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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.
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?
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).
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.