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Video Appliance For a Large Library On a Network?
devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"
I run PS3MediaServer on my fileserver. Streams (and trancodes when necessary) over the network to my PS3. Works well.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
XMBC Live on a Atom + Ion machine.
Something like the Acer R3610 ( http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/productv.do?LanguageISOCtxParam=en&kcond61e.c2att101=68913&sp=page16e&ctx2.c2att1=17&link=ln438e&CountryISOCtxParam=UK&ctx1g.c2att92=242&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2669969291 )
It can process 1080P h.264 without breaking a sweat.
After 12 years and a few days, I finally gave in to the dark side and joined slashdot.
You'll need two things:
1. A computer that stores your movies. This computer must run some sort of UPnP media server software like PS3 Media Server on Windows or fuppes on Linux. It must be powerful enough to transcode in real-time your movies. Think Core 2 Duo 2GHz for 1080p, or P4 3GHz for 720p.
2. A Playstation 3 or XBox 360. This will be your display device hooked to your TV. Both are cake to use for non-computer experts and can do other fun things as well, like games, the Internet, Netflix, etc. I prefer the PS3 since it can handle Netflix without paying Microsoft a subscription fee, but if you already have an XBOX 360 with and Xbox Live account, then that may be a better idea.
All other answers to this question are lame and/or missed the point. Seriously. Making some crap computer out of spare parts and hooking it up to your TV just doesn't make sense when you probably already have a PS3 or Xbox 360 and a computer good enough to transcode on-the-fly and large enough (storage wise) to hold your media. Hell, that computer probably sits in the same spot all day, every day and never gets turned off, so put that wasted power into good use. If you're really just trying to shoehorn some old, piece of shit computer into something useful, then what you really have is a solution looking for a problem. Fuck that. Sell the POS on craigslist and be done with it.
As a heads-up, I just tried this and ended up having to return the system. There appears to be some bug with their HDMI which can cause the machine to kernel panic, apparently when powering on either the display or receiver it's plugged into*. A damn shame, as it's otherwise very well suited to that kind of use. A compact, quiet, and fairly cool system that doesn't use a whole lot of power but still has no problem playing back HD video. Hooking the tower back up to the TV just sucks, as it uses about 50x the energy** and is massively overkill for that kind of use, and is certainly not compact by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe I'll dig out an old unused laptop instead.
* I'm not 100% sure that's the cause, but it was as close as I ever got to diagnosing the issue. And this was after exchanging the system for a full replacement. If only only happened to one machine I'd blame the hardware, but two systems with identical problems tells me something else is at play. Of course, it could be specific to my TV+receiver combo too.
**Which only bothers me because of the power bill. Effing hippies.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The popcorn is good, really good, but it is not perfect. The music playback is pretty crappy; the interface isn't fantastic; and it is a little buggy. I think it is pretty much perfect if ALL you want to do is play movies, but if you want to do more, I would use something else.
I still prefer XBMC and after seeing a friend put it on a re-purposed Apple TV (not just jailbroken; completely overwritten), that is the way I am going.
That really sucks, but I've never run into that problem and I've had this setup going for several months now (got the mini as soon as the hdmi ones were released). I'd guess it's your TV+receiver combo then - I don't have any problems with my Kuro and Pioneer something or other receiver (the mini plugs into the receiver, the receiver goes to the TV).
+1 for Popcorn Hour. They make very good media streamer with great community support and add-ons.
I use the following setup:
Popcorn Hour A-110 hooked to wired ethernet
Kroozbox for TV user interface
Personal Video Database for video database management
The way it works is I put a video file on a Samba share and run PVD from my desktop. PVD scans the share, finds the new video file(s), and populates the database with information from IMDB and posters from Amazon. Kroozbox runs on my Linux server and uses the PVD database to display the movie library information in a friendly way on the screen. The whole thing was a little tricky to initially configure but works very well. Everyone in the house was able to immediately browse and use the video library without any training (we're talking ESL grandparents here).
I also have a WD TV Live which is decent but the interface isn't nearly as good as the setup I described above.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Hard drives fail. Consumers tend to take the hilarious path of refusing to use again any hard drive brand that ever fails on them.
For what it's worth, I've had to replace drives made by WD, Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung, JVC, JTS, Quantum, Conner, Miniscribe, IBM, IMS, CDC, Imprimis, ExcelStor, Fujitsu, Micropolis, and I swear to god one Plus Hardcard.
But more Seagate than anything else.
I just installed XBMCLive on a en Eeebox, the eb1501 handled bluray level playback without an issue. It's an Atom 330 so it's already kinda dated as the 510s with Ion2 will actually handle flash in full screen without the benefit of the crappy 3d acceleration now offered in Flash 10.1. It's based on Ubuntu 9.04 so there are some issues with certain wireless controllers but it took me all of an hour start to finish to get the thing setup how I want it. That even includes being able to launch Firefox with the Launder app, coincidentally this method will work with Pandora too although sadly Netflix natively is a no go but a lot of people have Bluray players already with netflix so you just use XBMC as a uPNP client at that point and you can enjoy all the benefits. My whole setup complete with SSD so there is zero noise after the sound of pressing the button.
Why not just use the minimal install option? This turns the unit into an XBMC appliance, so there isn't an OS for the end user to deal with.
I actually put this on a CF card with a CF to IDE converter. I use the PicoPSU-120 power supply and I removed all the fans on the mobo and cards with large heat sinks. It's completely silent. However, I only use mine for music so I don't have any large graphics cards, but I'm pretty sure you can get fanless cards capable of 1080p since I have a fanless one in my desktop that runs at WQXGA.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Price? about 99 euro for a diskless streamer, my mede8ter (without disk, with ALL cables) 139 euro, for a disked station like the popcorn A200 220 euro.
(and forget those cheaper pre-2009 streamers, they are underpowered and don't eat averything you throw at them.
PS, despite the fact these boxes run linux, they have large binary blobs so i would not consider them open source NMT's