DVD Server using XBOX Media Center (XBMC), DVD Profiler, and IMDB (Pictures galore) [Text View] - Page 17

Slack

11-03-08, 08:14 AM

Lesson learned. Now I have a predicament.

I looked at the backups I ftpd over, and see that I did not backup the C drive after the mod completed. (I have eeprom, ms and c bakups that the softmod made) So even if I get FTP access back by using the Xenium, I have no 'recovery' folder with which to undo what I did. Some kind soul feel like zipping theirs up and emailing to me? PM me if you can oblige.

I have another box in my office (the one with the blown ethernet port). I suppose I could run the softmod on it. Use filenanager and the Xenium to copy the recovery folder to a thumb drive. And move it over to the new, freshly-destroyed-by-me-box.

And hope it boots, and then undo the softmod, and re-do the softmod. This time selecting the evox dash option so I can better identify what is launching.

Another idea, will this work? Softmod the other box with the blown ethernet port, and move the HDD to the box with the good ethernet port? Aren't the HDD and motherboards tied together somehow? I know I did this on my chipped box. Meaning I moved the chip and hdd to a new box, and worked fine (I never boot to retial kernal).

First rule of thumbs with softmods is to never install or touch anything on c:\

SID5 is booting something on E:\

This is documented in the SID5 package somwhere....

make sure you have the eeprom.bin backed up in case you really screw up. I would uninstall and then re-softmod then put the shortcut in the proper location on the e drive....

I'm looking for the specifics now

never EVER mess with the C drive on a softmod.

Sean

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-03-08, 08:57 AM

Lesson learned. Now I have a predicament.

I looked at the backups I ftpd over, and see that I did not backup the C drive after the mod completed. (I have eeprom, ms and c bakups that the softmod made) So even if I get FTP access back by using the Xenium, I have no 'recovery' folder with which to undo what I did. Some kind soul feel like zipping theirs up and emailing to me? PM me if you can oblige.

I have another box in my office (the one with the blown ethernet port). I suppose I could run the softmod on it. Use filenanager and the Xenium to copy the recovery folder to a thumb drive. And move it over to the new, freshly-destroyed-by-me-box.

And hope it boots, and then undo the softmod, and re-do the softmod. This time selecting the evox dash option so I can better identify what is launching.

Another idea, will this work? Softmod the other box with the blown ethernet port, and move the HDD to the box with the good ethernet port? Aren't the HDD and motherboards tied together somehow? I know I did this on my chipped box. Meaning I moved the chip and hdd to a new box, and worked fine (I never boot to retial kernal).

I dont use SID5 what exactly are you looking for.

send me the eeprom.bin and I will mail you a XboxHDM recovery disc that you can use to rebuild the HD from scratch or swap to a larger disc.

will the system boot a game or AID or FrostysRecovery disc or does it always post a code 21

Sean

Slack

11-03-08, 11:03 AM

Was hoping to get a zip of C:\SIDDashboard\Recovery.

In any case it sounds like if I bone-up on XboxHDM I can probably restore my own disk. I was going to have to use it anyway to do a hdd upgrade. In fact with all the old PCs I have lying around this might actually be easier that pulling the Xenium out of my bedroom unit. In fact I should have everything I need to just build a new drive from scratch, and do it on the 320gig I purchased for this box? No?

To answer your other question, the box will boot a game. Dunno about AID or Frostys as I've not used them before.

I dont use SID5 what exactly are you looking for.

send me the eeprom.bin and I will mail you a XboxHDM recovery disc that you can use to rebuild the HD from scratch or swap to a larger disc.

will the system boot a game or AID or FrostysRecovery disc or does it always post a code 21

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-04-08, 02:15 PM

Was hoping to get a zip of C:\SIDDashboard\Recovery.

In any case it sounds like if I bone-up on XboxHDM I can probably restore my own disk. I was going to have to use it anyway to do a hdd upgrade. In fact with all the old PCs I have lying around this might actually be easier that pulling the Xenium out of my bedroom unit. In fact I should have everything I need to just build a new drive from scratch, and do it on the 320gig I purchased for this box? No?

To answer your other question, the box will boot a game. Dunno about AID or Frostys as I've not used them before.

if you can boot a game the softmod is not hosed just the dash...

a couple of options...

1. use the Eeprom.bin to build a new 320G hD and install that
2. buy another xbox, mod it and get the files you need off that one....

Sean

ssusca

11-05-08, 06:51 AM

sean_w_smith

11-05-08, 09:43 AM

Has anybody tried PlayOn from themediamall.com to stream movies through your pc to xbmc from your netflix queue?

I am having issues with it and was wondering if anybody else is having the same problem.

Whenever I try to start a movie, I get an error saying something like playlist aborted, too many failed items.

I have seen that error when playing a audio playlist with too many thousand entries in it but never on video. I did not I could use play on to acess from XBMC. I will have to give it a try....

EDIT: So it creates a upnp server. I will try this later on my XBMC setups and the PS3. Has anyone confirmed it works on platforms other than the supported platforms...

Sean

ssusca

11-05-08, 12:45 PM

sean_w_smith

11-05-08, 01:06 PM

sean_w_smith

11-05-08, 02:33 PM

1st round testing....

failed on PS3, HR-20, and XBMC

I had turned off windows firewall but had not restarted Playon

stopped and restarted the playon service (which you need to do after you turn off the firewall says the help)

and I am now streaming a netflix movie to the xbox... seems a little flakely.... more later...

Sean

UPDATE:

Will say its sucking up 100% of the CPU doing transcoding. dunno why it has to transcoe since XBMC plays about everything. I will expirement more with the PS3 and HR20 and see what it says...

BTW: Netflix is outputing Mpeg2. I did not check hulu format or CPU consumption

Slack

11-05-08, 07:08 PM

if you can boot a game the softmod is not hosed just the dash...

a couple of options...

1. use the Eeprom.bin to build a new 320G hD and install that
Sean

Ding!

Just booted into the 320G HD. And copied over the softmod exploit. I think tonight I'll quite while I'm ahead. And have a beer. (Well another)

topperdude

11-05-08, 08:37 PM

Am trying to mod another Xbox with the same installer (SID 5) and the same memory card as that used for my last softmod above. However when I go into the memory card to copy the softmod saves and install files to the hard drive, the only option it shows is "Delete" - it does not show the "Copy" option.

Thoughts on why I am unable to copy the files from memory to the HDD?

Thanks,
-Topper

darklordjames

11-05-08, 09:07 PM

Push "Right". :)

topperdude

11-05-08, 10:17 PM

Push "Right". :)

D-OH!! I guess I could have also gone back one page to look at this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14969622#post14969622) :rolleyes:

Anyways, thanks again! :)

Softmod done! :D It took longer to decide if I should do the dual boot or standard/single boot. Ended up going with dual boot, not sure if there's any advantage in doing so (dont have an Xbox Live account nor do I plan to create one). Any thoughts on any other reasons/advantages of dual boot?

I'm guessing even if I dont use the MS Dash ever, there's no disadvantage of dual boot so I'm guessing it wont 'hurt' not having the single boot.

-Topper

sean_w_smith

11-05-08, 10:31 PM

Ding!

Just booted into the 320G HD. And copied over the softmod exploit. I think tonight I'll quite while I'm ahead. And have a beer. (Well another)

Glad to hear it....

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-05-08, 10:38 PM

Over on the xbmc.org forums there are many users who claim to use it successfully.

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=36218&highlight=play

I haven't posted on that site yet to see if anyone else has had this issue.

I am currently using a several month old version of xbmc, so maybe if I upgrade i will have better luck. I just want to get it working before my 21 day trial runs out to decide if I want to purchase the software or not.

So I played with this more this evening....

3 clients

PS3, XBMC and HR-20 (DVR)

Never got it to work at all with the HR-20 yet

The Xbox and PS3 I can get to work although very intermittently. once I finallt get the video to start it plays reliably but overall its wicked buggy on both PS3 and XBMC.

Video quality is from OK to pretty darn good. Tonight show off hulu looked damn good....

The concept is neat but lets just say the combination of Server and Client leaves tons to be desired. when you have reboot 3 times just to get a stream to play and its literally like rolling the dice to get it to work.

This is all on hard wired gig-e network so network throughput on my lan is good and the my wan is pretty good.

At one point tonight I had a 24 is HD playing upstairs on the PS3 and a netflix movie playing on XBMC downstairs and it was working fine from a network bandwidth percentage.

one huge problem for XBMC is that is its not opimtally communicating what it supports playing so I am consuming massive amounts of CPU on my PC running PLayon (core2 duo) to transcode the video from netflix to mpeg2.

playing the same video the PS3 results in virtually idle cpu. The xbox has the ability to play but does not seem to negotiate optimally with the XBMC.

more expirements later but right now its beyond buggy and only for the ultimate tweaker.

my 3gig P4 did not have enough CPU to transcode a movie for XBMC.

Hopefully the server software will improve. I am sure there are plenty of improvement that can be made to the player as well.

Right now my netflix roku box works 100X better than this play on solution.

What are other folks seeing...

Sean

aharris

11-06-08, 12:59 AM

Ive been lurking for months, and inspired me to get my xbox(s) hooked back up.

1 problem, the main box I use, has the external lcd (my box has an x3 in it), but when the unit goes to standby, the time is displayed full screen, but in 24 hour format.

Any way to switch it to 12 hour format?

Ja Phule

11-06-08, 02:27 AM

D-OH!! I guess I could have also gone back one page to look at this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14969622#post14969622) :rolleyes:

Anyways, thanks again! :)

Softmod done! :D It took longer to decide if I should do the dual boot or standard/single boot. Ended up going with dual boot, not sure if there's any advantage in doing so (dont have an Xbox Live account nor do I plan to create one). Any thoughts on any other reasons/advantages of dual boot?

I'm guessing even if I dont use the MS Dash ever, there's no disadvantage of dual boot so I'm guessing it wont 'hurt' not having the single boot.

-Topper

I dualboot with XBMC and UnleashX. In case I accidentally mess up an XBMC update, I can always boot into UnleashX and have the FTP server run and FTP the XBMC files back on to the xbox.

Slack

11-06-08, 08:22 AM

D-OH!! I guess I could have also gone back one page to look at this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14969622#post14969622) :rolleyes:
-Topper

Gotta love it.

topperdude

11-06-08, 01:02 PM

ssusca

11-06-08, 02:39 PM

So I played with this more this evening....

3 clients

PS3, XBMC and HR-20 (DVR)

Never got it to work at all with the HR-20 yet

The Xbox and PS3 I can get to work although very intermittently. once I finallt get the video to start it plays reliably but overall its wicked buggy on both PS3 and XBMC.

Video quality is from OK to pretty darn good. Tonight show off hulu looked damn good....

The concept is neat but lets just say the combination of Server and Client leaves tons to be desired. when you have reboot 3 times just to get a stream to play and its literally like rolling the dice to get it to work.

This is all on hard wired gig-e network so network throughput on my lan is good and the my wan is pretty good.

At one point tonight I had a 24 is HD playing upstairs on the PS3 and a netflix movie playing on XBMC downstairs and it was working fine from a network bandwidth percentage.

one huge problem for XBMC is that is its not opimtally communicating what it supports playing so I am consuming massive amounts of CPU on my PC running PLayon (core2 duo) to transcode the video from netflix to mpeg2.

playing the same video the PS3 results in virtually idle cpu. The xbox has the ability to play but does not seem to negotiate optimally with the XBMC.

more expirements later but right now its beyond buggy and only for the ultimate tweaker.

my 3gig P4 did not have enough CPU to transcode a movie for XBMC.

Hopefully the server software will improve. I am sure there are plenty of improvement that can be made to the player as well.

Right now my netflix roku box works 100X better than this play on solution.

What are other folks seeing...

Sean
Thanks for the input. I guess its possible that my machine is just too weak. I am only running an AMD 64 3500+ with a gig of memory. I guess I'll keep trying the updates until my subscription runs out. If it gets any better, I'll buy it.

sean_w_smith

11-06-08, 03:18 PM

So - I started playing around with my freshly modded Xbox. One of the reasons for getting this box was that the first one I had purchased pre-modded by someone else has the Thompson drive in it and wouldnt play any burnt DVD discs (I have an LG GSA-H10L DVD burner if I'm not mistaken and do set the booktype to DVD-ROM prior to burning).

The new Xbox has a Samsung drive in it and it was able to play the single layer burnt discs that I tried but when I popped in a Verbatim DVD+R DL disc, it went through the initial chapters just fine but was unable to read the latter part of the disc. I'm guessing this might be similar to Ja Phule's issue here (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10585951#post10585951). I might try some TDK or HP discs Sean mentioned in that thread (if I can find some locally), but ideally I would like to use my existing burner and Verbatim discs and have it playback in the Xbox? Could my LG burner be flaky - tho' I havent had any problems playing any of the discs (single or dual layer) on the Philips DVP-642 which I'm hoping can be relegated to 'backup' duty by the Xbox.

Would appreciate any thoughts/suggestions.

Thanks,
-Topper

Seems to be hit or miss... My NEC and Sony drives author DL movies that most of my xboxes will read even some non samung drives. My friends Lite-on does not work in any xbox although it will work on some other players... Media has defintely shown to be a factor in some of my testing....

I have never successfully got an xbox to read a backup of a dual layer game like halo though.... dunno why this is different than videos. I generally am using nero and imgburn to create the DL discs... sorry I cant be of much help.

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-06-08, 03:20 PM

Thanks for the input. I guess its possible that my machine is just too weak. I am only running an AMD 64 3500+ with a gig of memory. I guess I'll keep trying the updates until my subscription runs out. If it gets any better, I'll buy it.

The machine speed should not cause it not to play ( or at least I dont think). but will result in choppy video. Have succeeded at getting it to play at all. make sure firewall is off and reboot the xbox 2-3 times and it eventually worked for me. Then it would I would do abother and it would fail and 2-3 reboots later it would work. Same ratio of success with PS3 but I did not reboot. just kept trying the samething over again. Honestly I think you have enough PC. I think the software just needs to mature more...

SEan

ssusca

11-07-08, 01:21 PM

Thanks,

I'll give it another try tonight after upgrading to the latest T3CH build.

ilovejedd

11-07-08, 03:56 PM

Its limited by somthing but not HD speed.

these drives stand alone in window will do 60MB/s on large trasfers... in raid 0 I can measure over 120MB/s

throughput in unraid is 1/4 to 1/5 that. writing a 4 GIG iso is pretty slow. comparable to the NV+ though....

something about unraid is terribly inefficient...

Sean

Consider this:
When you write a file to unraid, each sector of data written to unRAID causes:

1) the sector of the data disk to be read
2) the sector on parity to be read
3) a parity calc done on the sector data
4) the new parity sector written
5) the new data sector written.

Now reading a sector and immediately writing back new data to the SAME sector on a hard drive is slow, because of drive geometry.... essentially although the data is ready to be written, the drive has to wait for that part of the disk to spin back around under the drive head. This particular aspect can be a significant factor. There are some strategies in controllers and drives that can mitigate this problem, such as NCQ and elevator seeks... anything that lets the drive/controller reorder commands so several sequential reads can take place and once, then several sequential writes. But many of these depend on buffering and simply get swamped when the writes are more than 100x buffer size. Simply increasing buffer size won't help, as the CPU on the drive and on the controller will then be overtaxed by the extra buffer management.

So every write you do to unRAID, results in 2 reads and 2 writes..... THAT's one big reason why it is slow.

Note, it's the CPU on the drive being taxed, not the CPU on the PC. You already mentioned that the individual drive does 60MB/s. Divide that by 2 and you get 30MB/s which is getting close to your actual write speed. Also note that you're using SAMBA in Linux. That right there is probably the biggest source of inefficiency.

Yes, unRAID is somewhat slow, but that's the price you have to pay for increased fault tolerance.

On a side not, I use Windows XP 32-bit on my PC's and the max transfer speed I can get using Windows File Sharing is 25MB/s (even between WinXP PC's). An iperf test among the computers shows transfer speed of 75MB/s.

sean_w_smith

11-07-08, 04:30 PM

Consider this:

Note, it's the CPU on the drive being taxed, not the CPU on the PC. You already mentioned that the individual drive does 60MB/s. Divide that by 2 and you get 30MB/s which is getting close to your actual write speed. Also note that you're using SAMBA in Linux. That right there is probably the biggest source of inefficiency.

Yes, unRAID is somewhat slow, but that's the price you have to pay for increased fault tolerance.

On a side not, I use Windows XP 32-bit on my PC's and the max transfer speed I can get using Windows File Sharing is 25MB/s (even between WinXP PC's). An iperf test among the computers shows transfer speed of 75MB/s.

That explains writes but not read performance. I can get real world SMB transfer rates of 2X what you are seeing with windows and a stop watch.

I wish I was seeing 30MB/S write speeds.....

thanks for the info though... Also note the 2 write and 2 reads happen to separate disks so there should be overlap on these operations and it should not be serial.

bswiz

11-09-08, 03:45 PM

Anyone know why there haven't been any new T3CH releases since 10/6? Are updates still being made to XBMC or are things stabilizing a bit?

I noticed that there is a typo when you fast forward during a movie. The pop-up says "Fast FOWARD" missing the R. Minor nitpick but I'm a stickler for spelling!

darklordjames

11-09-08, 03:55 PM

XBMC is still being worked on. T3CH just seems to update the build when she feels that something rad just happened that she needs.

srauly

11-09-08, 06:03 PM

I just bought a Belkin N+ wireless router today at Best Buy (on sale for $99). It has a single USB port for hooking up a USB drive. It supports FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. You can install special software on a PC (so that it thinks that the USB drive is connected locally) or reference the drive by IP address / drive name. Here's the pertinent quote from the user manual:
Alternatively, you do not need to install the Storage Manager in order to access your storage device. Open a file explorer window and type in the address field:
\\192.168.2.1\DeviceName
where “DeviceName” is the name that was assigned to the storage device.

Theoretically, should this work with a modded XBox w/XBMC? I won't have time to set it up and try it out until tomorrow, so if anyone knows of a definite reason why it would not work, please let me know so I won't waste my time and can just go and return it.

I'd love to be able to hook it up to my 1TB Western Digital drive and leave my desktop computer turned off most of the time.

Oh, despite the fact that it only has one USB port, the manual also states:
Your Belkin N+ Wireless Modem Router supports up to four USB storage devices through a separate USB hub (not included).

vr4z06gt

11-09-08, 07:56 PM

Does anyone have any luck using playon and a upnp share? I installed playon on my default drive on my server and initially it appeared to be fine. When i rebooted the server only espn would work. Netflix would tell me that my password username wasn't correct, hulu couldn't do anything and neither could cbs or youtube. I have two xbox's, one soft modded and one hard modded both have the same problem. I have the latest version of t3ch on both boxes and the newest version of playon, are there any oddities i should be aware of? All dvd streaming work correctly and both boxes can properly access the internet.

sean_w_smith

11-09-08, 08:32 PM

I just bought a Belkin N+ wireless router today at Best Buy (on sale for $99). It has a single USB port for hooking up a USB drive. It supports FAT, FAT32, or NTFS. You can install special software on a PC (so that it thinks that the USB drive is connected locally) or reference the drive by IP address / drive name. Here's the pertinent quote from the user manual:

Theoretically, should this work with a modded XBox w/XBMC? I won't have time to set it up and try it out until tomorrow, so if anyone knows of a definite reason why it would not work, please let me know so I won't waste my time and can just go and return it.

I'd love to be able to hook it up to my 1TB Western Digital drive and leave my desktop computer turned off most of the time.

Oh, despite the fact that it only has one USB port, the manual also states:

should work just fine

sean_w_smith

11-09-08, 08:34 PM

sean_w_smith

11-09-08, 08:37 PM

XBMC is still being worked on. T3CH just seems to update the build when she feels that something rad just happened that she needs.

And all the latest versions have tons of bugs in them. The 10/6 release was awful. I highly recommend T3CH 6/16 as a stable version for the xbox.

you need to remember the main branch is now the linux branch. The XBMC developers all except 1 are primarily developing and testing on linux. The end result is that this has destabilized good working features on the xbox in the name of the future of XBMC on other platforms. I hope they get a stable xbox version in the future but it may be quite likely that 6/16 may be the last stable release for xbox.

Sean

vr4z06gt

11-10-08, 08:19 PM

I do have another question about xbmc uses, i am trying to figure out how to pull tv episode information, on my server i have it set up as a tv shows folder on the main disk, then in that the name of the show, then in that each episode, using the tvdb scraper i can pull show information but it will not recognize unique episodes or record them in the episode count, the folders are ripped from a dvd and labeled according 'sXXeXX - Name of Episode', inside there are the audio_ts, and video_ts folders, when i rip them i choose to keep them in raw vob format, i remember reading somewhere that it should pull it if the file is saved as an .iso format, however to go back and convert the thousand or so folders to iso would be a pain so is there anyway to use the folder name as a lookup, the same way that movies are done? In the tv show parent folder i deselected the, folder contains a single episode' as an option, i figured it was referencing the parent folder and not the nested folders.

dan4081

11-13-08, 10:15 AM

bigbw

11-13-08, 10:23 AM

I'm using Atlantis and have no issues at all.. Of course you could down load atlantis and just the pmIIIHD skin if you wanted to..

sean_w_smith

11-13-08, 02:48 PM

Has anybody upgraded to the newest Atlantis build?
Are you using PMIII HD?

If so, any issues? I'm using a 6/16 build that works perfectly but I like the looks of the new PMIII HD and am thinking of giving it a try with the new Atlantis build.

Thanks

IMO its crap....

lots of issues with the PM3 HD skin. some issues with DVD Playback. music scanning is leaking memory... the list goes on for me. not nearly as stable as 6/16

SEan

sean_w_smith

11-14-08, 11:20 AM

IMO its crap....

lots of issues with the PM3 HD skin. some issues with DVD Playback. music scanning is leaking memory... the list goes on for me. not nearly as stable as 6/16

SEan

So I was playing with Beta2 on my mac mini last night and my fear is true. THe development for PC has destabilized the Xbox builds... All the stuff thats not working on beta 2 on my xbox seems to work fine on the OSX build. One can only hope they address this...

Sean

dan4081

11-14-08, 12:25 PM

So I was playing with Beta2 on my mac mini last night and my feat is true. THe development for PC has destabilized the Xbox builds... All the stuff thats not working on beta 2 on my xbox seems to work fine on the OSX build. One can only hope they address this...

Sean

In your opinion is the xbmc for mac/pc/linux far enough along that its a viable replacement for the xbox xbmc?

Just wondering if its getting to be the time to build a pc or mac box just for xbmc since it will also do hi-def.

sean_w_smith

11-14-08, 12:39 PM

In your opinion is the xbmc for mac/pc/linux far enough along that its a viable replacement for the xbox xbmc?

Just wondering if its getting to be the time to build a pc or mac box just for xbmc since it will also do hi-def.

just got the mac mini a few days ago. Let me kick the tires some more and I'll let you know what I think. right now looks promising. I want to do some tests and see what a mac mini will do. The ATV might be another option for those who dont want the disc. They are certainly cheaper and we know they can do 720p video but its unclear at 1080 what they can handle.

Sean

darklordjames

11-14-08, 07:14 PM

The ATV? What is that?

skriefal

11-14-08, 07:21 PM

Apple TV?

CodeLogic

11-14-08, 07:46 PM

XBMC on Apple TV can handle a subset of 720p content that is low to medium bitrate h264 and no 1080p content at all.

Also, it might be worth mentioning that XBMC Atlantis has gone gold.

darklordjames

11-14-08, 08:00 PM

Ah, AppleTV. Yeah, not enough hardware there for real XBMC consideration. At least, not as an Xbox replacement.

srauly

11-14-08, 08:28 PM

A replacement for the XBox? Well, it depends on what you consider to be a viable replacement. My old XBox is cheap, fairly quiet, has a built-in DVD player, and boots up instantaneously. There actually isn't any other XBMC-compatible device that can boast all four of those features.

The AppleTV is silent and the next cheapest XMBC-compatible device available, but lacks the DVD drive, which I think is pretty important if you want an all-in-one device in your room so you can play DVD rentals.

The Mac Mini is nice in that it's similar to an Apple TV size-wise, but has the DVD player. But it's a *lot* more expensive and you have to deal with boot up time, unless you plan to leave it turned on all the time.

PC's are going to be bigger and louder.

Personally, I think the rush to "move on" from the XBox is premature. Yes, the XBox is old and outdated and we all *ought* to be able to move on from it by now, but there's simply no other hardware available that offers the unique combination of price/features that the XBox offers. I'm also going to say that I think that the most outspoken critics among the "it's time to move on and leave the XBox behind" crowd, are likely younger people who only care about feeding one TV. If you want to actually wire a house for multi-room media streamers, the price advantage that a $60/room XBox offers becomes even more compelling. If you've got 3+ rooms you want to have media players in, multiply that times the cost of a Mac Mini and it starts to get very expensive.

So now that Atlantis has gone gold, can anyone here counter Sean's pessimistic opinion of Atlantis on the XBox? I just today upgraded my March 2008 versioned XBox to the 6/16 version that Sean has been recommending. What would Atlantis add feature-wise, and do you think that the Gold release is stable enough that it would be worth installing?

Cocophone

11-14-08, 08:53 PM

I have 3 xboxes, so I agree with you about the benefits of low cost, and fast booting times.

I run a recent version of xbmc and use the MediaStream skin, but I usually only start the xbox and play one movie or video podcast and then turn it off.

I think the way I use xbmc reduces the chance of running out of memory issues that other have had problems with.

srauly

11-14-08, 11:09 PM

ChrisFB

11-15-08, 09:12 AM

If you want to stream HD content, Xbox1 is a non-starter - that's the bottom line. HDTV and HD movies are now very prevalent. I think for any use other than HD video, the Xbox is a rock solid and viable option. This is actually what led my to delay the HTPC build again (5 years total now) about 6 months ago and mod another Xbox. For music, SD movies, and pictures it can't be beat by anything especially when one considers price (used $35 for me) and the nice stock of vintage emulators also on it.

That said, someday very soon streaming HD video will become necessary for me (I'm really busy now so I just don't care much). Also the other issue was that if I'm going that route I'm going to get 1080p on everything and when I was going down that road it still meant an $800 build. I expect that too will come down soon.

dan4081

11-15-08, 03:56 PM

I forgot to mention a fifth feature of the XBox: A large library of [now inexpensive] games you can play on it. FWIW, the one XBox I currently own was purchased after I learned about XBMC. I'm not a hard-core gamer, but it's nice to have that capability. My plan has always been that once I get things working well on my "test" XBox, I'll probably pick up a couple more for other rooms in the house.

You brought up a lot of great points.
I have 3 xbox's running xbmc now, so you are very right about the cost factor. I bought all 3 of mine for $60 or less from gamestop.
Using the 6/16 build they are rock solid. Thats why I had asked about the new Atlantis. I'm not willing to give up stability for features at this point.

My questions about the xbmc on pc or mac were more from my geek side. I just love to try new stuff out. At this point I have hundreds of dvd's ripped to hard drive that I use with xbmc xbox and I have no desire to start over with new hi-def rips, never mind the cost for enough storage to hold everything in hi-def. 4gb for a move as compared to 15-25gb sure adds up!

Guess my next project should be the dedicated server I keep putting off....

sean_w_smith

11-15-08, 05:10 PM

I dont have high hopes for the new version. loading it now...

There really aren't any new features since june that I can think of....

Sean

D-I-G-I-T-A-L

11-15-08, 08:38 PM

sean_w_smith

11-16-08, 01:02 AM

I dont have high hopes for the new version. loading it now...

There really aren't any new features since june that I can think of....

Sean

So the issues with the music scanning in the golden build persists...

Old XBMC from last year or without some combination of artist or album download will complete in 1 try on my 30000 song library.

XBMC beta2 on OSX completes 1st try with all features enabled.

Plex crashes and has not finished yet but I think it will... Boxee who knows... that program is weird... I like the concept. hate the GUI and am really pissed all my power user options are gone... Its just doing what ever it wants. crashed it 3 times in 45 minutes this afternoon.... So far on the MAC the real XBMC seems to work best....

full scan on the golden build never completes and always hangs in the same spot. no matter how you try it. delete that it will hang soon after. I highly beleive there is some sort of resource leak or lack of error check that is hosing this.

Itunes and MediaMonkey both scan the library perfectly without crashing or hanging...

One improvement they have made it seems is when the scraper hangs XBMC still works. On the previous builds it would hang XBMC...

This means I need to keep at least 1 build at each house just so I can update my music library. With these new builds with this bug even if I FTP over a complete working library. it can't even complete a scan without hanging...

I'll test video and pics tomorow and see if those bugs still exist...

So anyone know what the deal is with the horrible frame dropping on some DVD playback at HD resolutions with DEINTERLACING. I saw this issue on XBMC on XBOX at 720P output and thought it was just the xbox running out of CPU. But it does the exact same thing on OSX with a core duo so its clearly not. My standard solution is to use 480i and let me TV scale so this one is easy to work around but I found this is my testing and its very reproducable. This did not happen on last years builds. It does happen on 6/16 though...

Sean

srauly

11-16-08, 07:39 AM

sean_w_smith

11-16-08, 09:23 AM

Sean, it's interesting that you mention frame skipping at 720p on the 6/16 build. Based on your recommendations in this thread, I upgraded my XBox to the 6/16 version yesterday. Well, I was having lots of problems playing back my ISO's. Some examples:

- Cars: Lots of audio skipping/dropouts (I couldn't see visual signs of skipped frames, but the audio dropouts may have coincided with dropped frames).

- Assault on Precinct 13 (the newer one): The audio was totally screwed up. It sounded like some loud squelched version of the actual audio track. I thought for a moment that it might have been playing an AC3 bitstream signal over my TV speakers (instead of the XBox decoding it) on top of the actual decoded audio. Very strange.

The other problem I had with 6/16 was that pulling up the on-screen menu while a DVD was playing and then trying to select the Audio settings (in an effort to fix the issues I was having with Assault on Precinct 13) brought up a big empty window with no options at all. Bringing up the video settings resulted in the same.

So then I switched back to my older version (I think it's a Feb or March 2008 version) and everything went back to normal. Well, I should say that I'm still not 100% certain that my USB 1TB drive connected to my new Belkin N+ router is playing back DVD's as flawlessly as when I had it hooked through a computer. Playing back Cars seemed to have a couple of audio dropouts (in my few minutes of sampling), but not nearly as bad as the 6/16 release. But I know that it played back OK a while back (when my drive was connected through a computer). But then I watched a different movie last night (Deep Impact) and didn't seem to encounter any audio dropouts, so I'm still hopeful that the Belkin setup will work out.

Like I said some of the older versions are even better. Dunno about your ISO playback issues (other than check the interfacing setting as it causes all sorts of bad behavior during playback including dropped sound). I suspect it has do with the fact I can tell from problem 3 with the OSD that it seems like you did an inplace upgrade while XBMC is running and did not blow away all the settings....

Anyway what version do you run that you find better. its worth noting and testing....

I would be thrilled that the cheapo solution for the 1TB drive works at all.... I am on NAS #4 for me and have installed at least 1/2 dozen others for friends and in the world of NAS's you get what you pay for. All the good NAS's without Disk's are $500. My home built unraid setup was less than 300 but if you factor in my time building it it cost way more than $500 but it was fun....

srauly

11-16-08, 09:26 AM

Just wanted to post back with a quick update on my problems and to correct some things I stated previously:
1) The problem with the in-movie Audio and Video settings not displaying was due to me using an outdated version of the xTV skin. I noticed when upgrading to the Atlantis build today that the MediaStream skin that came bundled with T3CH's build showed the Audio and Video pop-ups fine, while my xTV skin was not. So I just downgraded to the 6/16 build, but keep this latest xTV skin, and confirmed that the Audio and Video pop-ups work fine with that build as well.

2) With the latest xTV skin and the Atlantis build, Assault on Precinct 13's audio was fine. Downgrading back to 6/16, the audio was screwed up again. Definitely seems like a bug with that release. I'm wondering if perhaps that particular ISO rip is a DTS soundtrack and the 6/16 build has a bug such that it's not decoding/transcoding DTS to analog correctly (I'm doing my testing here with the red/white audio cables plugged into my LCD TV).

3) Cars is just plain screwed up no matter which build I use. I did confirm that the audio skipping/dropouts coincides with brief video pauses, so it seems like it's a streaming issue. I was thinking that maybe the filesize might be larger than the other movies I tested, and sure enough it's a little over 6GB. But Deep Impact which seemed to play fine is just a little under 6GB and I just tried playing my largest (filesize) movie and it seemed to play fine. I also checked the onscreen bitrate display and saw that Cars was 9800 kb/s video. I tried another Disney movie that had similar stats and it plays back fine. Interestingly enough, Cars shows no dropped frames in the on-screen display, but it's clearly having issues. Maybe the ISO file itself has gotten somewhat corrupted? I guess the next thing to try is to connect my USB hard drive back up to my computer and try streaming through that.

srauly

11-16-08, 09:40 AM

sean_w_smith

11-16-08, 09:45 AM

Sean, the version I was using before was the 2/15/2008 compile. It definitely does not have the audio problem with Assault on Precinct 13, nor does the Atlantis build.

As far as my Cars problem...should I try playing around with cache settings? What about actually clearing out cached data that's currently stored on my XBox's HD?

There is nothing to clear.... I have a couple that do decoding to analog but never test with those. all my test rigs are toslink....

I'm sitting here this morning still battling the bad music scanning in atlantis. About to give up and try some video tests and see is the other bugs I see persist.

Hey is the Artist info feature in that 2/15 build.....

BTW: Anyone noticed the "PLay in Last.fm" on the song info screen. Very cool.....

Sean

srauly

11-16-08, 10:09 AM

Sean, I don't know about Artist info. I just switched back to the Atlantis build and want to try playing around with that for a few days to see how well it works for me. FWIW, the 2/15 build just happened to be the latest (or latest stable?) build that was available on the day I first installed XBMC on my XBox (which I bought at GameSpot solely for the purpose of installing XBMC). So, it's possible that there's another build between 2/15 and 6/16 that is stable and doesn't have the [possibly DTS-related] audio issue I encountered with Assault on Precinct 13.

One more update on my Cars issues...all of the testing I did thus far involved starting up the movie, skipping one "track" (so as to pass by the Disney logo, opening credits, etc.), and playing from there for about a minute. The video/audio stuttering was consistently reproduceable. I just tried skipping past multiple chapters and playing from there and I'm not seeing any video/audio stuttering. I seem to recall having problems with XBMC a while back where the sample video I was using was doing something similar and I can't help but wonder if it's my testing itself that's actually introduced these issues, which is why I'm wondering if there's a cache somewhere that I can delete.

sean_w_smith

11-16-08, 10:16 AM

srauly

11-17-08, 09:10 AM

I am outputting at 720p. The DVD player settings indicate to output at the "Best Possible" resolution. The de-interlace setting is normally at Auto, but I also tried setting it to "Off" and had the same stuttering issues. I know that I've had stuttering issues in the past where I needed to switch from Auto to Off, but that doesn't seem to be the cause here. Also, those problems usually result in constant stuttering that is unbearable to watch or listen to. With my Cars test, the stuttering was fairly infrequent, but seemed to occur in the same places every time.

sean_w_smith

11-18-08, 10:15 AM

so more testing with atlantis indicates my music scanning will eventually complete after 2 days and 20 restarts but it never compresses the database successfully. It also runs out of memory scanning a 100 movies of my server.

PM3 HD makes it worse. Thats about all the testing I have had time to do but they show the focus on newer platforms is a reality I guess we will have to live with.

Anyone here ever try this....

Sean

Humpy

11-18-08, 02:07 PM

Hey everyone, I was directed to this thread.. I have XBMC 8.10 Atlantis runnnig on Vista x86. I'm familiar with the old xbox version, which is what I used for years before getting my HDTV.

My only real issue so far is that all my WMV's are silent. MKV's work fine though. I have a 5.1 soundcard, plugged into 5.1 logitech speakers. When I go to the audio options everything looks normal, only one soundtrack (5.1 it says).

Any ideas? I'd like to add more information but I don't really know what else to say! Silence! :)

bigbw

11-18-08, 02:45 PM

ChrisFB

11-20-08, 06:35 PM

I'll just throw in that I'm pretty bummed they went gold and there are still all these issues in the Xbox branch. While I appreciate all the free work and I know these guys have a passion for adding new functionality as opposed to cleaning up code (as evidenced by the minimal point releases since 2002ish), I think it would make a whole lot of sense for the Xbox team to get things cleaned up before moving on.

I was really looking forward to a new perfect point release for the Xbox and I find myself leaning more toward abandoning the platform in favor of a Linux HTPC.

sean_w_smith

11-20-08, 06:38 PM

Ja Phule

11-21-08, 01:17 AM

Ja Phule

11-21-08, 01:19 AM

What do those use MAC's an PC's use to control XBMC.

The apple remote is not adequate.... Is there something better...

Ideally I would like to be able to use Xbox like game controller. The controller has so many benefits over IR its hard to use IR for me....

Sean

There's always original xbox controller (or even remote) using usb adapter. Or even the 360 controller using usb adapter.

sean_w_smith

11-21-08, 03:41 PM

There's always original xbox controller (or even remote) using usb adapter. Or even the 360 controller using usb adapter.

Hmm... USB gender bender is easy. Can anyone confirm the PC builds support these... That would be super sweet... I have one here I will plug it in the MAC later and see what happens.... Thanks for the Idea.

Anyone know what the event server on XBMC does. I know it has something to do with remotes but no luck yet.

Still playing with the golden build.

So far no slideshow issues. Music DB still will not scan even with artist and album fetching off. It fails on the compressng database step. Some strangeness playing ISO's but need to do more testing.

I will say I have been using PlayOn and I can't explain why but it seems to be working better and being more stable. Nothing has changed on the xboxes, PS/3 or the PC thats running it but it seems to be more reliable. Its a great concept and think it will be popular once the bugs get out. Can't wait for Netflix to launch HD support for a platform other than 360.

EDIT: damn, the USB adapter cable I have is for USB stick to Xbox and is the wrong gender on both ends. Anyone know where I can get once with a Male PC USB and a Female XBOX USB connector.

Sean

topperdude

11-21-08, 04:07 PM

Hmm... USB gender bender is easy. Can anyone confirm the PC builds support these... That would be super sweet... I have one here I will plug it in the MAC later and see what happens.... Thanks for the Idea.

Anyone know what the event server on XBMC does. I know it has something to do with remotes but no luck yet.

Still playing with the golden build.

So far no slideshow issues. Music DB still will not scan even with artist and album fetching off. It fails on the compressng database step. Some strangeness playing ISO's but need to do more testing.

I will say I have been using PlayOn and I can't explain why but it seems to be working better and being more stable. Nothing has changed on the xboxes, PS/3 or the PC thats running it but it seems to be more reliable. Its a great concept and think it will be popular once the bugs get out. Can't wait for Netflix to launch HD support for a platform other than 360.

EDIT: damn, the USB adapter cable I have is for USB stick to Xbox and is the wrong gender on both ends. Anyone know where I can get once with a Male PC USB and a Female XBOX USB connector.

Sean

Kinda like this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130269826834)? Noticed something like this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390010739966) in a local Walmart recently as well so maybe check there too?

Edit: Noticed there are other sellers that might be slightly cheaper too. For example... (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120337385519)
-Topper

sean_w_smith

11-21-08, 04:59 PM

Kinda like this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130269826834)? Noticed something like this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=390010739966) in a local Walmart recently as well so maybe check there too?

Edit: Noticed there are other sellers that might be slightly cheaper too. For example... (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120337385519)
-Topper

Thanks Topper that appears to be exactly what I need....

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-21-08, 05:24 PM

Thanks Topper that appears to be exactly what I need....

Sean

Unfortunately it looks like you need some driver code that is windows only. Support seems to be on the roadmap. I will buy one an try it out....

Sean

sean_w_smith

11-23-08, 01:44 PM

darklordjames

11-23-08, 01:48 PM

I had the same issue a couple weeks ago soft-modding a PS2 for someone. A 160GB IDE drive ran me $60 at a local computer shop. If it was SATA, that same $60 would have gotten me a 250-320GB drive instead.

Slack

11-24-08, 09:34 AM

BTW: Finished 4 750G Softmods this weekend for xmas gifts....

Sean

Do you include any content? I ask cause the softmod is more or less striaght forward and not so time consuming, but getting the content on there takes a while. (I was using filemanager to pull straight from a NAS)

topperdude

11-24-08, 10:43 AM

Unfortunately it looks like you need some driver code that is windows only. Support seems to be on the roadmap. I will buy one an try it out....

Sean
For non-windows, I'm assuming you were referring to Mac support (based on your previous posts). Maybe this one (http://xhd.sourceforge.net/)? If linux, then this one (http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/controller-linux.php) work for you?

BTW, anyone know if the EDL/Scenemarker support (http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=EDL_(commercial_skipping)_and_SceneMarker_support) in XBMC is broken?

I record some shows in HD using the QAM tuner on my PC. I then transcode it to 720x480 and run comskip on it to generate the various EDL/Scenemarker files in Comskip, EDL and Videoredo formats to mark commercials. If I open the Videoredo project file in videoredo, the commercials are marked off pretty accurately.

Unfortunately, when I change the keymap.xml as described in the XBMC wiki page linked above, XBMC does not show the commercial breaks as expected. FWIW, I added the NextScene/PreviousScene lines to the Full Screen Video section (dont remember the exact tag) of the keymap.xml file. Should I be adding it elsewhere?

These (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=34437) two recent posts (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27798) on xbmc forums seems to indicate that XBMC should recognise the various commercial break files so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong (e.g. not changing the keymap.xml correctly) or if the EDL support is broken?

Thoughts,
-Topper

arnesr

11-24-08, 04:47 PM

BTW: Finished 4 750G Softmods this weekend for xmas gifts....

one thing to note: IDE Drives are getting expensive. I paid $150 delivered for a IDE 750G Drive. I can get a SATA 1.5T drive for the same price. Almost 100% premium to get em. Even newegg.com is out of stock. Tiger direct had em....

I imagine this situation will continue to diminish. Anyone on the fence might want to stock up...

Sean

I could be wrong, but I believe I read a while back that Seagate stopped prodction of IDE drives to focus on SATA. I'm guessing there aren't a ton of the 750GB still in the retail pipeline, hence the price premium.

sean_w_smith

11-24-08, 09:23 PM

Do you include any content? I ask cause the softmod is more or less striaght forward and not so time consuming, but getting the content on there takes a while. (I was using filemanager to pull straight from a NAS)

yes putting content on there takes a while.... I use filezilla....* filemanager will copy 10-20G and then die. I have only ever suceeded on super big transfers with filezilla. flashXP, smart and filemanager all seem to leak resources and eventually crash.

Sean

srauly

11-24-08, 09:33 PM

topperdude, do you have an automated method for transcoding your HDTV content, or do you do that manually?

srauly

11-24-08, 11:26 PM

I'd certainly appreciate some help with my issues. An update: the Cars ISO is not corrupt. I know this now because I reconnected my external 1TB drive to my PC via firewire, and was able to fire up XBMC (for Windows) and play through the previously problematic scenes no problem.

As part of my latest experiment, I disconnected my Belkin N+ wireless router (since I was now connecting my 1TB drive to my PC, the advantage of the Belkin N+ router's USB connector was now useless to me) and reconnected my Netgear 802.11g router. After confirming that my PC w/locally connected (via firewire) could play back my ISO DVD rips fine, I then tried playing them back through my XBox. The XBox was/is connected via hardwired ethernet to the router. Sadly, it plays back everything with frequent stuttering.

This is ridiculous. I know that I had this all working a while back with my older D-Link 802.11g router (whose power supply got fried) and I don't see a ton of posts here or on XBMC.org with my problems, so it seems like most people can get this working no problem, yet I've got two (two *newer*, I might add) wireless routers and I can't seem to get it working without stuttering using either of them with hard-wired ethernet connections!!!

PLEASE HELP!!! :)

Ja Phule

11-25-08, 03:13 AM

srauly

11-25-08, 08:48 AM

Ja, it doesn't seem like it's the XBox's HD. Here's a summary of my experiment results:

1) 1TB drive connected via USB to Belkin N+ wireless router. XBox and PC connected to router via ethernet. Everything plays back fine except for Cars (stuttering issues). I believe that the Cars issues occur even on the PC.

2) Same as above, but XBox connected via Linksys 200mbps powerline adaptor (Belkin utility reports strong connection - over 160mbps). XBox playback gives me significant stuttering on all ISO DVD rips.

3) 1TB drive connected via firewire to PC. XBox and PC connected to router via ethernet. PC playback is fine (including Cars), but XBox has significant stuttering issues on all ISO DVD rips.

So in short, no matter how I connect things up, I can't seem to get both the PC and XBox to play back all files flawlessly. The best (of the worst) methods seems to be #1, which seems to allow for acceptable playback on almost everything (except for Cars) on both my PC and XBox.

But I know this all *should* work much better. A while back I was using option #3 successfully (but with an older D-Link router whose power supply recently got fried). I'm not playing high-def content, and everything is connected via ethernet. I really would like to use option #2, and I know that others are having success with powerline adaptors, so that shouldn't be unreasonable either.

srauly

11-25-08, 09:15 AM

Yes, success!!!

OK, I seemed to recall reading somewhere that the XBox might have a problem with ethernet autonegotiation settings. Now I believe that this is something that would need to be tweaked on the PC side, as there's no way to change that on the XBox itself. So I pulled up my network settings for my PC and saw that it was actually currently hard-set to 100Mbps full duplex. But just for fun I tried changing it *to* use autonegotiation. Well, now I can play back everything on my XBox (including Cars) without any problems at all. I tried flipping it back again afterwards just to confirm that I wasn't going crazy and, sure enough, it started stuttering again. Then switched it back to autonegotiate and it was playing back fine again.

Even better, I hooked up my Linksys 200mbps powerline adaptor and now I can even stream stutter-free with that (yes, even Cars)! What I guess I *can't* do is have the 1TB drive connected directly to the Belkin N+ router, as that seems to be behaving the same way as my PC in 100mbps full duplex mode behaves. Perhaps there will be a firmware update for the Belkin N+ that will fix this (and/or allow more tweakability - right now there isn't a lot you can tweak). But unless someone has any other ideas, I'll likely just return the Belkin N+ and have to live with streaming from my PC.

Later today I'll have to see how far away I can successfully use the Linksys powerline adaptor (my current test was just one room over which isn't where I'd need it).

srauly

11-25-08, 09:36 AM

topperdude

11-25-08, 12:52 PM

topperdude, do you have an automated method for transcoding your HDTV content, or do you do that manually?

I use GBPVR to record the HDTV shows. Not sure if you are familiar with GBPVR, but it has built-in options to run certain third party software (ffmpeg for transcoding and comskip for detecting and marking commercials). GBPVR can be configured to start the third party software at the same time as the recording or after the show has been recorded.

The built-in transcoding options (to convert to xvid,divx, etc) did not work for me as these not only downscaled the video but also converted the audio to 2-channel. I added my own transcoding options so it downscaled the video to DVD resolution and maintained the original audio (2 channel or 5.1 channel) and then configured GBPVR to use this "custom" routine when it calls ffmpeg for transcoding. The Xbox reads the output file just fine - in fact, as a test, over the weekend I was also able to start playing an NFL game in HD using GBPVR which in turn auto-transcoded it in real time and fed the output file to XBMC so I could watch the game with 5.1 sound on non-HD TV - looks so much better than analog cable even tho its not HD :D

For non-windows, I'm assuming you were referring to Mac support (based on your previous posts). Maybe this one (http://xhd.sourceforge.net/)? If linux, then this one (http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/controller-linux.php) work for you?

BTW, anyone know if the EDL/Scenemarker support (http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=EDL_(commercial_skipping)_and_SceneMarker_support) in XBMC is broken?

I record some shows in HD using the QAM tuner on my PC. I then transcode it to 720x480 and run comskip on it to generate the various EDL/Scenemarker files in Comskip, EDL and Videoredo formats to mark commercials. If I open the Videoredo project file in videoredo, the commercials are marked off pretty accurately.

Unfortunately, when I change the keymap.xml as described in the XBMC wiki page linked above, XBMC does not show the commercial breaks as expected. FWIW, I added the NextScene/PreviousScene lines to the Full Screen Video section (dont remember the exact tag) of the keymap.xml file. Should I be adding it elsewhere?

These (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=34437) two recent posts (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27798) on xbmc forums seems to indicate that XBMC should recognise the various commercial break files so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong (e.g. not changing the keymap.xml correctly) or if the EDL support is broken?

Thoughts,
-Topper

So an update on this - I played around a bit in Settings and found an option under Video -> Player for using files with information re. commercials. This option is disabled by default. After enabling this, I rebooted and pointed XBMC to couple shows that had the corresponding commercial skip files already generated. Noticed XBMC automatically skipped the ~1-2 minutes of commercials at the beginning but when I fast forwarded to the next commercials section and clicked the "Next Chapter" button (re-programmed in keymap.xml to "skip commercials" as described in the wiki linked above), it did not do anything. Close, but no cigar, I guess ;). Thoughts?

-Topper

Ja Phule

11-26-08, 01:01 AM

Well, just when you think you've solved one problem...

I tried playing back Assault on Precinct 13 again. This was the file where I think I may have ripped the DTS track and which was giving me files with the June build that Sean recommended. Well, it turns out that it doesn't play right with the Atlantis build after all. Unlike the June build (which sounded like static or a raw DTS bitstream playing back on top of audio), with Atlantis it plays back the music and sound effects fine, but all of the dialog is silent. I switched back to the February build, and it plays back perfectly fine with that build.

DTS to 2 channel analog is still a problem with XBMC. If you are bitstreaming the audio to your audio receiver for 5.1 audio then it shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, this is a problem for me in my bedroom where I only use the tv speakers, but it is fine in my living room.

srauly

11-26-08, 07:01 AM

DTS to 2 channel analog is still a problem with XBMC. If you are bitstreaming the audio to your audio receiver for 5.1 audio then it shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, this is a problem for me in my bedroom where I only use the tv speakers, but it is fine in my living room.So do you just not watch those movies in the bedroom, or are you using an older build? If the latter, which build do you recommend?

Ja Phule

11-26-08, 09:58 PM

So do you just not watch those movies in the bedroom, or are you using an older build? If the latter, which build do you recommend?

Still using the latest build. I test the DTS with each release, they're working on it at least it seems.... I've been watching tv shows lately so DTS hasn't been too much of an issue but it is something I wished they'd fix soon.

srauly

11-27-08, 07:30 AM

Still using the latest build. I test the DTS with each release, they're working on it at least it seems.... I've been watching tv shows lately so DTS hasn't been too much of an issue but it is something I wished they'd fix soon.FWIW, I just posted about this issue in the XBMC forums yesterday. Someone else verified the issue and logged it as an issue, so hopefully it will get fixed soon.

sean_w_smith

11-28-08, 09:03 AM

Sorry to hear about all the stuttering issues. Sorry I could not help been busy getting in some early snowboarding the last few days..... Need to get back to playing with the MacMini.

Sean

srauly

11-28-08, 09:11 AM

dan4081

11-28-08, 03:50 PM

FYI, according to their online post-Thanksgiving sale ad, Gamestop/EBGames has the used XBox on sale for $39. The online store is showing it as $49. They also have "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sale on used games and accessories.

Great deal.
Another deal of interest TigerDirect has the 1.5gb samsung drives for 119 plus 1.99 shipping.

ChrisFB

11-30-08, 10:36 PM

Great deal.
Another deal of interest TigerDirect has the 1.5gb samsung drives for 119 plus 1.99 shipping.

Great deal but there have been some major issues with these drives (I think it's Seagate rather than Samsung too). It's all over the internet - just read the reviews and look at the distribution on Newegg. I figure there's a reason they are blowing them out for dirt cheap when it's the highest capacity drive and king of the market. Unusual quality issues for Seagate but I passed on this deal and went with 1TB drives (Hitachi $79 after rebate from Tiger but expiring today).

It was Seagate on the 1.5s: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4138742&CatId=2459

sean_w_smith

12-01-08, 01:26 PM

Great deal but there have been some major issues with these drives (I think it's Seagate rather than Samsung too). It's all over the internet - just read the reviews and look at the distribution on Newegg. I figure there's a reason they are blowing them out for dirt cheap when it's the highest capacity drive and king of the market. Unusual quality issues for Seagate but I passed on this deal and went with 1TB drives (Hitachi $79 after rebate from Tiger but expiring today).

It was Seagate on the 1.5s: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4138742&CatId=2459

Yes,

They had some early reliability issues and a issue with the firmware causing stuttering (which I have been seeing) and some controller time outs (which I have not been seeing). Seagate acknowledged the issue and released a firmware update to address these problems last week. I ordered 4 more from newegg at $119 delivered on black friday. These are going into my readyNAS to upgrade the 4x250G I have in there now. I will let you folks know how the firmware upgrade goes and if it solves my problems....

based on my newfound love of XBMC on the mac mini I ordered an appleTV to play with the other day too. it should be exciting.. Its pretty cool that the XBMC on the mac mini plays 1080P video very well. I dont have much to feed it as all my HD content is via BD on my PS3's and via my Dtv hr-20's each of which has its own 1TB esata drive plugged in.

Sean

dan4081

12-01-08, 02:19 PM

Yes,

They had some early reliability issues and a issue with the firmware causing stuttering (which I have been seeing) and some controller time outs (which I have not been seeing). Seagate acknowledged the issue and released a firmware update to address these problems last week. I ordered 4 more from newegg at $119 delivered on black friday. These are going into my readyNAS to upgrade the 4x250G I have in there now. I will let you folks know how the firmware upgrade goes and if it solves my problems....

based on my newfound love of XBMC on the mac mini I ordered an appleTV to play with the other day too. it should be exciting.. Its pretty cool that the XBMC on the mac mini plays 1080P video very well. I dont have much to feed it as all my HD content is via BD on my PS3's and via my Dtv hr-20's each of which has its own 1TB esata drive plugged in.

Sean

Does xbmc on the mac mini work as well as xbmc on the xbox?
Any show-stopper issues found yet?

sean_w_smith

12-01-08, 02:30 PM

Does xbmc on the mac mini work as well as xbmc on the xbox?
Any show-stopper issues found yet?

Atlantis works better on the MAC mini than it does on the xbox. less crashes and the memory leak issues are not important as my MAC mini has 4G of ram versus 64M. Everything is very stable on the MAC.

I'll post later this week on how it works with the ATV.

Sean

bswiz

12-01-08, 07:24 PM

Atlantis works better on the MAC mini than it does on the xbox. less crashes and the memory leak issues are not important as my MAC mini has 4G of ram versus 64M. Everything is very stable on the MAC.

I'll post later this week on how it works with the ATV.

Sean

What is the going price for an XBMC-capable Mac Mini? It would be cool but I'm afraid I'm still too cheap for anything but a $50 Xbox!

srauly

12-01-08, 08:12 PM

I picked up two new (used) XBox's at GameStop today for $40/each. Unfortunately the "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" deal on games and accessories was apparently no longer active today. Still, I picked up two remote controls (for the IR sensor) at $10/each, an HD A/V connector pack for $5, and a couple other extras.

bswiz, I believe a Mac Mini will set you back over $500. You may be able to find a used older model for under $500, but it will probably still be over $400. The base AppleTV can be had for about $200 (4x more than an XBox), but lacks a DVD drive, so unless you plan on ripping every movie you rent, you'll need an extra DVD player.

Sean, jumping back to the discussion about the issue with the DTS downmixing, it appears that the June 1, 2008 build works fine. So the build you've stated here as being your preferred older build, is actually the build where DTS downmixing was broken (and has yet to be fixed). Kudos to the guy/girl posting as "Streamer" on the XBMC forums for doing the extra effort to determine the newest build where this still worked. As a result, the June 1 build is now the build I'm using on my XBox.

srauly

12-01-08, 08:19 PM

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 12:41 AM

What is the going price for an XBMC-capable Mac Mini? It would be cool but I'm afraid I'm still too cheap for anything but a $50 Xbox!

$600 New or $500 refrub from apple.

There is no better deal out there than $40 xboxes from gamestop. Even with the $10 remote and the $20 psyclone cable + tax you are in for less than $80 and as you point out it does have a DVD drive which although not a deal breaker is certainly handy. Mine still get used when guests stop by etc....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 12:42 AM

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 12:44 AM

Sean, I'd be interested to hear how "snappy" the XBMC interface itself seems on the XBox vs a Mac Mini vs the AppleTV. I think I've read on the XBMC forums that the AppleTV feels a bit sluggish compared to the XBox. OTOH, the AppleTV is apparently capable of decoding higher bitrate HD material as compared to the XBox. For those that may be unaware, the other big advantage (to me, anyway) of the AppleTV over the XBox is its HDMI output. But, the XBox is cheap, has a DVD drive, and can play XBox games.

response on the mac mini is every bit as snappy as the original xbox. To me using any of the IR remotes removes some of this which is why I prefer the logitech wireless controller. Using mouse and keyboard on the MAC is also very fast.

I'll let you know what I think of the apple TV once I get it running later this week.....

BTW: just got back from Utah and my USB/Xbox gender bender cable has arrived. now to get the wireless controller working on the mac mini.

Sean

darklordjames

12-02-08, 10:30 AM

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 11:22 AM

Has anyone looked into performance of XBMC on the Asus Eee Box? I am definitely getting to the point that I need to replace my Xbox, but I will not put up with any non-XBMC solution. :)

Also Sean, have you looked into how disaster recovery works of the AppleTV? Is it like the iPod where if you screw up putting RockBox on it then you just restore it through iTunes to put it back to normal? Or is it more of a "dead box send to Apple now" thing?

Oh, and on the Mac Mini, is XBMC a total OS replacement, or is it just a program running within OSX? Additionally, can you auto-boot into XBMC when powering on the machine?

Dont understand the process of disaster recovery for the ATV yet. will know more in a week once I play with it.

XBMC is just an app under OSX. yes it can auto start full screen. also if you hook up a wireless keyboard/mouse you can switch over to another virtual desktop and easily run firefox or any oher application you wish. XBMC + HTPC all in one.

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 05:50 PM

All,

Question for the group. On the most recent softmods I did I upgraded all 4 to 750G drives. space split between F & G.

Usually when I swap HD's the FTP speeds and file copy speeds from apps like DVD2XBOX improve from stock.

Somehow with these new ones I did they all are slower than the stock HD. This should not be. These drives are much faster than the stock drive....

Any ideas as to why? jumper setting? need a better cable? some incompatibility between these Seagate 750's and my Xbox. They lock correctly and boot XBMC and everything works. Its just too slow for some reason....

Any help would be appreciated....

Sean

darklordjames

12-02-08, 05:59 PM

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 06:10 PM

I have never found the drive to be the limiting factor for speed, whether stock or not. I have always found the 100mbps ethernet connection to be my limiter. Did something change related to your network or FTP software? Does your personal Xbox still copy at a faster speed with the same network/FTP settings?

I know you've been doing this forever and I'm pointing out the obvious, but sometimes it's helpful to be reminded of the obvious when you have an obscure idea stuck in your head that has to be causing the problem. :)

Yes my other xboxes are still running fast from the same exact computer...

ignoring the PC and Network entirely for a second. DVD2XBOX speeds are less than stock and HD upgrades always yield about 2x speed improvement ripping games... samething with installing the softmod. The throughput #'s on the softmod install actually went down....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 06:17 PM

I am getting about 1 megabyte/second on writes.... Peaking at 2 MB/s This is using XBMC at the FTP Server.

Switched to Xbox2HD FTP server and its a little faster.

tried a filemanager copy in XBMC and got 14MB/s copying to and from F to G. Which is really the same disk. That seems fast enough

EDIT: more info. I can saturate the FastE on reads but writes are awful.....

EDIT: more info..... HD to HD copy on the known good xbox is 1/2 the speed of the new one so it looks like the new Xbox HD is working properly.

did some testing on the good xbox and its read performance is great but write performance is also poor. I am going to try another PC on my network and see if I can get different results...

thanks for the feedback DarkLord....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-02-08, 07:09 PM

BTW: Another FYI for those out there....

I bought a game called Avatar for the 5 year old and it ripped fine to the HD with DVD2XBOX but it would not FTP over to the PC.

finally figured out that when dvd2xbox ripped it, it put a trailing whitespace in the directory name.

using XBMC file manager I renamed the dir to get it to remove the trailing white space and know I can FTP the game to my PC and burn my backup.

so if you have issues like this consider there may be invisbile characters in the DIR name....

Sean

darklordjames

12-02-08, 07:56 PM

"I am getting about 1 megabyte/second on writes.... Peaking at 2 MB/s"

That is pretty terrible! Just using Windows Explorer or the FTP client built into C-XBOX and using XBMC as the server I tend to get 6-9MB/s on writes to the Xbox for big files, though that does drop drasticly to maybe 2MB/s when dealing with lots of tiny files. DVD2Xbox for me always seems to be DVD drive limited at about 6MB/s if memory serves.

It is sounding like stuff is working properly for the most part. I seem to recall the FTP server in UnleashX being faster than XBMC's, or at least giving me less problems when I did need to FTP stuff around.

Ja Phule

12-03-08, 02:40 AM

ChrisFB

12-03-08, 03:37 AM

$600 New or $500 refrub from apple.

There is no better deal out there than $40 xboxes from gamestop. Even with the $10 remote and the $20 psyclone cable + tax you are in for less than $80 and as you point out it does have a DVD drive which although not a deal breaker is certainly handy. Mine still get used when guests stop by etc....

Sean

This is what made me stay with a modded Xbox. I want full 1080p flawless MKV and that was still close to $800-1K all in. I couldn't justify that for HD video only as the Xbox does everything else perfectly for only $40. Plus my situation was one kid and another on the way in what appears to be an ugly economy so I was in no hurry to burn cash at the time (that hasn't changed).

sean_w_smith

12-03-08, 11:12 AM

With the use of bigger drives, did you have to change the cluster size for your partitions? Could that be what makes the drives slower?

yes I had to use 32K clusters but that does not seem to be the issue.

filezilla seems to be a big part of the issue. Trying SCP4 this morning and I am getting 6MB/s just by changing FTP clients. I have been enjoying filezilla since it was the only client that would let me transfer 100,000+ files at a time and never fail. I guess I need to investigate other opportunities. FlashFXP and SmartFTP all seem to leak resources and crash an hour or two in to a massive transfer.

Any other recommendations on FTP clients...

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-03-08, 11:17 AM

This is what made me stay with a modded Xbox. I want full 1080p flawless MKV and that was still close to $800-1K all in. I couldn't justify that for HD video only as the Xbox does everything else perfectly for only $40. Plus my situation was one kid and another on the way in what appears to be an ugly economy so I was in no hurry to burn cash at the time (that hasn't changed).

I hear you. I am lucky to be in a relationship where my GF is a techy also so I get away with buying and playing with lots of toys and happen to be able to afford it. I dont like wasting money either which is why I am keen to play with the ATV and see how that works at XBMC host platform.

looks like all the stuff I got on black friday should show up today so that will make for an interesting weekend.

Cheers,
Sean

Cocophone

12-03-08, 01:59 PM

You are one LUCKY man.

ChrisFB

12-03-08, 04:45 PM

I hear you. I am lucky to be in a relationship where my GF is a techy also so I get away with buying and playing with lots of toys and happen to be able to afford it. I dont like wasting money either which is why I am keen to play with the ATV and see how that works at XBMC host platform.

looks like all the stuff I got on black friday should show up today so that will make for an interesting weekend.

Cheers,
Sean

Hey, I just saw your earlier post that said you've gotten good 1080p performance out of Apple TV. Please keep us updated, specifically 1080p MKV. I know I'm not the only one that is interested.

Have fun with your new setup. I'm envious of your WAF synergy! ;)

porkozone

12-03-08, 06:01 PM

There is no better deal out there than $40 xboxes from gamestop. Even with the $10 remote and the $20 psyclone cable + tax you are in for less than $80 and as you point out it does have a DVD drive which although not a deal breaker is certainly handy. Sean

Amen to that. I recently went round and round thinking about an AppleTV or a Mac Mini vs sticking with my xbox, which I had not been utilizing much up until recently.

After a lot of deliberating (and finally setting XBMC as the dashboard as well as getting the IR dongle to allow me to use it with my Harmony Remote), I realized the xbox still is a great solution, and cheap to boot. Instead of spending $250-$600 on one device, for around $350-$400 I could get:

1) An eyeTV Hybrid for my mac that allows me to save stuff off of my DVR as well as old VHS tapes, in addition to my existing movie and tv show library.

2) An Airport Extreme Base Station in order to connect a USB hard drive to allow my xbox and computers to all my media library, without the need to have my laptop up and running (as I was doing previously, which was not compatible with my wife's idea of ease of use (or mine for that matter)).

3) A larger USB Drive to connect to the AEBS as an Airport Disk.

4) A second Xbox for for the front room as well, so my wife can play the kids shows in either of the two rooms from the same library of files

5) The XIR IR mod to allow them to be turned on with my Remote.

It's been a great solution so far, and the things I bought have other uses as well...which keeps me from feeling like I'm putting all my eggs (and $$$) in one basket, and would allow me to easily wait and upgrade later to a mini or similar device when they really become a better solution.

I have a couple of questions, though:

Does anyone know if the Gamestop $40 deal has a known time limit on it? I've been planing to get a second xbox since I saw them for $50 a couple weeks ago at gamestop. I'll probably get one by this weekend, hoping they won't go back up before then...

Also, does using Toslink help at all with playback issues? I would assume using the digital audio offloads the audio processing away from the xbox. In normal situations, does this help performance at all? I currently use the microsoft component cables, but might consider the high-def av pack if toslink would be a cheap way to improve performance, since my TV has a toslink in port.

srauly

12-03-08, 06:20 PM

porkozone:

1) What sort of performance issues are you trying to improve?

2) How easy was the XIR mod?

3) So the Airport Extreme Base Station is working well for you? I bought a Belkin N+ router w/USB connection recently, but had DVD ISO stuttering issues. Have you streamed this type of movie without issues?

4) Can you connect multiple USB hard drives to the AEBS by way of a powered USB hub?

Anyone:

4) Has anyone compared the Psyclone component w/digital audio cable to the Microsoft-branded or Monster brand cables? I didn't even know the Psyclone cable existed until I just saw it mentioned here.

srauly

12-03-08, 06:35 PM

Oh, I'm reading online that the Airport Extreme Base Station doesn't support NTFS. The comments I'm finding are old, so perhaps they've since "fixed" that? If not, that would rule that out for me. Many of my DVD ISO rips are over 4GB, so I need NTFS support.

bswiz

12-03-08, 06:39 PM

A few months back when I got my Xbox and did the mod, I also installed a 320GB hard drive. As far as I can tell, everything went fine with the mod and drive install. However, with the bigger hard drive, several games will not play. These are original games that work fine with the (modded) original Xbox hard drive. I don't really know what could cause this, so I am planning to reformat the 320GB and try again. Are these the correct steps & tools to use?

1) Backup any settings from the 320GB (mostly XBMC user settings here)
2) Unlock the 320 (Frosty's recovery disc? Some other tool?)
3) Reformat 320 in my PC
4) Redo 320 preparation with the original eeprom, etc

I think I still have the ISO I used to prepare the 320 last time around but I guess I should play it safe and create a new one?

Thanks in advance!

sean_w_smith

12-03-08, 11:26 PM

Hey, I just saw your earlier post that said you've gotten good 1080p performance out of Apple TV. Please keep us updated, specifically 1080p MKV. I know I'm not the only one that is interested.

Have fun with your new setup. I'm envious of your WAF synergy! ;)

no I ordered an ATV to play with. I got 1080P video working with XBMC on a Core2Duo 1.83Ghz Mac Mini. XBMC now supports multiple cores for decompression etc.

Mac mini is limited to 720P for the most part although if you set the parameters the right way you can get soe 1080i video to play.

It will upsale 720P to 1080P though. Lots more testing to do...

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-03-08, 11:28 PM

sean_w_smith

12-03-08, 11:32 PM

on the question about toslink. you would think that just passing through the DD or DTS should require less mips than decoding it. That said I do have a few SD TV's with xbox's hooked up to analog and dont have any stuttering issues even on my wifi setups. I have been real lucky in that regard.

on the XIR mod. its not too hard. maybe an hour or less to the do the first one and less after that.

screw the programmable pro one its a PITA. Get the regular one.... it works more reliably with the single keystroke on/off versus the 3 keystroke version where you need to create a macro. its cheaper too if I remember.....

Sean

ChrisFB

12-04-08, 12:05 AM

If you've even openned up and Xbox before, I'd say the Xir is under 30 minutes first time. Pretty much, drill a hole, glue the eye, stick a few wires into the harness, push the board into a spot where it won't get in the way and put it back together. This is by far the easiest and most straightforward hardware mod I ever did. Most of the time is spent taking the Xbox apart and putting it together or making sure you get the right colored wires in the right holes. Very simple.

And I strongly second Sean's recommendation on the Xir Easy Kit. No reason to do anything else.

ChrisFB

12-04-08, 12:07 AM

no I ordered an ATV to play with. I got 1080P video working with XBMC on a Core2Duo 1.83Ghz Mac Mini. XBMC now supports multiple cores for decompression etc.

Question - does this include quad cores or only dual core processors? This is great news.

dan4081

12-04-08, 09:26 AM

---snipped----
nd $$$) in one basket, and would allow me to easily wait and upgrade later to a mini or similar device when they really become a better solution.

I have a couple of questions, though:

Does anyone know if the Gamestop $40 deal has a known time limit on it? I've been planing to get a second xbox since I saw them for $50 a couple weeks ago at gamestop. I'll probably get one by this weekend, hoping they won't go back up before then...

Also, does using Toslink help at all with playback issues? I would assume using the digital audio offloads the audio processing away from the xbox. In normal situations, does this help performance at all? I currently use the microsoft component cables, but might consider the high-def av pack if toslink would be a cheap way to improve performance, since my TV has a toslink in port.

The $40 dollar deal ends on Sunday December 7th.

sean_w_smith

12-04-08, 10:13 AM

Question - does this include quad cores or only dual core processors? This is great news.

I beleive so. THe release notes says multiple cores...

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-04-08, 10:19 AM

BTW: I have figured out some of the reasoning behind plex. One thing of interest plex has done so far is clean up the audio subsystem and get rid of unecessary internl format conversions and bolt it in tightly to Apple Audio APIS. The end result. Plex on Mac mini can bit perfectly play 24bit/192Khz recordings....

I need to try that out.... I have a few recordings like that lying around....

I have been testing a lot of video but where does one get 1080P MKV samples... PM me if you would....

Sean

topperdude

12-04-08, 10:27 AM

4) Has anyone compared the Psyclone component w/digital audio cable to the Microsoft-branded or Monster brand cables? I didn't even know the Psyclone cable existed until I just saw it mentioned here.

I have both the psyclone and the (used from Gamestop) $4.99 original Microsoft branded HDTV cable kits and did not notice any difference in quality when hooked up to my 32" HDTV. Dont know about the Monster cables.

HTH,
-Topper

porkozone

12-04-08, 11:12 AM

1) What sort of performance issues are you trying to improve?

I'm not actually having issues at the moment per se, but just wondering if it would help. In order to future-proof my encoded files, I've been using the 640x480 h.264 iPod encoding settings of eyeTV and VisualHub with the thinking if I ever got an AppleTV or some sort of iPod for video playback, I wouldn't have to re-encode everything. I know the xbox has some trouble playing back h.264 at full 720x480 480i, so I've kept it smaller than that to be safe. So far it seems like about once per episode, I'll have one hiccup of sorts where the image will freeze/skip while the audio plays on, and then it catches back up. I don't know if that has to do with the encoding, or whether it has something to do with the xbmc cache, or even the AirDisk connection (or all of the above). I know my TV has a Toslink in, and I have a toslink cable already, so I am thinking about getting the Psyclone cable (now that I know it exists) - but only if it would really make any difference - otherwise I'll just use the analong audio on the xbox component cables I already have. It would just be going into the TV's speakers, so using Toslink wouldn't be for sound quality, just for potentially helping the XBox's meager specs along in any way I can.

2) How easy was the XIR mod?
Haven't received it in the mail yet, but the other posts above seem promising.

3) So the Airport Extreme Base Station is working well for you? I bought a Belkin N+ router w/USB connection recently, but had DVD ISO stuttering issues. Have you streamed this type of movie without issues?

4) Can you connect multiple USB hard drives to the AEBS by way of a powered USB hub?

So far it's working well, although I've honestly just got this all set up in the last couple of weeks. I have a Maxtor USB drive attached now, but just today got a larger WD My Book to replace it. The Maxtor does go into "sleep" mode even while attached to the AEBS (despite things I've read thay Airdisks do not sleep), which is actually okay with me...I'm okay with the delay waiting for it to spin up every now and then as opposed to having it spin all day and night even though I actually don't use it all that often.

I have had one issue where every now and then XBMC seems to lose the connection with it, and I can't get it back without apparently rebooting the Base station. That's kinda frustrating, considering my goal is to have something that my wife doesn't need to call me in the middle of the day asking why it doesn't work...but, so far it hasn't done that in "normal" use. It's usually happened while I was browsing through the video directories and tweaking the library settings, thumbnails, fanart, etc. (which I doubt actually uses the drive other than the initial directory listing), without actually playing anything on the drive. I'll be curious to see how the WD My Disk will perform as opposed to the Maxtor.

I have the XBox plugged in via ethernet to the base station, so I'm not wirelessly streaming, and I haven't tried playing DVD ISOs - I've been ripping DVDs to smaller mp4 files to conserve space.

Yes, you can supposedly hook up multiple drives via a powered hub, although I haven't done it yet myself.

Anyone:

4) Has anyone compared the Psyclone component w/digital audio cable to the Microsoft-branded or Monster brand cables? I didn't even know the Psyclone cable existed until I just saw it mentioned here.
I'm curious about this too...I didn't know the Psyclone existed until now either. I think I read a year or so ago when I bought my component cables that the M$ cables are better than the Monster ones...but I could be wrong on that, it's been a while.

bswiz

12-04-08, 02:33 PM

you should not need a new ISO. dunno why the larger HD would effect games playing. you playing them off the HD or from DVD.

Sean

I've tried the original DVD disc, as well as playing from the HD. I can create the ISO image fine, but when I try to play the game (original or rip), they hang usually on the game intro screens. Some games still work fine, but many don't.

Weird.

darklordjames

12-04-08, 02:58 PM

"they hang usually on the game intro screens"

Sounds like the game is loading, but then hangs when it goes to cache stuff to the HDD. Are your X Y Z partitions set up properly?

bswiz

12-04-08, 03:15 PM

"they hang usually on the game intro screens"

Sounds like the game is loading, but then hangs when it goes to cache stuff to the HDD. Are your X Y Z partitions set up properly?

Not sure! I am still pretty green on the Xbox mod stuff. As far as I could tell I did everything correctly. I pretty much followed these directions:

http://www.techfreaks.org/articles/modxbox2.shtml

Is there a way to verify those partitions are set up correctly?

dan4081

12-04-08, 04:01 PM

---snipped----
DVD ISOs - I've been ripping DVDs to smaller mp4 files to conserve space.

Yes, you can supposedly hook up multiple drives via a powered hub, although I haven't done it yet myself.

I'm curious about this too...I didn't know the Psyclone existed until now either. I think I read a year or so ago when I bought my component cables that the M$ cables are better than the Monster ones...but I could be wrong on that, it's been a while.

I have tried both the Psyclone and the original Microsoft cable and havent seen any difference between the 2 on my 65" Mitsubishi or my 102" projection (720 Mitsubishi)

sean_w_smith

12-04-08, 06:40 PM

I have tried both the Psyclone and the original Microsoft cable and havent seen any difference between the 2 on my 65" Mitsubishi or my 102" projection (720 Mitsubishi)

The psyclone cable seems to be a very equivalent replacement for the MS and Monster ones. There are other kinds out there but many including myself had lots of bad experiences with them.

Psyclone is the most cost effective choice unless you were lucky enough to stumble across the original MS dongle for $5 at gamestop last week.

Sean

BIG ED

12-04-08, 11:00 PM

Ja Phule

12-04-08, 11:02 PM

Ja Phule

12-04-08, 11:21 PM

Just the audio media basics:
What about fan noise?
What format is music saved too the HD?
How is the sound quality (output) for music.
Thanks.

And I hope someday too move up too the video level your all at as well! :o
Enjoy. :D

EDitEDbyED:
Maybe I should spend more $$$
& go too:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14821901
or does anyone think the original X will do as well?
Thanks too all!

Back to the full on media server stuff!

Fan noise will vary depending on what model of the xbox you have. You can control the fan speed within XBMC also. There are also fan mods that many people do. I have no issues with the fan, but I'm not too picky either.

I don't do any ripping of music with XBMC but it supports playback of many audio formats. See link below:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/index.php?title=Supported_File_Formats#Supported_audio_codec s:

You can output audio with pcm digital optical (using cable that has an output) or 2-channel analog using the regular cables.

srauly

12-05-08, 08:26 AM

BIG ED, IMO, the original XBox is reasonably quiet. I purposely search out newer XBoxes when I go to buy them (e.g., manufacturing date in 2005). There's a wiki page here that shows you how to determine the manufacturing date / XBox version using the serial number:
http://www.xbox-linux.org/wiki/Xbox_Versions_HOWTO

At some point in the production, it is my understanding that Microsoft replaced one of the fans with a heatsink, so the later ones should be the quietest, but I've never heard an old one, so I don't know how much louder they are.

FYI, the XBox 360 is *very* loud, and while you can stream various types of video (including high-def) and audio formats, you can't run XBMC on it, so you won't get support for as many video formats (e.g., DVD ISO rips which is what I use), or access to all of the neat XBMC skins (I use one called xTV which replicates the original AppleTV UI).

On a side-note, I noticed in that recent GameStop flyer that Sony still seems to be manufacturing/selling new PlayStation 2's. I really think that Microsoft was dumb to discontinue the original XBox so quickly. Wouldn't it have been cool if they had done what Sony did and created a newer/slimmer XBox classic and sold it for under $150. With today's technology, I imagine that they could have gotten the size way down, though the hard drive (something the PS2 lacks) would probably keep the size/price up higher than the PS2.

sean_w_smith

12-05-08, 08:50 AM

All Xboxes except the 1.0 versions have 1 Fan. The 1.0 box had a GPU fan as well. They are fairly quiet stock but can be near silent. With a 80mm case fan mod like the zalman its the way quieter than any of my DVR's....

Xbox can rip audio to WAV, Ogg and MP3. It will playback literally about any format. In 5+ years of use I have yet to find an audio file it wont play. It plays commodore 64 audio files :)

Sorry but the 360 has nothing on the XBMC when it comes to streaming audio. It does all that and a whole lot more...

Sean

bswiz

12-05-08, 11:17 AM

It plays commodore 64 audio files :)
Sean

Are those the SID files? I used to be addicted to those back in the C64 BBS days. Ah, the memories.

bswiz

12-05-08, 11:19 AM

I assume you are using xbpartitioner to format the drive after you installed it in the xbox. Make sure you are using the correct cluster size (32k clusters I think for your drive). I think the latest version of xbpartitioner should also know what to use clusterwise for your drive when you format (older versions did not).

Yep, I did use xbpartitioner, and pretty sure I did the 32K clusters. In any case, that was to format the F partition, if I recall correctly. Since I can see and use that partition, I think it should be fine.

The earlier comments about X/Y/Z possibly having a problem might be my issue, but how to check it without starting over?

sean_w_smith

12-05-08, 04:05 PM

Yep, I did use xbpartitioner, and pretty sure I did the 32K clusters. In any case, that was to format the F partition, if I recall correctly. Since I can see and use that partition, I think it should be fine.

The earlier comments about X/Y/Z possibly having a problem might be my issue, but how to check it without starting over?

Its not that simple with large drives. if you dont use the right size you will eventually suffer data corruption issues.

I thought X,Y,Z were all virtal drives. not sure how one could mess them up.

can you indicate some of the games you have trouble with....

BTW: Which softmod are you using?

Sean

bswiz

12-05-08, 04:28 PM

Its not that simple with large drives. if you dont use the right size you will eventually suffer data corruption issues.

I thought X,Y,Z were all virtal drives. not sure how one could mess them up.

can you indicate some of the games you have trouble with....

BTW: Which softmod are you using?

Sean

I used SID 4 I believe, and followed this guide step by step.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/558747

I don't know if it's possible to mess up X/Y/Z, that was Darklordjames's suggestion since the games hang during the intro.

A couple games I remember hanging are both Star Wars Battlefront games - 1 & 2. I think there were others, but I'm at work right now and can't check them all.

sean_w_smith

12-05-08, 06:06 PM

I used SID 4 I believe, and followed this guide step by step.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/558747

I don't know if it's possible to mess up X/Y/Z, that was Darklordjames's suggestion since the games hang during the intro.

A couple games I remember hanging are both Star Wars Battlefront games - 1 & 2. I think there were others, but I'm at work right now and can't check them all.

Dont have those... I have star wars legos 1 and 2 :)

Sean

darklordjames

12-05-08, 06:27 PM

BIG ED

12-05-08, 10:59 PM

Thanks guys: Ja Phule: AVS Special Member (I'd add very special), srauly: "Budget Videophile" (I'd add audiophile),& sean_w_smith: "Information Junkie" (I'll say!).
BIG thanks for stopping too help & the info; actually learned about the different X's cooling last night after visiting here. I'll have too absorb all that you three shared, might take a while.
So, it sounds (ha, ha) like its still best too go XBMC.

On with the thread! :D

Ja Phule

12-06-08, 02:02 AM

bswiz

12-06-08, 01:31 PM

X: Y: and Z: are physical partitions on the drive, each of about 750MB. This is where the Xbox dumps game cache data for quicker read back than is possible from just the DVD. Open up whatever file manager you like on your Xbox (XBMC has one) and see of those partitions are on your drive. It feels like something is wrong with them, as the first thing an Xbox game normally does is boot it's load code, starts playing the opening cinematic, then starts caching stuff to the hard drive in the background.

OK, I see X w/749 MB, Y w/749 MB, and Z w/746 MB.

X & Y are empty, but Z has some stuff it in that looks like it is from XBMC. Directories called imdbthumbs, scrapers, temp, weather, and -Httpcache. There are also a couple files - one is Mohloader.bin

Are these files not supposed to be there and would they cause a game to hang? Can I just delete them and see what happens? I guess worst case is something in XBMC might not function correctly?

Edit: Just tried Halo 2. It gets to the screen where it says "Press start to continue." Once I press start, it locks up. Had to do a hard reboot, and then the file manager shows lots of space now occupied in Y & Z (presumably the stuff cached there by Halo 2).

Edit 2: From the UnleashX menu, I just clicked MS Dashboard. It gives an error saying C:\msdash.xbe does not exist. Could this be related? Maybe I screwed something up when preparing the larger hard drive?

Edit 3: Put the original Xbox drive (w/softmod) back in. Still get the error when I try to launch MS Dashboard from UnleashX. But now Halo 2 (and other games) work fine again!

sean_w_smith

12-06-08, 03:41 PM

sean_w_smith

12-07-08, 09:48 AM

OK, I see X w/749 MB, Y w/749 MB, and Z w/746 MB.

X & Y are empty, but Z has some stuff it in that looks like it is from XBMC. Directories called imdbthumbs, scrapers, temp, weather, and -Httpcache. There are also a couple files - one is Mohloader.bin

Are these files not supposed to be there and would they cause a game to hang? Can I just delete them and see what happens? I guess worst case is something in XBMC might not function correctly?

Edit: Just tried Halo 2. It gets to the screen where it says "Press start to continue." Once I press start, it locks up. Had to do a hard reboot, and then the file manager shows lots of space now occupied in Y & Z (presumably the stuff cached there by Halo 2).

Edit 2: From the UnleashX menu, I just clicked MS Dashboard. It gives an error saying C:\msdash.xbe does not exist. Could this be related? Maybe I screwed something up when preparing the larger hard drive?

Edit 3: Put the original Xbox drive (w/softmod) back in. Still get the error when I try to launch MS Dashboard from UnleashX. But now Halo 2 (and other games) work fine again!

I am at loss... not being able to run the stock dash is no big deal and a side effect of some soft mods.... I have halo2 and it does run on my bigger HD machines. I wish I could be more help except to say you need to post over on Xboxscene where there is a much bigger audience of xbox hackers..

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-07-08, 09:14 PM

lcohen999

12-07-08, 09:53 PM

sean_w_smith

12-08-08, 07:40 AM

Evening all,

a quick XBMC question for everyone. I have about 30gb of music plus video, etc.

What I am looking for is an airtunes style of application so I can stream the music from anywhere in the house.

I am unsure if Airtunes would work with it, and the WMB54G requires a PC.

Any other inexpensive solution?

I'm confused.... do you want to use Airtunes or XBMC?

define inexpensive...

does anywhere in the house mean you want multi-zone support?

sorry but I need some more info....

Oh yeah when you mention requires a PC, does this mean you have MAC or Linux only?

Where do you plan on storing the 30G of data

Sean

topperdude

12-08-08, 10:32 AM

BTW: Just finished flashing all the firmware on my 1.5TB drives and got all 4 running on my readynas. Over 4TB of usable space after all is said and done including 100G reserved for snapshots.... Lots better than the old 4x250's that were in there... so far so good.... NAS seems happy... Copying about 2TB of data to it now. Will run a compare after it all copies. All that should take around 3 days....

Sean

I am about to setup my 1TB drive purchased over the Black Friday weekend. Wondering what cluster size to use when I format it. Content will be primarily multimedia stuff, i.e. recorded shows, DVD archives, music and photo library.

I read an article on MS website that said the default cluster size in NTFS for HDD this big would be 4k but also read elsewhere that the largest size is faster for multimedia files, but leaves you with less overall space and wasted space for smaller files whereas smaller size saves space at the cost of some disk performance.

Wondering if there's a good compromise or "rule of thumb" to determine the same? Thoughts?

-Topper

lcohen999

12-08-08, 10:58 AM

I'm confused.... do you want to use Airtunes or XBMC?

define inexpensive...

does anywhere in the house mean you want multi-zone support?

sorry but I need some more info....

Oh yeah when you mention requires a PC, does this mean you have MAC or Linux only?

Where do you plan on storing the 30G of data

Sean

Hey Sean,

All I want is to be able to stream my audio to anywhere in my house from my XBMC. I have 30gb of MP3s on my XBMC. If I have a party, or just want to listen to music in other parts of the house, it would be nice just to listen without a PC involved...

Does that make more sense?

srauly

12-08-08, 09:00 PM

All I want is to be able to stream my audio to anywhere in my house from my XBMC. I have 30gb of MP3s on my XBMC. If I have a party, or just want to listen to music in other parts of the house, it would be nice just to listen without a PC involved...
So you want to use your XBox as the "server"? I'm thinking:
1) Wireless speakers. I don't know anything about this - range may be an issue, and you'll probably need some sort of a speaker A/B switchbox.
2) A 2nd XBox for the 2nd room.

sean_w_smith

12-09-08, 10:19 AM

So you want to use your XBox as the "server"? I'm thinking:
1) Wireless speakers. I don't know anything about this - range may be an issue, and you'll probably need some sort of a speaker A/B switchbox.
2) A 2nd XBox for the 2nd room.

good suggestions. Xbox can only server via Upnp or FTP not SMB. So any device that can stream using one of those protocols should be fine....

Sean

Ja Phule

12-12-08, 02:28 AM

Has anyone tried the latest T3CH version of XBMC yet? I haven't gotten a chance to install it yet.

dan4081

12-12-08, 09:30 AM

Has anyone tried the latest T3CH version of XBMC yet? I haven't gotten a chance to install it yet.

I'm using 8.10 and its perfect so far.
No issues that I have found. (I was using the June 16th release before finally going to the newest one)

BTW, the 8.10 includes the PMIII-HD skin and also mediastream skin, as well as the regular PMIII.
I still like the PMIII original best, but the PMIII-HD is growing on me.
It looks much nicer, but has different views than the original.

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 11:02 AM

Has anyone tried the latest T3CH version of XBMC yet? I haven't gotten a chance to install it yet.

no will try it later....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 11:03 AM

I'm using 8.10 and its perfect so far.
No issues that I have found. (I was using the June 16th release before finally going to the newest one)

BTW, the 8.10 includes the PMIII-HD skin and also mediastream skin, as well as the regular PMIII.
I still like the PMIII original best, but the PMIII-HD is growing on me.
It looks much nicer, but has different views than the original.

8.10 works well if you have small music collection. Unfortunately it does not work very well when you have a very large music collection....

I still think independent of that deal breaking issue for me it crashes more than the older versions...

mike_311

12-12-08, 01:37 PM

will the xbox media center streaming video from a pc play in 5.1 sound? assuming the source material contains it?

tlniec

12-12-08, 02:19 PM

I'm trying to come up to speed on some of this stuff, so please forgive me if some of my questions seem really basic/have been covered elsewhere in the thread (I've read about 40 pages of it, but that leaves 100 to go!).

I am looking for a good way to archive a bunch of my standard-definition DVDs for HDD-based playback. Ideally, I'd have a nice front-end for browsing and initiating playback.

I've got an XBox, an XBox 360, and a PC. My XBox and 360 are installed at my equipment rack. My PC is not. Thus far, I have played around a bit with streaming video files from the PC to the 360 via Ethernet -- that works, but there is no real front-end to speak of, just a file browser.

Someone pointed me to this thread from another forum. I must admit, I'm VERY intrigued. I'm not willing/able to move my PC to the equipment rack, so a traditional HTPC approach won't work for me. But sounds like I could softmod my old XBox to run XBMC, which would give me the front-end I'm looking for.

What I'm not clear on is exactly what to do/how to do it. I guess a few fundamental questions I have are:
1. I'd really like to use ISOs of my DVDs. Does XBMC support this (from reading the thread, it sounds like the answer is 'yes')?
2. Do the ISOs need to be on the XBox's own HDD? Can I instead plug a USB HDD into the XBox (would need an adapter, I assume)? Or stream from internal/external HDDs installed on my PC (I can connect the PC to the XBox via Ethernet).
3. I have a native 720p projector (Mitsubishi HC1500). It scales reasonably well, and deinterlaces OK too. But could I instead set up the XBox to deinterlace/scale to 720p? If so, how does its deinterlacing/scaling compare to something like a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player (what I currently play my DVDs through)... just wondering if I should expect a significant image quality hit?
4. All that stuff aside, what exactly do I need to "do" to make this happen? There must a website or two out there dedicated to this, with detailed tutorials, right? :)

I think that's the main ones I have for now. Any help would be much appreciated!

darklordjames

12-12-08, 02:53 PM

"3. I have a native 720p projector (Mitsubishi HC1500). It scales reasonably well, and deinterlaces OK too. But could I instead set up the XBox to deinterlace/scale to 720p? If so, how does its deinterlacing/scaling compare to something like a Toshiba HD-A3 HD-DVD player (what I currently play my DVDs through)... just wondering if I should expect a significant image quality hit?"

For film-based stuff like movies, it looks great. For most TV shows though, it can look good with it's bob+weave blending that it does, but then there is an issue of dropped frames and out of sync audio at anything over 480p. Otherwise it looks bad for TV shows on DVD at 720p.

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 03:03 PM

will the xbox media center streaming video from a pc play in 5.1 sound? assuming the source material contains it?

Yep, Dolby Digital and DTS work great over toslink....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 03:07 PM

dan4081

12-12-08, 03:54 PM

8.10 works well if you have small music collection. Unfortunately it does not work very well when you have a very large music collection....

I still think independent of that deal breaking issue for me it crashes more than the older versions...

My music collection is only 16gb, so no problem there.

As far as it crashing, I see almost no crashes with this new version, even less than I ever had with the June version.

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 04:57 PM

My music collection is only 16gb, so no problem there.

As far as it crashing, I see almost no crashes with this new version, even less than I ever had with the June version.

I find it crashes usually after 4-6 hours depending on what I am doing. I am probably the rare case as I work from home all day everyday and literally run XBMC at least 8-14 hours on a typical day.

A far cry from most users I think....

Sean

tlniec

12-12-08, 05:14 PM

1. Yep
2. DVD's can be anywhere on your network. PC, NAS, etc.... XBMC doesn't care where the media it plays comes from.
3. XBMC's scaling is good its de-interlacing it not so good. set the output to 480i and let the proejctor scale it. you can run the GUI and view pictures in native 720P and still play video through 480i. XBMC is very configurable in this regard. The de-interlacing has improved but IMO this method still works best for me.
4. Lots of Links on the first post of this thread. where do you live?

Sean

Sweet, thanks for the reply!
To answer your question, I live near Cedar Rapids, IA.

sean_w_smith

12-12-08, 05:39 PM

Sweet, thanks for the reply!
To answer your question, I live near Cedar Rapids, IA.

Sorry dont live near there... If I did I would help you out with a softmod. but maybe someone else here does....

Sean

lcohen999

12-13-08, 10:32 AM

good suggestions. Xbox can only server via Upnp or FTP not SMB. So any device that can stream using one of those protocols should be fine....

Sean

So basically any wireless receiver that supports UPnP should be fine...

Thats what I needed to know...thanks!

sean_w_smith

12-13-08, 12:33 PM

So basically any wireless receiver that supports UPnP should be fine...

Thats what I needed to know...thanks!

Theoretically but I have not tried to use the xbox as a upnp server....

Sean

Henway

12-13-08, 03:50 PM

sean_w_smith

12-13-08, 04:27 PM

I've recently started streaming Last.fm on my computer. I'd also like to stream on xbox. The only settings I see in XBMC are to submit my information to Last.fm, not stream. I've looked online for help, but it's all dated from Xbox Media days, and I can't find the .xml file I'm supposed to modify (I can't even find the bookmarks section).

Simple help?

you need to add a source to sources.xml through the GUI or via text editor...

sources.xml is in XBMC\userdata\sources.xml

under your music section you need a bookmark

lastfm://

that gets you to the root of last.fm

a nice new feature in atlantis not sure if its PM3 or PM3HD skin is that while a song is playing if you select a song's information there is a button for play in last.fm which will create a last.fm station based on the song you are currently playing.....

Have fun....

Sean

Henway

12-13-08, 07:30 PM

Thank you for the response. I'm getting a "Path Not Found or Invalid" error when I do this.

I've added it to sources.xml:

<source>
<name>Last FM</name>
<path>last.fm:\\</path> (BTW, using "last.fm://" gets me "Could not connect to remote server")
</source>

I believe this is the media bookmark in the source.xml. I have internet connection through the xbox which seems to work fine. I'm missing something simple, right? (BTW, I uploaded with the xbox in AvaLaunch and rebooted and then verified the proper file had been copied over.)

darklordjames

12-13-08, 07:52 PM

"<path>last.fm:\\</path>"

I'm not familiar with Last.fm specificaly, but don't you need the rest of the URL that leads to your account. Something like "last.fm://music/chris+randall" or something?

bswiz

12-14-08, 11:04 AM

In some earlier messages, I mentioned the trouble I had with some games not running with a 320GB drive installed in my Xbox. I'm finally getting around to rebuilding that drive to see if the problem goes away.

Quick question: Do I need to unlock the 320 before I can rerun xboxhdm on it?

Thanks!

darklordjames

12-14-08, 11:20 AM

You can unlock it from within xboxhdm, if memory serves. It just requires running the disc 3 times instead of only 2.

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 12:20 PM

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 12:21 PM

"<path>last.fm:\\</path>"

I'm not familiar with Last.fm specificaly, but don't you need the rest of the URL that leads to your account. Something like "last.fm://music/chris+randall" or something?

no it will take you to the root of the lastfm tree

the problem is the dot

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 12:22 PM

You can unlock it from within xboxhdm, if memory serves. It just requires running the disc 3 times instead of only 2.

yep boot into lock unlock mode and do a

unlockhd -a

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 12:28 PM

Ja Phule

12-14-08, 02:35 PM

Sean,

That's great news. I actually put the latest build in the current xbox that I'm modding. I haven't had chance to play with it too much but I've had no issues scanning videos in to the library so far. I'll have to play with it some more now.

bswiz

12-14-08, 03:43 PM

yep boot into lock unlock mode and do a

unlockhd -a

Sean

OK, I'm making progress now.... redid the HD, before hooking everything up I tried Halo 2 with the new drive. It worked fine. Made the final connections, put all the screws back in the case, Halo 2 doesn't work! The problem - when the network cable is plugged in, the game doesn't work. Unplugged, game works fine. Any ideas on that one? Xbox live is disabled so I don't think that's it.

Another question: When I redid the hard drive with xboxhdm, it recognized that that I had an F: drive and asked if I wanted to format it. I said yes, and now that partition shows up in UnleashX and XBMC, but I don't know if it formatted it with the required 32K clusters or whatever. Can I check it somehow or do I just need to reformat with the proper tool?

Thanks for all the help. I probably didn't need to redo the HD, I just never thought to unplug the network cable and see if it helped.

EDIT: Maybe this is the cause - if I go to the MS Dash and try to check the network settings, nothing happens. I select Network Settings from the menu and it goes to a black screen and hangs. So maybe the games are trying to access the network and can't or something? Any ideas?

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 04:53 PM

OK, I'm making progress now.... redid the HD, before hooking everything up I tried Halo 2 with the new drive. It worked fine. Made the final connections, put all the screws back in the case, Halo 2 doesn't work! The problem - when the network cable is plugged in, the game doesn't work. Unplugged, game works fine. Any ideas on that one? Xbox live is disabled so I don't think that's it.

Another question: When I redid the hard drive with xboxhdm, it recognized that that I had an F: drive and asked if I wanted to format it. I said yes, and now that partition shows up in UnleashX and XBMC, but I don't know if it formatted it with the required 32K clusters or whatever. Can I check it somehow or do I just need to reformat with the proper tool?

Thanks for all the help. I probably didn't need to redo the HD, I just never thought to unplug the network cable and see if it helped.

EDIT: Maybe this is the cause - if I go to the MS Dash and try to check the network settings, nothing happens. I select Network Settings from the menu and it goes to a black screen and hangs. So maybe the games are trying to access the network and can't or something? Any ideas?

do you have auto login to Xboxlive selected in the MS DASH. That needs to be off. maybe thats on and it tries to login to Xbox live?

Halo2 works for me with the network plugged in.

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 04:54 PM

BTW: RSS works fine in 12/07

I had a bad feed in my rss.xml that kept it from working....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-14-08, 06:28 PM

do you have auto login to Xboxlive selected in the MS DASH. That needs to be off. maybe thats on and it tries to login to Xbox live?

Halo2 works for me with the network plugged in.

Sean

regardless of what XBOXHDM says about F&G you should repartition with xbpartitioner if you put a 320G disk or bigger in it. Xboxhdm will not partitition and format large discs correctly with 32K clusters.

bswiz

12-14-08, 08:10 PM

Well after going round in circles a bit, everything seems to be working now, although I can't explain how or why. Basically, at one point I completely hosed my MS dash as I tried to get the network stuff working again. Restored the dash from the backup made during the softmod, then redid the softmod. The networking is all working again, and all my games are working so far (including Halo 2 and others that didn't previously).

Only thing odd is I still can't get into the network settings on the MS dash, but I guess I don't really need to since I won't be using the MS dash and/or Live.

Thanks again to everyone who's helped along the way!

Oh, and I did reformat F with xbpartitioner, so I think I'm good to go.

darklordjames

12-14-08, 09:01 PM

"Only thing odd is I still can't get into the network settings on the MS dash"

Normally that's where the hook to get into your custom dash is placed. For example, my system boots into XBMC, when I select Quit To Dash it boots back out to UnleashX, within UnleashX I can boot the Original Xbox Dash, selecting Xbox Live in the MS Dash boots me back out to XBMC.

ChrisFB

12-14-08, 11:30 PM

Well,

I started playing with the 12/07 build yesterday with low expectations and luckily my expectations have been far exceeded.

They fixed the nasty memory leak in the scaper and in compressing databases. The 11/13 build would not scan my music library no matter how many times I tried and different ways I sliced it and diced it. The 12/07 build did it in one shot... and it did faster. It only took about 14 hours total to scan my 30K song library.

it fixes some issues with milkdrop I had been seeing although it still remains flaky somewhat.

Movie scraping is working. Slideshows are working, weather is working...

rss does not seem to work. (who cares)

they upgraded the mplayer core and one problem I see there is that the MIME type for internet radio for (RADIOIO) is reported as internet video. so you need to adjust the internet video buffer instead of the unknown type in the cache menu. This is weird but since I dont watch internet video no big deal. Hopefully they'll fix this in the next release.

Overall I think this build is a winner and far better than the official golden release.

What do the rest of you think.....

Sean

This is great news. I was really bummed out about the Atlantis build and ended up not even trying it after seeing the confirmed issues.

Since you already have it installed could you post back after it gets some usage and let me know what you think?

srauly

12-15-08, 12:26 PM

FYI, the DTS downmixing problem appears to be fixed with this new release. I did encounter video/audio out-of-sync issues last night when playing back an actual DVD (FWIW, the movie was "Finding Amanda"). I was able to get the video and audio to sync up by rewinding for a few seconds. Later in the movie, it also seemed like the video was not playing back smoothly (like I was getting less than 24fps), but the audio did not stutter and remained in sync with the video. Today, my daughter watched an ISO DVD rip and it played back perfectly fine.

topperdude

12-15-08, 12:30 PM

Well,

I started playing with the 12/07 build yesterday with low expectations and luckily my expectations have been far exceeded.

They fixed the nasty memory leak in the scaper and in compressing databases. The 11/13 build would not scan my music library no matter how many times I tried and different ways I sliced it and diced it. The 12/07 build did it in one shot... and it did faster. It only took about 14 hours total to scan my 30K song library.

it fixes some issues with milkdrop I had been seeing although it still remains flaky somewhat.

Movie scraping is working. Slideshows are working, weather is working...

rss does not seem to work. (who cares)

they upgraded the mplayer core and one problem I see there is that the MIME type for internet radio for (RADIOIO) is reported as internet video. so you need to adjust the internet video buffer instead of the unknown type in the cache menu. This is weird but since I dont watch internet video no big deal. Hopefully they'll fix this in the next release.

Overall I think this build is a winner and far better than the official golden release.

What do the rest of you think.....

Sean

FYI, the DTS downmixing problem appears to be fixed with this new release. I did encounter video/audio out-of-sync issues last night when playing back an actual DVD (FWIW, the movie was "Finding Amanda"). I was able to get the video and audio to sync up by rewinding for a few seconds. Later in the movie, it also seemed like the video was not playing back smoothly (like I was getting less than 24fps), but the audio did not stutter and remained in sync with the video. Today, my daughter watched an ISO DVD rip and it played back perfectly fine.

sean and srauly - thanks for the info. I have been holding off on upgrading from the June (16?) release, but it may be time to upgrade now if the positive feedback continues on this release :)

-Topper

srauly

12-15-08, 12:34 PM

topperdude

12-15-08, 12:52 PM

Question: Is it possible to share the DVD drive in my PC and stream a DVD movie to an XBMC device? This isn't something I'd do with an XBox, but I'm considering getting an AppleTV (w/XBMC of course) for one of my rooms just so I can connect to the plasma with a single HDMI cable, and it would be nice if I didn't need to have a separate DVD player in that room.

I had tried this once with XBMC on Xbox sometime back - I shared the DVD drive on my PC and then added it as a source on Xbox. When I loaded a movie in that drive, I was able to play it back through XBMC just fine. I had also done this to see if I could avoid having a separate DVD player in the living room AND playback dual layer DVDs (recorded at home) that the Xbox's Samsung drive has problem with.

-Topper

Henway

12-15-08, 01:15 PM

no it will take you to the root of the lastfm tree

the problem is the dot

Thanks all, the dot was the problem. A bit of a duhh moment, but I had copied the web location from my computer to the xbox and that wouldn't work.

dan4081

12-15-08, 02:09 PM

sean and srauly - thanks for the info. I have been holding off on upgrading from the June (16?) release, but it may be time to upgrade now if the positive feedback continues on this release :)

-Topper

I was reluctant to switch from the tried and true June 16 build also, but the new version 8.10 is working perfectly for me.
Plus it has the new PMIII-HD skin (and mediastream skin) included.

Also, many of the new plug-ins need the latest version to work.

topperdude

12-15-08, 03:43 PM

I was reluctant to switch from the tried and true June 16 build also, but the new version 8.10 is working perfectly for me.
Plus it has the new PMIII-HD skin (and mediastream skin) included.

Also, many of the new plug-ins need the latest version to work.

Is 8.10 the version number for the 12/07 build?

-Topper

sean_w_smith

12-15-08, 04:12 PM

Is 8.10 the version number for the 12/07 build?

-Topper

8.10 was 11/13

the 12/7 build did not even have release notes but its a definite improvement from the 11/13 official build IMO.

Sean

dan4081

12-15-08, 06:11 PM

8.10 was 11/13

the 12/7 build did not even have release notes but its a definite improvement from the 11/13 official build IMO.

Sean

Good to know Sean. I'll check it out.

BTW, I just bought my first NAS after going back and forth between a NAS and a server.
I couldnt pass up the $99 D-Link deal at newegg.
Only 2 bays, but that works perfect since I m only using 2 1TB drives right now.
I can add another later on when I fill these 2 drives up.

srauly

12-16-08, 07:42 PM

Ja Phule

12-17-08, 02:12 AM

FWIW, I played a few minutes of a ripped movie today and saw the same non-fluid motion that I was seeing with the DVD I played the other day (Finding Amanda). This time, I went into the on-screen menu and changed "Interlace Handling" from "Auto Select" to "None" and that fixed it.

Yeah....sometimes I wish there is one setting that I can use for all my vids but it doesn't seem like there is one... Luckily, the interlace handling is saved for each video should you change it from default.

Oddly enough, sometimes when Auto looks best, I can't seem to find which mode auto is using when I try out all the different settings.

sean_w_smith

12-20-08, 09:15 AM

A Few Related Notes....

Finished all my xmas xboxes.... way too many this year... I've gotten pretty proficient at the HD swap from doing so many. start to finish about 30 minutes....

Still haven't hacked the ATV or got my controller working on the mac but hopefully I will get to that this weekend...

Still really like the 12/07 build. PM3HD is not as stable as regular PM but itsa big improvement over 11/13 official release...

The real exciting news is I got onkyo 876 for my downstairs rig in raleigh. I was expecting the Reon video processor to make a difference but I did not expect the difference to be this big.... What this chip does for 480i content is extremely impressive. I was surprised how big a difference it makes feeding it 1080i and 720P content from DirecTV. Very impressive.... Need to play with Dynamic EQ and Dynamic volume....

On of my close friends has been working with BubbaQ on bubba raid and we got the unraid OS all pimped out now with all sorts of extra services: printing, ups, full standbye, hibernate and wake on lan, torrent, upnp, squeeze center, bonjour, etc.... not for the non programmer crowd but the results are very cool.... Hopefully Rocco will package this up and distribute it but I doubt he wants to support it... so far I love unraid.

Sean

BLKMGK

12-20-08, 12:42 PM

Awesome to hear about the work on unRAID sean! I have been using that for years but yet to try Bubba's code simply for lack of time. I am wishing for a WEB based torrent front-end and they looked close last I looked, fingers crossed.

As for the aTV, use the Google launcher code and the patchstick stuff to add it. There's a Windows based image flasher for the USB that works easily and makes this hack SIMPLE. Once done downloading Boxee and Atlantis XBMC is cake. Sadly while better than the old XBOX hardware downloaded 720P video still stutters a little on mine :(

For those pondering building a 1080P capable box have a look here -> http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=9999386 That is $400 for HDMI audio capable XBMC hardware, 1080 capable when clocked to 3ghz. Cheap case but it's working for me using 8.1 Ubuntu, latest ALSA, and an .asoundrc tweak. full story here -> http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=34235

Edit: You'll still need an MCE remote\receiver for that. Some of th enew Vista ones apparently work but I have not tried them.

sean_w_smith

12-20-08, 04:51 PM

Yep Bubba raid is pretty cool. Its got the web torrent thing in there now...

we added LPD for printing, motherboard monitor to check fans and temp and a few other services like bonjour. by running unraid on a more complete slackware adding packages is now possible.... building new kernals and bzroot balls makes it totally not for the non super techy but the end result of what rocco did is impressive. He's working on the new dual core build that just came out and seeing if he can port the bubba+rocoo stuff to the new version.

I have the patchstick all built from my ATV. too busy building xboxes for xmas to finish it. maybe tomorow....

That and my SeatonSound Submersive showed up today and I have being playing with that....

Sean

BLKMGK

12-21-08, 12:05 AM

I have two unRAID - I would SO love to get that working on the lesser of the two that holds my torrents and backup files. I hope that at some point it can be made somewhat easier so I don't have to stress as much over potentially losing data due to a screwup (lol). But the torrent stuff etc. would be so very worth trying it!

Slack

12-21-08, 02:58 PM

You folks are hard core.

FWIW: I went into a Gamestop yesterday to pickup 39.99 consoles. Alas they are back to 49.99. I picked up two used DVD kits for 9.99 each.

Clerk says another sale is due for the week after xmas. Hopefully I can pick up some spare consoles @ 39.99.

srauly

12-21-08, 07:21 PM

sean_w_smith

12-21-08, 09:10 PM

Any Zune users here? I just bought my daughter an 80GB Zune for Xmas. In the process of researching how best to convert DVD's to a Zune-friendly forrmat, I found out about their Zune Pass "service" which is a DRM-encoded rental model but (now) with the ability to "keep" 10 DRM-free songs per month. Apparently, they offer a lot of songs in MP3 format, so if I were to sign up for it ($15/month), the "10 songs you can keep" I'd choose would be in MP3 format, but I'm also now wondering if there's any way to stream the DRM-encoded songs to an XBox/XBMC. I'm guessing not, but I figured I'd ask.

open source and DRM dont play together. never will. if you open source the DRM then there would be no DRM so its an oxymoron. There are devices that do different forms of DRM but XBMC or any other open source peice of software wont be one of em. Maybe in 5 years XBMC will be so predominant that the DRM'ers will distribute purely object code plugins. I would not hold my breath.

to make zune videos check out handbrake. its free and much easier than gordian knot. it has a zune profile built in....

Sean

darklordjames

12-21-08, 09:53 PM

DVD Fab also has a Zune converter.

srauly

12-22-08, 08:25 AM

Yeah, I've got DVDFab Platinum, and it has a Zune profile. But it doesn't have a built-in option for 720x480 resolution, which I believe would allow for displaying anamorphic video out to the TV (if I ever wanted to do that). I'm guessing I could create my own profile to do that, though. On that point, DVDFab has a ton of options available, and I'm not sure what to tweak. This is really more of a question for a DVDFab or Zune forum (which I've done), but I figured if anyone here had a Zune, they could perhaps PM me.

As for the DRM issue, I'm wondering though if I could possibly play the DRMed files in XBMC running on a PC. That wouldn't necessarily meet my needs, since my desktop is in my office and works more as the file server and CD/DVD ripper, rather than as a playback device. It's an HP "slimline" but it's still too bulky for me to stick in my living room, which is the main room I'd be playing music in.

sean_w_smith

12-22-08, 09:33 AM

I Guess you did not understand my last post

Short answer never

Buy a commercial streamer if you want rhapsody etc

PeppiP

12-23-08, 10:48 PM

sean_w_smith

12-23-08, 11:19 PM

Hi,
I have switched over to the new Atlantis built and for some reasons I can not do an automated scan in file mode. Can only do one movie at a time with IMDB!! I have both vob files in a folder as well as iso files.

here are my settings:
On the Set Content screen, everything is checked, including
Run automated scan
use folder names for lookup

On settings, whether I leave everything at default or Playing around with these settings do not seem to have any effect, in terms of scraping. The green progress bar came on and quickly disappeared.

I changed to the 6/16 built that a lot of you seem to like, to no avail. Same effect.

Am I doing anything wrong?

I recall that I used to scrape 80 movies in one shot (takes quite a while). The skin I am using is PM III.

BTW, I no longer have a copy of the old user data file.

Many thanks :confused:

Blow away all the userdata settings and the proper directory's in udata or tdata and re-install and everything will work...

you have some bad data in there messiing something up.

be careful on the tdata and udata thing. if you do it wrong and your box is softmodded you can brick it...

12/7/2008 is better than the Official release but thats just my opinion....

BTW: One other stupid suggestion.... u sure your internet connection is working. had a problem with music scrapers and it was because bit torrent had hung my router and the router needed rebooting....

Also there is always the logfile which is filled with useful info....

Sean

Sean

PeppiP

12-23-08, 11:40 PM

sean_w_smith

12-24-08, 08:43 AM

Thank you Sean for the quick reply.

I will get the 12/7 version.

Can you please amplify a bit on 'Blow away all the userdata settings and the proper directory's in udata or tdata'

I deleted the .db files in userdata folder.
What do I exactly do with udata or tdata. My box was a TSOP mod done by a friend a few years back.

OK for reference this info is covered in the user manual here...

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Upgrading_XBMC_for_Xbox

and in the release notes here:

http://217.118.215.116/README_1st.php

but the process is simple....

1. run some other dashboard, evox, avalaunch, some other version of xbmc
2. delete XBMC completely inluding userdata
3. delete E:\TDATA\0face008\
4. delete E:\UDATA\0face008\
5. install the latest XBMC
6. do not restore user data. files like sources.xml and rssfeeds.xml are safe... maybe keymap.xml but thats it.

Sean

PeppiP

12-24-08, 01:33 PM

Thanks Sean,

Via avalaunch
deleted XBMC completely inluding userdata
deleted E:\TDATA\0face008\
deleted E:\UDATA\0face008\
installed the latest XBMC -12/7 build from eurasia.nu

Still get the same issue. I can not scape the movie all at once but could do it one at a time. Also when it is an iso file, the only way is to add it manually which is a real pain - having to delete the iso extension in the name and set the gender etc. I recall that in an earlier build there was a button that hide the extension.

Anyway I included the log below, just in case you can make something out of it. The error appeared to be -Unable to parse web site and drive T?

Please bear in mind that I can do scrape one title at the time.

Thx
Peppi
------------

07:56:55 M: 56213504 NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Starting XBMC, Platform: Xbox. Built on Dec 7 2008
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Q is mapped to: F:\Apps\XBMC
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: The executable running is: F:\Apps\XBMC\default.xbe
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Log File is located: Q:\xbmc.log
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Unmapped drive T
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Mapping drive T to Harddisk0\Partition6\Apps\XBMC\UserData
07:56:55 M: 56193024 NOTICE: Setup DirectX
07:56:55 M: 56168448 NOTICE: Mapping drive C to Harddisk0\Partition2
07:56:55 M: 56168448 NOTICE: Mapping drive E to Harddisk0\Partition1
07:56:55 M: 56168448 NOTICE: Unmapped drive D
07:56:55 M: 56168448 NOTICE: Mapping drive D to Cdrom0
07:56:55 M: 56168448 NOTICE: Mapping drive F to Harddisk0\Partition6
07:56:57 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Mapping drive G to Harddisk0\Partition7
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Mapping drive X to Harddisk0\Partition3
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Mapping drive Y to Harddisk0\Partition4
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Unmapped drive Z
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Mapping drive Z to Harddisk0\Partition5
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: load settings...
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: Mapping drive P to Harddisk0\Partition6\Apps\XBMC\UserData
07:56:58 M: 56164352 NOTICE: loading T:\guisettings.xml
07:56:58 M: 56164352 ERROR: Unable to load T:\guisettings.xml, creating new T:\guisettings.xml with default values
07:56:58 M: 56016896 NOTICE: Getting hardware information now...
07:56:58 M: 56016896 NOTICE: Checking resolution 10
07:56:58 M: 56016896 NOTICE: Setting autoresolution mode 0
07:56:58 M: 56016896 NOTICE: No advancedsettings.xml to load (T:\advancedsettings.xml)
07:56:58 M: 56016896 NOTICE: Per AV pack settings are off
07:56:58 M: 56143872 NOTICE: q:\UserData\sources.xml
07:56:58 M: 56143872 ERROR: CSettings::Load Error loading q:\UserData\sources.xml: Line 0, Failed to open file
07:56:58 M: 33894400 NOTICE: Checking the Date!
07:56:58 M: 33894400 NOTICE: start dvd mediatype detection
07:56:58 M: 33828864 NOTICE: initializing playlistplayer
07:56:58 M: 33828864 NOTICE: DONE initializing playlistplayer
07:56:59 M: 33820672 NOTICE: load default skin:[Project Mayhem III]
07:57:00 M: 30101504 WARNING: use dashboard
07:57:00 M: 29786112 NOTICE: initialize done
07:57:00 M: 29786112 NOTICE: Running the application...
07:57:02 M: 26365952 NOTICE: XBFileZilla: Starting...
07:57:02 M: 26300416 NOTICE: ES: Starting event server
07:57:02 M: 25239552 NOTICE: ES: Starting UDP Event server on 0.0.0.0:9777
07:57:02 M: 25174016 NOTICE: UDP: Listening on port 9777
07:57:02 M: 24518656 NOTICE: XBFileZilla: Started
07:57:12 M: 28016640 WARNING: CUtil::GetMatchingSource... no matching source found for [Video Plugins]
08:00:23 M: 26140672 NOTICE: My Videos: Scanning for video info using worker thread, operation took 00:00
08:01:31 M: 25694208 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1043838/posters]
08:01:31 M: 25722880 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://api.themoviedb.org/backdrop.php?imdb=tt1043838]
08:01:45 M: 23990272 ERROR: XFILE::CFile::Delete - Error deleting file q:\UserData\Thumbnails\Video\e\e898bf0e.tbn
08:01:48 M: 23871488 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1043838/posters]
08:01:48 M: 23900160 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://api.themoviedb.org/backdrop.php?imdb=tt1043838]
08:02:00 M: 23875584 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1043838/posters]
08:02:01 M: 23900160 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://api.themoviedb.org/backdrop.php?imdb=tt1043838]
08:02:12 M: 23875584 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1043838/posters]
08:02:13 M: 23904256 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://api.themoviedb.org/backdrop.php?imdb=tt1043838]
08:02:25 M: 23867392 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt1043838/posters]
08:02:25 M: 23896064 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://api.themoviedb.org/backdrop.php?imdb=tt1043838]
08:02:34 M: 24334336 NOTICE: My Videos: Scanning for video info using worker thread, operation took 01:06
08:03:49 M: 25808896 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://www.impawards.com/2008/eighty_eight_minutes.html]
08:04:03 M: 24100864 ERROR: XFILE::CFile::Delete - Error deleting file q:\UserData\Thumbnails\Video\c\c2de9fc2.tbn
08:04:07 M: 23953408 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://www.impawards.com/2008/eighty_eight_minutes.html]
08:04:20 M: 23924736 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://www.impawards.com/2008/eighty_eight_minutes.html]
08:04:33 M: 23896064 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://www.impawards.com/2008/eighty_eight_minutes.html]
08:04:47 M: 23924736 ERROR: CIMDB::InternalGetDetails: Unable to parse web site [http://www.impawards.com/2008/eighty_eight_minutes.html]
08:04:56 M: 24264704 NOTICE: My Videos: Scanning for video info using worker thread, operation took 01:11
08:06:03 M: 26251264 ERROR: exception in CApplication::FrameMove()
08:06:06 M: 25657344 NOTICE: My Videos: Scanning for video info using worker thread, operation took 00:00

sean_w_smith

12-24-08, 01:37 PM

PeppiP

12-24-08, 01:42 PM

No problem.
Thx for looking into it.

happy holiday

PeppiP

12-24-08, 04:17 PM

sean_w_smith

12-24-08, 06:09 PM

Somehow it's all fixed.

Went back in and deleted the TDATA and UDATA in the E folder as well as the .db files in the USERDATA in the XBMC file and started the process again.

Thanks very much

Happy Holiday to everyone.:)

great to hear... wonder if there server was down or some temp file managed to not get deleted....

Sean

darklordjames

12-26-08, 12:49 PM

intomed

12-27-08, 04:43 PM

ChrisFB

12-28-08, 11:21 AM

Anyone recall if there is a button combination you can hold to reset the resolution of MSDASH back to 480i? My plasma just died, so I had to hook up my 720p outputting XMBC box to an SD CRT. It of course doesn't like that. :)

Just reverse this:
Pull and hold both the left and right triggers. While holding the triggers, click (press in) the left and right thumbsticks.
After a brief blank screen, the Xbox Dashboard will display in 480p.
http://support.xbox.com/Support/en/us/xbox/Hardware/SystemUse/ViewDashboardHDTV/ViewTheDashboardOnHDTV.aspx

Almost like the old triggers/start/select from the Xecuter bioses ;)

Failing that, I'd just FTP in and change whatever config file is driving it.

darklordjames

12-28-08, 11:26 AM

Thanks Chris! I'll give that a try. :)

ChrisFB

12-28-08, 05:47 PM

BTW- when I said reverse I meant repeat. It should toggle between 480i and 480p on the stock Xbox dashboard (providing it isn't running a very old software version).

sean_w_smith

12-28-08, 11:14 PM

Wow!!! Been away from this forum for a while and just read the entire 141 pages. I think my head is going to explode. LOL

Anyway, I've got a question for you, Sean. I see that you have been playing with Apple TV and Mac Mini for use with XBMC. I have several questions about each and I guess the easiest thing to do is break it down into 2 sections.

Apple TV: First off, how do you like it, compared to the XBox? Is it as fluid? Is the GUI responsive? Would you recommend it?

Mac Mini: I've been seeing that you can upgrade these machines to Core 2 Duo processors (Merom > 2GHz, specifically). With that in mind, if I were to configure a Mac Mini with a dual core processor > 2GHz and loaded with 2GB of ram, would this configuration have the 'testicular fortitude' to handle 1080p MKV files? Also, what remote can be used for the Mac Mini?

Thanks for you time.

to me it seems curerntly that the mac mini and ATV are overkill... I still haven't*gotten the game controller working with the mini. I just saw they added harmony support in plex. plex will supposedly play 1080P mkv files with a Core2 Duo 1.82 Ghz. The test clips I found for free seem to play. I dont even know where follks are getting this stuff online cuz none of the sites I look have real BD rips. Is everyone just ripping these themselves....

I have 4 HD DVR's and 2 have 1 TB esata drives. I have no shortage of HD content from that and my netflix sub for BD's.... so to me all this seems like overkill for what a $40 xbox will do.... I'm sure my opinion will change when I get a BD drive for the PC and start playing with ripping those... My new job has been consuming a lot of time....

just to be clear... lack of game controller is a big deal for me. even though I dont game very much its awful nice having some games to play when you have guests/kids or even guest with kids... The 5 year old loves the scooby doo game...

I do get why plex is cool now and it seems to be gaining some real advantages for the MAC platform... boxee is just too damn buggy and I dont like the GUI. they gor rid of all the power user features....

Sean

sean_w_smith

12-28-08, 11:15 PM

Anyone recall if there is a button combination you can hold to reset the resolution of MSDASH back to 480i? My plasma just died, so I had to hook up my 720p outputting XMBC box to an SD CRT. It of course doesn't like that. :)

weird... I have done that a bunch of times and XBMC just seem to figure out I had replaced the HD display with a CRT and fixed it self... sounds like you got it worked out though....

darklordjames

12-28-08, 11:46 PM

"weird... I have done that a bunch of times and XBMC just seem to figure out I had replaced the HD display with a CRT and fixed it self... sounds like you got it worked out though...."

It's still hooked up component, so the Xbox doesn't know that anything changed. And no, I broke my XBMC install while trying to fix it. :) Easy enough to repair, it just isn't done yet.

Scotty6595

12-30-08, 12:53 PM

Need some help here folks...

I am no longer able to click Video's and go straight to my library in one click. I now go to a screen with "sources", "DVD" and some other option. In the past it would go straight to the DVD option which is a combination of all my shared DVD folders spread across several drives. I think something has changed in my sources.xml file that is causing this but I can't figure out what it is...

Here is what my sources.xml file looks like. Can you tell me what is incorrect or missing that may be causing this issue?

<video>
<default></default>
<source>
<name>dvd</name>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/dvd/</path>
</source>
<source>
<name>DVD1</name>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/DVD1/</path>
</source>
<source>
<name>DVD2</name>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/DVD2/</path>
</source>
</video>

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

darklordjames

12-30-08, 03:56 PM

<video>
<default>Videos</default>
<source>
<name>Videos</name>
<path>smb://LORDJAMES/Public/Videos/</path>
<path>smb://AMANDA-PC/Public/Videos/</path>
<path>smb://AMANDA-PC/Amanda Secondary/320 GB/Videos/</path>
<path>smb://AMANDA-PC/DVD 750GB/</path>
</source>
<source>
<name>Xbox DVD Drive</name>
<path>D:\</path>
</source>
</video>

Here's my sources as a comparison. Notice "Videos" in the "default" tag? That makes the opening video page my aggregate video folders of the 4 related SMB shares. You probably want "DVD" in between "default", and you also might like it if you put all of your SMB shares under that one "DVD" header. Like so:

<video>
<default>DVD</default>
<source>
<name>DVD</name>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/dvd/</path>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/DVD1/</path>
<path>smb://SCOTT-9629126FD/DVD2/</path>
</source>
</video>

Scotty6595

12-30-08, 05:09 PM

Blaaa! Never mind... I got it all sorted out...lol

sean_w_smith

12-30-08, 09:15 PM

A few comments on the ATV as a XBMC....

I hacked everything in less than an hour last night.

making the patchstick is simple.
installing patchstick is simple
installing XBMC and Boxee is also simple....

very easy automated hack.....

XBMC seems to work fine....

overall UI seems slower than xbox to me....

also the apple remote or equivalent in harmony land is not great...

not nearly as responsive as the xbox with logitech wireless controller or even IR

scrolling though large lists of thumbs is slower it seems....

these are all early impressions....

Other thing to note is the ATV boots slow before this hack and even slower after. It certainly 1+ minutes to boot. not 15 seconds like an xbox.

sorry to harp on the negatives but thats what I noticed in my first two hours of serious usage...

I will do more with it this weekend after I figure out how to FTP my sources.xml and other stuff to it and have it index my NAS. I installed the 4 1.5 TB's drives in the infrant X6 before xmas and finally got it installed in the utah house where it normally lives again. pretty sweet now getting over 4TB of usable space on raid5 + 200G of snapshot space as well.... on a 3 year old NAS. definetely it was not cheap but still the most robust and feature rich of the many NAS's I have....

Sean

Ja Phule

12-31-08, 01:24 AM

Sean, is your ATV xbmc GUI running at 1080p? Any smoother at 720p?

Also, new T3CH build out for xbox. Quite a few fixes logged this time it seems.

sean_w_smith

12-31-08, 09:42 AM

Sean, is your ATV xbmc GUI running at 1080p? Any smoother at 720p?

Also, new T3CH build out for xbox. Quite a few fixes logged this time it seems.

I am running the ATV at 720P connected to my projector....

Sean

darklordjames

12-31-08, 11:42 AM

Does the ATV+XBMC let you spit out odd resolutions like 1024x768 or 1366x768?

ChrisFB

12-31-08, 08:32 PM

If anyone likes the new 12.30 Xbox build please shout out.

Also - Sean, please keep the updates on the ATV impressions coming. Much appreciated.

intomed

12-31-08, 09:35 PM

Got my Apple TV today. Just like Sean said, very easy and fast to set up. I was up and running in less than 1 hour. Still playing with it. So far, I think it is very good. I do not appreciate a slower UI than XBox at this point and time. Then again, I have not had much time today to really test drive the aTV. Presently, it is connected via HDMI to my 42" Panasonic Plasma ==> looks good. Will provide further user experiences as I get further opportunity to play with it. I think, I will be giving the Mac Mini a run sometime in the near future.

intomed

12-31-08, 09:36 PM

Sean, have you figured out how to ftp to your aTV yet? I'm having difficulty do that at this time. Any tips? Thanks.

sean_w_smith

01-01-09, 12:10 AM

Does the ATV+XBMC let you spit out odd resolutions like 1024x768 or 1366x768?

yes it did have some. I will check which ones but definetely more than xbox

sean_w_smith

01-03-09, 01:20 AM

BTW: MediaStream 1.0 shipped a while back. This is about 4 weeks more mature than what shipped with atlantis... you can download here... running at 1080i does not seem to work well. it just uses too much memory on the xbox.

ok on the mac mini.... at 1080i

seems good at 720P

The media preview VIEW is pretty f^&^* cool especially with the animation turned on...

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=41541

Sean

darklordjames

01-03-09, 01:27 AM

That's a slick looking skin :)

househusband36

01-05-09, 02:29 PM

Hey guys,
I guess I have couple of questions. Are all the links at the beginning of this thread still relevant. I mean is the information that the links send you to till good. My wife picked up an original xbox at a yard sale about 3 months ago for 15 bucks and that included 12 games. (Some people just don't know value). She was going to resell it because I have a 360. But I wanted to either soft mod or hard mod it, to fill it up with movies for our bedroom or theater. Are there still places, websites or people here. that mod xboxes soft or hard, with all software included. or do I have to piece it together from all the links? I'm willing to pay. Just not a arm and leg.

thanks
Steve

felke001

01-05-09, 02:49 PM

sean_w_smith

01-05-09, 04:00 PM

topperdude

01-05-09, 04:11 PM

I'm a long time XBMC user on the original Xbox but like many others was frustrated by the hardware limitations despite it's incredible interface and usability.

I got myself a Popcorn Hour A-110 for Christmas--so far I'm pretty impressed.

While it clearly doesn't have nearly as slick an interface as XBMC (although there are some Video jukebox overlays that are a reasonable approximation), its ability to easily install a large HDD and then play almost any type of video file (including blue ray rips with HD audio) either streamed or directly from the box output via HDMI is pretty impressive. I have yet to find a file that it can't play.

I am still playing around with it but it might be the first digital server to come along that will cause me to relegate the vintage Xbox to the kids playroom.

I havent played around with my PCH much (just hooked it up yesterday), but I did purchase it to hopefully fill in some of limitations/gaps with XBMC - mainly HDTV playback and to provide a frontend for my TV server.

I understand there's an ongoing XBMC project for TV frontend, but I dont believe its ready for beta yet, let alone for 'primetime' use. Plus I believe the frontend/plugin supports some (e.g. MythTV, MediaPortal) and not other (e.g. GBPVR) TV server solutions. OTOH, there's a PCH plugin for GBPVR which allows streaming liveTV, actually, the entire GBPVR frontend from the server and playback via PCH. It can even playback HD/Bluray material from harddrive. To be fair, the PCH plugin has its own limitations (no resume, no support for comskip files, etc), nor does it have a frontend anywhere as mature as XBMC. :D

So while the 'holy grail' of "one box to do it all", the combination of XBMC for non-HD and PCH for TV/unprotected HD material could be hard to beat (if it works as well as I am hoping it can ;) ) .

-Topper