing all the items within this path

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc9.jpg)

You will see it scanning your media in the top right. If you have already added everything to Sick Beard and allowed it to rename & grab meta data then this process won't be too long... if you haven't well you might want to go do something else for a while!

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc10.jpg)

Repeat this process for your Movies folders and then your sorted! Once both have been added (and finished scanning) you can access them from the main menu but at the moment things are no-where near as pretty as my starting images!

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc11.jpg)
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc12.jpg)

Skinning
I'm going to do is switch over to AEON MQ2 as it the skin I like but I would recommend trying some of the 100's of other skins to find something that suits you personally, the options are pretty standard over all skins so you should be able to follow the below whatever you choose!

AEON MQ2 is quite a demanding skin so if you are running on a lower spec'd machine but still want something that looks similar to AEON MQ2 I would recommend AEON Nox, I run it on my netbook and works great

Download Skin Aeon MQ2 - Repository (http://www.marcosqui.com.br/downloads_english.html) but don't extract it.

Go back into XBMC and go down to the Settings Menu and then select Appreances
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc13.jpg)

Select Confluence
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc14.jpg)

Select Get More at the bottom of this menu
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc15.jpg)

This will take you straight to the list of Skins that you can simply select and download.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc16%282%29.JPG)

Try a few if you wish but as I'm installing one not listed here I need to navigate away from this list so Select the .. a couple times until you get to the following menu:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc16.jpg)

Select Install from zip and then navigate to the Zip file we downloaded before:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc17.JPG)

Now from the same menu select Get Add-ons and then Select Repo AEON MQ
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc18.jpg)

Keep selecting skin until you get the install prompt:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc19.jpg)

Wait for it to download and then it will prompt you if you want to switch to this skin, select yes
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc20.jpg)

Press ESC twice and you will get prompted for which version of the Skin you wish to run. I'm sticking with Normal as I do some homepage customization.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/xbmc21.jpg)

Congratulations you have a new shiny skin.

To come: Media views, Remote controls, Advanced: Custom playlists.

Cheers for the guide, it's very thorough. Just one question, what are the benefits of ubuntu over windows, I'm going to setup xbmc on my system, it's current running windows, and like using it, just wondering what the benefits are for ubuntu.

My main reasoning was because its free and I didn't have a windows 7 copy to hand but there is nothing different between the two. XBMC, SABnzb, Sick Beard and Couch Potato all run on Windows perfectly and so does the intergration between them.

Infact installing on PC is easier for all the programs as they are either setup or just 'run the EXE after extracting' jobs and the config is cross platform.

Bah was going to finish the Sick Beard & Couch Potato guides but left my USB stick at work... will have to wait :(

There we go! Someone who knows more than "I've had XBMC running smoother on Ubuntu / Live than on Windows on lower specced machines" which is what I should of said in my 1st reply :)

I use the XBMC remote on android - on my main phone and also have an old magic kicking about in the living room.

(http://android-xbmcremote.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Documentation/Images/teasers/v0.6.1.png)

There are also similar remotes out for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) - was going to mention them in the XBMC section when I finish writing it :)

edit: oh and as for the Windows vs Unix front as you can see in my sig I use both :D if your using it purely as Server/XBMC then it shouldn't matter as long as things are running smoothly... if your wanting to use it for other things as well then go with the OS your most comfortable with :)

Heh I don't mind (its why I reserved the posts above) - maybe a clean up and consiladation once I'm finished but then I plan to update & expand with ideas etc anyway :)

Yep Commander is the one I was thinking of on iOS. The thing I want to get working on this ubuntu box after is the central server SQL database so you only need to update 1 XMBC database. It also means that your watched/unwatched sync's on all installs & if you stop watching a film half way through in the living room and move to bedroom it gives you the "resume from xx:xx" option.

Seems easy enough to do but first things first :)

Cheers guys, just had a thought, I'm using the antec fusion with VFD on the front, and expect it wont work on the linux distro, so probably stick with windows for the moment on that machine, might try ubuntu on my other machine... Keep up the good work

I'm sure some bright spark has got it working but I wouldn't know where to start.

Last night I had some issues with running on Ubuntu which means I might be switching over to Windows 7 or Server 2008 on my server machine - there are just some things I need to be able to do which, while prob possible, I can't do on Linux.

Logmein is a must for world control of PC
RDP connection is better than VNC
Flash Playback Issues in XBMC
Media Managment software I use is only on Windows
and other simple things like not having to use SMB shares, having to seperatly mount drives, no being able to post processing in sickbeard over a network mount, etc etc etc.

I'm going to finish off my linux documentation and PDF it with a link at the start. It will still be complete but won't be updating it in future. I'm also going to create a zip file that 'installs' Sick Beard, Couch Potato and SABnzbd+ for PC with majority of the required setting already setup - you will just have to change the account settings (just need to confirm it works but can't think why it wouldn't) - The guide will still also go into whats required in each section if you choose to do things manually or want to know what is required and what isn't).

And with the rediscovery of the tags I'll add some 'advanced config' :D

Watch this space.

Edited the orginal post and started my switch over to Windows systems. I can't get Windows 7 installed on this virtual machine at work and I haven't finished setting up my remote login for my home server so not sure how much I can get sorted today but expect a bigger update tomorrow.

I was using it becuase its the best solution I had come across. I will check out teamviewer tonight :D Either way I'm still going back to Windows after a few annoyances.

I happens every time I do to Linux, its all great for a couple days and then a few small things piss me off and I go back. Thought this time would be different but noooooo :P

SAB on windows added.

Thats strange, its a pretty simple setup and so I'm not sure whats going wrong on your end. Guess you can just compare to my setup and see if there is anything you have missed.

I'm going to do the Sick Beard & Couch Potato setups today or tomorrow but as I'm at work I can't add anything to the collection or do any searchs (won't look too good with those kinds of querys hitting the proxy).

Sick Beard setup added - Will have to add 'adding new & existing shows' to the end of the guide tomorrow as I can't do that at work & I'm off for a leaving do tonight.

Working on couch potato setup now.... Suppose I should actually go do some work at some point as well.

Added Couch Potato setup.

I'd just like to add that this is an excellent and thorough guide, exactly the sort of thing we need to see on the forums :bow:

I do have a question though, as someone that has never really used newsgroups, what is the difference between an Astraweb account and then having one of the other two you mention on top, Newsbins or NZBMatrix?

Cheers. Hmmm how to explain...

The newsgroup servers (such as Astraweb / Giganews / Supernews etc) are the servers that actually host the content. Newsbins & NZBmatrix are indexing? sites that point you to the files you want to download... something like that.

From a torrent comparison... Astraweb is the other users your downloading off (but its a server this time), NZBmatrix is the torrent website like piratebay/btjunkie

I'm sure someone will have an better explaination :)

Quick note to moderators - Leave all the spam in here for the moment, going to references a few things and its still a WIP - when finished can merge / move everything in a gerneral thread somewhere else on the forums and clean everything up.

Urgh too much text - eyes starting to hurt.

Added an 'advanced install' of Sick Beard in a (SPOILER) tag which uses the source code and complies from Git. Most people won't need it but its what I use as it allows you to use user customised branches that are availible on github.

this is a handy guide as well http://www.henryford.tk/XBMC_DharmaGuide.pdf

Saw that guide (or one similar) before and was going to link to it when I did XBMC becuase to be honest my install is going to be very basic but with a better skin :P (as thats all I do)

http://pinnaclegameprofiler.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11678 (http://pinnaclegameprofiler.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11678)

got my 3in1 keyboard today

it works as a mouse as well :oD - the little joypad
Just need to map all the keys
Im using pinnacle profiler trial atm.

I thought the pad was bluetooth, but its not. It comes with its
own wireless USB receiver that also doubles up as a dock/charger

It does feel cheap & plasticy, but I think it will do the job for now.

Update - Added managing shows in SB, my mind isn't quite in it today so will prob redo it but hey I want something up there. Last step is XMBC which I will do asap.

Cool egg, I wasn't (and still not enough) about getting a remote or wireless keyboard as XBMC is controlled purely by the android phone & the software I use is all Browser based so shouldn't need to touch it (can RDP if required).

I also switched over to using TeamViewer but I'm not sure I like it... its not as streamlined as Logmein as you have to 'send' a right click and shortcut keys don't work while working on screen. I also seem to get freezes where it still thinks everything is fine but can't move any windows until you reconnect.

Id personally get a cheap android slate as a giant remote :oD
I just went for something cheap as my budget is limited

Quote from: Eggtastico on May 17, 2011, 12:05:37 PM
Id personally get a cheap android slate as a giant remote :oD
I just went for something cheap as my budget is limited

I'm using the official XBMC remote app on my Advent Vega.
You can pick the Show/Movie/Album on the tablet and beam it to the xbmc.

Not bad either, at £199

Using my HTC magic at the moment with the XBMC remote - When I had my Desire HD it was better, the bigger screen made it more usable. A tablet would be great but phone works well enough :)

Quote from: soopahfly on May 18, 2011, 11:58:29 AM

Quote from: Eggtastico on May 17, 2011, 12:05:37 PM
Id personally get a cheap android slate as a giant remote :oD
I just went for something cheap as my budget is limited

I'm using the official XBMC remote app on my Advent Vega.
You can pick the Show/Movie/Album on the tablet and beam it to the xbmc.

Not bad either, at £199

i got that on my iphone - but I dont want to use my phone as a remote

It's the best I've come across so far.
I want something that shows me my collection, with covers and allows me to beam it to the xbmc.
Although nothing's got quite the look I'm after.

Quote from: soopahfly on May 18, 2011, 13:36:15 PM
It's the best I've come across so far.
I want something that shows me my collection, with covers and allows me to beam it to the xbmc.
Although nothing's got quite the look I'm after.

aye - nor the speed! - I'll pick up a cheap slate droid eventually

Been a bit slow on continuing this. I have added the beginning of the XBMC install (Draft).

If you're using Sabnzbd and the like for your aquisitions.... This might be one of the most important text files you'll ever need.

http://www.jimbeeer.com/?page_id=432

http://www.jimbeeer.com/passwords.txt

Plain Text passwords, for when those cockstains put passwords on their files.


And I grabbed a MCE remote -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320663187967

Probably a fakie, but Windows sees it as a genuine one so XBMC is all happy.

I've never had an issue with passworded files but I guess its worth adding in just in case :)

Headphones (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=103688) has just appeared which is a Music version of Sick-Beard in early development and only running in Pyhton (no windows bin - check out the advanced SB install for getting it working). I had a play last night and its got potential but still plenty of problems.

I'll do some more work updating, adding and reformatting guide when I get some spare time in the coming weeks.

Not trying to be a putz, but ....

This looks like an interesting setup, but I just want to pose 2 questions. First, I know USENET and its use are not illegal but...:

(1) Isn't downloading TV shows you do not own, via Sickbeard, illegal (at least in Canada and possibly the U.S.)?
(2) Isn't downloading movies you do not own, via Couch Potato, illegal (at least in Canada & U.S.)? 

I'm really interested in what people have to say.   Thanks.

Depends but generally yes these tools can be used to download illegal copies of media, the same could be said with an installation guide for uTorrent. It is the users responibility, not the softwares :P

I think really it depends on what you are downloading as well... I can't see an issue in downloading a TV episode that has aired, especially if you could have watched it on TV but missed it for example... I can't see a logical argument for this, if I wanted to record an episode of misfits on the TV on to DVD or TIVO, this is perfectly legal, but if I downloaded exactly the same episode this is possibly illegal...

On the plus side TV on demand is much better now and a lot more of these things you can get via the web.

It's very subjective news groups and torrents, neither of them are illegal, but some of the content you download potentially can be.

From the film side, this is a sign of Cinema's trying to make more money and not listening to the needs of the consumer, there's no reason why they couldn't release the DVD at the same time as in the cinema, but a lot don't (although recently they have been catching on to this and I've seen a few released sooner or at the same time).. People have better home setups now, and don't want to pay extortionate cinema prices, I'd much sooner watch films at home if I could, and for some people, downloading a film is the only option, if given the option to rent or buy a film at point of release I bet you'd end up seeing the film makers make a lot of money..

For Avatar they have been using shocking tactics to make money, so they made a silly amount of money in the cinema, the then released the 2D DVD/bluray, followed by another 2 versions of the 2D Bluray (We are not talking about ground breaking differences here). Not to mention you can't buy the 3D version at the moment unless you buy a panasonic bluray player! Next year they will release the 3D version and make yet more money and expect there will be multiple versions of that as well!

Also what about those films you go to the cinema to see (maybe you take the family) you watch the film and it's crap, you're £40 out of pocket for a film that wasn't worth even a £3 rental, if I watch a film in the cinema and I like it, then I'll buy the DVD, it would be the same for a download, downloads aren't just ruining the film industry they are promoting it, they are creating cause to release better films, and resulting in more people getting in to films and purchasing them!

At least with music you can try before you buy, as you can hear it on the radio..

Anyway my thoughts on this, there are some legal scenarios, some questionable, and some illegal,  but for the illegal ones what are the drivers for this, is it extortion from the film companies or is it just people wanting stuff for free, I expect it's a mix of both, but either way I don't think the film companies are being hit that hard by it, apart from those maybe the release rubbish films..

I haven't got room for a vast DVD collection living in a tiny flat.  I prefer digital copies as they are easily accessible from a central source, and I don't have to sit through all the anti piracy bits that ironically the people who bought the DVD have to sit through.

I can't watch a BR on my tablet when lying in bed, and it's easier when friends come round to watch a movie to show them XBMC with covers, IMDB ratings and Synopsis than it is to point them to a shelf with some DVD's on and the inevitable question of "What's it about"

I don't see an issue with TV shows if they are aired in your country.  I pay my licence fee and will do what I choose with the TV shows.  Bit shady when it's not aired in your country though.

You think Avatar was bad for milking it, Care to glance through how many different versions of LOTR there is?

What we need is a spotify for music :D

Since getting Spotify, I don't download music.  If we can get a good distributed system for TV and Movies then I'm sure a lot of people would convert.

On another note, what's the betting that poincare_ is FBI ;)

How are you dealing with standby / power on of the MicroServer? Is it on constantly on the XBMC screen or does it sleep / power off when not in use?

This is the only issue I can forsee with using it as a media player as well as server.

I'm so close to ordering one, I've ordered a HIS HD 6450 (passive and low profile) in preperation, just need to wait until payday for the box itself!

Mine is on 24/7 and on the XBMC screen most of the time unless I'm remote desktoped to it from work so haven't played with standby/hibernation.

Headphones app is becoming very good and is acually usable now (Sick Beard for Music) so when I have some spare time I will update everything and add this :)

I'm one step closer, just bought a full HD tv so now I can justify a full HD media solution!

Two features that I'd love to integrate into this are Skype so we can video conference on the TV and an IP cam feed so I can check who's at the door from my TV. Ideally both from within the XMBC interface with the remote.

Anyone found neat solutions to either of these? The internet is awash with unanswered and half scripted solutions for XBMC, I have read that Boxee has proper Skype integration which is making me consider going down that route.

I've ordered mine! A full breakdown of what I ordered:

HP ProLiant MicroServer - £121.15 (https://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk/node/255520) (after cashback)
2 x Kingston ValueRAM memory - 4 GB - £31.46 (https://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk/node/331958)
HDE Wireless USB PC Remote Control Mouse for PC (Chinavision CVSB-983)£7.95 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001M56DI0/ref=ox_ya_os_product)
HIS HD 6450 Silence Edition £36.99 (http://www.ebuyer.com/264765-his-hd-6450-silence-edition-1gb-ddr3-dvi-hdmi-vga-pci-e-low-h645h1g)

I went with 8Gb of RAM because it was so cheap. Might as well have too much.
The remote is just for the IR receiver so I can use my Harmony remote to control it, I've read that that remote is supported in the Harmony database.
The 6450 seemed to be the highest performing passive, low profile card I could find.

I'm holding off adding any additional drives because I'm not short of storage at the moment. My DNS323 is still doing a good job for now but I expect it will be turned into a full 'dumb' backup device once the HP is up and running.

EDIT: Delievered! Let the fun begin!

EDIT: The remote linked I havent yet managed to get setup properly and the receiver has a terrible range, I dont recommend it.

Hi Guys,

I'm kind of new to this whole media server business so you'll have to excuse me.

This is probably a very stupid question but here goes....

I'm just wondering once you have the media server in place how do you go about streaming this content to your living room TV?

I apologise if this is covered in the guide I have only skimmed it briefly.

Thanks,

Luke

Hi Luke, welcome to the forum, the idea behind this setup is that the computer connects directly to the TV either via VGA or HDMI...

XBMC is then the software used to display the media..

You don't have to go to this level of complexity, you could just plug your laptop or computer in to the TV and use it as normal.. but then if you are up for it, then this can provide a good interface.

If you give us an idea of what media you want to play and what hardware you have or your budget then we could probably make some suggestions ;)

Quote from: LukeC on August 30, 2011, 23:53:01 PM
Hi Guys,

I'm kind of new to this whole media server business so you'll have to excuse me.

This is probably a very stupid question but here goes....

I'm just wondering once you have the media server in place how do you go about streaming this content to your living room TV?

I apologise if this is covered in the guide I have only skimmed it briefly.

Thanks,

Luke

As XEntity said, this guide primarily assumes that the computer running all this software is connected directly to the TV. I have my HP Microserver (the PC I use to run everything) tucked away in a cupboard with a 10m HDMI cable running to my TV. If I need to go on the computer and dont want to occupy the TV I remote desktop to it from a laptop.

Fantastic thanks guys! I have taken the plunge and also purchased one of the HP Proliant Microserver's :)

Can you recommend worthwhile upgrades? Will I need some kind of USB InfraRed receiver in order to use a remote?

Cheers,

Luke

Just to clarify I intend to use it for pretty much the exact same stuff as Leon has highlighted in his guide.

In terms of upgrades:

- If you are going to be storing a lot of movies - get some hard disks to go in there
- If you are going to play HD content - You will NEED a new graphics card
- For a remote there are many options out there and when you get a remote, most will come with a receiver.. however you can get two types (Infrared - needs line of sight or RF - you can hide the computer away)
- Extra ram can give a performance boost an isn't very expensive
- OS - Don't forget that this doesn't come with an operating system!!

Thanks XEn :)

I noticed sexytw picked up the ATi 6450 is this a safe bet graphics wise?

I will probably pick up 4GB of RAM with a 2TB storage drive, looking at either a WD Green or Seagate alternative.

I'll scour the interweb for a suitable remote.

I had been thinking about getting an iPad when the v3.0 comes out can they be used as remotes and also manage the server via some sort of remote desktop app?

No worries..

Sexytw will be able to advise on the graphics card, as I'm using mine only as a server, I have a separate media PC..

In terms of the hard disk, the preference on here is the Samsung F4s in the HP micro server (I think we all have those drives in ours :) )

Not sure about the remote, as haven't played with that.. for remote desktop you have two main options (RDP - requires a Pro or server version of windows and will log out on the media PC, or the free and easy choice of VNC for which you can use "VNC viewer" on the iPad (I think it's a couple of quid, but much better than the free ones) Image quality isn't quite as good though..

Luckily my University is a member of the MSDN Alliance so I can get a copy of W7 or Server 2008 free of charge!

Nice work on MSDN, I LOVE my MSDN subscription.

The 6450 had been perfect for me so far, I cant fault it. It plays every full HD file I've thrown at it (with XBMC as the player). There may be slightly cheaper cards that do the same but at £35 or so I dont think you can argue.

It does audio over HDMI (HDMI 1.4) so I can have just one cable going to the TV / AV receiver and receive full HD, DTS sound.

I've played the extended Full HD DTS edition of Lord of the Rings (25Gb files) with no fault at all with the spec I laid out above.

As an FYI to Soopah, when following the Guide, there seems to be a part missing where you install XBMC, it jumps straight to the XBMC settings which is a little confusing. Awesome guide overall, got mine setup faultlessly which I wouldnt have managed otherwise!

A few tweaks I have found are:

1. Enabling multiple concurrent user session in Windows 7.

This means I can remote onto the HTPC without affecting anyone who is watching something on the TV. I found a guide here (http://www.blogsdna.com/2336/enable-multiple-user-accessconcurrent-user-sessions-for-remote-desktop-on-windows-7.htm) but I had to manually modify the install.cmd to match my version of Windows. This just involved changing the top version name and build number variables to match your own (which can be found in the registry if you're not sure).


2. Making Windows boot directly into XBMC without showing the taskbar / login screen etc first (but still loading CouchPotato, SickBeard etc first). This works particularly well when you have a separate user account for xbmc and log in for maintenance using another (using the above concurrent session hack).

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_make_Windows_boot_directly_to_XBMC_(as_a_shell)

3. Installing CouchPotato script usescript extension for chrome / firefox / your respective web browser

It is actually enormously simple but I spent ages googling trying to find the plugin extension to install to chrome. Once you have the couch potato application installed, navigate to its web interface from the computer you want to install the extension on. In the Config section select 'UserScript' then just press the big 'Install option'.

For some reason my CouchPotato setup isnt updating my XBMC library. Everything seem to be setup correctly, I have tested the xbmc notifications and that works but when films are downloaded them dont appear in the library.

Amusingly I was googling for a solution (didnt find one) and the top result was http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=102800 Your guide on http://forum.xbmc.org!

Hi Guys,

I have received my HP Proliant Microserver but it refuses to boot from 2 USB sticks now.

Just chucks me to the media test failure check cable screen! I have moved the 250GB disk that came with the machine to the 2nd slot and my new Samsung 2TB drive is sitting in the first slot.

Can anybody help?

Hi Luke, are you trying to boot from USB on the internal port or one of the external ports? Make sure you've set it to boot from USB in the BIOS also.

The external ports on the case, didn't realise there were more inside?!

There's only one inside, but I believe this may be the only one you can boot from. :)

Open the door and look just at front near the big power cable and BIOS battery, you can't miss it!

When I plug the USB memory stick into any of the ports including the one inside the machine the Samsung 2TB HDD disappears from the boot order which may be causing the problem?

I believe I have found the problem.. Downloaded some service packs for Windows Server from MSDN rather than Win Server ISO itself.

DUH!

Glad you susses it out! I haven't tried mine yet, but it seems the few dramas involved seem to stem from odd software behaviour more than anything, I'm hoping it will be plain sailing for me.

What are the benefits of using the USB drive instead of a 3.5 drive. Is it just the extra free HD slot you get for storage or is it faster?

I'm considering booting Win Server 2008 R2 from USB but I'm concerned that some of the application I intend to run may have issues with not having enough space on the install drive for temp/cache files.

People are mostly using it to boot from USB pens for the BIOS update or for small/streamlined OS installs like freeNAS or unRAID (as then you get your extra storage drive slot). I certainly wouldn't recommend it for a Windows or linux install! I'm going to use mine to hook up a USB DVD drive I've borrowed from Alan to get Server 2008 R2 installed.

Bear in mind you can install a SATA card for additional ports, most people seem to be able to comfortably squeeze 6 drives into the server, but some have managed 7 or even 9 :lol:

You can get 6 drives in there with the standard ports, although one of the drives wont be properly mounted...

You can also get a 5 1/4" adapter to mount a slim DVD drive and a 2 1/2" HDD/SSD

Looks like i'd got the wrong end of the stick with that one. I'll look for a guide on getting 6 in without modification. I'd love 5 x 2Tb in RAID 5 plus a system disk.

I havent been able to find any benchmarks of a Microserver running RAID 5, if the extra CPU overhead for the raid calculations a concern with the relatively slow CPU?

EDIT: This allows SIX 2.5" drives to fit into the 5.25" bay, how many spare SATA connectors are there?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sharkoon-sata-quickport-internal-sata-iii-6-gb-s-6xbay-25-hdd-into-single-525-bay

Quote from: sexytw on September 08, 2011, 11:34:27 AM
Looks like i'd got the wrong end of the stick with that one. I'll look for a guide on getting 6 in without modification. I'd love 5 x 2Tb in RAID 5 plus a system disk.

I havent been able to find any benchmarks of a Microserver running RAID 5, if the extra CPU overhead for the raid calculations a concern with the relatively slow CPU?

EDIT: This allows SIX 2.5" drives to fit into the 5.25" bay, how many spare SATA connectors are there?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sharkoon-sata-quickport-internal-sata-iii-6-gb-s-6xbay-25-hdd-into-single-525-bay

LOL!

There are 4 to the main cage, then one internal and one external connector, the external connector you can feed via the PCI slot cover..

Shown here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1429720-tims-7-24tb-tiddler-unraid-nas.html (http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1429720-tims-7-24tb-tiddler-unraid-nas.html)

Obviously you could just get an additional SATA card to make use of another 6

Also I guess that if you have 6 1TB drives you are going to be limited to 6TB and quite a lot of cost, as if you fitted 2 3.5 drives you could just put in a couple of 2TB drives at much less cost?

You lose 2TB, but I guess it depends on how much that will actually matter?

I wouldn't bother going down the 2.5" route save for a system SSD or unraid cache drive, like you said you soon realise it becomes prohibitively expensive. For that money you could by an external 4-drive bay case and pass through to a SATA card I reckon!

The problem is anything over 4 storage + system disk isn't really viable without an add-in card. I don't know if it's possible to boot off eSATA or not, but that would be a possibility for drive six.

In terms of making a RAID volume in Windows, I don't know how well/if its possible to integrate the eSATA into this either, most setups seem to be using this for a cache drive and boot off USB, using the ODD SATA for 5th storage volume.

My own feeling from reading all of this is that if you're after a maximised pure storage solution unraid is the way to go, as it really doesn't care about HDD sizes or how they are connected.

 Wub Just popped in as I subscribed to this thread :p

The workaround for 6 drives is to use the 4 sata in the caddy, the single sata for the 5.25 bay & then running a cable from the external sata to the 3.5" bay.
I looked at the 6 bay on scan before, but opted against it as its for 2.5" drives.

Any of the  USB's should be bootable - Ive booted xbmc live using the usb ports on the front - I use the internal one for a wifi usb adapter.

For Ipad users, theres 2 awesome remotes constellation (my fav) http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=104567 (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=104567)
and the offical app xbmc commander http://www.xbmc-commander.com/ (http://www.xbmc-commander.com/)

Anyone wanting to use XBMC live & install to a HDD - heres my quick & dirty guide
networking
sudo pico /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid home (home being my wireless network name)


file server

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install samba
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

    [xbmc]
    comment = XBMC Share
    path = /media (media being where my shares are setup)
    force user = xbmc
    inherit permissions = yes
    read only = No
    guest ok = Yes


mounting hard drives
mk dir /media/hdd1
mkdir /media/hdd2
mkdir /media hdd3
sudo nano /etc/fstab
UUID=0E74F72674F70F69 /media/hdd1 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0          (the random characters are drive specific - in this case I am mounting 3 drives)
UUID=22209A40209A1ABD /media/hdd2 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0             (you can get your random characters from running linux version of fdisk)
UUID=26F6D5C1F6D59203 /media/hdd3 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

HDMI sound
Create a asound.conf file as follows : sudo nano /etc/asound.conf (this is how I got sound working on my micro-server to a zotac nvidia card)

Add the following text into the file, and save :
pcm.!default {
   type plug
   slave {
       pcm "hw:0,3"
       rate 48000
   }
}


updating nvidia drivers
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

And skip the x-config, as it tends to kill XBMC autostart.


sab nzb - work in progress
sudo apt-get install sabnzbdplus
sudo nano /etc/default/sabnzbdplus
You'll need to change two settings to get the application to work properly: USER and PORT. I usually just set the USER to the account XBMC runs on by default 'XBMC' and set the PORT to '8080'. This means you will later access the web interface via http://XBMCIP:8080/sabnzbd/ (http://xbmcip:8080/sabnzbd/)

http://boshdirect.com (http://boshdirect.com)- good stuff there

Thats all the sh*t I need to do when my linux server crashes after I play around - only takes me 20mins to get everything up & running into a usable state.

now im going back in to wilderness.. cherio

LOL! You should stick around, it's not quite the same without you here :P

Looks like sound advice, although I don't think it has a 3.5" bay, I think there is an area where you could fit a 3.5" drive, but I dont think there is any way to mount it? (I might be wrong)

I seem to  be getting very high CPU usage when XBMC is idle, or when im using the menus. The interface is a bit laggy.

It seems to sit at 50-70% of the microserver CPU which slows everything else with down and when SABnzbd does an extractions it really lags video.

Im looking into it.

Hi All,

I bought one of the HP microservers a few weeks back with the plan of putting in my rack at the datacentre for R1Soft CDP - the beast arrived and I realised what a little gem it is, i decided i would make use of it at home rather than give it to my clients to use ;-)  I've followed this guide and it's great (if a bit messy right now) and do have some questions to ask but first off i thought i'd put some details of my upgrades to it here so others don't make the same mistake as me....

RAM: do not buy this (it doesn't work!) http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003OSTDPI/ref=oss_product - Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V unbuffered from ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/247674-corsair-8gb-2x4gb-ddr3-1333mhz-xms3-memory-kit-cl9-1-5v-unbuffered-cmx8gx3m2a1333c9) work perfectly though!

I chose this (http://www.ebuyer.com/201166-asus-hd-5450-silent-512mb-ddr2-dvi-hdmi-vga-out-pci-e-low-eah5450-silent-di-512md2-lp-)graphics card too - not tested on the TV as still setting the remote up but I am led to believe we will get sound out of the HDMI port :-)  The low profile bracket is the wrong way round for the microserver so you will need some tin snips so you can cut off the VGA part.

So my setup is now:

HP Microserver with 8gb RAM, 512MB 5450 Graphics card, 1 x 250gb HDD (original drive), 3 x Samsung F3's (1tb each) and 1 x Samsung F4 (2tb).  Probably overkill but will last me a while i hope :-)

I'm using the XMBC Commander app on the iPad for a remote until i can find the ir reciever for my Windows remote - so far not actually too impressed with XBMC Commander.

On to my question.... When windows starts, i want SickBeard, CouchPotato and SABnzbd to run before XBMC - i've put shortcuts to all in the startup folder but when i boot, XBMC fires up and then we get the browser open over the top of it.  I have set the properties for them all to startup minimised with the exception of XMBC that should be fullscreen.  Anyone know a way to fix this as the wife/kids will get somewhat confused....

I notice thetvdb.com is down - can SickBeard use an alternative and if so, anyone know one?

Quote from: Starteck2002 on September 10, 2011, 22:27:32 PM

On to my question.... When windows starts, i want SickBeard, CouchPotato and SABnzbd to run before XBMC - i've put shortcuts to all in the startup folder but when i boot, XBMC fires up and then we get the browser open over the top of it.  I have set the properties for them all to startup minimised with the exception of XMBC that should be fullscreen.  Anyone know a way to fix this as the wife/kids will get somewhat confused....

Hey Starteck, welcome to the forums.

This is something I noticed as missing as well. I manually added them to the start-up folder as you have.

There are setting in each of the apps to disable them opening browser windows on startup.

Sickbeard -> Config -> General -> Uncheck 'Launch Browser'

CouchPotato -> Config (Cog Icon) -> General -> Uncheck 'Launch Browser'

I dont think SABnzbd opens automatically.

Quote from: Starteck2002 on September 10, 2011, 22:31:53 PM
I notice thetvdb.com is down - can SickBeard use an alternative and if so, anyone know one?

I noticed this as well today, as far as I know I dont think it can be changed so its just a waiting game for TVDB to be fixed.

Thanks for the welcome :-)

Have made those changes so hopefully that will make my life easier.

Well I'm getting there.  Had a stupid issue with XBMC losing focus on boot which has now been resolved by stopping ASUS SmartDoctor (uninstall) and removing Catalyst Control Panel.  I've connected it to the TV and it's great.  I think i need to do the FW hack to enable the HP to run the internal sata at full speed though as bootup  seems quite slow.

Now need to get to grips with XBMC as it's not going to a nice coverflow or something like that when selecting movies/tvshows/music etc.  Will update on tasks here to help others as and when i fix them.  So far, have to say that the HP microserver makes a far better mediacentre than any of the other sulutions i've tried such as Boxee running on an ASUS R3600 :-)

thetvdb.com is down : here's the reason...

http://forums.thetvdb.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7487

(Someone else reply in here, it's starting to feel like i'm the only one posting :-) )

Coooooooey  :lol:

There's not much to say about the problem. It's a pain in the arse but there we go :)  :hug:

I've been trying to resolve my high CPU usage for a little while now. Turning on debugging:

System -> System -> Debugging -> Enable debug logging

shows that my menus were running at 100fps and my CPU cores somewhere around 60-100% when idle.

Turning 'Vertical blank sync' to 'Always Enabled' helped this, as it caps the menus to 60fps.

System -> System -> Video Playback -> Vertical blank sync

I also created an advancedsettings.xml in the /username/AppData/Roaming/XBMC/userdata folder with the following lines in it:

<advancedsettings>
  <useddsfanart>true</useddsfanart>
</advancedsettings>

This moves fanart and some image rendering over to the GPU from the CPU lowering the pressure on the relatively slow CPU we are using.

Now my menus run at 60fps and my CPU sits at 20-22% when in menus. Not ideal but a lot better.


Also, as I have mentioned previously I have setup two user accounts, one to run XBMC and all the related apps, and one that I can remote into without interrupting the XBMC session (guide to allowing multiple session logons in Windows 7 was in a previous post).

One thing I didnt include was how to get the XBMC account to atomatically log-on, this is done with the following steps:

Open the run dilog (Start->Run or Windows Key+R)
Type control userpasswords2 and press Enter
Highlight the account you want to automatically log in (the XBMC account) and Uncheck  "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer"
Enter the password when prompted.
Done, when windows boots it will now boot directly into that account without a login prompt.

can you log in with more than 1 account, without logging out the one which is logged in ?

would be handy for me to log into the cctv at work.... without messing with the cctv program
(which has to be in a logged on account to work)

I know it's a long shot.... but thought I'd ask :-)

Quote from: knighty on September 18, 2011, 01:27:07 AM
can you log in with more than 1 account, without logging out the one which is logged in?

would be handy for me to log into the cctv at work.... without messing with the cctv program
(which has to be in a logged on account to work)

I know it's a long shot.... but thought I'd ask :-)

You can. See my post below (a few pages back). Although I have recently been having troubles remoting but I think its unrelated as its on all accounts.

Quote from: sexytw on September 03, 2011, 15:24:55 PM
A few tweaks I have found are:

1. Enabling multiple concurrent user session in Windows 7.

This means I can remote onto the HTPC without affecting anyone who is watching something on the TV. I found a guide here (http://www.blogsdna.com/2336/enable-multiple-user-accessconcurrent-user-sessions-for-remote-desktop-on-windows-7.htm) but I had to manually modify the install.cmd to match my version of Windows. This just involved changing the top version name and build number variables to match your own (which can be found in the registry if you're not sure).

woohoo, thanks :-)

Have any of you actually got your server hooked up to the TV and playing back 1080p from a Linux XBMC install ? If so what gfx card are you using as I cannot find any low profile, passive cooled, nVidia cards :/

Not me, ATI and Windows I'm afraid.

Quote from: Nimrod on September 19, 2011, 15:27:45 PM
Have any of you actually got your server hooked up to the TV and playing back 1080p from a Linux XBMC install ? If so what gfx card are you using as I cannot find any low profile, passive cooled, nVidia cards :/

just for you nimrod I logged in...

yes, I use nvidia & got perfect playback. I got a zotac nvidia & it came with a low profile bracket.
Follow my dirty guide on the previous page should get you the latest drivers.
nVIDIA 210 Zotac sinergy low profile 512mb

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ZOTAC-GEFORCE-GT-210-512MB-DDR3-SILENT-GRAPHICS-CARD-/250874887033

Cheers buddy :)

Think I'll be getting myself one of these once my Scan RMAs are completed, or I finish GoW3 :)


Sent from my android using Tapatalk

Been super busy at work so fallen behind on this but glad to see others have answered all the questions :)

I'm back in backpacker mode at the moment so don't have access to my servers/pcs/media etc but mid next month I'll be home for a week and I'll try and do one final big update to get everything up to scratch, add Headphones for music downloads and an FAQ.

Anyone think of things that need/want to be added to the orginal guide?

Backing Up Your New XBMC Library

Now you have finally got your library set-up how you want it you don't want to have to go through all that pain again! I advise backing up because if you upgrade XBMC, have to reinstall Windows or want to setup XBMC on another PC you don't want to retain all your glorious meta-data!

You can back-up all of the data and images that are now attached to your video and music files by doing the following:

First ensure your XBMC PC has write access to the folder your media files are stored in, it needs this because it creates information files in that location.

Go through the following menus:

System -> Video Settings -> Library -> Export video Library
Select 'Separate Files'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export thumbs and Fanart'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export Actor information'
Select 'Yes' to 'Overwrite old files'

XBMC will now take some time exporting all of the information to the same folder locations as your media files.

After this is done you will no longer have to get information from the internet or manually fix or fill in incorrect information for these media files again even if you reinstall or wipe your Windows install (assuming you don't delete the information files in your media library).

You can get the HP Microserver modified BIOS from here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1521657-hp-n36l-microserver-updated-ahci-bios-support.html#post15503408

I updated to the latest official BIOS and that seemed to increase the speed of the 250gb drive I've got in the ODD port, but I might stick that on just to try and get a bit more out of it.

I believe the modified and latest official both unlock the same functionality, but if you do it can you do a speed test?

Newznab - Free usenet search for CouchPotato and SickBeard

Newznab (http://www.newznab.com/) is a free usenet indexing application that you can host yourself. Alternatively you can add a version hosted by someone else to your CouchPotato and SickBeard search providers .. more choice ftw!

Register a free account at:

http://www.nzb.su/

Log in and click the NZB.su logo and ' Your Profile'

Copy the 'Site Api/Rss Key'

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/NZBsu_1.jpg)

In Sickbeard select Config -> Search Providers

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/NZBsu_2.jpg)

Under the section 'Configure Custom Newznab Providers' enter the following information:

Provider Name : NZB.su
Site Url : http://www.nzb.su
RSS Key : Site Api/Rss Key you copied earlier.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/NZBsu_3.jpg)

In CouchPotato click 'Change Settings' (the cog) then select 'Providers'

Assuming you have build R34 or newer (if not upgrade! (http://couchpotatoapp.com/)) you will have a Newznab option.

Fill in the details as below:

host: http://www.nzb.su
Apikey : Site Api/Rss Key you copied from your profile.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/NZBsu_4.jpg)

Oooo more providers is always good! Cheers sexytw.

It's my last week of work, after this I'm back for a week and will go over the original posts and update everything :D

Quote from: Leon on October 11, 2011, 09:21:49 AM
Oooo more providers is always good! Cheers sexytw.

It's my last week of work, after this I'm back for a week and will go over the original posts and update everything :D

Speaking of more providers ... does anyone have a NZB.org account? Its the only one I need to complete the set! New registrations are closed but i assume there is some form of referral system in place. 

Nah I'm only using NZBmatrix & Fanzub as my main providers at the moment.

Just thought i'd add, incase anyone finds it useful, my list of 'Igmore Words' for Couch Potato (Settings -> General).

I do not download any movies containing the following words:

TS,TELECINE,LiNE,TC,GERMAN,CAM,PPVRIP,IFLIX,VHS,PPV,PPV-IFLIX,PPVRIP-IFLIX,PPVRIP-IFLIX

This stops me getting sub DVDrip quality encodes by mistake, its pretty good but not 100%.

My preferred words are:

DTS,1080p,x264,Xvid,DVDrip,BluRay

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/CouchPotato_IgnoreWords.jpg)

first post :) and hi to all

firstly, big thanks to OP for writing this guide. ive trolled the net looking at many, and this is one of (if not THE) best I found. So well done.

Secondly, thanks to rest of you for the tips that you have found during setting up your HTPC.

I got my HP Proliant MS on monday, and have spent the week installing and learning everything about XBMC, SAB, couchpotato & sickbeard. Its all totally new to me as I have come from torrents... Im just sick of them though, especially getting each tv show each week... what a mission!!! :(

I havent worked with couchpotato yet, Im first focusing on getting my library sorted.

I will post more of my experience when I can :)

in the meantime, can someone direct me to a place where I can read up on starting up the HTPC with everything (XBMC+SAB+SB+CP). there was a link a couple posts back but the URL was dead

found it. please go http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_make_Windows_boot_directly_to_XBMC_(as_a_shell) (http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_make_Windows_boot_directly_to_XBMC_(as_a_shell)) if you want details on how to boot right into XBMC

Yey new person on the forum, Welcome!

Glad we could help, just drop any questions you come across in here and we will try and help, it will also help me with what I need to add to the guide when I update it next week.

QuoteHTPC with everything (XBMC+SAB+SB+CP). there was a link a couple posts back but the URL was dead

You mean auto launching everyone on boot? I've been working on some batch files for mine but had mixed success (as I want them to pull updates 1st and I'm running them in Python)

QuoteYou mean auto launching everyone on boot? I've been working on some batch files for mine but had mixed success (as I want them to pull updates 1st and I'm running them in Python)

found it. please go http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_make_Windows_boot_directly_to_XBMC_(as_a_shell) if you want details on how to boot right into XBMC

you can also add other goodies to load before XBMC, so that should do the trick. gonna test tonight when I get home and post results

:)

Hmmm eventghost might actually do what I want with the git commands, I'll also take a look next week to see if I can get it working with my stuff :)

What is the problem you're all trying to solve?

I created shortcuts for CP, SB, SABnzbd, EventGhost and XBMC then put them all in the Start menu Startup folder and they all boot when the system starts.

From an end user point of view you never see Windows unless you're watching while it starts up.

I run SB, CP, Headphones and Sab via the Python installs so each time I turn my machine on I want to do

cmd
cd c:\htpc\SAB\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sickbeard.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\sick-beard\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sabnzb.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\couchpotato\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
couchpotato.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\headphones\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
headphones.py

Which is easy when done via .bat files but I haven't actually got round to doing it :P

Quote from: Leon on October 13, 2011, 13:07:49 PM
I run SB, CP, Headphones and Sab via the Python installs so each time I turn my machine on I want to do

cmd
cd c:\htpc\SAB\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sickbeard.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\sick-beard\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sabnzb.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\couchpotato\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
couchpotato.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\headphones\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
headphones.py

Which is easy when done via .bat files but I haven't actually got round to doing it :P

would you mind explaining to me this python business? and also what "git pull" means?  :dunno:

I have windows 7 so Im simply run them from the relevant folder and it opens in the browser (chrome)

With all the programs you can either download the windows binary version which has been complied to work in windows (you get an .exe!) and these are fine but if you want to run the very latest versions you need to run from source code (normally hosted on https://github.com/) - the problem with these is that they haven't been compiled to work stand alone within windows you need to compile and run them in Python.

The instructions to do this are in the 'advanced install' at the start of the Sick-Beard section and most won't need it.

Git Pull grabs any changes to the source code from github before running the program.

right, so last night I added my entire tv series folder into sickbeard

I hope it worked properly, but I left it going over-night and it seemed to have froze??

When I turned on the TV this morning, my internet explorer window was frozen. I checked the log and it it had been working most of the night.

I closed IE and re-launched SB.... On the home screen all the TV show names were there, and it looked OK. How can I verify that everything was added??

Hmmm if the logs look OK and everything appears to be there then thats basically all. You could go to Manage > Status (or something like that, I don't have my SB in front of me) and look at all episodes that are 'skipped' - If you notice that some shows / episodes are skipped which you know you have then it has missed some.

Other option is to go to management and rescan all shows again, as its added most it won't take that long and will pickup / error on the ones with issues :)

cool, thanks Leon. I did check the error log, and all I saw where some CSI episodes that it couldnt find due to the naming structure being screwed up for I think Season 4 it was... Was using the naming "season x episode x.avi" and SB didnt seem to like that. I will have to manually edit those file names and rescan that show?

It would appear I have the basics up and running with XBMC and SB.

Now I would like to focus on the smaller things, tweaking, customizing etc etc

first thing I wanna do tonight

QuoteGo through the following menus:

System -> Video Settings -> Library -> Export video Library
Select 'Separate Files'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export thumbs and Fanart'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export Actor information'
Select 'Yes' to 'Overwrite old files'

secondly

QuoteI also created an advancedsettings.xml in the /username/AppData/Roaming/XBMC/userdata folder with the following lines in it:

Code: [Select]
<advancedsettings>
  <useddsfanart>true</useddsfanart>
</advancedsettings>

This moves fanart and some image rendering over to the GPU from the CPU lowering the pressure on the relatively slow CPU we are using.

and also

QuoteHere is what my advancedsettings.xml looks like

Code:
<advancedsettings>
    <videolibrary>
        <hideallitems>true</hideallitems>
        <recentlyaddeditems>50</recentlyaddeditems>
        <backgroundupdate>true</backgroundupdate>
        <cleanonupdate>true</cleanonupdate>
    </videolibrary>
</advancedsettings>

any comments on the above three items? none of them will screw with the NAB and SB combo.functionality??

cheers

If it doesn't pickup the episodes with that naming structure you can try moving them to a temp folder (I have one called Post Processing) and then in sickbeard go to Add Shows > Post Processing and point SB to that temp folder and see if it will pick them up, rename them and move them from there :)

As for the advanced settings you mentioned above I haven't done them personally but from looking at them there is no reason why they would interfere with SB/SAB/CP - and keep a copy of the default advancedsettings.xml so if you do manage to break anything just simply copy the old one back .

I found this very informative

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Advancedsettings.xml

Quote from: crimptool on October 14, 2011, 10:50:03 AM

QuoteGo through the following menus:

System -> Video Settings -> Library -> Export video Library
Select 'Separate Files'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export thumbs and Fanart'
Select 'Yes' to 'Export Actor information'
Select 'Yes' to 'Overwrite old files'

This exports all the information from the XBMC database to physical files, this is only worth doing once you have scanned all your shows into XBMC and have them all tagged and labelled with the correct metadata and images. I couldnt tell if you had done this yet or not.

Quote from: crimptool on October 14, 2011, 10:50:03 AM
any comments on the above three items? none of them will screw with the NAB and SB combo.functionality??

cheers

The other two advanced config changes are great little tweaks I found very useful, they don't affect anything except XBMC so the nab / sb functionality will be fine.

Hi guys, first post so my apologies for being a mong and a noob but i am at a loss right now!

I follow the guide however when i get to sickbeard and the running of sickbeard.exe i get my browser opening an error page "Oops! Google Chrome could not find localhost:8081". I have tried searching about but i don't know if most of these examples are will apply to this.

Any wisdom you guys can bestow would be most appreciated.

Cheers

First I'd make sure that "sickbeard.exe" is running under Processes in Task Manager. If it is and you still cant access it I for 'End Process' of all sickbeard.exe and restart.

If it still doesnt work when you run it I would unistall sickbeard, delete all of its local config files and start again with a newly downloaded version.

I cant think of anything specific that would cause it not to be found the first time its run.

Wow, great guide. Will need to set aside some time to go over it. The only thing I'm missing is a HTPC, instead I have WDTV Live, hopefully that will not hinder me in setting up everything except for the XBMC part.

Quote from: sexytw on October 25, 2011, 11:20:16 AM
First I'd make sure that "sickbeard.exe" is running under Processes in Task Manager. If it is and you still cant access it I for 'End Process' of all sickbeard.exe and restart.

If it still doesnt work when you run it I would unistall sickbeard, delete all of its local config files and start again with a newly downloaded version.

I cant think of anything specific that would cause it not to be found the first time its run.

Tried both mate and still getting the same scenario any other ideas from the board?

I don't really know much about the setup so it's a bit of a longshot and I could be way off the mark, but you could try checking your hosts file in C:\windows\drivers\etc\hosts to see that localhost is configured correctly, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be though (it should read localhost 127.0.0.1)

Other than that have you got firewall software running that might be blocking port 8081?

tried skipping the sickbeard and going for couchpotato same problem encountered except in this case it was the following:

Oops! Google Chrome could not find localhost:5000

Cheers for the input Clock'd will give it a go

Sorry I just checked as that was off the top of my head and I had got the path wrong, it was C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and the file is hosts

You should have a line like:

127.0.0.1       localhost

Hey buddy yeah I am pretty sure that is there, haven't checked yet as in the car but from memory my sabnzbd is on that host but with https prior and /9090 after it and it loads fine.

Any ideas?

Try skipping using localhost and use 127.0.0.1 on your config instead, you'll know stright away then if it is an issue with the hosts file or not (it may be that the line 127.0.0.1       localhost is there but is commented out with a # at the start).

Info here
http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=978 (http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=978)

I have been having issues when XBMC auto-starts with windows. XMBC doesnt start with focus, its minimized or the mouse pointer is visible. To solve this I opened the XBMC shortcut properties from the Start Menu startup folder and chanced the shortcut to:

"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -d 20

The -d 20 delays XBMC starting for 20 seconds, this allows everything else to boot first then XBMC can load up freely with all network connections and other apps in place.

Might be useful for someone.

Quote from: Leon on May 10, 2011, 09:25:48 AM
I was using it becuase its the best solution I had come across. I will check out teamviewer tonight :D Either way I'm still going back to Windows after a few annoyances.

I happens every time I do to Linux, its all great for a couple days and then a few small things piss me off and I go back. Thought this time would be different but noooooo :P

I have been using teamviewer for several years, love it.  Especially now that you can remote control right inside of a web browser, and log into your account to see all "saved" pc's you control..

I wonder if someone can help me.

I've got my Microserver up and running with 8Gb RAM, 4Tb storage, and an ATI Radeon HD6450.

Still finding my way around SB and CP, but I have used XBMC previously.

I'm having some big problems with playback of video content on my box. Pretty much everything I throw at it fails to play successfully. In XBMC, I have DX acceleration turned on, but I invariably get about 4 seconds of playback before it freezes.

I've installed the latest AMD drivers for the card and checked it's not overheaiting. Any ideas anyone? Getting a bit frustrated....  :(

Replying to my own post as I sussed it soon after posting...

I needed to enable sound via the HD6450. Once I did this, everything worked great  :P :P :P

I haven't used it so wouldn't have had the foggiest, but thanks for posting the fix as well the problem for anyone else that has trouble :thumbup:

Thanks for a great guide.

I have just received my server and I am waiting for my storage drives to arrive.

I have installed windows 7 by USB to the internal drive( I can do a guide for this if needed )

How have you set up windows for XBMC?
Do you leave XBMC on all the time ?
Or do you start XBMC by youre remote when you want to use it?

When I have my own place I want to look at doing one using Plex or grab a now removed from official boxi software.

Quote from: uksparx on February 07, 2012, 21:37:29 PM
Thanks for a great guide.

I have just received my server and I am waiting for my storage drives to arrive.

I have installed windows 7 by USB to the internal drive( I can do a guide for this if needed )

How have you set up windows for XBMC?
Do you leave XBMC on all the time ?
Or do you start XBMC by youre remote when you want to use it?

Personally I have put a shortcut to it in the startup folder, this means its always on when i turn to the media channel input. I can also put all the other apps in there as well. I wrote this over in the other guide (http://www.tekforums.net/guides-projects/(wip)-automated-media-server-xbmc-setup-(long-image-heavy)/msg191820/#msg191820):

Quote from: sexytw on November 14, 2011, 12:41:29 PM
I have been having issues when XBMC auto-starts with windows. XMBC doesnt start with focus, its minimized or the mouse pointer is visible. To solve this I opened the XBMC shortcut properties from the Start Menu startup folder and chanced the shortcut to:

"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -d 20

The -d 20 delays XBMC starting for 20 seconds, this allows everything else to boot first then XBMC can load up freely with all network connections and other apps in place.

Might be useful for someone.

Thanks for the help so far.

I now have 2 x 2 tb drives for my data

I don't think I am going to worry about backup as touchwood I have not had a hard disk fail on my yet, I plan to back up on to a external drive .

But can I make the 2 tb drives as 1 drive on the of so it sees 4gb in 1 drive?

Also If want to add more data drives in the future can these just be added to create more space on the 1 drive letter?

Thanks for a great guide.

I am looking at adding the Sony ps3 Bluetooth remote as my xmbc remote , has anyone used this.

Quote from: uksparx on February 15, 2012, 21:04:36 PM
Thanks for the help so far.

I now have 2 x 2 tb drives for my data

I don't think I am going to worry about backup as touchwood I have not had a hard disk fail on my yet, I plan to back up on to a external drive .

But can I make the 2 tb drives as 1 drive on the of so it sees 4gb in 1 drive?

Also If want to add more data drives in the future can these just be added to create more space on the 1 drive letter?

Thanks for a great guide.

I am looking at adding the Sony ps3 Bluetooth remote as my xmbc remote , has anyone used this.

I would strongly recommend not joining them into 1 drive.  Although you've not had a failure, it's a whole lot less fun trying to re-aquire 4tb of data than 2tb.

I'd also not use the PS3 remote.  It's a great idea in principle, but I never got it working reliably.  Main points being it never turning off so the batteries last a few days and the fact that the app that makes the remote works in windows suddenly decides it wants all the CPU time and makes everything else crash.

I plumped for a MCE remote, I've got 3.  My main one is my Lenovo one which I nabbed from a B305.
It's infra red, but works way better than the PS3 remote.

Hey guys!  Im just starting to buildmy Microserver 40L and I had some questions with setting up the drives.

I have the 250gb drive it came with, and I bought 2 Samsung 2TB F4 drives. 

Should I set these up in any RAID fashion?  I feel like using RAID 1 is just a waste cause I was trying to be cheap and Id lose 2TB of space?  Also, Raid 0 ive heard is not a good idea.  you can connect the drives via a software raid in Windows 7 but is this the same as Raid 0?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36504/how-to-create-a-software-raid-array-in-windows-7/

So how do I get 4TB of usable space. If i keep the 2 drives separate and Lets say I fill up Drive 1 with movies and have to go to put more of my movies onto Drive 2; Can XBMC recognize movies from more then 1 file location?

Thanks for the tips!

Quote from: javaman82 on February 21, 2012, 20:44:01 PM
If i keep the 2 drives separate and Lets say I fill up Drive 1 with movies and have to go to put more of my movies onto Drive 2; Can XBMC recognize movies from more then 1 file location?

Thanks for the tips!

The only way to keep all 4Tb is to keep them as seperate drives or put them in a RAID 0 array which doubles the risk of you loosing all your data.

XMBC can add as many different folders or drives as you like and will show them all under your one 'movies' or 'tv' heading.

Software RAID and hardware RAID are essentially the same thing, RAID 0 which merges the drive space into one big lump (and would give you your 4TB) increases the chance of any one drive's failure destroying all your data. RAID 1 is mirroring one drive's data onto the other - effectively giving you a live backup of your data - but as you say could be considered 'wasting' the extra 2TB. It all depends how much you value your data as to whether you want to choose either, really.

K

Quote from: addictweb on February 21, 2012, 20:50:23 PM

Quote from: javaman82 on February 21, 2012, 20:44:01 PM
If i keep the 2 drives separate and Lets say I fill up Drive 1 with movies and have to go to put more of my movies onto Drive 2; Can XBMC recognize movies from more then 1 file location?

Thanks for the tips!

The only way to keep all 4Tb is to keep them as seperate drives or put them in a RAID 0 array which doubles the risk of you loosing all your data.

XMBC can add as many different folders or drives as you like and will show them all under your one 'movies' or 'tv' heading.

awesome man! so it just makes the most sense to have them separate! and just install my OS on the 250GB drive.  Itll also make additing an additional drive super simple.

Thanks man!

Let me start by saying THANK YOU for this guide!  I've been reading it over and over for a month and drooling.  I started my project with a WD Live Streaming Media Player and that sucked.  Today I got a Boxee Box.  It isn't exactly an HTPC or XBMC, but so far I'm loving it.  I did go with Astraweb/Sabnzbd/SickBeard/CouchPotato, though.  I'm just using my main PC's slave drive (2 TB) to store media and NFO.  Boxee can do it's own metadata but I'm using SickBeard's XBMC database.

So on to my question... it's about storage size.  Currently I'm just using a 2 TB drive as I said.  In your guide, you said you always prefer 720/1080p... and I do as well.  However, up until now I've just been downloading DVD Rips and normal "HD" televised versions which run anywhere from 350mb to 750mb for a 1 hour television show.  After downloading my first 720p BluRay episode of The Walking Dead with this new setup, I noticed it's about 2.3 GIG!  Just one episode!  Obviously, the quality is much better, but now I'm concerned about how much I'm going to be able to store if I keep with this quality preference...

How much storage space are you 720/1080p guys typically using for this purpose?  How much storage space does Windows 7 support?  I can add another 2 TB drive I suppose...

This setup is so slick.. I know I don't have an HTPC but even using SickBeard/CP/Sab etc. on my own Windows 7 Box and using Boxee as the streaming device.. it's freakin awesome.  Now I'm half tempted to rip all of my BluRays and sell the discs!  Yeah right... like I can afford to lose that HD space :P

You wont hit any restrictions with hard drive space in Windows 7, you can keep adding disks until your motherboard runs out of connectors.

HD space is always a problem if you want to archive media, the only solutions are:

1) Remove things after you have watched them - after all, you can easily acquire them again
2) Buy more harddrive space

Personally I have 4Tb of space but its full. With harddrive prices as high as they are at the moment I have taken to option 1 for a while.

The sizes you quotes were about right, if you're short on space be sure to stay away from 1080p rips, they're huge and I've always struggled to spot the difference from 720p.

Well I'm back in the UK now, once I get a bit of spare time I'll update everything and redo the guide :)

Quote from: Leon on May 19, 2012, 12:51:07 PM
Well I'm back in the UK now, once I get a bit of spare time I'll update everything and redo the guide :)

It's done well while you were away up to nearly 30k hits!

Nice Guide :D

Can't wait until you get time to update it :D

Been going through what I need to update and there isn't too much that is actually 'out of date'

Couch Potato is running a beta of V2 which I'm going to try out and if stable (which it looks to be going by comments on xbmc forums) I'll update guide with that. I also want to add Headphones (Music downloader) to the guide however its having major issues with pulling Album information at the moment so I'm going to hold off until that is sorted.

The new version of XBMC has some small changes and there are some skin changes as well which I need to play around with but haven't upgrade myself since coming back into the country  ;)

Quote from: Leon on June 03, 2012, 16:39:12 PM
Been going through what I need to update and there isn't too much that is actually 'out of date'

Couch Potato is running a beta of V2 which I'm going to try out and if stable (which it looks to be going by comments on xbmc forums) I'll update guide with that. I also want to add Headphones (Music downloader) to the guide however its having major issues with pulling Album information at the moment so I'm going to hold off until that is sorted.

The new version of XBMC has some small changes and there are some skin changes as well which I need to play around with but haven't upgrade myself since coming back into the country  ;)

I'm running Eden and its nice, like you say, minor changes really. I think its slightly less stable than the previous version, running it 24/7 it occasionally locks up which I never had before.

I'm running a shared XBMC database now so all my machines can access the same library, I've found the performance worse and you still need a version of XBMC running constantly to handle real time library updates as there isnt a headless version. The full backup and restore of the library didnt work fully so it was a huge task to update all the films again. So in summary, not worth the effort.

My XBMCbuntu Eden machine is very slow to boot (using an old mechanical drive) which has meant its hardly ever used. I had to replace the Nvidia card with an ATI one to get it running as well. Need to put a small SSD in there to finish it off.

Yer I had very mixed experiences with shared libraries, it would work fine and then it would spaz out and screw things over. I have a sticky on my notes to mention it but just link to the XBMC forum post on the subject instead of actually adding it to the guide.

Still working on my paper notes / draft versions of updates but wanted to highlight a current problem with NZBMatrix and Sickbeard.

NZBMatrix has complained that SB is hammering their servers so they have 'blocked' lookups from SB. As SB uses the RSS feed and not the API to grab info from NZBMatrix its not a 100% fail but you will probably be seeing lots of errors in either sickbeard or shows just not correctly adding to your SAB queue.

There is some complex way around this (which I haven't looked at myself yet) if you do some googling but for the moment I've just disabled usign NZBmatrix and enabled SickBeard Index and added NZB.su as a new provider.

Thanks for this great guide.

I was thinking off adding a MySQL server for my libray but after reading the above posts have decided not to.

I have just recived a raspberry pi which I have installed xbmc on.

When I add my shares from the hp server what's the best way off getting the rasberry to update the new videos??

Best thing to do is setup notifiys as I explained in the guide. So when SB or CP finish downloading the show they tell XBMC to update. The main difference is that you will need to put in the IP address of XMBC on the raspberry pi instead of the local IP of the server.

But I still want the server to update as that's connected to a TV as well. Can you add multiple ips to update?

I have just taken delivery off my 2nd PI so I will have 3 devices in total.

In Sick Beard you can have multiple IP's (seperated by commas) as long as all XMBC installs are using the same username/password.

Couch Potato doesn't say anything about multiple hosts, I can't find anything with a quick google and I don't have 2 XBMC's setup to try for you but would be interested to know if it does work if anyone has tried?

You can also set XMBC to rescan for media on each startup but this will only be useful if the machines aren't on 24/7.

Thanks

I'll let you know tommorw.

Shame about raspbmc being ddossed.

Newbie.  Thanks for this guide, it made me purchase & setup my own media server. I am not able to watch movies/TV shows that I haven't seen since I was a kid in the early 1980's (like Streethawk and Star Maidens - from the mid 70's).

I am looking for a copy of "Automan though (anyone remember that?)

Once again thank you.

Ok this has caught my eye

Im wondering if:

a) my old shuttle has enough guts to be workable

Its an SN25P, AMD 64 X2 4400+, 2Gb DDR400 ram, ATI Radeon X1300 512MB DDR2 PCI-E (would need to use DVI to HDMI), 500GB SATA HDD (can you connect to a NAS over 1Gbps copper and stream?)
Its getting on a bit but seems a waste to throw it, can it manage it? Id run ubuntu as i cant shell out for another windows license. Hopefully ubuntu would support the hardware ok..


b) how you guys are getting dts surround if at all? DVI to HDMI and optical out? or HDMI out from the gfx card carrying DTS or dolby digital?

The shuttle looks more than enough but I have zero experience with that gfx card... worst case is shell out £20 for a nvidia 210.

Ubuntu should be fine for everything long as the drivers are fine (which these days generally are) and streaming over 100mb is working fine for me so 1gb got it covered :)

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

Quote from: Binary Shadow on June 26, 2012, 19:25:02 PM
b) how you guys are getting dts surround if at all? DVI to HDMI and optical out? or HDMI out from the gfx card carrying DTS or dolby digital?

HDMI 1.3 supporting graphics cards carry DTS over HDMI to a compatible amp.

ah yes missed that one.

If you do stick with your current gfx card you will have to go with the DVI>HMDI and Optical out for DTS :)

Thanks for the details

Ubuntu is having issues with the graphics card it seems :(

I'll try and get it working again if not i'll probably just change it out for the nVidia one.

I've re-enabled nzbmatrix on my sickbeard providers and not getting any errors yet but it's at the bottom of the list so may not be searching... will do some testing over the next couple of days.

Also anime encoders are jumping on the 10bit wagon which is nice for filesize (about half) but does not use hardware decoding and currently not supported in XBMC 11 so you may find a couple things auto downloaded to have issues (I've seen no movies or TV shows in this format yet but just a heads up).

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

CP v2, errors with my headphones needing a reinstall, new version of sab and XBMC 11 to install, I think now is as good a time as any to start grabbing new screenshots for the update.

After rereading the entire thread I haven't picked up many FAQs that are specifically related to the setup, most questions are based on the microserver which has its own thread now.

Edit: grrrr xbmc 11 won't open via remote desktop, that's annoying when trying to grab screens from live system :p hardly end of world but grrrr.

Quote from: Leon on July 02, 2012, 04:07:24 AM
Edit: grrrr xbmc 11 won't open via remote desktop, that's annoying when trying to grab screens from live system :p hardly end of world but grrrr.

I didnt get v10 to open via remote desktop either? Would be awesome if it did run over MSTSC.

I've been getting more and more crashed with Eden, very frustrating. Almost everyday I'll turn to the box to find XBMC not responding or at some ridiculously low screen resolution. Hopefully future releases will improve these bugs.

Friend of mine just got XBMC running on his RasberryPi, impressive stuff.

Hmmm just realised I was thinking "but I did majority of my other screenshots while connected remotely" but that was from work via LogMeIn however it's strange to think that yesterday was the 1st time that I ever tried running XBMC over MSTC since I'm always connecting to that machine... the only difference is that I only just put Eden on it.

I haven't had any crash outs myself yet (but its barely been 24 hours) however I am reading some reports of being more unstable on the forums which is a strange one as it was in Alpha and Beta for a LONG time. They seem to be pushing for 12 to come out sooner rather than later but who knows if thats a good or bad thing yet.

Hi,
Thank you for this awesome guide ! :)

just a question
in sab's categories for movies you let movies as folder/path, does that means it doesnt move the movie but let CP moving it ?

is that right ?

CP scan your download movie folder and move/rename it ?

Ok so in SAB I have different categories for TV, Music, Moves, Games etc.

You only need to setup 2. One for TV which runs the sabToSickBeard script (which tells Sickbeard "Hey this has finished downloading, please move and rename it to the correct location) and one for Movies which just puts it into a folder called Movies in a temp location (I just use Downloads\Movies)

Then in CouchPotato renaming config you tell it to watch that Downloads\Movie folder and when it sees a film in there (freshly downloaded by Sab) it will then move and rename it.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/Pictures/CP.JPG)

Make sense?

yes it does make sense !
thank you  :cheers:

Hi again Leon,

My awesome HTPC is running fine now :)
I've a question though
With XBMC's video, we've just got the choice between tv shows and movies, i'd like add a third folder where i just put cartoons for my kids. Any idea how to do so ?

Thx !

There are 2 ways to do it.

The easiest is just add a new source, call it Cartoons, add the cartoons directories to it and then assign it as TV Shows. It will add them all however it will mix them in with everything else under the TV tab.

The other one is using smart playlists. The last time I did this it required you to create something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<smartplaylist type="tvshows">
    <name>Anime</name>
    <match>one</match>
   <rule field="path" operator="startswith">smb://LEON-SERVER/anime/</rule>
    <order direction="ascending">tvshow</order>
</smartplaylist>

and play around in the skin to get it to display correctly however I think you can how do it much easier in XBMC itself. I'm downloading and installing XBMC on this machine so I can take a look, grab some screenshots and I'll get back to you later today :)

Haha well I've been spending the last 30min playing with smart playlists in XBMC 11 and they don't work for me lol. The idea is sound but they aren't finding the media I'm pointing to... will update once I know why ;)

Ok Solved it! Quick and dirty guide but will hopefully help.

The problem with this is its VERY skin specific. Most skins support smart playlists but only some allow you to configure the home screen as much as the one I'm using. The following screenshots are using the Aeon Nox skin (downloadable in appearance settings).

Step One: TV Shows & Anime (or whatever) must be in different folders! - On my main setup I have them on different drives. D: for TV Shows, E: for Anime, F&G for Movies however for this I have a temp folder with 2 folders... 1 TV Shows and 1 Anime.

Add your shows to XBMC as normal, both as TV shows... once this has been done you will notice that all your shows combine with 'TV Shows' on the homepage.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/1.jpg)

2. Hit the .. to go up a folder to get into Playlists and New Smart playlist...
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/2.jpg)

3. Select type as TV Shows, call it TV Shows (or whatever it is) and under Find Items Where you want to ADD
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/3.jpg)

4. Select Path and Starts with - Important you change it from 'is' to 'starts with' ... that was the mistake I was doing  :P
Type or Browse to the correct location.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/4.jpg)

5. Create a 2nd playlist for the Anime/Cartoons, point it to the correct folder etc.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/5.jpg)

6. Congrats you now have 2 smart playlists.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/6.jpg)

Now here is where it gets a bit confusing and this is where the skin specific stuff comes into play.

Go into Settings > Skin
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/7.jpg)

Customizers > Main menu item customizer (backgrounds,widgets)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/8.jpg)

On the main bar scroll over to CUSTOM1 and hit Enter. When customising it you want to turn off Disabled, change type to Video Playlist, Choose the TV shows playlist, label it as TV Shows and Choose yourself a nice background.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/9.jpg)

Do the same with CUSTOM2 for your anime/cartoons.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/10.jpg)

DISABLE the default main TV shows otherwise you will have 2 TV Shows on your homepage (1 with everything, 1 with just TV shows)
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/11.jpg)

Done! You now have 2 playlists on your homepage and your TV shows & Anime/Cartoons are separated!
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/Smart%20Playlists/12.jpg)

Very nice. Good addition.

Had it on my 'to do list' for the revise but someone had to come along and ask the question before I did it ;) hehe.

wow ! great guide !
Thanks a lot, that's exactly what i needed  :thumbup:

I've just done this, happy days indeed ... but where do I get decent backgrounds from? I need one for TV and one for Standup comedy ... any ideas?

I did a search of my TV shows folder for 'fanart.jpg' copied all of them into a single folder called TV Show backdrop and did the same for my anime folder. Then when selecting background in XBMC select multi image and point it to either the TV backdrop folder or Anime folder :)

Genius.

Just noticed my home videos and standup wont add to library under TV shows :-/ Need to rethink ...

Is there a way to add category in couchpotato so when you download a cartoon it goes automatically in the cartoons folder and otherwise in the movies folder ?

Not currently in the version of couch potato I'm using in the guide. V2 beta is running now and may have more options like that but I've yet to try it out :(

edit: If its something you really wanted to do there is nothing stopping you running 2 instances of CouchPotato. Install it again in a 2nd folder, set it to open on a different port and then you would have 1 CP list for movies and 1 CP list for cartoons.

Personally I think its too messy but it would work ;)

Doesnt look like that method is going to work for me annoyingly.

- I'd have to create NFO files for each of my stand-ups and home videos for them to be added to the library
- When using  this method you can use the 'recently added' widget that I use a lot.

Is there a way to add a link on the home screen to a folder of video files? Not in library mode?

There is a thread somewhere on XBMC.org forums about getting home videos added to XBMC without issues. I've had quite a few pints at this point so can't find it for you now but bit of googling should help you out otherwise I'll look tomorrow :)

If you didn't find it before there is some useful info on the wiki: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Adding_videos_to_the_library/Home_videos/custom_videos

Basically installing a scraper that uses filenames instead of internet lookup and making sure to select that when adding a homemoive / random vidoe folder does the job and would create the NFO's for you if you exported after.

I ended up just adding the video folders to my favourites, then linking directly to them from the home screen. It's not a library view but it doesnt really need to be. Setting up the custom scraper looked like a bit of a faff.

I've just ordered a RaspberryPi to run XBMC on. The plan is for it to sit in the kitchen attached to the back of a monitor and be exclusively by XBMCremote.

Something to add, if you're using the XBMC Remote official app you need to leave the port for XBMC on 9777. I changed mine and only got partial control so I had to switch it back.

And if you're not using the XBMC Remote, why not? It's amazing! If I get a call my TV pauses what I'm watching and lets me know who's calling. Genius.

Ah, I was getting kicked off remote on phone and tab just won't connect at all.. maybe thats the issue. Will see if changing it back solves me problems.

Quote from: Leon on July 27, 2012, 20:07:27 PM
Ah, I was getting kicked off remote on phone and tab just won't connect at all.. maybe thats the issue. Will see if changing it back solves me problems.

Yep, 3 things, have 'allow other applications to control XBMC' enabled, have it set to port 9777 and have port 9777 port forwarded on your router.

I'm new to the app but it's made the setup a million times more wife friendly.

Was using it before without any issues (before moving to XBMC 11) so I guess its something that changed in that (bug?)

Quote from: addictweb on July 27, 2012, 20:09:17 PM
Yep, 3 things, have 'allow other applications to control XBMC' enabled, have it set to port 9777 and have port 9777 port forwarded on your router.

I'm new to the app but it's made the setup a million times more wife friendly.

I've just realised (whilst setting up my Raspbmc kitchen instance, that this issue, of having to use port 9777 means you cant have multiple servers on your XBMCremote as port 9777 (the only one that works fully) can only be forwarded to a single instance.

*problem*

I'll have a play with my setup at the weekend to see if its happening with me aswell.  Quick check on XBMC.org forums doens't show anything obivous but that thread is huge.

Been playing around with camtasia and may do video verison of the setups and some of the other things if I can get them to not be completely crap when finished :P

I've been trying to write out the methods I use to rename/add unknown shows in bulk to SB but it comes across as messy (which it is) which made me think doing it as video may be easier.

Quote from: addictweb on August 12, 2012, 09:10:58 AM

I've just realised (whilst setting up my Raspbmc kitchen instance, that this issue, of having to use port 9777 means you cant have multiple servers on your XBMCremote as port 9777 (the only one that works fully) can only be forwarded to a single instance.

*problem*

I switched my XBMC remote to a different port and its still working fine - I do have my router completely open at the moment though (static IPs and no firewall).

Actually thinking about it what is stopping you have multiple instances on port 9777? The IP addresses of the XBMC machines will be different so there won't be any clashing and the remote works fine with multiple boxes added to it (you just hit the button at the bottom to switch which room you're controlling).

Quote from: Leon on August 28, 2012, 11:14:14 AM
Actually thinking about it what is stopping you have multiple instances on port 9777? The IP addresses of the XBMC machines will be different so there won't be any clashing and the remote works fine with multiple boxes added to it (you just hit the button at the bottom to switch which room you're controlling).

The router needs to be set up to forward remote requests to the box running the XBMC instance, so in the port forwarding settings I'm forwarding 9777 to my living room media centre. This means that all requests go to that machine, if I configure a second server to use 9777 it doesnt get the requests. If I use a different port then it doest work.

I've not played with it yet, if I can get it working on a different port that would be ideal.

Hmmm i didn't need to setup port forwarding on router unless I wanted to access from the outside world

Quote from: addictweb on September 18, 2011, 10:18:14 AM

Quote from: knighty on September 18, 2011, 01:27:07 AM
can you log in with more than 1 account, without logging out the one which is logged in?

would be handy for me to log into the cctv at work.... without messing with the cctv program
(which has to be in a logged on account to work)

I know it's a long shot.... but thought I'd ask :-)

You can. See my post below (a few pages back). Although I have recently been having troubles remoting but I think its unrelated as its on all accounts.

Quote from: sexytw on September 03, 2011, 15:24:55 PM
A few tweaks I have found are:

1. Enabling multiple concurrent user session in Windows 7.

This means I can remote onto the HTPC without affecting anyone who is watching something on the TV. I found a guide here (http://www.blogsdna.com/2336/enable-multiple-user-accessconcurrent-user-sessions-for-remote-desktop-on-windows-7.htm) but I had to manually modify the install.cmd to match my version of Windows. This just involved changing the top version name and build number variables to match your own (which can be found in the registry if you're not sure).

Hi im new to seting up all this and want to get xbmc installed and autologin working on the hp proloiant, i have seen the guide to enable autologin and think i can manage this(is this same process for whs2011 ?) but im not sure i understand the instructions for enabling mulitple users , is this just for windows 7 as i have WHS 2011.

Also when i install xbmc onto the server where do i download it to, the laptop or server directly , sorry if this is a silly question just the server plays up when asking it to download something. one more thing ..using a remote on the server does this mean i dont need to have a keyboard attached to get xbmc working as i only remote into it via my laptop desktop currently.


thanks for any help  :bow:

addictweb should be on in a bit to help you with the autologin/multi user questions (not something I've played with)

As for installing XMBC you install it on whatever box you have connected to your TV. If your doing the same way I did with a Microserver with GFX card connected to TV then install it on the server. If you are going to be playing movies via the laptop/another machine install it on them instead... or install it on all of them!! ;)

The remote is purely for controlling XBMC not the windows environment (though there are solution for that) but with SAB/SB/CP all accessable via web interface and XBMC controlled via remote (android or iOS) there isn't much need for me to actually connect to the box with a keyboard and mouse unless I'm playing (or something has broken).

That help?

If its the same as Server 2008 R2 then you can do the following to enable multiple user logins:

Quote from: addictweb on October 02, 2011, 10:06:02 AM
Tweaking Windows Server 2008 R2 to Make it a better Media Server


Enableing Multiple (Remote) Logons in Windows Server 2008 R2

When you remote into your server you probably don't want to kick other sessions off. This will mean you can log in and use the server while others are watching things through XBMC.

In the Start Menu search box type 'tsconfig.msc' then press [enter].
Scroll down until you see 'Restrict Each User to a Single Session'

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/Win2008R2_enableMultipleUser1.jpg)

This needs to be unchecked.

Double click on it to open the properties window, then unckeck 'Restrict each user to a single session'

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/Win2008R2_enableMultipleUser2.jpg)

Click 'Apply' then 'OK'

Original post here (http://www.tekforums.net/guides-projects/(guide)-installing-windows-server-2008-r2-for-xbmc-on-hp-microserver/).

Quote from: Leon on August 29, 2012, 10:24:27 AM
addictweb should be on in a bit to help you with the autologin/multi user questions (not something I've played with)

As for installing XMBC you install it on whatever box you have connected to your TV. If your doing the same way I did with a Microserver with GFX card connected to TV then install it on the server. If you are going to be playing movies via the laptop/another machine install it on them instead... or install it on all of them!! ;)

The remote is purely for controlling XBMC not the windows environment (though there are solution for that) but with SAB/SB/CP all accessable via web interface and XBMC controlled via remote (android or iOS) there isn't much need for me to actually connect to the box with a keyboard and mouse unless I'm playing (or something has broken).

That help?

Thanks, thats a great help, so what remote should i buy ?

Can i install xbmc via RDP ?

And i currently have a 2tb drive in each bay and a 1.5tb in ODD along with the 250g drive with the OS on it, was looking at flexraid but im unsure if i should set this up before installing xbmc et al or after

:-\

Quote from: addictweb on August 29, 2012, 11:15:13 AM
If its the same as Server 2008 R2 then you can do the following to enable multiple user logins:

Quote from: addictweb on October 02, 2011, 10:06:02 AM
Tweaking Windows Server 2008 R2 to Make it a better Media Server


Enableing Multiple (Remote) Logons in Windows Server 2008 R2

When you remote into your server you probably don't want to kick other sessions off. This will mean you can log in and use the server while others are watching things through XBMC.

In the Start Menu search box type 'tsconfig.msc' then press [enter].
Scroll down until you see 'Restrict Each User to a Single Session'

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/Win2008R2_enableMultipleUser1.jpg)

This needs to be unchecked.

Double click on it to open the properties window, then unckeck 'Restrict each user to a single session'

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7698099/XBMC_Guide/Win2008R2_enableMultipleUser2.jpg)

Click 'Apply' then 'OK'

Original post here (http://www.tekforums.net/guides-projects/(guide)-installing-windows-server-2008-r2-for-xbmc-on-hp-microserver/).

Thanks, i believe server 2008 R2 to be the same and this is first time a setting looks easy to do for me, so now i will be able to hopefully finally get this sever doing something other than consuming dust  :cheers:

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 10:00:00 AM
Thanks, thats a great help, so what remote should i buy ?

Can i install xbmc via RDP ?

And i currently have a 2tb drive in each bay and a 1.5tb in ODD along with the 250g drive with the OS on it, was looking at flexraid but im unsure if i should set this up before installing xbmc et al or after

:-\

You can install XBMC via RDP but you can't open it up (but you can connect to a machine when its running...)

As for remote I wouldn't recommend buying a dedicated remote. Both Android & iOS have great apps for controlling it and most people have a smartphone. If not then maybe its an excuse to buy one ;) or pick up the cheapest 2nd hand one you can if you only plan to use it as a media remote.

Quote from: Leon on August 30, 2012, 10:13:11 AM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 10:00:00 AM
Thanks, thats a great help, so what remote should i buy ?

Can i install xbmc via RDP ?

And i currently have a 2tb drive in each bay and a 1.5tb in ODD along with the 250g drive with the OS on it, was looking at flexraid but im unsure if i should set this up before installing xbmc et al or after

:-\

You can install XBMC via RDP but you can't open it up (but you can connect to a machine when its running...)

As for remote I wouldn't recommend buying a dedicated remote. Both Android & iOS have great apps for controlling it and most people have a smartphone. If not then maybe its an excuse to buy one ;) or pick up the cheapest 2nd hand one you can if you only plan to use it as a media remote.

And not being able to open it is what i have found..or so i think when i try to open it it tells me ''cAppliation::create()failed-check log files and that it is writeable'' does this look right?

so i have the server connected directly to my tv , how do i now get it open so i can set it up ?

I also have a spare android phone and a spare harmony remote which one is best to use as a remote?

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 11:02:55 AM
And not being able to open it is what i have found..or so i think when i try to open it it tells me ''cAppliation::create()failed-check log files and that it is writeable'' does this look right?

so i have the server connected directly to my tv , how do i now get it open so i can set it up ?

I also have a spare android phone and a spare harmony remote which one is best to use as a remote?

Error sounds like the one I was getting over RDP (not at home so can't confirm for you) but both me and addictweb had the same issues so it looks like it just doesn't work.

You will have to plug a mouse into the server and open it that was (or add XBMC as a startup options and reboot the machine?). I did the majority of the work before via Logmein.com so that's another option on how to connect instead of using RDP (I'm getting VNC will allow you to open it remotely).

But still configuring XBMC and getting it how you like, adding media and all that jazz would be so much quicker and easier to do if you just plug a keyboard / mouse into the machine and go sit in front of the TV until its how you want it and then unplug them.

As for remotes I've never used the Harmony remotes, there is ways on getting them working with XBMC but I believe it uses 3rd party programs... check out the forums on xbmc.org for more information on that. If your JUST wanting to control XBMC and no other media then I would say use the Android phone and the app it really is great (and free).

Quote from: Leon on August 30, 2012, 11:10:52 AM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 11:02:55 AM
And not being able to open it is what i have found..or so i think when i try to open it it tells me ''cAppliation::create()failed-check log files and that it is writeable'' does this look right?

so i have the server connected directly to my tv , how do i now get it open so i can set it up ?

I also have a spare android phone and a spare harmony remote which one is best to use as a remote?

Error sounds like the one I was getting over RDP (not at home so can't confirm for you) but both me and addictweb had the same issues so it looks like it just doesn't work.

You will have to plug a mouse into the server and open it that was (or add XBMC as a startup options and reboot the machine?). I did the majority of the work before via Logmein.com so that's another option on how to connect instead of using RDP (I'm getting VNC will allow you to open it remotely).

But still configuring XBMC and getting it how you like, adding media and all that jazz would be so much quicker and easier to do if you just plug a keyboard / mouse into the machine and go sit in front of the TV until its how you want it and then unplug them.

As for remotes I've never used the Harmony remotes, there is ways on getting them working with XBMC but I believe it uses 3rd party programs... check out the forums on xbmc.org for more information on that. If your JUST wanting to control XBMC and no other media then I would say use the Android phone and the app it really is great (and free).

Great, thanks I will pull my keyboard out and connect it up want to keep it simple as possible so i can keep up (sad i know) will I need to do the same for the other installs SB,couch potato ect? or will those be ok to set up via rdp ?

Thanks for your quick replies

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 11:02:55 AM

I also have a spare android phone and a spare harmony remote which one is best to use as a remote?

I use a Harmony 900 for everyday control as it allows me to have a single remote to control all the devices (TV, Amp and media centre). All you need is an infra-red receiver for your PC. I got mine by buying the cheapest Windows Media Centre remote I could find then programming the media centre remote into the Harmony. Its a bit of a faff to setup but it works well. I think I mentioned this somewhere in one of the threads.

Agreed with Leon about connecting a keyboard/mouse to begin with. Its much easier and quicker to setup with direct access to the machine.

The other programs (SABnzb/SB/CP) all happily setup via RDP.... well extract and run them via RDP and then you can do the rest of the config via browser on your laptop.

Quote from: addictweb on August 30, 2012, 11:26:45 AM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 30, 2012, 11:02:55 AM

I also have a spare android phone and a spare harmony remote which one is best to use as a remote?

I use a Harmony 900 for everyday control as it allows me to have a single remote to control all the devices (TV, Amp and media centre). All you need is an infra-red receiver for your PC. I got mine by buying the cheapest Windows Media Centre remote I could find then programming the media centre remote into the Harmony. Its a bit of a faff to setup but it works well. I think I mentioned this somewhere in one of the threads.

Agreed with Leon about connecting a keyboard/mouse to begin with. Its much easier and quicker to setup with direct access to the machine.

thanks again, i will looki into either buying the cheap MCE remote or trying to work out the harmony when i get all the other stuff set up , decided to just pull the keyboard and mouse out seems easier  :cheers:

Quote from: Leon on August 30, 2012, 11:35:44 AM
The other programs (SABnzb/SB/CP) all happily setup via RDP.... well extract and run them via RDP and then you can do the rest of the config via browser on your laptop.

:cheers: fingers crossed i dont faff it up

Well I got nothing better to do at work than refresh TekForums and read the entire internet so post if you got issues ;)

Playing with the full version of XBMC on android (XDA thread to nightlies releases (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1813089)) and its damn nice and running really really smooth on my Transformer TF101 (Tegra2) however I haven't tested 1080p playback on it yet.

The touch skins are really crappy as well but its got a lot of potential ;)

Quote from: Leon on August 30, 2012, 13:18:41 PM
Well I got nothing better to do at work than refresh TekForums and read the entire internet so post if you got issues ;)

hit a pit stop, have installed xbmc and SABnzbd but trying to download the sick beard file my server keeps telling me my security levels dont allow me to download the file!! is there a setting i need to change or a mirror for the file??
UPDATE...sorted it with a little rummage around in settings for internet downloads ...and on we go....

If you're looking for really easy remotes check out flirc.tv (http://flirc.tv), its a usb thingy that learns the remote commands of any remote pretty much and then relays it to the computer as a keyboard press. You can pretty much program any remote however you want.

I use one for my media center pc.

After a long day installing all the programmes, (im yet to set up xbmc, and autologin) I am having difficulty working out how i access the couch potato and sickbeard when im not connected to the machine directly with keyboard, i saved the browser page but on trying to recall the page i get nothing, and there is nothing in my programmes? 

How will i add to my wanted lists from now on, sorry if this is a daft question im really trying to learn

I followed the guide to the letter :)

Nah its fine, keep the questions coming!

It should be simple enough:

1) Make sure the programs are running on the server. They run as processes.
2) Once they are running on the server you should be able to access them from any computer on the network by doing http:\\<hostname of server>:8080 \ 8081 \ 5000 or by doing http:\\<IP address of server>:<port>

I use a static IP on my server and all my URLS point to the IP address not hostname but that's because DNS on my networks is a bit flaky.

If you are correctly pointing to the correct hostname/IP and you're still getting nothing try loading it in a browser on the server with http:\\localhost:8080 - if nothing opens then the program is not running correctly.

Quote from: Leon on August 31, 2012, 10:35:22 AM
Nah its fine, keep the questions coming!

It should be simple enough:

1) Make sure the programs are running on the server. They run as processes.
2) Once they are running on the server you should be able to access them from any computer on the network by doing http:\\<hostname of server>:8080 \ 8081 \ 5000 or by doing http:\\<IP address of server>:<port>

I use a static IP on my server and all my URLS point to the IP address not hostname but that's because DNS on my networks is a bit flaky.

If you are correctly pointing to the correct hostname/IP and you're still getting nothing try loading it in a browser on the server with http:\\localhost:8080 - if nothing opens then the program is not running correctly.

argg, this is where my lack of techie knowledge kicks in!!

in my browser it just says http://localhost:8081/home/

how do i check its running as a process as i saved the webpage in favourites this didnt work out , to get it working i had to relaunch the exe. file

thanks

Ok lets break this down a bit.

On the server
Once the EXE's have been run on the server you can check they are still running by going into Task Manager (CTRL-ATL-Del > Task Manager) and seeing if their processes are running:

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/Pictures/task.JPG)
Note SABnzb is there... you will also have SB & CP listed (mine is listed as Pyhton but yours won't be).

Once you have confirmed the programs are actually running (and if not have run their EXE files to get them running) you now need to find out the hostname of the server, so open up CMD and type hostname and hit enter. This will give you the hostname of the computer you are working on.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/Pictures/cmd.JPG)

End your links to point to http://<hostname>:8080, 8081 and 5000 (SAB, SB and CP) and then check they still open on your server. If they do move over to your laptop (which is on the same network) and confirm that the new links pointing to hostname are still working.

Give that a try :)

Quote from: Leon on August 31, 2012, 12:50:10 PM
Ok lets break this down a bit.

On the server
Once the EXE's have been run on the server you can check they are still running by going into Task Manager (CTRL-ATL-Del > Task Manager) and seeing if their processes are running:

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/Pictures/task.JPG)
Note SABnzb is there... you will also have SB & CP listed (mine is listed as Pyhton but yours won't be).

Once you have confirmed the programs are actually running (and if not have run their EXE files to get them running) you now need to find out the hostname of the server, so open up CMD and type hostname and hit enter. This will give you the hostname of the computer you are working on.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/Pictures/cmd.JPG)

End your links to point to http://<hostname>:8080, 8081 and 5000 (SAB, SB and CP) and then check they still open on your server. If they do move over to your laptop (which is on the same network) and confirm that the new links pointing to hostname are still working.

Give that a try :)

ok after i opened the exe files i can see them running in precesses under task manager

the browser shows couch potato as http://localhost:8081/home so do i now change this to http://administrator:8081/home as copying this into my laptop browser brings nothing back

Not the username but the hostname... I've edited the image and added some bad paintskills to highlight what you are looking for. It's whatever you called the machine.

edit: Just thought... You are using the hostname or IP address to RPD to the machine... use that same one in the URL for SAB/CP/SB.

Quote from: Leon on August 31, 2012, 13:43:25 PM
Not the username but the hostname... I've edited the image and added some bad paintskills to highlight what you are looking for. It's whatever you called the machine.

edit: Just thought... You are using the hostname or IP address to RPD to the machine... use that same one in the URL for SAB/CP/SB.

Still no luck.. i have called the server PROLIANT so have tried http:/PROLIANT:8081/  and also used the ip address of the rdp connection and checked it under ipconfig but no joy from my laptop... would it have anything to do with my router not forwarding ??

Damn looks like you are doing everything right but its still not playing ball. It may be a port forwarding issue, I've never had an issue but I think addictedweb did? Hmm hopefully someone else has some ideas (but they don't check this as much :P)

Quote from: Leon on August 31, 2012, 15:01:25 PM
Damn looks like you are doing everything right but its still not playing ball. It may be a port forwarding issue, I've never had an issue but I think addictedweb did? Hmm hopefully someone else has some ideas (but they don't check this as much :P)

I think i had a similar issue with my ip cam recently i just had to forward the port number in the router settings, i will give it a try

Another issue as i have now moved onto the xbmc set up I have entered the port number as 8082 as in tutorial, and then on SB and CP do i just enter localhost:8082 as when i test it it come back as failed

Oooo you are having all kinds of connection issues lol.

As well as port, username, password on that network screen within XBMC make sure the 'allow access via HTTP and allow other devices to control XBMC are ticked' - think those are the options off the top of my head.

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 31, 2012, 13:40:34 PM
ok after i opened the exe files i can see them running in precesses under task manager

the browser shows couch potato as http://localhost:8081/home so do i now change this to http://administrator:8081/home as copying this into my laptop browser brings nothing back

Just to confirm, on the PC that's running couch potato (we'll call this the server), when you type "http://localhost:8081" into the browser you see the CouchPotato page?

If this works we know CouchPotato is running correctly on your server.

On your other PC, first open cmd (Start -> Run (or search box) -> type 'cmd' [enter]). In the black cmd window type:
ping hostname
where hostname is the name or IP address of the server.

You should see a number of 'Reply from ip address ..." type lines.

If that works we know your two computers can talk to each other over the network.

Now use that same hostname or IP address in a browser on your other PC and try the address:

http://hostname:8081 (so it will be something like http://proliant:8081 or http://192.168.0.12:8081)

Quote from: Leon on August 31, 2012, 15:25:53 PM
Oooo you are having all kinds of connection issues lol.

As well as port, username, password on that network screen within XBMC make sure the 'allow access via HTTP and allow other devices to control XBMC are ticked' - think those are the options off the top of my head.

yes have those ticked and double checked..not going to well is it lol

so have managed to changed skin to aeon nox i think but i have no audio and the tv show plays for only a few seconds then freezes up ...

im running the proliant directly connected to the tv via hdmi and using ATI radeon 5450, however i have tried to update the drivers and it says they are current...

seems i have loads of issues is there a smiley showing me banging my head on the wall??  :mad:

and another issue i have is that when trying to add a movie on couch potato nothing happens!!

Quote from: addictweb on August 31, 2012, 15:50:25 PM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 31, 2012, 13:40:34 PM
ok after i opened the exe files i can see them running in precesses under task manager

the browser shows couch potato as http://localhost:8081/home so do i now change this to http://administrator:8081/home as copying this into my laptop browser brings nothing back

Just to confirm, on the PC that's running couch potato (we'll call this the server), when you type "http://localhost:8081" into the browser you see the CouchPotato page?

If this works we know CouchPotato is running correctly on your server.

On your other PC, first open cmd (Start -> Run (or search box) -> type 'cmd' [enter]). In the black cmd window type:

Code Select Expand

ping hostname
where hostname is the name or IP address of the server.

You should see a number of 'Reply from ip address ..." type lines.

If that works we know your two computers can talk to each other over the network.

Now use that same hostname or IP address in a browser on your other PC and try the address:

http://hostname:8081 (so it will be something like http://proliant:8081 or http://192.168.0.12:8081)

I can see the couch potato page on the server in the browser when using http://localhost:8081 all is well here, except im not able to get it to search any movies at all ?

when i ping the server (proliant) from my laptop i get four lines of reply back all is well here it seems.

than when i use the http://proliant:8081 i get can not display page !! weird eh , goint to try it in IE as im using chrome

Quote from: addictweb on August 31, 2012, 15:50:25 PM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on August 31, 2012, 13:40:34 PM
ok after i opened the exe files i can see them running in precesses under task manager

the browser shows couch potato as http://localhost:8081/home so do i now change this to http://administrator:8081/home as copying this into my laptop browser brings nothing back

Just to confirm, on the PC that's running couch potato (we'll call this the server), when you type "http://localhost:8081" into the browser you see the CouchPotato page?

If this works we know CouchPotato is running correctly on your server.

On your other PC, first open cmd (Start -> Run (or search box) -> type 'cmd' [enter]). In the black cmd window type:

Code Select Expand

ping hostname
where hostname is the name or IP address of the server.

You should see a number of 'Reply from ip address ..." type lines.

If that works we know your two computers can talk to each other over the network.

Now use that same hostname or IP address in a browser on your other PC and try the address:

http://hostname:8081 (so it will be something like http://proliant:8081 or http://192.168.0.12:8081)

Couch potato opens fin on the server browser using localhost

ping works fine from laptop to server

same hostname or ip from laptop fails tried on IE and chrome  :disappointed:

argg still at it here but now calling it a night, no luck with the accessing via laptop to CP or SB and for some reason all the downloads in sabnzb that are residing in my c\ waiting for couch potato and sickbeard to move to xbmc is not working out

under notifications in CP for xbmc should the host be the >full ip address of the server<:8082 or should it be localhost:8082

will have a shorter go at this tomorrow but really im stuck as my know how even with my friend google tonight has resulted in zilch !lol

on a good note i have resolved the audio issue..not sure how but its working  :w00t:

thanks for all help received today x

PM'd!

Quote from: Leon on September 01, 2012, 01:53:19 AM
PM'd!

Replied  :)

Hi all. I'm new to this forum, and new to the HP Microserver which I have just taken delivery of. It looks a lovely bit of kit, and I am eager to get it up and running as our family media centre as soon as possible. We have been using Windows 7 Media Centre for a number of years which has been connected to our 32" Sony TV. Its been (and still is) very good for us. We use it to watch and record live TV (with two USB tuners), listen to our music collection (ripped MP3s), view our extensive collection of photos and watch movies (paid for using BlinkBox or similar, but mainly our ripped DVDs - well, my 5-year-olds DVDs to be honest, so kids films in the main).

I built the media centre myself (I have a reasonable amount of experience in building PCs and installing Windows operating systems, though not really server OSs). The machine is very overpowered for a media centre, with a quad core AMD that runs quite hot and uses quite a bit of electricity. I wanted to get something smaller and more energy efficient, so I opted for the N40L.

Now, enough of the back story...

Basically, I am deciding on which OS route to go down. Ideally I want the following setup:-

a) OS to boot from the internal memory stick
b) 4 x 2TB drives - probably none raid as I will perform my own backups to external hard disks as I need them - I don't want a situation where data is split over different disks in a RAID5 setup (for example) as I'd like to be able to simply remove and replace internal disks without worries about RAID.
c) I want all the functionality that this thread helps achieve, but I also, most importatly, need LiveTV and PVR-type functionality

I presume I will need a linux-based solution if I want to run the OS from the USB. However, I know next-to-nothing about Linux, so would like advice on which variety to run with, knowing that I need to have the ability to have LiveTV and PVR functionality with at least external 2x USB tuners hanging off the back of the machine. To achieve b) above, I need the system to allow me to run the XMBC/potatoe/etc stuff as described in this thread. This, in itself, will be a massive learning exercise for me, but I need to get the OS choice pinned down first.

Any help and advice would be hugely appreciated.

Many thanks guys and gals.

Welcome to the forums! If you watch a lot of TV shows this setup will save you an enormous amount of time.

Well, I'd say that unfortunately something will have to give. Getting USB tuners/PVR working on linux would be a massive pain in the arse, if possible at all. On the flip side a Windows OS wont run off a USB stick.

Is there a reason you need to run off a USB stick? There's room for 4 storage drives plus an OS drive in the Optical drive bay (or an SSD and an optical drive - side note: insanely priced £33 SSD today! (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/solid-state-drives/715_7553_70705_xx_xx/1_12/price-asc/xx-criteria.html?srcid=369&xtor=AL-11&cmpid)).

I think the only realistic and supportable option for you is a Windows OS (whatever you have an licence to really or experience with as most would do) on an internal HD.

Thanks for your quick reply. Much appreciated.

The main reason I wanted the OS to run from the USB is to leave me the four free hd slots inside.  I have bought two new 2TB drives that I will use whilst I get the system up and running, and I have two more 2TB drives in my current htpc that I would port over once the hp rig is stable and I am happy with it. I was hoping not to 'hack' the hp machine at all by trying to fit a fifth hard disk (for the OS) in there - I need a DVD player in there too.

I didn't realise I could fit an SSD in there under the optical drive. Is that definately possible? How does it mount and how do I wire it up?

Phew! I've just gone through the setup procedure as detailed in this post. To be honest, I had never even heard about Astraweb, NZBMatrix, Sickbeard, SABnzdb, CouchPotato or XBMC until I found a good deal on a HP N40L microserver!!!

I think the only thing lacking from this tutorial is exactly how all the software functions together (from a complete newcomer point of view). I have run through the installation procedure and everything apart from notifications in SickBeard seems to be working - it gives me a "Test notice failed to localhost:8082" error when I test - any ideas?

Basically, my system is, at the moment, empty. I have no films, shows, music or pictures on any of the drives. Once I am familiar with how all this software works together, I will be bringing over another 2TB disk that has all my own photos, music and ripped DVD films.

Now I just need to know how I find tv programs and shows that I am interested in and would like to download.

My assumptions and questions are as follows:-

1) I search through NZBmatrix for films/shows I am interested in. Do I then just add these to an NZB queue? Then what? Or don't I need to manually use NZBmatrix at all? Is NZBmatrix just a service that lists all available films/shows/apps/etc, and sickbeard/couchpotato just use that database to find stuff?

2) If I want to find a particular film, I can search on CouchPotato for the film. When it becomes available, it will auto download with SABnzdb - is that right? These are then thrown out to XBMC, correct?

3) Sick Beard - I use this to search for tv shows that I would like. It then searches NZBmatrix (?) for them and downloads when it finds them, renaming and organising the resultant files. These are then thrown out to XBMC, correct?

Apologies for the 'newbiness' of my questions. I am digging around daily to work all this stuff out myself, but this forum has been a big help. An awful lot to take in.

Well glad you got things setup! I'm swamped at the moment and flying to Canada tonight (well at least starting the journey to the airport) so won't be around for the next week however if we don't get things straightened out today I'm sure one of the other guys will have some good advice :D

I don't use the notifications at the moment and haven't tested them since XBMC 11 and since you are having the same issue as Kat I'm wondering if its an issue with the update? If I get time today to remote home I'll take a look and see if it still works for me.

1) You don't HAVE to use nzbmatrix at all (manually) - I use it for grabbing non movie/TV stuff and adding it to the SAB queue either by downloading the .nzb file into the 'watch' folder you set in SAB and it auto adding OR by just copying the URL and pasting into the add box within SAB.

2) Indeed. Just add any movies you want into CP set at whatever quality you want it to look for. It will use the NZBMatrix library to search, download and then rename/move (if setup) to the correct location and notify XBMC to update its library. Simple :)

3) Yep same with SB. Just add in the shows you want, set the episodes you want to 'wanted' and it will go off and search the index sites you have setup in the config for the episodes, download them, rename them, move them, grab the pretty pictures and then tell XBMC that they are available to watch... Well they would if your notifications were working.

Thanks Leon.

So really, in essence, it is as simple as this (once setup correctly of course!!):

1) use CouchPotato to search for MOVIES I want - sabnzdb will download them
2) use Sickbeard to search for TV SHOWS that I want - sabnzdb will download them
3) The setup within both CP and SB will push the downloaded MOVIES/TV SHOWS to XBMC

Is that about right?

Now I need to spend some time looking at XBMC as in its 'vanilla' state, there are now categories for MOVIES or TV SHOWS. There is just the VIDEOS button with 'files' and 'add-ons' as sub menus.

Yep thats exactly right... simple isn't it (once its working lol).

The first thing I would recommend for XBMC is go into settings > appearance > Skin and change it to something better (I use Aeon Nox). There are a few more options and things are laid out a bit easier.

Obviously you won't have much to do within XBMC until you have some shows/movies to point it to but generally the only thing that can go wrong here is if you have a very messy collection but if you are starting from scratch, which it sounds like you are, this won't be an issue as CP/SB will keep everything neat and tidy :P

Quote from: Leon on September 06, 2012, 10:03:54 AM
Yep thats exactly right... simple isn't it (once its working lol).

The first thing I would recommend for XBMC is go into settings > appearance > Skin and change it to something better (I use Aeon Nox). There are a few more options and things are laid out a bit easier.

Coolio. I think I am finally 'getting it'!

With regards to XBMC, I have installed the skin you suggest, though version 3 as version 2 didn't seem to be available when I selected it. Now it has a TV Shows and Movies category, so that seems better. I didn't realise it was actually a skin that 'unlocked' these kind of menus (remember, I am coming from a WMC background, so everything you need is there by default).

Can I just check something - when I click on Movies, I am presented with 'files/playlists/video add ons' text buttons. Only when I click on 'files' does a further option of 'movies/add videos...' appear. I then have to click on 'movies' to see my one and only film listed, which is Gladiator (2000). I then click on this and am presented with another text button 'Gladiator.mkv'. When I finally click on this, the movie begins.

I assume there is a better way whereby I can click on the initial MOVIES button on the home page and then just see all the cover art, rather than going through all the text buttons as described above.

Menus can be added and removed in the skin settings menu. The video menu you had before allows you to browse files, TV and Movies are designed to be used in 'Library' mode.

You need to enable 'Library mode', this will then directly show you a list of your movies/tv shows that will play when clicked. I think there's a section on that in the guide somewhere, you also need to set the content type on folders so the library knows where to look for files.

silly question - I have CouchPotato running, but I set it not to open in a web browser when W7 boots up. I can see the processis running, but how do I get up the CouchPotato config page manually???

http://localhost:5000/
http://<IP Address>:5000/
http://<Hostname>:5000/

That is assuming you left the port as the default 5000 ;)

Quote from: Leon on September 06, 2012, 12:53:06 PM
http://localhost:5000/
http://<IP Address>:5000/
http://<Hostname>:5000/

That is assuming you left the port as the default 5000 ;)

D'oh!

I have my machine here with me at work to tinker with when I have spare time. It is sat happily downloading some True Blood episodes. However, the download speed reported by sabnzdb is only about 850kb/s. I have set the maximum to 5000kb/s. Our work ISP can download about 8 meg, so I am not sure where the apparent bottleneck is. I did a speed check just before on the same machine and it was giving me around 7.5 meg.

Any ideas?

Did you go for the unlimited DSL package on Astraweb?

Quote from: Leon on September 06, 2012, 13:45:36 PM
Did you go for the unlimited DSL package on Astraweb?

Yes.

Hmm I'm not sure then, I've never had SAB not max any connection I've been on (upto about 7000kb/s is fastest I've got my hands on).

There are 3 places to set the download speed within SAB. 1 is in the general config page, 1 in the scheduler and the other is on the download queue. I know that the scedualer and the download queue speeds are linked however I'm not sure if the one in the general tab overrides them both? Confirm that at least both the speed in general config and the box at the top of the download queue are set to something high.

They are both set to 6000, so I am not sure what else to do. I have logged a ticket with Astraweb so I will see what their response is. I will be taking this machine home tonight so I will see how it is on my home network. My work ISP and my home ISP are the same - Zen Internet. You don't think they could be limiting things at a lower level do you?

(could sabnzdb be mis reporting the speed somehow? How could I check the throughput outside of sabnzdb?)

maybe you need to set multiple connections to the server? i dont use astraweb, but I usually have to set my nzb client to X amount of connections to maximise my speed. Id never get full speed on 1 connection to the usenet server

Ah - I have been a fool! Just been onto the tech people at Zen, and what I am getting is about right for an 8mb line - around 800kb (which is the same as 8mb!)

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!

ah yes that's the obvious answer, and something I would of normally pointed out but some reason it didn't stand out when I read it before ;)

Yep I get 1.1mb/s on my 10-11mb connection at home... I miss my 50mb connection I had in London :(

School boy error of the highest order!

My next issue is that playback of my 720p MKV files in XBMC is bad. It gets about 5 seconds into a video and then the video freezes. The timer keeps ticking on however (I am unable to test if sound still plays as I am outputting through a DVI cable at the moment until my Turtle Beach USB audio thingymajig arrives).

Even if I pause the video and click play again, the video is still frozen.

XBMC has not crashed - I can still navigate around and choose a different video, but the same thing happens all the time with every video I have so far.

The files play outside of XBMC just fine using MKV File Player, so it seems to be an issue with XBMC only. Any tips?

What GFX Card you using?

edit: I'm finishing work in a minute and heading to the airport a few hours after so I won't have time to respond so I'll update this.

If your trying to run 720/1080 with the onboard gfx card that's your issue, it just won't do it. You need something like this £20 Zotec nVidia 210 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zotac-Express-1040MHz-Synergy-Graphics/dp/B005IHM274/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346947657&sr=8-1) or similar (or better, long as its low profile).

If you are using something like that already and its still jumpy etc then make sure that DXVA(?) is enabled in XBMC > Video settings.

I am using an ATI 5450 card, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have the latest ATI drivers installed. DXVA is enabled.

I enabled debugging and this is the first chunk of the log - any use?

18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Starting XBMC (11.0 Git:20120321-14feb09), Platform: Windows 7, 32-bit Service Pack 1 build 7601. Built on Mar 21 2012 (compiler 1600)
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: AMD Turion(tm) II Neo N40L Dual-Core Processor
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Desktop Resolution: 1280x1024 32Bit at 60Hz
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Running with restricted rights
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Aero is enabled
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://xbmc/ is mapped to: C:\Program Files\XBMC
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://xbmcbin/ is mapped to: C:\Program Files\XBMC
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://masterprofile/ is mapped to: C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://home/ is mapped to: C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://temp/ is mapped to: C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\cache
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: The executable running is: C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Local hostname: PROLIANT
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Log File is located: C:\Users\Rich\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\xbmc.log
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Setup SDL
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Found screen: Generic PnP Monitor on ASUS EAH5450 Series, adapter 0.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Primary mode: 1280x1024 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 640x480 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 640x480 @ 59.94 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 720x480 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 720x576 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 800x480 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 800x600 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1024x600 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1024x768 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1280x720 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1280x720 @ 59.94 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1280x768 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Previous line repeats 2 times.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Additional mode: 1280x1024 @ 60.00 - Full Screen
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: load settings...
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://profile/ is mapped to: special://masterprofile/
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: loading special://masterprofile/guisettings.xml
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Getting hardware information now...
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Checking resolution 12
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Loading player core factory settings from special://xbmc/system/playercorefactory.xml.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Loaded playercorefactory configuration
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Loading player core factory settings from special://masterprofile/playercorefactory.xml.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: special://masterprofile/playercorefactory.xml does not exist. Skipping.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: No settings file to load (special://xbmc/system/advancedsettings.xml)
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: No settings file to load (special://masterprofile/advancedsettings.xml)
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Default DVD Player: dvdplayer
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Default Video Player: dvdplayer
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Default Audio Player: paplayer
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Disabled debug logging due to GUI setting. Level 0.
18:11:11 T:5552  NOTICE: Log level changed to 0

And here some other bits of the log - anything relevant to the problem I am having?:-

18:11:55 T:5552   DEBUG: Error: Requested setting (pvrplayback.signalquality) was not found.  It must be case-sensitive
18:12:00 T:2748   DEBUG: Previous line repeats 120 times.

18:12:03 T:2748 WARNING: CRenderManager::FlipPage - timeout waiting for flip to complete
18:12:03 T:2748 WARNING: CRenderManager::FlipPage - timeout waiting for previous frame
18:12:04 T:5552 WARNING: Previous line repeats 10 times.

18:12:04 T:5552   DEBUG: CGUIWindowManager::PreviousWindow: Deactivate
18:12:04 T:2748 WARNING: CRenderManager::FlipPage - timeout waiting for previous frame
18:12:05 T:5552 WARNING: Previous line repeats 8 times.

18:12:10 T:5552   DEBUG: CApplication::ExecuteXBMCAction : Translating ActivateWindow(settings)
18:12:10 T:5552   DEBUG: CApplication::ExecuteXBMCAction : To ActivateWindow(settings)
18:12:10 T:5552   DEBUG: Activating window ID: 10004
18:12:10 T:5552   ERROR: DXVA - failed executing m_process->VideoProcessBlt(target, &blt, &samp[offset], count, NULL) at line 1592 with error 80070057
18:12:11 T:5552   ERROR: Previous line repeats 21 times.
18:12:11 T:5552   DEBUG: ------ Window Deinit (Home.xml) ------

Just trying again with playback. When it freezes, if I bring up the sound options and change any of the sound settings (HDMI to Analogue for instance), the video resumes in the background for a few seconds, then freezes again. If I adjust another sound related setting, the video briefly plays again. No other on-screen settings seem to make this happen.

I can only hope that once I attach the HDMI cable to my TV (rather than using the DVI cable that I am now using to my monitor - with no sound), the video will work normally. I am crossing my fingers that it is just the fact that I am using DVI output from the GFX card, and there is therefore no audio output as the HDMI socket isn't connected to anything. Hopefully by either connecting to my TV via HDMI, or setting up the Turtle Beach USB audio thing when I get it from Amazon, the playback will be OK.

Quote from: Leon on September 06, 2012, 12:53:06 PM
http://localhost:5000/
http://<IP Address>:5000/
http://<Hostname>:5000/

That is assuming you left the port as the default 5000 ;)

wish this would work for me as still not access other than directly on the machine :'(

Quote from: birket on September 06, 2012, 18:03:48 PM
I am using an ATI 5450 card, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have the latest ATI drivers installed. DXVA is enabled.

I am using the same card and had same issues with the video freezing up after a few seconds, sad to say im running hdmi and it was not different, i also had no sound to start with but after fiddling with the settings and restarting a few times i managed to get sound working, the sd quality movies work ok but the higher rez ones are still freezing

Quote from: coffeebeankat on September 07, 2012, 09:09:57 AM

Quote from: birket on September 06, 2012, 18:03:48 PM
I am using an ATI 5450 card, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have the latest ATI drivers installed. DXVA is enabled.

I am using the same card and had same issues with the video freezing up after a few seconds, sad to say im running hdmi and it was not different, i also had no sound to start with but after fiddling with the settings and restarting a few times i managed to get sound working, the sd quality movies work ok but the higher rez ones are still freezing

So do your HD movies play outside of XBMC?

I have a whole bunch of DVD rips that I created using AnyDVD and CloneDVD sitting on a hard disk. They are mainly my daughters films, as it saves hunting around the house for scratched disks all the time! In most, if not all of these rips, I have just extraced the main film feature, not the menus/extras/subtitles etc.

Each film sits in its own folder, for example, A Bugs Life is in a folder called 'A_BUGS_LIFE' and within that are the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders with their contents. Also, in the route of the A_BUGS_LIFE folder, I have a file in each called folder.jpg which is the front cover that WMC displays in the MOVIES section.

What is the best/easiest way to get these films seen by XBMC? Ideally, I don't think I want (or need) to convert them into some other file format, though if that is straightforward and reasonably automated, I may consider it. If I don't do this, I will end up having to use WMC for all my existing movie rips, but switch over to XBMC to view downloaded content. I'd rather just use WMC for live tv and recorded tv.

(I just installed Handbrake again on this new machine. Not exactly sure what format it should convert to, but I made a guess at the settings and I've set it transcoding A Bugs Life. Its a slow process - it reckons over 2 hours for this film. As mentioned above, I'd rather not do any conversions if at all possible)

edit - it does seem that i can simply add the directory where all my ripped dvds are stred into xbmc, and it is now scanning and getting info/artwork for them all. Clever. However, some of the things it is getting wrong. For example, I have a rip of the old Disney Alice in Wonderland (the film cartoon). It has scraped the data for the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. I now need to look into how I might change this.

Xbmc should pick the dvd rip based on the folder name

There are ways of putting extra data in to get the right film - like the film year, but there is a certain way the directory has to be named usualy film_name(year)  there are also 3rd party progs that will let you manipulate the xbmc database

Quote from: birket on September 07, 2012, 11:08:20 AM

Quote from: coffeebeankat on September 07, 2012, 09:09:57 AM

Quote from: birket on September 06, 2012, 18:03:48 PM
I am using an ATI 5450 card, so that shouldn't be a problem. I have the latest ATI drivers installed. DXVA is enabled.

I am using the same card and had same issues with the video freezing up after a few seconds, sad to say im running hdmi and it was not different, i also had no sound to start with but after fiddling with the settings and restarting a few times i managed to get sound working, the sd quality movies work ok but the higher rez ones are still freezing

So do your HD movies play outside of XBMC?

do you mean on the server? i havent tried but they play on my laptop fine

System all running amazingly well considering I am completely new to this. Thanks to all on this thread for the guidance.

At the moment, I have an ISP package with 100GB allowance each month. I've never come close to using up all that before. However, in the last week, since leanring about usenet and setting up this system, I have already used about 80% of this months allowance  :D :o :D

I have ordered a regrade to 200GB per month, but have also ordered an upgrade to Fibre broadband which should deliver sppeds of over 60MB (as opposed to 9 which I am on now). I realise that once the excitement wears off a bit, monthly useage might reduce again, and I will regrade accordingly. However, my work ISP (with the same provider) has 400GB  monthly usage. We don't even come close to using all of that, perhaps only 60-100GB on average.

What steps would I need to take to have my downloads through sbanzdb optinally use my work connection when I am in work. Can I have it setup at work also and save downloads to a USB hard disk, then when I get home, copy the downloads into the appropriate sickbeard/couch potato/xbmc folders and have it organise everything for me automatically?

I would advise keeping this kind of activity to your home connection only, it's not really the kind of thing you should be doing in the work place.

Are you in the UK? There are plenty of 'unlimited' ISP packages, especially the majority of fibre ones (BT, Virgin)

Fair point.

I am downloading True Blood (seasons 3-5) as I have not seen them. Most episodes are coming down just fine, but a couple recently have given me the error in SABnzdb that 'repair failed, not enough repair blocks'. I'm guessing that this means one or more of the PAR files that are downloaded are problematic, and there aren't enough PAR to fill in the holes.

What is the best course of action when this happens? Is it just tough luck for me and we will have to miss those episodes?

Quote from: birket on September 10, 2012, 15:29:43 PM
Fair point.

I am downloading True Blood (seasons 3-5) as I have not seen them. Most episodes are coming down just fine, but a couple recently have given me the error in SABnzdb that 'repair failed, not enough repair blocks'. I'm guessing that this means one or more of the PAR files that are downloaded are problematic, and there aren't enough PAR to fill in the holes.

What is the best course of action when this happens? Is it just tough luck for me and we will have to miss those episodes?

That usually happen when files are very old on the newsgroup servers. It could also be that the files have become incomplete by some other means. I think you can click 'retry' on sabnzb and it will try and download the missing parts, but if that doesn't work your only real option when the par files aren't sufficient to repair the missing parts is to download a different version.

Quote from: birket on September 10, 2012, 15:29:43 PM
Fair point.

I am downloading True Blood (seasons 3-5) as I have not seen them. Most episodes are coming down just fine, but a couple recently have given me the error in SABnzdb that 'repair failed, not enough repair blocks'. I'm guessing that this means one or more of the PAR files that are downloaded are problematic, and there aren't enough PAR to fill in the holes.

What is the best course of action when this happens? Is it just tough luck for me and we will have to miss those episodes?

Back from Canada (Man I'm knackered).... In this case you can retry within SAB or put it back as 'wanted' in SB however most of the time it will just fail again so just pop onto NZBmatrix, manually add the said episode to your list (different version) and set it as TV so that when it finishes it will get SB and XBMC to do its thing.

Quote from: Leon on September 11, 2012, 09:01:52 AM

Quote from: birket on September 10, 2012, 15:29:43 PM
Fair point.

I am downloading True Blood (seasons 3-5) as I have not seen them. Most episodes are coming down just fine, but a couple recently have given me the error in SABnzdb that 'repair failed, not enough repair blocks'. I'm guessing that this means one or more of the PAR files that are downloaded are problematic, and there aren't enough PAR to fill in the holes.

What is the best course of action when this happens? Is it just tough luck for me and we will have to miss those episodes?

Back from Canada (Man I'm knackered).... In this case you can retry within SAB or put it back as 'wanted' in SB however most of the time it will just fail again so just pop onto NZBmatrix, manually add the said episode to your list (different version) and set it as TV so that when it finishes it will get SB and XBMC to do its thing.

First I'd like to thank Leon for such an awesome tutorial! I have been following your manual and it has worked with one exception.
I downloaded the AEON MQ2 and MQ3 and so far I have been unable to set this viewtype as seen in your picture.
I really love your view but I cannot find the setting to have it show up like that.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/2.JPG)

I only have these viewtypes available:

(http://www.abload.de/thumb/aeonq7kf6.png) (http://www.abload.de/image.php?img=aeonq7kf6.png)

Quote from: Leon on September 11, 2012, 09:01:52 AM
Back from Canada (Man I'm knackered).... In this case you can retry within SAB or put it back as 'wanted' in SB however most of the time it will just fail again so just pop onto NZBmatrix, manually add the said episode to your list (different version) and set it as TV so that when it finishes it will get SB and XBMC to do its thing.

Worked a treat. Thanks Leon. Now I have all three complete seasons that I am missing! Joy.

Allan I'm currently downloading MQ3 (Extremely slowly it seems) to take a look myself. Will get back to you in a bit.

Birket: Glad that worked :)

Right took a while but I got MQ3 on this test XBMC - The view you want is Multiplex and you need to turn it on as a active view from Settings > Skin > Viewtypes >  Multiplex

I am interesting in building 2 HTPC's with XBMC installed on for two different rooms in my house. I would like these machines to be completely separate from each other I.E I can pick which shows/movies would go to each machine. I want this so I could have my own shows on one, and my housemate have his own shows movies on another WITHOUT them being synced. Is this possible to do using the same Astraweb details and using the same NZBMatrix account? Would I be able to pick and choose on what machine to store them on?

Thanks for the guide.

Hmmm depends how you want to do it. Do you want things completely private from each other or do you not care if you can see what the other has but just don't want them mixed in each others XBMC?

Seeing what each others has isn't a problem, I'd even like to be able to transfer between the two manually if that's possible (In case we both want the same stuff, to save redownloading). I just don't want his tv shows/movies to be added onto my XBMC or stored on my harddrives etc

Ok it's a bit messy and given more thought there might be a better way of doing it but off the top of my head you could do something like the following:

Applications
Server One:
SAB
SB
CP
XBMC

Server Two:
CP
XBMC

Folder Structure
Server One:
Ell223 Movies
Ell223 TV Shows
Shared Movies
Shared TV Shows (or put this one on the other server to even disk usage?)

Server Two:
Flatmate Movies
Flatmate TV Shows

Settings

SickBeard
In this menu:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/sb3.jpg)
Have all 3 folders off the 2 servers listed (Ell223s, flatemates and shared) and depending on how you want the show select the correct folder for it to be moved into once downloaded.

Couch Potato
CP doesn't allow you to point to multiple movie folders so you would have to setup 2 instances of CP, one for you and one for him (maybe another for shared) each pointing to a different movies folder and working seperatly... its gets very messy at that point but as movies are much more sharable than TV shows I would just advise having one instance of CP for all movies, have them dump into a shared folder and if there is one or two you really don't want to share move it manually into a private folder.

XBMC
Easy part... Ell223's XBMC just add the Ell223 TV shows and Shared TV Shows to the video library and Flatemate does the same with their own.

Make kind of sense? :P

sounds like someone wants to hide their porn stash ;o)

Quote from: Leon on September 12, 2012, 17:12:21 PM
Hmmm depends how you want to do it. Do you want things completely private from each other or do you not care if you can see what the other has but just don't want them mixed in each others XBMC?

Thanks for looking. I still cannot replicate your viewtype though. Your info panel is much smaller than mine
and more Fanart is visible. Mine is huge and almost spans the entire width of the screen. (1920 x 1080p resolution)

Yours:
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14672624/HTPC/2.JPG)

Mine:
(http://www.abload.de/img/screenshot0013qotk.png)

I don't have my XBMC in front of me but I'm sure there is an option in either Info Panel (Choose Display Mode or Select Layout) or in Extra Panel at the bottom.

Quote from: Leon on September 13, 2012, 11:35:23 AM
I don't have my XBMC in front of me but I'm sure there is an option in either Info Panel (Choose Display Mode or Select Layout) or in Extra Panel at the bottom.

That's not it, unfortunately. I really love your layout and I can understand why you would post it, it's much
better than the default "multiplex".
If you look at the screenshots closely, you can see they are different viewtypes, maybe a theme?
Your bottom row containing your movies is not transparent like mine is. Your info panel also has
a different texture.

Could you take a look when you are at home and let me know. You have been a great help! Kudos

Okay I figured it out  :cheers:

To have this skin viewtype, select "MultiWall" in MQ2
The viewtype in MQ2 is called "MultiWall".

I still haven't figured out how to replace the two empty pictures. Anybody have an idea?

(http://www.abload.de/img/screenshot004omx7u.png)

Cool! Grats :)

The pictures are extra thumbnails from in film (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=138975) which it won't grab from auto scraping, you will have to manually create them (or use a program to do it for you). I believe in the info panel options you can choose to display something else instead of the thumbs?

Ok cool. You don't seem to be able to disable or change the picture layout.
I used FFMEPG do create thumbnails and they were named <name>.tbn

I refreshed my movie library, but they do not show up. Did I do something wrong?

Hmmm it's been ages since I last used them. Try putting them into a folder called Extrathumbs

Movies\Ice Age\Extrathumbs\extra1.tbn

I'm having a little google around to see if thats correct ;)

Quote from: Leon on September 13, 2012, 14:59:50 PM
Hmmm it's been ages since I last used them. Try putting them into a folder called Extrathumbs

Movies\Ice Age\Extrathumbs\extra1.tbn

I'm having a little google around to see if thats correct ;)

Still doesn't recognize them, strange

In the movie properties, select 'Update', you should then be able to confirm which movie it is and re-download the meta data. You then get to select which thumbnail you want to use, or to browse for your own.

That's from memory and I know the options arent in the same place for all skins but hopefully it clear enough.

I went to "Movie Information" and then "Reload".
When I go to "Get Thumb" under "Movie Information" all I can choose is the thumbnail picture in my movie collection,
not the special screenshot from the movie itself.

Yeah thats just the main thumb and fanart. Extra thumbs are different but for the life of me I can't remember how you get them showing correctly.

This XBMC addon: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add-on:Artwork_Downloader

Appears to be able to grab your extrathumb, might give you an idea on how to name/process them if you want to do it manually (or you could just try the addon and use it if it works ;))

Quote from: Leon on September 13, 2012, 16:49:40 PM
This XBMC addon: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add-on:Artwork_Downloader

Appears to be able to grab your extrathumb, might give you an idea on how to name/process them if you want to do it manually (or you could just try the addon and use it if it works ;))

Sir, you rock! Worked without a problem! Thanks

Quote from: Leon on September 12, 2012, 19:37:34 PM

Make kind of sense? :P

Yes, this is going to be very useful thank you!

Just another quick question, I know you use the HP microserver for your setup, how loud would you say this is? It would be in my room and ideally I would like to run it overnight, however I don't want to be kept awake! Is it noticeably louder than say, an Xbox 360 for example? Or would you say it's fairly discrete.

I would have to look into building a custom HTPC if the volume would be an issue for me I think.

I have it at the end of my bed and only notice it when the disks spin up (which I barely notice anymore either). I would say its quieter than my 360, guessing you're talking about when its not spinning a disk, but then again I never have my 360 on when its not playing something to mask the noise so not 100% on that one ;)

Birket noticed it was louder than he wanted and looked into replacing the stock fan, no-one else has complained about it though.

Does anyone know whether you can add widgets to MQ2, like you can do in Aeon Nox?
Haven't found a way of doing it.

Though I have XBMC etc installed and running well on my N40L, I still don't seem to be able to change the way that the DVD boxes/artwork etc are displayed in the Aeon theme. I'm on version 3 in Eden. Regardless of the method I choose to display the MOVIES artwork, I always get the same basic look - basically, a text list of movies which as I scroll down, with the cover artwork appearing on the right hand side and a piece of fanart in the background. What I really want is one of the more dynamic looking interfaces, but they don't seem to be working.

I am clearly missing something very fundamental here.

Quote from: Leon on October 13, 2011, 13:07:49 PM
I run SB, CP, Headphones and Sab via the Python installs so each time I turn my machine on I want to do

cmd
cd c:\htpc\SAB\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sickbeard.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\sick-beard\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
sabnzb.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\couchpotato\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
couchpotato.py

cmd
cd c:\htpc\headphones\
git pull
*wait for latest updates*
headphones.py

Which is easy when done via .bat files but I haven't actually got round to doing it :P

Hey i saw this earlier in the thread i have been thinking of switching from the windows versions to the pythons versions i just have a quick question with the .bat file with these commands in it. i was wondering if there is a way to get the bat file to restart every 24 hrs so the latest updates are downloaded

Use Task Scheduler in windows to setup a task to run the batch file every 24 hours :)

Here's a quick Windows 7 guide (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/schedule-a-task)

I'm loving the hp server finally got the PI working well with raspmc after updating to the 512mb version it now streams without buffering and it now shares the xbmc library from the hp server via upnp.

Only problem is since updating to the latest xbmc notifications from sickbeard and couch potatoe no longer work.



See this post.


http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=144438


Has anyone found a cure for this?

Or is the only way to go back to a older version off xbmc but if I do this will my pi no longer be able to share my library through upnp?

I've moved from Astraweb to Supernews, as I was getting a lot of failures due to DMCA takedown requests against Astraweb.

Also, I've got an XSUsenet account as a free backup.
It's limited in how much you can download/speed if for any reason the main one fails.
http://xsusenet.com/

Got my N40L (4GB ram, Sapphire HD6450 2GB) on Saturday and started implementing Leon's awesome guide. I've got everything pretty much working (with some glitches still e.g. couchpotato doesn't post-process the movies but nothing major).

I have two accounts one for administration purposes and one to run XBMC (called XBMC of course  :)) . On the XBMC account the application runs within a window e.g. upper and bottom bars are visible while when i run it from the other account no bars are visible ....

Any idea on how to fix it?

Fixed. For a strange reason video output was on "windowed" although i never touched the setting... 

Hey all,

Firstly, I'd like to say a huge thank you to Leon for such an epic guide! It's very easy to understand and the screenshots help a lot :)

Today I ordered a new HP N40L Microserver as well as 2x4GB RAM and a Sapphire HD 6450 1GB graphics card to upgrade with...

I think I'm all set and looking forward to having a play with it tomorrow... However, I'm not 100% sure on what OS to use. I want to be able to do all the things you have in the main post (SABnzbd, Sickbeard, XBMC etc.), but I'd also like the ability to host a small website with it. Would Windows 7 be the way to go?

I currently have 2x1TB drives I will be using tomorrow (Along with the 250GB it comes with) - however I see myself upgrading the drives soon to 2TB (And possibly more than just the two I have). What's the best way to connect them together (RAID wise I mean - Have you noticed I'm a total newb when it comes to this bit? :P). Any help or advice would be very appreciated!

Thanks again!

I think considering what you want to do with it, W7 pro will allow you to mirror (RAID 1) and run everything you want to run, if you want to go for RAID 5 you'll need to look at a server edition of windows which is not supported for XBMC but apparently with some tweaks it'll run, but I have no idea on what those tweaks are and how much of a weekend you'll waste trying it :)

Other than that you have the on board RAID controller which would mean you wouldn't have to go for Pro, but I'm not sure what the advantages or disadvantages are, other than being independent to hardware failure. I'f running 2 x 2TB using the on-board RAID controller and not had any problems with it.

I assume that the W7 software RAID may have advantages during upgrade possibly? Not sure if anyone on here wants to comment on this or the OS choice I have made? Although I believe that some of the additional software mentioned in this thread are reliant on a Windows OS to function.

Well, it seems that NZBMatrix has been shut down, which leaves me (a novice) a bit up in the air. My setup (following this guide) was running pretty well - thanks to you guys! I was able to find and download series and movies through Sickbeard and Couch Potato quite easily. Even manual searching on NZBMatrix was quite easy.

Now that NZBMatrix is gone, what should I do? Any tips or pointers would be most appreciated. I do find all this stuff a bit confusing, and general google searches on the matter yield page after page of usenet enthusiast talk which goes way over mt head. Is there an easy to use alternative to NZBmatrix, or should I be cancelling my subscriptions to everything and just sticking with WMC?

Quote from: birket on December 13, 2012, 16:26:23 PM
Well, it seems that NZBMatrix has been shut down, which leaves me (a novice) a bit up in the air. My setup (following this guide) was running pretty well - thanks to you guys! I was able to find and download series and movies through Sickbeard and Couch Potato quite easily. Even manual searching on NZBMatrix was quite easy.

Now that NZBMatrix is gone, what should I do? Any tips or pointers would be most appreciated. I do find all this stuff a bit confusing, and general google searches on the matter yield page after page of usenet enthusiast talk which goes way over mt head. Is there an easy to use alternative to NZBmatrix, or should I be cancelling my subscriptions to everything and just sticking with WMC?

http://www.nzbsrus.com

Quote from: addictweb on December 13, 2012, 21:00:06 PM


http://www.nzbsrus.com

Thanks for that. So do I just sign up and then enter user name and API details into both CouchPotato and SickBeard...and that's it? Simple as that?

(should I sign up to a VIP account for nzbsrus or not?)

Quote from: birket on December 14, 2012, 09:30:23 AM

Quote from: addictweb on December 13, 2012, 21:00:06 PM


http://www.nzbsrus.com

Thanks for that. So do I just sign up and then enter user name and API details into both CouchPotato and SickBeard...and that's it? Simple as that?

(should I sign up to a VIP account for nzbsrus or not?)

yes signup for vip as otherwise your limited to x amount of downloads per day.
nzbrus has been a bit flakey server wise for the last few weeks.

Quote from: Eggtastico on December 14, 2012, 11:06:59 AM
nzbrus has been a bit flakey server wise for the last few weeks.

Can you suggest a better service?

You could roll your own

http://www.newznab.com/ (http://www.newznab.com/)

I have this running on a ubuntu Virtual box (not ideal), but it seems to work fine

Has anyone tried the new CoachPotato v2 ? New interface few nice improvements

Hello all- have a HP N40L server and have been following Leon's awesome guide- just one problem with xbmc- when I try to select control over http I get an error message saying webserver failed to start - any ideas on what I need to do to fix this?

Cheers

Phil

Hooray- managed to get it working but not sure how lol

great guide this thanks to the OP for posting, used it before and worked a dream, since all the changes with newsgroups and new versions of software is this still the best way to set up my system or is there a new and improved guide ??

I'm hopefully going to be back in the UK come April and then will have to reset up my systems. I'll make new documentation then :)

Quote from: Leon on February 24, 2013, 15:51:59 PM
I'm hopefully going to be back in the UK come April

Why is this the first I'm hearing of this???

Quote from: Leon on February 24, 2013, 15:51:59 PM
I'm hopefully going to be back in the UK come April and then will have to reset up my systems. I'll make new documentation then :)

thanks  :nana:

Hi Leon,

any update on if your back in UK fro april, would love to see this guide updated if possibleas it was brilliant first time used it :nana:

I am back now but haven't started working yet (so don't have anywhere ton live yet). Hopefully next month mate as ill need to setup my server again.

Going to attempt a video guide as I do it :p

Quote from: Leon on April 10, 2013, 21:10:26 PM
I am back now but haven't started working yet (so don't have anywhere ton live yet). Hopefully next month mate as ill need to setup my server again.

Going to attempt a video guide as I do it :p

great news gives me time to stick an SSD in as my boot drive

I started processing half of my collection with "Use Banners", then decide to use posters instead so unchecked this box and processed the rest of my shows.

however I now want them all to have banners. How do I go back over my collection and update the ones with posters to banners?

Sorry for the delay on update on this.  I got back to the UK 3ish weeks ago, started new job last week and still don't have anywhere to live so my server and pc are all up north.

Once I get somewhere to live (bit of a priority) and move my stuff down south I'll be resetting up my media server, XBMC etc and documenting as I do so.... I've also heard a lot of the uys at work who used this originally 18 months ago and the newsbin websites have been hit hard here in the UK so there are new problems to look into.

Watch this space next month :P

when you do new guide, id be interested in if you tried using server 2012 got that running on my n54l at present but not yet setup media server side yet with sab,couch, sick and xbmx etc yet  :thumbup:

Quote from: mobileman on June 23, 2013, 14:49:29 PM
when you do new guide, id be interested in if you tried using server 2012 got that running on my n54l at present but not yet setup media server side yet with sab,couch, sick and xbmx etc yet  :thumbup:

I'm using Server 2012 on my HP Microserver. Have Sickbeard, CP and SAB running on it. Set it up using this guide pretty much. Some things have changed slightly but not all that much.

Quote from: 2pak on June 29, 2013, 12:06:37 PM

Quote from: mobileman on June 23, 2013, 14:49:29 PM
when you do new guide, id be interested in if you tried using server 2012 got that running on my n54l at present but not yet setup media server side yet with sab,couch, sick and xbmx etc yet  :thumbup:

I'm using Server 2012 on my HP Microserver. Have Sickbeard, CP and SAB running on it. Set it up using this guide pretty much. Some things have changed slightly but not all that much.

Hi 2pak, I am doing the same. have you tried or been able to setup a tv tuner card into xbmc? I started ploughing through the setup before I found out there are big compatibility issue!

Quote from: bowett on July 01, 2013, 23:13:30 PM

Quote from: 2pak on June 29, 2013, 12:06:37 PM

Quote from: mobileman on June 23, 2013, 14:49:29 PM
when you do new guide, id be interested in if you tried using server 2012 got that running on my n54l at present but not yet setup media server side yet with sab,couch, sick and xbmx etc yet  :thumbup:

I'm using Server 2012 on my HP Microserver. Have Sickbeard, CP and SAB running on it. Set it up using this guide pretty much. Some things have changed slightly but not all that much.

Hi 2pak, I am doing the same. have you tried or been able to setup a tv tuner card into xbmc? I started ploughing through the setup before I found out there are big compatibility issue!

Nah I use the server just as the media server. I use a Raspberry Pi running Openelec as my XBMC client connected to my TV.

I'm just setting up my HP NAS/HTPC. What are people using for 'newsgroups' now?  I'm sure I saw a thread about it somewhere here, but can't find it now ...

I was on Astraweb but a lot of files were not completing.

I'm on supernews now.

Hey guys, been a while.

I've been so busy with the new contract and new apartment that I haven't been looking at this for a while. My media box isn't even downloading anymore (hasn't been for over a year!!) but I will eventually get round to sorting it out and if you're lucky I'll record / screengrab anything thats changed... maybe add a Pi section (as thats what I'm not using to stream).

Annoying that there has been that crackdown on newsgroups, need to look into a new source before anything I guess... plus my custom Anime string of SB hasn't been updated in a LONG time so thats now useless as well. Sigh.

Will look forward to seeing it :)

Have you seen the plugins on xbmc fusion?


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