Shairport – Apple Airplay streaming for free

 Apple, Geek, Linux, TV and Hi-Fi  No Responses »
Apr 272011
 

I used a few hours of this past long weekend to have a play with the recently released program Shairport (original post and Github repository). What the program does is emulate Apple’s Airport Express. As well as being an fairly over priced wireless router and print server, the Airport Express allows you to stream music from iTunes or an iOS device wirelessly to a stereo.

If you have an Airport Express connected to every stereo in your house you can play music to them all at once, in sync, and have a relatively cheap multiroom music system.

As I have a Linux PC connected to my TV and stereo in the living room I thought I’d give it a go. Installing is very easy – you need to download a few Perl modules (perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Module::Name::Here’)

  • HTTP::Request
  • HTTP::Message
  • Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA
  • IO::Socket::INET6

Then just fire up Terminal and type

apt-get install libssl-dev libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libao2 libao-dev libio-socket-inet6-perl libwww-perl avahi-utils make perl shairport.pl

Easy! I’d recommend actually looking at the installation doc when you download as the code is changing everyday and the instructions above are probably already out of date. There are also instructions for installing on OS X and Windows.

So does it work? Yes it does… and surprisingly well. I’ve even created a bash script that runs on start up so I don’t lose it after reboot. I can also connect fine after waking up from hibernation so I don;’t have to have the computer running all the time.

Overall, I’m really happy as it has saved me the £90 I was considering spending on an AppleTV (which can also act as an Airport Express for streaming) just for this feature. I already have Boxee and XBMC installed on the PC and all my music on a NAS but iTunes is really my go to application for music. It doesn’t suck nearly as much on a Mac as on Windows and all my playlists and podcasts are in it. I’ll still probably pick up an Express for the bedroom as having to plug a phone or iPod in feels a bit cumbersome.

Lets just hope Apple don’t attempt to change the key and up security so this stops working. Fingers crossed!

Cancelling Lovefilm

 Film, Geek, TV and Hi-Fi  No Responses »
Apr 132011
 

After being a Lovefilm member on and off for about 4 years I’ve decided that I’m not really taking full advantage of the service and it’s not really fitting in with my life. It’s a bit sad because it’s actually a really good idea and I’ve managed to watch some films that I probably wouldn’t have without the service.

The problems really started when I bought a Blu Ray player and moved as many of the films in my queue to BR as I could. From my experience it looks like Lovefilm don’t stock as many BRs as they should. Even with 10 or so discs on my list at high priority I would still be sent a random film from my medium priority list. This wouldn’t be so bad but I usually have a lot of crap on medium priority that I added on a whim and have forgotten to take off. In the worse case I had watched the film on TV a few weeks before and forgotten to take it off so was sent a film I had seen. I know this has a lot to do with my disorganisation but when you have 10 films on high priority you expect one of them to be sent.

Another part of the Lovefilm service that I think hasn’t really reached its potential is the Lovefilm Player. Quality is really quite awful on a 42″ 1080p TV and performance on my Atom/ION HTPC is pretty terrible. 1080p YouTube videos play perfectly but the 360pish Lovefilm videos stutter horribly.

To replace Lovefilm (because we can’t do without our movies) we’ve just upgraded our Sky package to HD. We already had the movie package but with an ancient box with a tiny 40GB hard drive. Upgrading to HD means a shiny new HD box with a 320GB  hard drive (120GB reserved for Anytime) which leaves lots of room to keep recorded films. It’s also nice that every film is in HD.

So far we’ve actually managed to record a few films that we’ve had on the Lovefilm list for a while. It’s more of an effort  to catch good films when you have to trawl through pages of TV listings on the Sky website but features like Remote Record make the process a lot easier.

I’m a little sad that I’m giving more money to Sky rather than a nice company like Lovefilm but at the moment I’m just happier with the service.

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.

The iPhone and Bluetooth Car Stereo

 Apple, Geek, TV and Hi-Fi  No Responses »
Mar 012010
 

At the moment I am working in Bedford and living in Milton Keynes. This means I have a drive of around 30-45 minutes every morning and evening. I would try to rotate my CDs but inevitably I just left the same five in there and got sick of them over the two months I have been working in bedford. Radio wasn’t really a viable alternative either. I hate commercial radio, Radio 1 is far too hip and Radio 2 seems to be playing Alisha Keys – New York every time I turn it on. So I decided to buy myself a stereo with Bluetooth so I can stream music from my iPhone 3G using the A2DP protocol which was included in iPhone OS 3.0.

I ended up going for the Sony MEX-BT2700. This was mainly due to price as I managed to pick it up for a reasonable £106.00 including next day delivery. I installed it on Saturday and went to pick up Jordan from the station. To my horror the audio was awful. The stream would stutter constantly and there was what can only be described as a loud farting sound accompanying the music. I was not happy.

Like any self respecting geek I headed to my iMac to investigate the issue. It turns out that the iPhone has a problem with Bluetooth audio whilst in power-saving deep sleep. I assume that it drastically reduces power to the Bluetooth antenna when the display sleeps as wireless transmission is one of the major power draws on modern smart phones. It seems fairly un-smart for such an advanced piece of technology to not override this setting when connected to a Bluetooth audio device where bandwidth is paramount. It would be interesting to test this with Jordan’s iPhone 3GS and see if the issue has carried across considering the 3GS was designed with OS 3.0 in mind and the 3G wasn’t. Whilst this was a rather annoying issue, at least it was easily solvable. All I have done is disabled automatic sleeping and and now music plays perfectly. Of course this is a fairly huge power drain (quite ironic considering this seems to be the fault of Apple’s weird power saving ideas) seeing as one of the other main power draws on a smart phone is the large touch screen. I just need to remember to sleep it manually when not using it and I might invest in a car charger and another USB lead to plug into my work computer.

Other than this issue the stereo is working nicely. The extra power brings a noticeable improvement in sound quality although it’s still fairly rubbish due to the card board speakers they put in Fiat Pandas. Thankfully there are some high quality, beefy speakers lying around the house that are just waiting for a non-rainy weekend to be fitted. Also, I am a little confused as to why I would need a remote control for it but hey ho.

I am enjoying being able to get back to listening to podcasts on my way to work. This was something I missed hugely about taking the tube/train to work whilst in London.