raspbmc – XBMC on Raspberry Pi

 Geek, Media Server  2 Responses »
Sep 012012
 

I think I may have decided upon a use for my Raspberry Pi. It’s now running raspbmc - a optimised port of the media centre software XBMC. For such a teeny and low powered device it runs it beautifully. Performance is a bit more sluggish than my Acer Revo R3700 running XBMCbuntu but some of the added extras in raspbmc make up for it.

It’s so good that I’ve actually decided to sell the Revo and use the Raspberry Pi as my main XBMC machine. OK the Pi isn’t powerful enough to emulate old consoles like the Revo did but I never really played them anyway. I don’t even get enough time to play my PS3 and XBox nowadays.

Where the Pi really succeeds is video playback. 1080p videos play smoothly due to hardware decoding of the h.264 video codec. Old non-HD avi files play well too. That tends to sum up my entire video library so it works for me. 5.1 audio decoding works out of the box. I had the Revo for two years and I still had problems getting surround sound (or in fact any sound through HDMI) whenever I installed a new version of XBMC or Ubuntu back when I was using Boxee. Whilst fiddling to get something working can be fun sometimes, I don’t particularly want to be fixing something when I actually want to watch a film.

Thanks to the newly released HDMI CEC functionality I can even control XBMC with my TV’s remote control so I don’t have to buy a separate remote. You can of course use the iOS or Android remote apps which are great in some ways but awful for navigating menus as you have to look down to see where your finger is on the touch screen.

Whilst being able to use my TV remote is great some of the buttons were mapped to strange functions. I had accepted this as one of the very few drawbacks. What I didn’t realise was that you can map the buttons to whatever the hell you want. All you need to do is edit the remote.xml file. The command below creates one in your home directory from the default XBMC one.

cp /opt/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin/share/xbmc/system/keymaps/remote.xml /home/pi/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/remote.xml

I then opened the newly created remote.xml in my home directory and added these lines to the <FullScreenVideo> section.

<red>Pause</red>
<green>Stop</green>
<yellow>ShowSubtitles</yellow>

<select>OSD</select>

The 3 are fairly easy to work out. The <select> section means you can now click the select button to bring up the video controls rather than changing the aspect ratio like it does by default.

YOu can find all the commands on the XBMC wiki.

I’ve recorded a video to show using my Philips TV remote and what to expect from the Pi. The Inception video at the start is 1080p although it doesn’t really look like it on camera. The TED video app is a bit slow to list content and start videos but performance is fine once playing the video.

Boxee Vs XBMC

 Geek, Linux, Media Server, TV and Hi-Fi  4 Responses »
Jan 102011
 

I’ve been using my new HTPC for a few weeks now. I’ve mainly been running Boxee to access all my media and stream stuff from the net. Overall it’s been pretty good and since everything has been hardwired I haven’t had too many issues with videos buffering (although there still has been some which I’ve narrowed down to the router so I’m trying to get that replaced).

The one real issue that I’ve run into is with Flash content. Flash is a horrible piece of software at the best of times, but on non Windows machines it’s a massive resource hog. Flash 10.1 on Windows allows the GPU to do the heavy lifting but  this isn’t enabled on Mac and Linux. This means that some Flash content, notably HD videos, is unplayable in Linux on an Atom processor. This is a bit of a disappointment. I’ve tried installing Flash 10.2 beta and that works brilliantly with Youtube through Firefox – playing 1080p videos with ease. The only issue is that Boxee has not been configured to take advantage of it and Lovefilm Player flat out refuses to play anything.

I’m hoping that the final release of Flash 10.2 will iron out this issue because the rest of the Boxee software (except for the embarrassingly basic Music player) is amazing. I love that I can see a video I’m interested in at work, click a bookmarklet labeled ‘Watch Later’ and when I fire up Boxee it’s ready to be watched in my queue. Browsing TED lectures from the sofa is treat and having access to many 4OD comedy shows is great even with the poor 360p streams from Youtube.

The reason I mention XBMC in the title is because I’ve been playing with that a little as well. XBMC is very similar to Boxee (Boxee having been built on top of XBMC code) but the focus is much more on local content. Plugins for TV catch up services, for instance, are harder to find and install. XBMC, however, has a much better iPlayer application. Rather than use the website so the stream, the XBMC app accesses the raw files encoded in the GPU accelerating friendly format H.264. This means HD streams play perfectly on my Revo’s Atom/ION combination.

The XBMC iPhone remote is also much nicer allowing you to browse your library from the phone and instantly play the file as opposed to having to navigate the menus through the TV.

So overall, there are still things that need to be cleaned up before us Linux users get a smooth Boxee experience. Hopefully Flash 10.2 will solve most of these issues which makes me a little worried as I don’t like to rely on Adobe for anything.

Revo R3700, Ubuntu 10.10 and Boxee

 Geek, Linux, Media Server, TV and Hi-Fi  2 Responses »
Dec 182010
 

A few months ago I wrote a post about choosing a device for streaming media from the web and the NAS on my network. At the time I was trying to choose between an updated AppleTV and a net top running XBMC. Since then I discovered Boxee. Boxee is built on top of XBMC but incorporates extra social features and makes viewing web based content easier. For a while I considered picking up the dedicated Boxee Box build by D-Link but at £200 I thought it’d make more sense to buy a Atom based net top and install Boxee on that. That way I get the same functionality but with the option of installing other useful applications.

I quickly realised that the price of the Boxee Box is definitely worth it if you don’t have time to fiddle. I always knew that running an HTPC (Home Theatre PC) was going to take some time to set up but I still wasn’t prepared for the amount of hassle.

My first attempt at installation was with Ubuntu 10.10.  Everything went smoothly until I came to shut down after the installer finished. The screen locked up. ‘No problem’ I thought and did a hard reset. After installing the NVidia drivers I restarted and it hung again. Turns out the wireless driver for this hardware  in 10.10 has a problem unloading. I couldn’t find a solution that evening so decided to have a look at Windows XP.

Installation was fine until I was greeted with that long forgotten about issue of searching for drivers. I managed to get everything working and Boxee installed. This is where I find out that Boxee relies on DXVA (Direct X Video Acceleration)  to offload processing to the GPU. This is only available in Vista and Win 7.  Every video played like hell… even 240p Youtube videos.

In the mean time I managed to stumble upon a fix for the previously mentioned wireless driver bug in Ubuntu 10.10. Post number 9 on this thread. Hurrah! The hard disk was formatted and Ubuntu was reinstalled with the fix doing its stuff. I can now shut down/hibernate/suspend without the system locking.

Video performance is much better under Ubuntu. Boxee in Ubuntu uses VDPAU for its GPU acceleration which is obviously available to 10.10 as it’s the most up to date release. Flash content can still be a bitch but that’s down to Adobe not building GPU acceleration into Flash 10.1 on any OS except for Windows. 10.2 fixes this so once that’s out of beta hopefully Boxee will build it in and even 1080p Flash content will play smoothly.

I was hoping to be able to stream most things wirelessly but  I’m starting to think my ISP supplied N router has an issue with sustained data throughput over wireless.  I can copy a file from my NAS (gigabit ethernet) to my Macbook Pro (wireless N) and get about 3-4 MB/s. That should be enough for any video file to play smoothly but when watching a DVD rip in Boxee it’ll stop randomly for a few seconds every 10 or so minutes. I think I’ll just run a cable round at some point. At least then I can plug in my Blu Ray player and XBox 360 as well.

There are still definite issues with this set up but overall things seem to be running smoothly. I’ll maybe make another post with my actual views after a few weeks usage. I think once I put down an ethernet run things will become a lot more useful and I can actually make a proper judgement on the set up.

Choosing a media streamer

 Apple, Geek, Media Server  1 Response »
Sep 222010
 

Throughout this year I’ve been trying very hard to find a practical solution to storing and streaming all my digital media to my TV and stereo. After many months I settled on a Netgear ReadyNAS for the storing but I am yet to decide on the best way to actually play movies and music on the television. Whatever I choose it’ll probably end up being a Christmas present to myself so I have a while to come to a decision.

My current two options are an AppleTV or an Acer Revo running XBMC or Boxee. Until Apple announced the updated AppleTV at the beginning of the month I was fairly certain I would go with the XBMC option.

XBMC

XBMC (XBox Media Centre) predictably started out life on the original XBox. People could hack their consoles to play movies and music from a networked computer – this increased the console’s usefulness and there are still people running XBMC on the original XBox (although development has ceased for that hardware).

XBMC is now focused more on home theatre PCs. With the recent wave of ‘nettops’, small PCs using Intel’s Atom processor and NVidea’s HD capable ION chipset, it’s now easy to create a small, quiet, set top box style PC for the living room. You have to add a IR sensor for a remote control but you can also use the many iPhone apps available to control it as well.

The advantage of this set up is the sheer flexibility. You can connect to your storage device with a multitude of different protocols including UPnP, SMB and iTunes sharing among others. You can install extra add ons such as Last.fm and BBC iPlayer (although a recent change to the iPlayer API broke this). Disadvantages to me as a Mac user are a lack of proper integration into the Apple/iTunes eco system. Playlists I create on my iPhone or laptop aren’t copied over automatically and it can’t access things like my iPhoto library.

AppleTV

Now the AppleTV’s advantages and disadvantages are pretty much the opposites of those discussed for XBMC. It’s obviously a very closed system – it can only stream content from an iTunes library and that content has to be in a very specific format. This means no streaming from my NAS so my laptop will have to be turned on and iTunes running to stream anything. There are also no added applications (although this may come in the future officially or through jailbreaking). The AppleTV also has no analogue audio out so I would need an adapter that costs around £50.

The advantage is complete integration into the Mac environment. I can stream music from my Mac either by choosing it on the television or by using the newly rebranded AirPlay feature. AirPlay also means I can stream music and video straight from my iPhone. It’s also £100 cheaper than the average cost of an Acer Revo.

From thinking about it on my drive home from work and writing it down here it looks pretty clear what I should get. XBMC, whilst being more expensive, provides a lot more. I’m starting to think that a good compromise would be picking up an Airport Express to stream music from my iphone and Mac to the stereo and using XBMC purely for video.

I still have a few months to decide. In that time hopefully someone will get a hold of the new AppleTV, hack it and install some applications that close the feature gap between it and XBMC. I do really like the form factor of the AppleTV. I’d quite like the look of one sitting under my TV… the Acer Revo isn’t much of a looker and would probably be relegated out of sight.

ReadyNAS – Impressions after a few weeks

 Geek, Media Server  No Responses »
Aug 232010
 

A few weeks ago I replaced my FreeNAS network storage with a Netgear ReadyNAS. My first impressions weren’t great. I was hoping for a stress free experience where by I plugged the drive and I instantly had access to network shares for media sharing and Time Machine back ups. I wanted this using AFP, not CIFS, so I get the nice Apple Display icon in my Finder sidebar, not a generic, blue screen of death PC icon.

I’ve mostly got things sorted out and working the way I want them. Shares are mounting reliably every time although this was accomplished by turning on CIFS sharing. Now I’m not actually connecting using CIFS. I’m still connecting via AFP but things just work a lot smoother when CIFS is turned on. I get the nice icon when the shares are mounted but every so often the blue screen icon does rear its ugly head.

For media serving I’ve installed the ReadyNAS version of Twonky media server. I bought a license when I was running it on Ubuntu a few months ago so it’s nice that that money wasn’t wasted. I really like the Twonky software. The web interface is very clean, easy to use and its implementation of UPnP works well with the XBox 360. Downloading is being handled by the ReadyNAS version of Transmission.

On the back up front, Time Machine is working nicely and backing up to its very own Back Up share. The ReadyNAS itself is backed up to an external USB drive every morning at 3am.

After a bit of fiddling I’ve managed to get things working pretty much as I’d like. I’m still a bit annoyed I have to have CIFS turned on to get the shares appearing properly. I’ve been looking into the application Bonjour Mounter that automatically mounts shares when available so that might help. I also made sure I kept the default share names when I set the NAS up (after the forth factory reset) so the share names are in lowercase which annoys me for some reason. I’m too scared to change them as when I did this before the shares just plain disappeared.

So I’m relatively pleased with everything. Im sure if I was using Windows things would be much easier to set up. Mac compatibility can be a little flakey but overall, for the price, the ReadyNAS is a pretty good deal.

From FreeNAS to ReadyNAS

 Geek, Media Server  4 Responses »
Aug 072010
 

Anyone following the geeky posts on this blog will be aware that I’ve had a bit on an ongoing saga with trying to add storage to my network for media serving and wireless back ups. Recently this task has been achieved using an old PC running FreeNAS. Basically FreeNAS is an operating system that gives an old PC the features of a fairly high end NAS drive. It supports AFP, Time Machine, rSync, even Active Directory which you would usually consider a feature exclusive to Windows Server. The software is very nice but my issue was with the old and unreliable hardware I was running it on. Even running such a lightweight OS things kept dying.

I had been shying away from a proper commercial NAS because of price. Generally the cheaper models don’t support Mac protocols which makes transfers slower and less reliable. After finally being defeated with FreeNAS I started looking into the Netgear ReadyNAS series. I found that the entry level model with no drives wasn’t hugely expensive and I figured that the lower running cost and lack of stress would be worth the price.  So I went and ordered myself a ReadyNAS Duo.

After copying my data from FreeNAS onto an external hard disk (formatted in EXT2, the file system recognised by ReadyNAS) I removed the 1TB drive and installed it into the ReadyNAS. I went through the start up wizard which allowed me to disable CIFS (Windows networking protocol) and set up my shares and users. I also enabled Time Machine support. After set up I couldn’t access the shares. Even when choosing ‘Go’ – ‘Connect to Server’ from the Finder menu bar and entering the IP address I could only connect to my user directory, not the ‘Media’ and ‘Back Up’ shares. After much fiddling and a couple of factory resets I was no closer to solving the issue.

At this point I had a Google around but couldn’t find anything directly relevant to my situation. What I did find was a few people asking where ReadyNAS places Time Machine back ups. I had just assumed I would use my Back Up share but it seems that when enabling TM support you also create a new (hidden) user called ReadyNAS with its own user directory in which ReadyNAS places the sparse bundles that TM creates.

This got me thinking. Rather than creating proper shares I could create a user called Media. I knew I could connect to user directories so all would be fine. This, however, didn’t as Finder will only allow you to use one login per network share it would seem (I could be wrong, but this was my experience after trying for 30 minutes). I decided to create one user called Midgar and just lump everything in there and hope for the best. It’s not quite as elegant as having two separate shares but at least it would work. I now have have to log in as ‘Midgar’ and on that one share I have the TM sparse bundles and my media folder. This is a far cry from the user friendly setup I had envisioned and I’m sure it would turn off many non techy people.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one having this problem or if I’m doing something wrong along the way. I did set it up using the wizard and only delved into the advanced options when things wouldn’t work. The interesting thing is that this is exactly the same issue I was having when I upgraded my server at the time to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Google confirmed that the ReadyNAS is indeed using Netatalk for its AFP implementation. I have no issue with companies using open source software to power their devices but you would think that Netgear with its R&D budget would be able to take Netatalk, improve it to make it more friendly and feature rich then give it back to the community from which it has benefited so much (the ReadyNAS series run a flavour of Linux and use a huge amount of open source software). To be honest I haven’t actually looked into if they do (I’ve been too busy trying to get the thing to work) but I would be surprised if they gave the project the support it deserves.

So yeah, one of the reasons for buying the ReadyNAS, reducing stress, hasn’t really worked out but at least its using less energy.

Media Server – FreeNAS

 Geek, Media Server  No Responses »
May 302010
 

I’ve never been completely happy with my server running Ubuntu 10.04. I do really like the OS but integration with OS X was always a little shaky. Before the upgrade to 10.04 I wasn’t able to use Time Machine with the network share. After the upgrade I could use Time Machine for wireless back ups but lost the ability to have multiple shares.

Whilst Ubuntu is fairly lightweight it was still running the horribly slow Intel Celeron processor at 100% most of the time which created a lot of heat – not really good for a server. This was with all the eye candy turned off.

I decided to replace the OS with FreeNAS as I realised the server was practically just a network attached storage drive. FreeNAS is a free (obviously) operating system that changes any old PC into a NAS with inbuilt support for AFP, Time Machine, UPnP, BitTorrent and rSync. This basically sums up what I was using the server for so FreeNAS is perfect for me.

Installation was quick and easy and after transferring all of the data over I was set up within a few minutes. I’ve now got multiple shares and Time Machine is backing up to a dedicated back up share. Jordan’s new Macbook is doing the same.

So everything is running much cooler. The  processor is currently running at 0%! All the things that I wanted to work are working so I can’t really ask for more!

Media Server – Upgrading to Lucid Lynx and Troubles With Netatalk

 Geek, Media Server  1 Response »
May 042010
 

I wasn’t planning on upgrading my server to the newly released Ubuntu 10.04 (codenamed Lucid Lynx) just yet but after reading many positive reviews I decided to give it a shot. It is after all a Long Term Support release which means that Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) will be supporting this version for three years as opposed to the usual 18 months.

I decided on using Ubuntu’s inbuilt Update Manager as I’ve never experienced any issues with it so far. I also have everything backed up so I could always roll back to 9.10 if anything happened. The upgrade took an age. Bear in mind though that my server is a rather ageing 2GHz single core Celeron with 512MB DDR RAM. It’s not fast by anyone’s standards. I left it running over night and when I woke up everything had installed correctly and restarted.

This isn’t going to be a review or anything as I use my server for serving files and media so I rarely actually look at the desktop.

Now it seems that Netatalk (the open source implimentation of Apple’s AFP file sharing protocol) is included in this version of Ubuntu which upgraded my 2.0.4 installation. I had tried upgrading Netatalk a couple of weeks ago and gave up due to a username and password prompt when connecting to shares that didn’t recognise either my server’s login details or my Macbook Pro’s. I decided to give 2.0.5 another go seeing as it was already installed.

My shares had stopped working so I ventured into the AppleVolumes.default config file and reentered my shares. They are…

/media/storage/Media "Media"
/media/storage/backup "Back Up"

For some reason this didn’t seem to work. When using ‘Connect to server’ from my Macbook Pro I was able to choose which share to mount but once chosen it would fail.

I spent most of the morning fiddling with options and restarting Netatalk. Finally I realised that mounting the root directory would work correctly.

/ "Root"

I tried /media which again worked. Even

/media/storage

worked. But as soon as I added the final folder it would refuse to mount. I have had to leave it for the time being. Hopefully someone more clued up on the complexities of Netatalk will be able to shed some light on things.

On the plus side it means that I can finally use Time Machine with the share. This was the feature touted for 2.0.5 which tempted me to upgrade in the first place. Time Machine is far more picky in Snow Leopard than it was on Leopard so just using the terminal command…

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

doesn’t do the trick anymore. Snow Leopard required a lot more work before Netatalk 2.0.5 came along. Now Netatalk basically pretends it’s a authorised share such as a computer running Leopard or a Time Capsule.

So my upgrade was a half success. On the plus side I can now back up over the network. On the down side I now have to make do with the one network share instead of the nicely organised ‘Media and ‘Back Up’ ones I had previously. Admittedly the ‘Back Up’ wasn’t really doing much without Time Machine so I supposed I haven’t lost out too badly.

Building a Media Server – Installation of Hard Disks and Powering On

 Geek, Media Server  1 Response »
Apr 172010
 

My first terabyte hard drive arrived the other day. Excitedly I installed it in my server but I was quickly disappointed when it wasn’t recognised in Ubuntu’s disk utility. I tried swapping SATA ports on the motherboard and quickly discovered that the second SATA port is broken… bugger.

So I went on to Amazon and ordered a PCI 4 port SATA card that was Linux compatible. I was going to buy it at some point anyway but I was hoping I could hold off for a while and use my external hard drive for the media back up disk. Due to my impatience I decided to take up Amazon’s offer of a free month of Amazon Prime (free one day delivery). All went well and I collected the card from the depot the next day.

So today I installed the SATA card and plugged in the 1TB hard disk which was recognised straight away. Hurrah! All i had to do then was add a couple of folders to my Netatalk (open source implementation of the Apple Filing Protocol or AFP) config file and up popped the server on my Finder side bar.

Now what’s the best thing about creating this kind of network? Naming all the computers of course! I decided to name everything after towns in Final Fantasy VII. The server is obviously called ‘Midgar’ after the main city. I haven’t yet decided between Wutai or Junon for the Macbook Pro. If I ever buy myself a computer for the living room I’ll call that ‘Gold Saucer’.

The rest of the day was spent copying hundreds of gigabytes of videos and music over to the server. I connected everything up with ethernet to take advantage of the increased speed over wireless but it still took hours. Everything is copied now though so I just need to sort out the back up of the media drive and start testing out Time Machine (Mac back up utility) with the network share. Time Machine isn’t designed to work over network by default so it could all go horribly wrong. If it does there is always Carbon Copy Cloner.

And for people that like to look at cables here is ‘Midgar’ derobed…

Building a Media Server – Pressing on!

 Apple, Geek, Media Server  No Responses »
Apr 132010
 

Today Apple finally released the updated Macbook Pros. I was a bit miffed that the 13″ models are stuck with the already outdated Core 2 Duos as opposed to the shiny new Core i5s or i7s. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue for me as I am using my higher education discount to get 15% off which means if I decide to sell in a years time I will make the vast majority of what I paid back to put towards the new model.

So anyway, this means I need to push forward with my server plans as my iMac will have to be sold once the laptop is bought. To start off I have bought the first of three 1TB hard disks. I decided on the Western Digital WD10EARS due to its slow spin speed (5200rpm) which I’m hoping will lead to increased reliability (speed will not be an issue due to the 100Mb network bottleneck).

I already have a 500GB external which will donate its hard disk for storage. The 1TB will work as main media storage and back up for the Macbook. The 500 GB will back up the first drives media storage but not the Macbook back ups… this means everything will be in two places and therefore fairly safe. Hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade the 500 to a terabyte before space becomes an issue. The 500 will then relegated to back up storage for the Macbook.

So that’s the plan so far. I’m going to call the Milton Keynes Apple Store tomorrow and find out when to expect stock of the new Macbooks and I’ll hopefully have one before the weekend.

Expect me to post here with my impressions and unboxing photos… *such a nerd*

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