Quick Question. I've had the XBMC set-up for a long time with a 250GB harddrive, but after seeing everyone elses setup with a NAS I think I would like to go that route and build one. Do any of ya'll have any good website to help unnderstand how they work a little better?

I'm looking at learning everything from what type of OS to what type of components.

Thanks in advnance

I've had to do a lot of research on this and I don't recall ever finding a single centralized thread anywhere. You need to decide if you're going with a Windows or Linux box.

I went Linux. First step, select your hardware. I have a fairly old machine (Celeron 600). Get a good case with expandability and ventilation options for the hard drives. Get a solid power supply. Figure out how much space you want and start keeping your eyes out for deals (and figure out which brand of hard drives you want to use). Decide if you're going to use RAID or not (I'm not) and if so, what type. Decide if you are going to rip on the NAS itself - if so it'll probably need a little better hardware.

Second step, learn to install a server distro (I went with Ubuntu server). Learn to work the command line. Learn to update repository lists and install apps with apt-get. Learn to configure a samba server (and maybe NFS server) for file sharing. Learn to add, format, and configure new hard drives.

Then start planning any ripping methods to get all of the media onto the NAS. I figure planning out an efficient process in advance will hopefully save time in the long run in the initial ripping process and any future ripping when new media is purchased. Select a video format (I chose ISO full rips rather than compression - full rips due to limitations in my Linux command line applications). Select an audio format (I'd recommend lossless compression - I happen to be going with FLAC). Audio format selection may be dependent on portable players you have (I didn't make this a factor since my portable _only_ plays MP3).

Then there are more detailed questions. If not on RAID, will you build a symlink farm to centralize read-only media access? This is especially a factor if you are going to access media from other clients beyond Xbox/XBMC (think another PC). Make sure you have a solid, consistent storage algorithm (always store music in a certain location, tv shows in another location, etc relative to the particular hard drive) on each drive so data can be easily found.

In any case, I wanted to refamiliarize myself with linux in general so I was willing to take on (and am still taking on) the learning curve of a linux NAS. The best thing is it is very solid once things are finally configured and a command-line only interface helps to make it very easy on the resources.

Wow alot of info thanks.

I've been playing around with linux recently but I'm not comfortable enough with it just yet, and I do think I like the idea of a RAID system.

But I do have one final question, the plan in my head so far is a server that I get running and then hideaway somewhere, so when you say rip to the server does that mean I can use my everyday PC to rip a ISO over the network, or do I have to have a DVD drive on the NAS and rip with it.

Thanks

I've been playing around with linux recently but I'm not comfortable enough with it just yet, and I do think I like the idea of a RAID system.

Think about RAID. I don't think we should discuss any more in this thread - don't want to bog it down. But rest assured there are plenty of argument threads about RAID vs no RAID.

But I do have one final question, the plan in my head so far is a server that I get running and then hideaway somewhere, so when you say rip to the server does that mean I can use my everyday PC to rip a ISO over the network, or do I have to have a DVD drive on the NAS and rip with it.

You can either rip on a workstation separate from the server or directly on the server. I personally would choose to rip on a separate machine. Either your main workstation or, if you're like me, a third computer (mine is a designated downloading and ripping machine). To me it would make more sense to throw money at hardware on a machine where it can be used for other purposes rather than throwing money at a server that really only requires minimal hardware to do its job. It's also nice to limit the NAS to doing only one thing - storing and serving up content. This keeps things less complicated.

As discussed earlier in the thread, my DVD ripping process uses a bash script to rip a DVD to VOB's, then convert to an ISO writing the output of the conversion to the server across the wire. As far as I can tell the bottleneck isn't the wire time to the server but rather the conversion to ISO process.

The downside to ripping on your main workstation is, unless you have a dual core processor, you probably won't be able to do much else while the machine is ripping.

DVDProfiler2XBMC (http://japhule.collinsreport.com/DVDProfiler2XBMC/index.html) is out. Please provide any comments, suggestions, error/bug reports and feedback here or via email.

Quick Question. I've had the XBMC set-up for a long time with a 250GB harddrive, but after seeing everyone elses setup with a NAS I think I would like to go that route and build one. Do any of ya'll have any good website to help unnderstand how they work a little better?

I'm looking at learning everything from what type of OS to what type of components.

Thanks in advnance

In addition to linux or windows you can try a NAS device as well. My old setup was a 300G Ext USB/Firewire drive connceted to an old POS laptop acting as a file server. ran xp home and setup a few shares and changed the arbitration mode from client to server mode in windows and it works fine. I have been using unix everyday for 15 years and its getting far easier to install and administer its still not the most user friendly thing out there but certainly can impliment all the desired functions. I recently decided to upgrade to a Infrant X6 for the raid-5 and capacity and couldn't be happier. There is a whole huge thread here on that device. Basically install drives, wait upto 30 minutes for the basic formatting of the drive to get done. Run the install wizard or advanced mode. wizard takes about 5 minutes and advanced takes about 20 if you go through every options pane. Wait for the raid to finish building and your done. The volume is available pretty quickly at a reduced speed while raid synchronization occurs. So far not one issue, crash, etc, its been solid.

On DVD Ripping, decrypting does not use much CPU. Transcoding with DVD Shrink does and will peg a CPU. The I/O Load from fast burners is huge 15MB+/s. With my NEC 3540 and 3550 I can rip a typical DVD in 8 minutes. I recommend a separate pc for dealing with it if you rip a lot, I rip sometimes on my superfast desktop but often I am not willing to tolerate the slowness of the RIP being even it to a crawl. Ripping on your server or main workstation is painful IMO. I rip to straight to local disk on the ripping machine and when I am done. I drag the iso's over to the NAS. Use cheap old hardware you have lying around if you have some. I don't understand MCE PC's in this respect either. I have a hard time beleiving it can record 2 hd shows and burn/rip DVD's at the same time with any sort of speed. My latest ripping machine is 800 mhz laptop with an external USB 2.0 Enclosure with NEC DVD 3550 (less than $80 from newegg). Its note as fast as my much newere desktop ripper but its portable and I brought on vacation. I also use this as my print server due to its location. You have lots of options based on your old hardware inventory, pc skills, and pocketbook.

I have a about 1500 store bought CDs and another 1000 CDs of Dead, Phish, Dave Matthews etc plus some foreign video content. I spent 6 months ripping disks, and years invested in tagging all my phish etc. The thought of that single disk dying scared me. Its not feasible to backup data of this size so raid seems like the only choice. So far I have not been disapointed. Its more $$$ than using old PC parts and the terrastation but it was the right choice for me.

Cheers,
Sean

One the XBMC upgrade question you can overlay the new install over the existing one. All your settings will be saved. if you keep a few versions on your pc you can downgrade just as easily. deleting the udata and tdata settings as well as changes with the main xml can cause some issues over time but its not very frequent. The thumbnails etc are stored in the xbmc dir and always seem to work correctly. I have been through about 20 versions of xbmc in the last year.

DVD playing freezes were common. I could seldomly watch a movie without it hanging. I generally used xbox dvd player with a disk. With the 2/12 and 2/20 builds I have watched a number of isos and its not hanging or dropping frames. Remember this aspect of XBMC is still beta. It was alpha up until recently. Its definetely the buggiest aspect of xbmc but getting better all the time. Given what I have seen using it for a while it will be right soon. The rest of xbmc is usually very stable and the features work correctly. The rate of improvement in the software has been very impressive.

DVDProfiler2XBMC (http://japhule.collinsreport.com/DVDProfiler2XBMC/index.html) is out. Please provide any comments, suggestions, error/bug reports and feedback here or via email.

Looks nice. I'm thinking I won't be using this app, but a couple suggestions. Perhaps you could enable an "underscore ouput," meaning all file name output is the same except spaces would be replaced by '_' characters. Also just wondering if the app detects whether a DVD has multiple discs and if so does it output multiple, incremented ISO's? It looks like the app does handle update execution (when you buy more DVD's) with the "Overwrite Existing DVD Covers" option.

Nice work!

Looks nice. I'm thinking I won't be using this app, but a couple suggestions. Perhaps you could enable an "underscore ouput," meaning all file name output is the same except spaces would be replaced by '_' characters. Also just wondering if the app detects whether a DVD has multiple discs and if so does it output multiple, incremented ISO's? It looks like the app does handle update execution (when you buy more DVD's) with the "Overwrite Existing DVD Covers" option.

Nice work!

Thanks. I can look into adding underscores for filenames. I'm not sure though, if this would affect the accuracy of the IMDB scan. If the DVD Profiler info contains # of discs for each dvd, then I could probably create an option for discs in a dvd set.

I can look into adding underscores for filenames. I'm not sure though, if this would affect the accuracy of the IMDB scan.

I've scanned about 10-20 discs with underscores and haven't seen any issues with IMDB. That is by no means an extensive test, however, so if anyone else has seen issues - pipe up!

I currently have an MG-35 that I use for Movies and MP3's. Currently I use the internal 300G HD. I am moving in the next 2 months and plan on setting up a NAS box. The NAS will be connected to a Gigabit switch connecting the PC's and MG-35. The question is.. I want to add another TV for viewing access. I am comptemplating going with another MG-35 or an Xbox with XBMX. Before I spend $250 on a modded Xbox I want to be sure I dont have stuttering issues on playback. Any comments?

Before you spend $250 on a modded xbox you need to find a better source :) Xboxes go for $100 or so on craigslist and then you might have to buy a dvd remote ($12 ebay) or HD cables ($12 again). Soft mod it (if you don't have the stuff, $30 for an actionreplay and $5 for a game). Still < $150 for everything.

There is some stuttering on dvdplayback now (basically my wife doesn't notice it, but I do -- it's not even a dropped frame, maybe I'm picky). The UI and the quick turnaround on bug fixes makes it was worth it to me compared to the MG-35... but that's just me.

goofygrin is right. I just picked up a used xbox on eBay for $105 with the DVD remote. I chose to do a soft-mod using the HD hotswap method, so the only other cost til now has been the $12 for the used HD AV cable at the local EB Games in the mall. Having never done one before, I had the soft-mod done in about 45 min.

You can save the $35 by just creating a USB to controller adapter. After that you will be able to hook the controller to a USB port and load files from the computer to the memory card and then load it to the xbox. The action replay software can be found on the internet (I forgot where it was it may have been there website).
Check xbox-scene for ndure's softmod and you can find several good tutorials there.

For those interested...

I have a tv tuner card in my pc that I use in conjunction with WinDVR software to capture TV in mpeg2 format. As a test, I was recording some tv and turned on my xbox and tried to see if it will stream the current recording, and it does it perfectly without affecting the video capture. Very cool indeed.

I meant $150.. Sorry for the confusion. ;)

Another vote for Xbox XBMC. Once you get it set up it's well worth the effort. You can't beat it for the price, performance and features. I might add it's worth it to DIY since you'll also learn the skills to update it and add features later on... A big thanks to Ja Phule, Jliles, Qooop and others in this thread for their input and direction. This is exactly what I was looking for!
Dave

I did the mod chip but maybe that was a waste. At least the soldering motivated me to finally fix my Tempest monitor. :)

Do the solderless Mod Chips work well?

I would highly recommend against solderless mod chips. They are difficult to instal and mine was very sensitive to movement. I would move the box from downstairs to upstairs and it won't work.... Do a soldered chip or a soft mod...

Sean

If you have some skills, you don't have to use a mod chip at all.. You can solder a couple of places on the board to enable writing to the original flash chip and then do a soft mod to reflash the chip with a different bios.

I have completed this on at least 10 boxes for friends and family and it only takes about an hour...

Another vote for Xbox XBMC. Once you get it set up it's well worth the effort. You can't beat it for the price, performance and features. I might add it's worth it to DIY since you'll also learn the skills to update it and add features later on... A big thanks to Ja Phule, Jliles, Qooop and others in this thread for their input and direction. This is exactly what I was looking for!
Dave

Can the XBMC be used with a remote NAS? Wirelessly?
Also, if I want to just play music, do I still need to turn on TV to select songs?

Can the XBMC be used with a remote NAS?

Yes

Wirelessly?


Yes


Also, if I want to just play music, do I still need to turn on TV to select songs?

1) Web front end allows selecting songs without a TV.
2) external LCD displays may also allow such behavior.

Does XBMC have built in wireless card? Are speeds enough to stream video from NAS to device or will picture be jittery?

XBMC is just a piece of software that runs on a modified Xbox. The Xbox has an ethernet port on it and you can use a game adapter or wireless bridge if you want to run wirelessly. For music and picture showing, wireless is fine. I wouldn't try it for for DVD quality video though.

XBMC is just a piece of software that runs on a modified Xbox. The Xbox has an ethernet port on it and you can use a game adapter or wireless bridge if you want to run wirelessly. For music and picture showing, wireless is fine. I wouldn't try it for for DVD quality video though.

Thanks

What type of wireless bridge? Can I just use my home wireless network and plug in a wirless card?
Are there any devices that do DVD quality video wirelessly?

I've no expereince with video distribution via wireless LAN. But from everything I've read, if it works well, you are a very lucky man. For video I stick with copper.

I've no expereince with video distribution via wireless LAN. But from everything I've read, if it works well, you are a very lucky man. For video I stick with copper.

Thanks. So what are the options for expanding the XBMC HD to make it larger? Can I get a regular internal HD from the likes of Seagate or Maxtor and just replace existing HD?

I also replaced the 10gb hard drive in the xbox with a 160gb seagate, $60

Was that just a standard internal HD or a special model?

Not such an easy answer.

Just cracking the case and throwing in a big honking drive is gonna net you a door stop.

The drive must be prepared, & locked (google should provide a web page with charts detailing which drive can succesfully 'locked' to work with the xbox). Furthermore, LBA support (>137gig) is dependant upon what hacked bios you are running.

:eek: Not such an easy answer.

Just cracking the case and throwing in a big honking drive is gonna net you a door stop.

The drive must be prepared, & locked (google should provide a web page with charts detailing which drive can succesfully 'locked' to work with the xbox). Furthermore, LBA support (>137gig) is dependant upon what hacked bios you are running.

Complications, compliactions... Crap. Why does it all have to be so complicated...
:eek:

anandrag,

I happen to both stream video wirelessly (from my PC and NAS) and I also put in a honkin' (ok, not THAT honkin') 120 GB drive in my XBOX.

Wireless video can be tricky and performance can depend on a lot of factors, like the distance between your router and access point and even the configuration of your apartment/house. I use a D-Link DI-634 router (the MIMO one) for excellent range and good performance. I couple that with the D-Link G820 game adapter attached to the XBOX. Both ends support a 108 Mbs connection (about double the standard wireless G speed), and though I don't know if I get that kind of performance in real life I can tell you that I have had little to no trouble playing video wirelessly between my PC/router downstairs and XBox in my bedroom upstairs. 98% of the time files play smoothly with no issues. The NAS itself is not wireless - it is connected directly to my router.

As for the honkin' hard drive, look earlier in this thread - I posted a link that shows you how to do it. The hard drives you can use are not really special - they are regular, off the shelf hard drives. The catch is they have to be "lockable", meaning they can be prepped in such a way that the XBOX will recognize it. Here's a link that will allow you to search for lockable drives - you can look in your Sunday circular and see if any of the drives on sale can be locked:

http://xboxdrives.x-pec.com/?p=list

Also, as mentioned, if you want to put in a drive greater than 137 GB extra prep work is required. However, the links I posted earlier will show you how to do that too. If you don't want to bother, just get a 120GB hard drive. :cool:

If I, probably the most tool-impaired person on the planet (Home Depot might as well be Abu Dhabi to me) can swap an XBOX hard drive, I assure you that you can too. :) Just take the time to read and learn.

Julie

New XBMC build out. T3CH 2-26.

Is the RPM of the drive important? I had a friend lose multiple drives in his TiVo. He replaced the stock 5400 with a 7200. I think it was heat that did them in as 7200s generate a lot more heat and if the case isn't designed for it, it could kill the drive. Unless the stock drive is 7200, I would recommend a 5400 unless you just want the biggest honking drive around.

The Xbox internal temp had a 9 degree rise in temp for both the MCPX and the CPU after a 7200 rpm drive was installed. This was with no activity.

However, with a constant use utilization on the system the internal temp climbed to 18 degrees above average. Not acceptable for me. YMMV.

After the fan speed was set to 30% (Xecuter 3 chip) the internal temp was only 5 degrees above average with no activity. This is the solution most in my group prefer (some run at 40%).

Unfortunately the software can alter the fan speed depending on what you're running on the 'box. Therefore I rewire the fan input voltage to apply either 7vdc (via grounding the fan neg lead) or upgrade to a 80mm quiet fan.

You can always wire the fan directly to the 12vdc source. It's louder, but yields an impressive 15 degrees cooler than stock.

pretty sure ALL of my xboxen & ReplayTV big honkin' drives are all WD 7200 RPMs Special Editions (bigger cache, 8 megs)

Never noticed a heat issue in any of the 4 boxes. Then again I never slowed down a fan, or cared to measure a temp.

I'm interested in taking a look at ripping and encoding my DVDs in h.264 and seeing how the quality is w/ XBMC. Does anyone have any good starting points in terms of their impressions as well as good encoding software?

Thanks for the thread. It inspired me to get a used xbox to put XBMC. Everything is great. I did a softmod using xboxhdm hotswap method. I started streaming videos using a spare router acting as wireless bridge. I am impressed with XBMC so far in handling all the formats and stuff (much better than my aging HTPC.)

I just have an issue, last night I got a HD pack and tried to set XBMC at 720p....I can set the settings on original ms dash by lauching it from XBMC but xbox doesn't remember the settings after the reboot. I tried coping eeprom.bin to shadowc folder but it is still a no go. I know this is not a right forum for xbox mod releated questions but I thought I'd ask here first.

I'm interested in taking a look at ripping and encoding my DVDs in h.264 and seeing how the quality is w/ XBMC. Does anyone have any good starting points in terms of their impressions as well as good encoding software?

I've been considering this also. I haven't re-encoded any of my dvds yet but I've tried re-encoding some video clips and trailers by using Nero Recode2. I haven't done any direct A/B comparisons yet but it seems fine so far depending on your quality settings. Check videohelp.com and the guides at doom9.org for other options.

Thanks for the thread. It inspired me to get a used xbox to put XBMC. Everything is great. I did a softmod using xboxhdm hotswap method. I started streaming videos using a spare router acting as wireless bridge. I am impressed with XBMC so far in handling all the formats and stuff (much better than my aging HTPC.)

I just have an issue, last night I got a HD pack and tried to set XBMC at 720p....I can set the settings on original ms dash by lauching it from XBMC but xbox doesn't remember the settings after the reboot. I tried coping eeprom.bin to shadowc folder but it is still a no go. I know this is not a right forum for xbox mod releated questions but I thought I'd ask here first.

When you make the change to enable 720p in the MS Dash, go back to the main MS Dash home screen. I believe it asks you to save before you get to the home screen. and go back into the video options to see if 720p is still enabled.

I'm not 100% sure how a softmod works, but can't you easily load up your xbox without the mod (as if you never did anything to mod it)? Maybe load the xbox up regularly and enable 720p and then reboot with the softmod. That is, if it is possible with the softmod.

Ok, so I'm at Best Buy today minding my own business when I see they have some 360's in stock so I buy one. I've been trying out the D-Link 520 but I'm not happy with the user interface. I play mp3's, jpegs and home movies on my hard drive (MPEG2 files).

I want to search by Artist and then by Album within the artist. I want album cover art. I want this accomplished on the supplied server, not through a third party server (unless its Microsoft's). Before I set this thing up and give it a try, will this work for me? My video has streamed well on the DLink (Belin G router) so far.

Input please.

I've been considering this also. I haven't re-encoded any of my dvds yet but I've tried re-encoding some video clips and trailers by using Nero Recode2. I haven't done any direct A/B comparisons yet but it seems fine so far depending on your quality settings. Check videohelp.com and the guides at doom9.org for other options.

did you get smooth playback on the xbox? i think h.264 is rather processor intensive to decode, so i was wondering if the xbox could handle it.

I just have an issue, last night I got a HD pack and tried to set XBMC at 720p....I can set the settings on original ms dash by lauching it from XBMC but xbox doesn't remember the settings after the reboot. I tried coping eeprom.bin to shadowc folder but it is still a no go. I know this is not a right forum for xbox mod releated questions but I thought I'd ask here first.

IN your softmod dash (say evox), launch the M$ Dashboard. In there change your settings to allow 720p. Power off, power on, launch xbmc, go into settings and 720p should be available.

I've got a multiboot with a safe dash, and only if I launch an unsafe dash does the resolution setting stick.

IN your softmod dash (say evox), launch the M$ Dashboard. In there change your settings to allow 720p. Power off, power on, launch xbmc, go into settings and 720p should be available.

I've got a multiboot with a safe dash, and only if I launch an unsafe dash does the resolution setting stick.


Thanks, Goofygrin & Ja Phule. I was launching the M$ dashboard from within XBMC. May be that's why the settings didn't stick. I just need to edit the evox.ini to add M$ dashboard link, right? I'll check it out tonight.

did you get smooth playback on the xbox? i think h.264 is rather processor intensive to decode, so i was wondering if the xbox could handle it.

The clips I've encoded playback smooth. It's also dependent on the bitrate that you encode the video with. The ones I've encoded have been lower bitrates. There's a test CD available from videohelp.com that has a variety of video clips in many formats (and many bitrates). I remember testing some h264 clips that also played fine, but I'd have to recheck some of those again.

Ok, so I'm at Best Buy today minding my own business when I see they have some 360's in stock so I buy one. I've been trying out the D-Link 520 but I'm not happy with the user interface. I play mp3's, jpegs and home movies on my hard drive (MPEG2 files).

I want to search by Artist and then by Album within the artist. I want album cover art. I want this accomplished on the supplied server, not through a third party server (unless its Microsoft's). Before I set this thing up and give it a try, will this work for me? My video has streamed well on the DLink (Belin G router) so far.

Input please.

Are you saying that you don't like the xbox360 and want to get the original xbox (if you don't already have one) and have it modified to run XBMC? If not, then you're in the wrong thread.

If you are asking about Xbox with XBMC...

It will play mp3s, jpegs, and mpeg2. All you need to do on your pc have the folders containing those files shared over your network. XBMC will scan your mp3 collection and read the id3 tags (along with the album art stored in id3), it will let you browse by genre, artist, album, and title. I haven't played too much with mp3s but I'll check if it will do artist and then show albums, but I believe it does. It will show album art, either with a separate jpg/tbn file or stored from id3, and also has a great visualizer that you can show while music is playing (there are pics in the first page).

Speaking of mp3 and music organization, anyone have good recommendations on mp3/id3 tag organizers? I've been using MediaMonkey which seems pretty good. I wonder if there's anything similar or better....though Media Monkey is pretty good, but I still need to mess with it. I need something that will narrow down the id3 music genre to a select few genres instead of having 50 similar genres.

Are you saying that you don't like the xbox360 and want to get the original xbox (if you don't already have one) and have it modified to run XBMC? If not, then you're in the wrong thread.

If you are asking about Xbox with XBMC...

It will play mp3s, jpegs, and mpeg2. All you need to do on your pc have the folders containing those files shared over your network. XBMC will scan your mp3 collection and read the id3 tags (along with the album art stored in id3), it will let you browse by genre, artist, album, and title. I haven't played too much with mp3s but I'll check if it will do artist and then show albums, but I believe it does. It will show album art, either with a separate jpg/tbn file or stored from id3, and also has a great visualizer that you can show while music is playing (there are pics in the first page).

Sorry for the confusion. I just got the xbox 360 (I never had xbox) and I haven't tried yet. My other option is strictly a media server (DLink 520). I am just curious if the xbox 360 will do what I want it to do. The games will just be a bonus, albeit a huge one from what I'm reading. I have Windows Media Center running on my PC and my hope is that the exact funtionality is transferred to the xbox 360. Thanks.

Sorry for the confusion. I just got the xbox 360 (I never had xbox) and I haven't tried yet. My other option is strictly a media server (DLink 520). I am just curious if the xbox 360 will do what I want it to do. The games will just be a bonus, albeit a huge one from what I'm reading. I have Windows Media Center running on my PC and my hope is that the exact funtionality is transferred to the xbox 360. Thanks.

Oh ok. You are in the wrong thread.... But from what I understand about the xbox360, it's functionality as a media center extender should be able to do almost everything your Media Center PC can do when it comes to audio. But don't quote me on that.

The clips I've encoded playback smooth. It's also dependent on the bitrate that you encode the video with. The ones I've encoded have been lower bitrates. There's a test CD available from videohelp.com that has a variety of video clips in many formats (and many bitrates). I remember testing some h264 clips that also played fine, but I'd have to recheck some of those again.

i'll do some testing and let you know how it goes. my hope is to acheive similar video quality to xvid or divx with greater compression. we'll see. there are a few threads on the xbmc forums about various parameters to set/clear when encoding to ensure smooth playback. please let me know if you uncover anything worth mentioning.

Well, as a baseline, I encoded a 45 minute episode of a TV show w/ h.264 from a DVD last night and while the results playing on my PC were excellent, the xbox couldn't handle it. I was using nero digital/avc and encoded at about 1.6 mbps with all of the encoding options selected, like bidrectional prediction, marcoblock partitions, weighted prediction, CABAC and deblocking. Right away frames were getting dropped on the xbox. Two pass encoding took about 4.5 hours with an athlon xp 2800. I'll try another encode and tweak the encoding options this evening per the xbmc forums. I'll also try an encode w/ gordian knot + x264 so I can tweak other things that nero doesn't allow. It's a shame because the quality of the encode with all of the encoding options at 1.6 mbps playing on my PC was very, very good. It almost makes want to think about a real HTPC with more horsepower just to get smooth h.264 playback with all encoding options.

If anyone is actually interested in further hearing the best way that I can find to encode in h.264 for xbmc playback considering quality/performance tradeoffs, let me know. Otherwise, I'll stop posting about this because it's a little off-topic for this particular thread.

There's no way I'd spend 4.5hours per 45 minutes to encode my 200+ dvds.

Just my humble opinion...

Ja Phule,
I used a combination of Mp3 Tag Tools v1.2 (http://massid3lib.sourceforge.net) and Mp3/Tag Studio 3.5 (http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts).

There's no way I'd spend 4.5hours per 45 minutes to encode my 200+ dvds.

Just my humble opinion...

Well, you don't sit there and stare at the screen for 4 hours. Nero digital takes 5 minutes to setup. Thanks for the snarky comment, though.

Batch encoding helps a lot. :)

Too bad there isn't an easier system for this like Kaleidescape that has a 200 disc loader that will do it all for you. Then again, I don't think it's worth $25k either.

Well, you don't sit there and stare at the screen for 4 hours. Nero digital takes 5 minutes to setup. Thanks for the snarky comment, though.

Obviously... but let's say there was a batch that I could run...

200 @ average of 90 minutes per movie (which is low) * 9 hours = 1800 hours = 75 days... probably at close to 100% cpu utilization... assuming you've already spent the time to rip those 200 dvds (which is no small task either), or you'll have to swap disks.

It's not snarky if its a valid point.

Batch encoding helps a lot. :)

Too bad there isn't an easier system for this like Kaleidescape that has a 200 disc loader that will do it all for you. Then again, I don't think it's worth $25k either.

I don't know a lot about the kaleidescape system, but I didn't think that it transcoded the dvds? (I thought it just ripped them direct, given the times that people were saying (put 200 in and the next day they're all done).

I don't know a lot about the kaleidescape system, but I didn't think that it transcoded the dvds? (I thought it just ripped them direct, given the times that people were saying (put 200 in and the next day they're all done).

Kaleidescape does not transcode, I'm just saying it'd be nice if there was something similar with a 200disc holder that will batch encode those 200 discs rather than having to do them one by one on a pc.

I always thought that there should be some sort of network that you could start where everyone catalogued their DVD's and the group would basically cooridinate the DVD ripping effort. I mean don't we all own the Godfather collection, Animal House, etc.. I'm sure there is a 70% overlap in most people's dvd collection anyway. Each person could rip their DVD's and everyone could just mail around a 250g maxtor external drive, copy their dvd's down and load up their rips. Repeat cycle. Just an idea that I'm sure would never work given the logistics needed ;)

Obviously... but let's say there was a batch that I could run...

200 @ average of 90 minutes per movie (which is low) * 9 hours = 1800 hours = 75 days... probably at close to 100% cpu utilization... assuming you've already spent the time to rip those 200 dvds (which is no small task either), or you'll have to swap disks.

It's not snarky if its a valid point.

creating, buying or maintaining close to 2TB of storage for those 200 uncompressed dvd's is just a walk in the park. and backing it up is also quite fun. good luck with that.

Maybe someone could build a DVD ripping and batch encoding system and rent it out to people (or have people pay for service). I believe this may be illegal though.

Maybe someone could build a DVD ripping and batch encoding system and rent it out to people (or have people pay for service). I believe this may be illegal though.

if you left off any copy protection circumvention software, requiring the user to install a decss implementation, then maybe it wouldn't.

creating, buying or maintaining close to 2TB of storage for those 200 uncompressed dvd's is just a walk in the park. and backing it up is also quite fun. good luck with that.

<cough>RAID<cough> Seriously...

I've had mine up for about a month now... other than some wonky hardware, I could make another 3 tb array again in about a day at most (most of that time would be spent while the array syncs [about 5 hours in my case]). Not as expensive as you would think either...

I've got all the physical media, so if lightning struck, I'd be able to recreate it...

<cough>RAID<cough> Seriously...

I've had mine up for about a month now... other than some wonky hardware, I could make another 3 tb array again in about a day at most (most of that time would be spent while the array syncs [about 5 hours in my case]). Not as expensive as you would think either...

I've got all the physical media, so if lightning struck, I'd be able to recreate it...

it is as expensive as I would think. that's why I'm stuck exploring compression. plus, if lightning strikes, i have a backup, so i wouldn't need to recreate it. i'm happy for you that you can afford it, but not everyone can.

I always thought that there should be some sort of network that you could start where everyone catalogued their DVD's and the group would basically cooridinate the DVD ripping effort. I mean don't we all own the Godfather collection, Animal House, etc.. I'm sure there is a 70% overlap in most people's dvd collection anyway. Each person could rip their DVD's and everyone could just mail around a 250g maxtor external drive, copy their dvd's down and load up their rips. Repeat cycle. Just an idea that I'm sure would never work given the logistics needed ;)

If we could ever trust the studios to agree on formats and licensing, the ideal thing would be for each DVD purchase to provide a license to the media. Then, when broadband is ready (maybe now), we could request one of our DVD's and either stream it real-time from some central source or perhaps request 15 minutes in advance to allow for buffering. Ideally we could carry our license keys around to watch in other locations and most importantly storage would become an moot point.

This could also allow for some interesting pricing where person A could just get the feature, person B could pay for the feature + commentary and person C could pay for the feature + commentary + special features.

If we could ever trust the studios to agree on formats and licensing, the ideal thing would be for each DVD purchase to provide a license to the media. Then, when broadband is ready (maybe now), we could request one of our DVD's and either stream it real-time from some central source or perhaps request 15 minutes in advance to allow for buffering. Ideally we could carry our license keys around to watch in other locations and most importantly storage would become an moot point.

This could also allow for some interesting pricing where person A could just get the feature, person B could pay for the feature + commentary and person C could pay for the feature + commentary + special features.

Sooner or later, they'll get to a monthly subscription service for movies like they do for music.

There's a lot of buzz going on for the new XBMC skin coming April 7th. Very nice looking skin emulating the xbox360 gui. I can't wait to try it myself.

Official Forum for MC360 Skin (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showforum=178)

Author's Site (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevenjweir/)

Video Demo (http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/hsdemonz/MC360-Blackbolt/mc360_public2.wmv)

http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/hsdemonz/MC360-Blackbolt/mc360_xs1.jpg

http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/hsdemonz/MC360-Blackbolt/mc360_xs2.jpg

http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/hsdemonz/MC360-Blackbolt/mc360_xs3.jpg

http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/hsdemonz/MC360-Blackbolt/mc360_xs4.jpg

Yea, I have been following that thread over at Xbox Scene for a long time and I am def. going to give this skin a shot. My concern is how much memory this bad boy will consume. Blackbolt has said that it will not be an issue but we will have to wait till April 7th to see. I currently switch back and forth between PMIII and MC2005. My wife likes MC2005 but I tend to think that PMIII looks way better. I was actually going to post some info about this skin a while back but I didn't think anyone would be interested....
By the way, Ja Phule didn't you post some information about upping the font size in PMIII in this thread? My eyes can't stand it anymore and I was going to try and change the fonts to something that I can actually see from 10ft. away....

Thanks!

Scott

Yea, I have been following that thread over at Xbox Scene for a long time and I am def. going to give this skin a shot. My concern is how much memory this bad boy will consume. Blackbolt has said that it will not be an issue but we will have to wait till April 7th to see. I currently switch back and forth between PMIII and MC2005. My wife likes MC2005 but I tend to think that PMIII looks way better. I was actually going to post some info about this skin a while back but I didn't think anyone would be interested....
By the way, Ja Phule didn't you post some information about upping the font size in PMIII in this thread? My eyes can't stand it anymore and I was going to try and change the fonts to something that I can actually see from 10ft. away....

Thanks!

Scott

Supposedly the skin uses less memory than PM3. I'm only using XBMC at 480i currently, but I've seen a few threads in the xbox-scene forums discussing changing of the fonts.

Supposedly the skin uses less memory than PM3. I'm only using XBMC at 480i currently, but I've seen a few threads in the xbox-scene forums discussing changing of the fonts.

see this thread for changing fonts for PMIII:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7165916&&#post7165916

Thanks guys!

I'm a little confused. If I am using dvdprofiler2xbmc and dvdprofiler, how do I start out with an existing iso image, then change the picture (image) within that iso file? I used dvdprofiler and created the skin. I then used dvdprofiler2xbmc and formed the two files that I am suppose to insert somewhere. Sorry, I feel like an idiot here, it seems simple, but what am I doing wrong?

In other words, I have a movie on my hd in iso form. I have the image for that movie created from the two programs above. Now what do I do?

thanks

I'm a little confused. If I am using dvdprofiler2xbmc and dvdprofiler, how do I start out with an existing iso image, then change the picture (image) within that iso file? I used dvdprofiler and created the skin. I then used dvdprofiler2xbmc and formed the two files that I am suppose to insert somewhere. Sorry, I feel like an idiot here, it seems simple, but what am I doing wrong?

In other words, I have a movie on my hd in iso form. I have the image for that movie created from the two programs above. Now what do I do?

thanks

Patrick,
The program will create the isos and the thumbnail image from your DVD Profiler collection. Once you have those files created, put those files in a shared folder (or share that folder in your network), and view it in XBMC and you should be able to see all the isos with the thumbnail image associated with the iso.

Replace the dummy iso with the real one and rename it to correspond to the thumbnail.

Well, as a baseline, I encoded a 45 minute episode of a TV show w/ h.264 from a DVD last night and while the results playing on my PC were excellent, the xbox couldn't handle it. I was using nero digital/avc and encoded at about 1.6 mbps with all of the encoding options selected, like bidrectional prediction, marcoblock partitions, weighted prediction, CABAC and deblocking. Right away frames were getting dropped on the xbox. Two pass encoding took about 4.5 hours with an athlon xp 2800. I'll try another encode and tweak the encoding options this evening per the xbmc forums. I'll also try an encode w/ gordian knot + x264 so I can tweak other things that nero doesn't allow. It's a shame because the quality of the encode with all of the encoding options at 1.6 mbps playing on my PC was very, very good. It almost makes want to think about a real HTPC with more horsepower just to get smooth h.264 playback with all encoding options.

If anyone is actually interested in further hearing the best way that I can find to encode in h.264 for xbmc playback considering quality/performance tradeoffs, let me know. Otherwise, I'll stop posting about this because it's a little off-topic for this particular thread.

I did another h.264 encode w/ Gordian Knot/x264 with different encoding options and I got what I feel are great results at a bitrate of 1.6mbps. I got zero dropped frames for a 45 minute movie. I had to turn off CABAC and deblocking, which degraded the quality slightly in a few scenes. Also, I didn't realize that Nero Digital converts the ac3 audio to AAC 5.1 audio, which causes the xbox to have to decode the audio before sending it over to my receiver with my prior attempt, resulting in dropped frames. I couldn't figure out how to get Nero to just mux the ac3 audio with the compressed video, didn't see an option for that. So unless Nero Digital has such an option, Gordian Knot is the way to go for h.264 for me at this point. The encode time was 2 hours, less than half the time of prior attempts, probably because Nero was transoding the ac3 audio in addition to having CABAC and deblocking turned on. I couldn't find a version of autogk that uses x264, but I think that x264 support is forthcoming. Gordian Knot can be a pain if you're using it for the first time because it doesn't have the wizard interface of autogk, but it's really easy once you figure out the workflow, requiring a handful of extra clicks beyond ripping a dvd. Comparing my xvid rip vs. the h.264 rip, I think the h.264 looks noticeably better and I'm going to start using it going forward, but it's probably not worth it to re-encode stuff I already have. I may also consider dropping the bitrate even further to see what it looks like. If anyone wants to try it out and has questions but is a Gordian Knot noob, like I was, I can try to help in any way I can.

I couldn't figure out how to get Nero to just mux the ac3 audio with the compressed video, didn't see an option for that. So unless Nero Digital has such an option, Gordian Knot is the way to go for h.264 for me at this point.

A multi-channel plugin can be purchased from Nero to keep DD5.1 intact. However they do not support DTS.

thanks ja phule, i'll give it a try.....

I did another h.264 encode w/ Gordian Knot/x264 with different encoding options and I got what I feel are great results at a bitrate of 1.6mbps. I got zero dropped frames for a 45 minute movie. I had to turn off CABAC and deblocking, which degraded the quality slightly in a few scenes. Also, I didn't realize that Nero Digital converts the ac3 audio to AAC 5.1 audio, which causes the xbox to have to decode the audio before sending it over to my receiver with my prior attempt, resulting in dropped frames. I couldn't figure out how to get Nero to just mux the ac3 audio with the compressed video, didn't see an option for that. So unless Nero Digital has such an option, Gordian Knot is the way to go for h.264 for me at this point. The encode time was 2 hours, less than half the time of prior attempts, probably because Nero was transoding the ac3 audio in addition to having CABAC and deblocking turned on. I couldn't find a version of autogk that uses x264, but I think that x264 support is forthcoming. Gordian Knot can be a pain if you're using it for the first time because it doesn't have the wizard interface of autogk, but it's really easy once you figure out the workflow, requiring a handful of extra clicks beyond ripping a dvd. Comparing my xvid rip vs. the h.264 rip, I think the h.264 looks noticeably better and I'm going to start using it going forward, but it's probably not worth it to re-encode stuff I already have. I may also consider dropping the bitrate even further to see what it looks like. If anyone wants to try it out and has questions but is a Gordian Knot noob, like I was, I can try to help in any way I can.

Cool! (I know I was bashing it earlier, but it's still cool). Are you upscaling/watching on a larger display? I'd be interested to see what it looks like on my 60" CRT RPTV or 100" CRT FPP at 1080i vs the dvd.

Is anyone paying attention to this thread:
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=ST;f=5;t=19053

(yes I'm the same goofygrin as over there.)

I've got some paying work that's taking my time away now, but thought you all might be interested... (how many of you use the current web interface?)

Is anyone paying attention to this thread:
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=ST;f=5;t=19053

(yes I'm the same goofygrin as over there.)

I've got some paying work that's taking my time away now, but thought you all might be interested... (how many of you use the current web interface?)

Interesting... I was just playing around with the web interface and I thought it was a cool feature but thought it'd could be much better...

I'm kinda got lost as to what can and can't be done currently with the work you've done so far. Can you give us a brief list of features?

All it does now is display the current music playlist and allows you to control the play/stop/etc. controls (and shows you what's playing). You can also seek in a song by clicking on the progress bar and select a file in the playlist by clicking it.

There's no interface yet for adding files to the playlist though...

Looks cool googygrin! I officially have tiredhead at 9:45am after reading that entire thread. WAY over my head on the tech... but I would love the functionality... Good work and keep it up!

not sure if this the correct thread to post in. if not, feel free to direct me to the correct one.

im having some problems with using xbmc and my os x powermac G5. i believe i have successfuly created the correct paths to my samba shared firewire800 drive. i can see the correct drive, browse through the contents of the drive, even "get info," for specific movie files within the drive. however, whenever i try to play a file, of any kind, avi, mov, etc. nothing happens - or it will start to attempt to read the file with the dialog coming up and saying:

"caching subtitles . . ."
and then after a few moments:
" protocol: smb
use standard file for protocol: smb"

what is odd is that i am able to link to and play files that are on my powerbook which is connected to my network via my airport network. might there be some kind of network issue here? i have tried wiring an ethernet cable directly into my router and then into my xbox with the same results which leads me to believe it is not my network strength which is the problem.

any help will be most appreciated. if you have any other questions for me, feel free to ask. thank so much!!!

dankwonka,

Try booting the xbox into "safemode" by holding down the x and y buttons when xbmc is launching (you'll know if you're in when there's a "free memory" display on the top left corner.

Try to play the file.

Now ftp to the xbox, and in the xbmc directory will be a log file. Save that log file locally, and read it towards the bottom to see if there's any error messages.

This probably isn't the best place to get help, but the forums on xboxmediacenter.com probably are a better place.

HeadsUP! New T3CH release dated 03-06-06 available....

HeadsUP! New T3CH release dated 03-06-06 available....

Looks like it's time for another upgrade. One of the changes in this release is that the IMDB thumbnail does not take over your custom thumbnail when you view the movie information.

Looks like it's time for another upgrade. One of the changes in this release is that the IMDB thumbnail does not take over your custom thumbnail when you view the movie information.


That's a plus, as I usually grab mine from Amazon. and they looks lots better.

Hello All,

I really enjoyed finding this thread and it made me purchase an xbox to go with my HP LCN2600 LCD display and MCE Remote kit, it's kick ass! Quick question for XBMC users;

In the MS Dashboard > Video, I enabled all resoultions (480p,720p,1080i) and every time I launch XBMC it displays it in 1080i. If I say no to 1080i, then XBMC displays in 720p. Sitting as far back as I am, the text is way to small. I would like to run XBMC at 480p and have it scale to 720p or 1080i only when necessary. Is that even possible?

sQwErTy,

You have two options here. In the video settings for XBMC (accessible from the GUI) you can simply set the output to 480p. When you want to upscale the output, just go into the settings again and change the output to 720p or 1080i.

If the only reason for not upscaling is the tiny font size, then you can change the fonts or the size of the default fonts used in XBMC's font config files. A bit earlier in this thread this was discussed and one very helpful poster actually posted his font settings for 1080i maximum readability.

Hope that helps...
Julie

Sorry, found the link for the font info...

http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=ST&f=2&t=13693

Sweet ;)

I just updated from the 2-12 build to the 3-6 build. I'm liking the new Party mode for music. It's a quick an easy way to just get some music playing rather than going in and selecting some music or online radio. I should probably start making some playlists and explore the music function some more though.

Sorry, found the link for the font info...

http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl?act=ST&f=2&t=13693

Thanks. That's a HUGE help!

There's another Web script that just came out. It seems to have expanded on some of the things that worked on goofygrin's script. This new web version allows drag and drop to the playlist.

More info here:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=496453

hello,

files that i know have ac3 5.1 audio will play but without 5.1. files that are on my smb shares will play, but again, no 5.1. i have dts and ac3 encoding selected in the settings. i have the xbox hooked up to my dolby digital dts decoding, etc, etc sony reciever via the opitical digital thing. my reciever seems to think that it is receiveing a 5.1 signal when i have "output stereo sound to all speakers" selected, but it ist really 5.1 sound, just the same level sound coming from all the speakers.

any help will be most appreciated!!!

No problems with AC3 5.1 here... Are you absolutely sure your clips are in 5.1? Can u post a small clip for us to test?

i can post a small clip. how do i do that?

You would need to store it on a site somewhere. Or use one of those file storage websites like megaupload.com.

The more I play around with XBMC the more I am amazed of all it can do.
Two questions I have is one, can it somehow connect to Pandora like my Squeezebox does or my PC?

Next is I have noticed the picture seems grainy on my Video, I am modulated to a certain channel on my TV's and it could be I just need to amplify the signal more. The are not Hi Def sets. Are your pictures sharp? My DVD player playing the same video on another modulated channel has a sharper picture?

Thanks,

Tim

New CVS of XBMC out. Seemed to have fix DVD stuttering, also Dynamic range compresssion for video audio, and smart playlists..

Do you have a genuine MS cable pack?
I ask because a guy at work had a third party cable, and could not get his amp to see DD5.1 or DTS.


hello,

files that i know have ac3 5.1 audio will play but without 5.1. files that are on my smb shares will play, but again, no 5.1. i have dts and ac3 encoding selected in the settings. i have the xbox hooked up to my dolby digital dts decoding, etc, etc sony reciever via the opitical digital thing. my reciever seems to think that it is receiveing a 5.1 signal when i have "output stereo sound to all speakers" selected, but it ist really 5.1 sound, just the same level sound coming from all the speakers.

any help will be most appreciated!!!

well the new build fixed the momentary stutters I was having with million dollar baby, but now if I fast forward in a dvd, it causes it to stutter a LOT... I'll have to play with it more over the next couple days...

I'm using the Infocus 4805 16:9 projector. XBMC does support widescreen resolutions as you can see in the screenshots. It supports 480p, 720p, and 1080i as well as 4:3.

XBMC does upscale DVD.


Ja Phule,
Just to clarify:

1. Are you using the M1 to component video adapter on the InFocus 4805.
2. What are you using for component out on the Xbox?

Thank you for sharing this information.

rudiger

Ja Phule,
Just to clarify:

1. Are you using the M1 to component video adapter on the InFocus 4805.
2. What are you using for component out on the Xbox?

Thank you for sharing this information.

rudiger

The 4805 has component inputs. I'm connected my system to component via this input, no need for the m1 component adapter unless you want a 2nd set of component inputs.

I'm actually using a 3rd party component adapter for xbox. I'm using a 3rd party adapter so that I can easily switch between svideo and component output without having to switch cables each time. This is so I can play via component on my 4805 and on my other regular sdtv display via svideo. I'm running XBMC at 480i in NTSC 16:9 mode currently.

Some one makes an adapter for Xbox for either component or s-video? That is something I need. Who makes it? PM me if you don't want to list the name.

rudiger

Uh... rudiger, they are ALL over the place. Even monster makes one...

I know monster makes a component video adapter. And they also make a s-video adapter. I'm asking if someone makes combination s-video/component adapter for xbox. Or am I needing some other device?

Sorry for being a little confused.

rudiger

I believe this is the adapter I'm using (though, it may be under a different name). I've also seen it at Fry's. EDIT: OK, my adapter is made by arsenal, however, it does not look like the arsenal adapter you see when you google it online, mine looks like the intec adapter pictured below. The arsenal adapter I have is also available at my local Fry's. There's a switch on the adapter that lets you switch between component and svideo/composite. If you switch while the xbox is on, the xbox will reset.
http://www.audio-discounters.com/g8239.html

http://store1.yimg.com/I/yhst-3248687470797_1889_29702265

This adapter also caught my attention because it is the only xbox adapter I've seen that has a coax digital output (along with optical, component, svideo, composite, analog audio).
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=xbox+component+coaxial&pid=4899951931145980161&oid=12570294082704767132&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=mrd
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MC-CM2010&sourceid=qIZwQ-uTUhf5AnqrsKqZ&cm_ven=CJ&cm_pla=0041593776&cm_ite=MC-CM2010

Is anyone else noticing a good deal of the CUE bug (chroma upsampling error) in 480p, 720p, and 1080i? That's one of the main reasons I'm running under 480i right now (along with the crappy deinterlacing I get on DVDs). Though the CUE may be from my 3rd party adapter, I think I saw it when I was using the official HD pack. I also noticed CUE in an older bug list for XBMC.

Thanks Ja Phule, I'm headed to Fry's.

rudiger

Is anyone else noticing a good deal of the CUE bug (chroma upsampling error) in 480p, 720p, and 1080i? That's one of the main reasons I'm running under 480i right now (along with the crappy deinterlacing I get on DVDs). Though the CUE may be from my 3rd party adapter, I think I saw it when I was using the official HD pack. I also noticed CUE in an older bug list for XBMC.

Yeah, I notice it really bad on the kiddo's baby einstein dvds that have lots of solid shapes and bright colors...

Here's a page on it for those who don't know what cue is: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_8_2/dvd-benchmark-special-report-chroma-bug-4-2001.html

well the new build fixed the momentary stutters I was having with million dollar baby, but now if I fast forward in a dvd, it causes it to stutter a LOT... I'll have to play with it more over the next couple days...

Stuttering is better, not completely fixed. On the build I have (from 3/2), the normal DVD controls are not working correctly at all!

I currently have a modded Xbox with the Evox dash and Xbox Media Player. Should I look to get Xbox Media Center in it's place? Would I have to do a complete re-install of all software? Thx

I have no experience with Xbox Media Player. I know that they stopped working on Xbox Media Player as it eventually became Xbox Media Center. You would need to dl XBMC and copy over its folder to your xbox. You don't need to re-install anything.

another T3CH build out (3/16). From what I was told, any build from 3/12-13 is going to have screwed up dvd player controls...

Seems like we will be getting more build updates weekly (2 a week) until the final 2.0 version will be available. I think it will be coming soon, maybe in time with the skin release of MC360.

I have all the XBMC files burned to a dvd.(Not too familiar with FTP). It launches fine if I choose "play media from dvd". How do I copy the files to the HD so i can launch XBMC without the dvd? THX

Go into the file manager in your dashboard, you should be able to copy over files from the DVD to you hard drive that way. You may need to create a link on your dash to open up XBMC, else you will need to run the executable via the file manager.

I was able to copy it over using my game manager. It loads but I have to do it from my game manager. I'd like to get it to come up on my boot up screen. I tried to use DVD2Xbox but with no results.

I'm not familiar with how Evox works, but you will need to edit the Evox settings and do some tweaks somewhere in order for XBMC to show up on your main screen.

What you have to do is copy all the files to the harddrive. For example copy the files to a folder (F:\Apps\XBMC). Then copy the default.xbe and the XboxMediaCenter.xml file over to the C:\ drive/folder. You have to edit the XboxMediaCenter.xml file in Notepad or some type of editor.
<xboxmediacenter>
<home>F:\Apps\XBMC\</home>
<home>-</home>
Lastly, you have to rename the default.xbe that you copied over to the C:\ to evoxdash.xbe. Then your Xbox dashboard will boot up XBMC each you start your Xbox. Hopefully I did not miss anything.

http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.php?wakka=XBMCAsDash&v=w9z


I prefer Option 2 using the shortcut makers. Makes upgrades easy. no path in xml config and you never updat the stuff on C: I highly recommend this easy option.

Sean

This adapter also caught my attention because it is the only xbox adapter I've seen that has a coax digital output (along with optical, component, svideo, composite, analog audio).
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_cluster?q=xbox+component+coaxial&pid=4899951931145980161&oid=12570294082704767132&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=mrd
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MC-CM2010&sourceid=qIZwQ-uTUhf5AnqrsKqZ&cm_ven=CJ&cm_pla=0041593776&cm_ite=MC-CM2010

Oooo. I wish I would have seen these adapters before I bought and hacked mine. In case anyone else needs to hack out a component digital audio solution:

hack link (http://wrongcrowd.com/staticpages/index.php/xboxspdif)

HI folks, have been reading this great thread all night..

Question about the default Media player in XBMC:

Is it possible to install the VLC player as the default video player in XBMC?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Fabian.

BTW: i am waiting for the xscale RAID NASes to come to the USA..

http://www.iodata.com/usa/forum/showthread.php?t=1216

cheap and fast!

Fabian.

Hi folks,

Has anyone played withthe RSS features of XBMC?

Can XBMC be setup to read an OPML and download all my IPTV RSS enclosures automatically?

Thanks,
Fabian.

HI folks, have been reading this great thread all night..

Question about the default Media player in XBMC:

Is it possible to install the VLC player as the default video player in XBMC?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Fabian.

Nope. Unless someone decides to write a version of VLC for xbox.

Anyone having LFE issues with the latest build?

I was playing Finding Nemo last night, and although the LFE light was coming on on my receiver, my subs weren't playing at all. I used the internal test tones on the reciever and the subs are working quite well :)

Nope. Unless someone decides to write a version of VLC for xbox.

VLC is distributed as open source and has been precompiled for everything under the sun, quite literally.

I would imagine that the flavor of OS (linux) on the XBOX has already been compiled, I just don't know what linux flavor that would be.

Having used this player, I can say that i have been able to uninstall quicktime, MPC, Activeplayer, and a few others from my PC because they are now obsoleted by VLC.

BTW: VLC can also read DVD ISOs without any mods.

2 cents,
Fabian.

Possible information on getting VLC to run on the XBOX:

http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/vlc/vlc81_alpha1/COMPILE_FROM_SOURCE_xbox.txt

F.

Possible information on getting VLC to run on the XBOX:

http://replayguide.sourceforge.net/vlc/vlc81_alpha1/COMPILE_FROM_SOURCE_xbox.txt

F.

Ah, of course, but this would also mean you need to get Linux running on xbox also.

Pretty much a non issue.

As XMBC and VLC both use mplayer.dll. In fact, people use vlc to debug XBMC...to play a file they are having trouble with in XMBC just to ensure it is not the file itself.

Granted the version of mplayer.dll that XBMC uses is likely older than anything vlc currently uses.

XBMC plays everything thrown at it, so what's the big feature of VLC you want on XBMC? The only thing I can think of is all the choices for de-interlacing.





HI folks, have been reading this great thread all night..

Question about the default Media player in XBMC:

Is it possible to install the VLC player as the default video player in XBMC?

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Fabian.

the issue with the xbox is that a lot of code in mplayer had to be changed to meet the memory requirements (well lack of memory on the xbox).

So even if you could compile vlc (for whatever reason) for the xbox, you probably wouldn't have enough memory to play anything unless you tweaked the app itself.

After the last two upgrades I have noticed my subtitles are always enabled. I have gone to audio settings disabled the subtitles and then saved this setting for all my DVD's but when I play another one it is turned back on again. What am I missing?

also each time I upgraded (the last 03/16) do I always need to rebuild my Music files? It takes several hours to do when i click on music.

Thanks,

Tim

Tim,
Not sure about the subtitle problem b/c I'm still using an earlier build, but for your music db, you can just copy over your old MyMusic##.db in the xbmc\db folder.

FYI,

New T3CH CVS out and available for download... Dated 3/20/06...

They are coming fast and furious. Hope this means 2.0 will be ready soon.

I'm still using the T3CH 3-6 build. I've watched a couple of dvds off my network recently and I've noticed XBMC will always crash 1hr into the movie when I play from the beginning. When I restart and play from where it crashed it finishes the movie just fine (some of which were over an hour). Kind of strange.

Ja Phule, That issue was addressed in the 3-16 build if I remember correctly. The 3-16 build addressed a ton of issues and the 3-20 cleaned up a good many things as well. Try out the 3-20 version and see if that fixes your problem. I have also read that for some reason alot of people are having to set their network video cache to 0 to get the best performance of 1080i playback. I personally have had a few movies where about halfway through it will pause for about 4 seconds and then start to play again. I haven't watched a movie from beginning to end since putting the 3-20 build on my Xbox. I'm sure we will this weekend and I report back with any problems.

Hi folks,

Has anyone played withthe RSS features of XBMC?

Can XBMC be setup to read an OPML and download all my IPTV RSS enclosures automatically?

Thanks,
Fabian.


Xpodder works like a charm!

http://www.xbmcscripts.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=44&Itemid=Array

I am able to easily stream all my favorite video-casts to my xbmc'ed xbox!!!

I love this thing, cable go bye bye..

F.

Another build dated 03/23/06, maybe this will fix some of the problem the last build has had. Just read the notes, does not sound like any major changes yet.

Tim

Saw the pics from your modded Xbox. Looks great. How have you connected the device to the rest of your equipment?

What I'd like to do is have a NAS to host all my mp3s/FLAC/mpg/jpgs upstairs and then network it to the media server in my family room or upstairs. I'd like to be able to access the media server contents (which in turn gets it from the NAS for static files) from TVs/audio eqpt in 2 different rooms.

How would I go about doing that?

The xbox would be connected to your network using its ethernet port. If your NAS supports Samba (SMB) or if you have a computer that can map your NAS as a drive and then share it over your network the xbox running XBMC will be able to map it over the network. XBMC may work with it directly, I'm not too sure about how your NAS works but I'm sure they should work. Think of the xbox as another computer in your network and it can browse the workgroup computers in the network and see and access their shared content.

The xbox would be connected to your network using its ethernet port. If your NAS supports Samba (SMB) or if you have a computer that can map your NAS as a drive and then share it over your network the xbox running XBMC will be able to map it over the network. XBMC may work with it directly, I'm not too sure about how your NAS works but I'm sure they should work. Think of the xbox as another computer in your network and it can browse the workgroup computers in the network and see and access their shared content.

That makes sense. May I ask where you got your mods done?


Thanks

That makes sense. May I ask where you got your mods done?


Thanks

I had someone local in my town do the mod. I'd suggest you do the same should you decide to join the othe people in this thread (if you don't want to do it yourself). Soft mod seems like an easier solutions also.

You can probably find a local modder here:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showforum=29

New XBMC build came out yesterday. I was fixing to update to the previous build but now I gotta go find this one. Maybe I should wait as I'm guessing there'll probaly be another update this weekend.

I read there are several fixes including the subtitle issue but a few new ones were created, hopefully next build will correct that.

Has anyone else noticed the IMDB seems to have been down the last few days for the XBMC?

Thanks,

Tim

I finally have my NAS more or less set up ... and now XBMC is giving me troubles.

About a month ago AVI's, MPG's, etc were not playing with a simple 'A' button click. I had to click the "white" button and then select "play with DVD player" to play these files. As you can guess, this also coincided with most of the scripts I use no longer working since (I assume) they use mplayer.

So I finally got time to install the latest build (CVS 3/28) overtop of my existing XBMC install. Same problem. So then I installed fresh (not overwritting), making sure to replace the xbe and use the new default XboxMediaCenter.xml file as a starting point. Still the same issue. Anyone have a guess?

Update:

I ran logging (hold X+Y on boot) and received the following messages:

01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG msg:AVI file format detected.
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG DLL: Q:\system\players\mplayer\mplayer.dll : malloc failed, crash imminent
01-04-2006 14:32:36 ERROR cmplayer::openfile() smb://usr:pass@thenas/media/video/tv/News_Radio_s4/NewsRadio_-_4x01_-_Jumper.avi failed
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG msg: mplayer_close_file()
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG msg:
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG msg: uninit_player
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG msg: uninit_player - done
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG Freeing FS segment @ 0xab41c0
01-04-2006 14:32:36 ERROR Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [smb://usr:pass@thenas/media/video/tv/News_Radio_s4/NewsRadio_-_4x01_-_Jumper.avi]
01-04-2006 14:32:36 DEBUG Playlist Player: no more playable items... aborting playback
01-04-2006 14:32:38 DEBUG CGUIMediaWindow::GetDirectory (smb://usr:pass@thenas/media/video/tv/)

Update:

I basically reduced my video caching to 0 and changed to 720p output (no longer 1080i). Seems like there was a memory issue causing this problem.

However, now I cannot get digital audio output to work with my DVD ISO's. :(

The non working digital output is a bug in the latest cvs build. Check xbox scene forums. A few people have had that problem. You will have to wait for next release or downgrade.

The non working digital output is a bug in the latest cvs build. Check xbox scene forums. A few people have had that problem. You will have to wait for next release or downgrade.

Hmmm...I did more trouble shooting tonight. Right now I'm back to the 3-23 build of XBMC with the same problem. Well, sorta.

I've been in the process of building a NAS and tweaking an xbox. So naturally what appears to have happened in the midst of all this configuring? Bother. It seems one of my co-ax digital inputs on my receiver went out. Eventually I couldn't get any sound out of the Xbox, DVD, ISO, AVI, music or otherwise. If I swapped to another co-ax input I was getting full sound.

This last scenario is certainly different than my previously described problem. BobBart, you're right, my previous problem does sound similar to the recently released bug (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=501282&view=findpost&p=3327158), though reading through that thread, my problem seemed a bit different. I won't go any deeper right now. I'm planning on sleeping on it and seeing if the old receiver (and Xbox) will feel better in the morning. :)

All,

BTW: THe Pimped guys have released a 4/1/06 build a few days back and AC-3 pass through is listed as fixed.(I know a lot of you like the T3CH builds which I occasionally try but the I have been running pimped for a year and more and those guys do a good job too). Anyway, Looks like the developers have fixed quite a few more bugs with DVD Playback and a bunch misc more as usual. I have had few problems with the recent builds and now find that the last 6-8 movies I have watched from ISO from the ReadyNas X6 have been flawless. I picked up a an OPPO DVD player and via DVD to my cheapo samsung 27" CRT at 480P it looks way better than the xbox for critical dvd watching. None of the de-interlacing errors on XBMC. Anyone understand why the I see a bunch of de-interlacing artifacts on certain DVD's. I can run this480I or 480P on this CRT. I can run 720P too but the set won't resolve that much detail so its a waste. Can anyone recommend what settings shoudl yield the best results. 480I or 480P and should I use Auto/Never/De-interlace/odd or even on the de-interlace settings. Continually amazed at what this thing does. Love the new smart playlist feature and this new MC360 Skin coming soon looks trick on the podcast preview....

EDIT: Did a bit of testing and DD, PL2, and PCM via toslink all seem to be working fine with this release. Looks like smart playlists might be hosed though...

Sean

Later,
Sean

Thanks for the update Sean. I've been waiting for the next T3CH release personally.

The XBMC deinterlacing is HORRIBLE. Not only is the deinterlacing horrible but Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE) is pretty bad also. I only use XBMC at 480i so I can let my display do the deinterlacing (using Faroudja deinterlacing, same as Oppo).

So in order to do this do I need to set 480P to no on the microsoft dash video settings and set de-interlacing to none. remember my CRT doesn't have to de-interlace it can natively display the interlaced picture...

The funny thing is I never really noticed this on my Sammy 61" DLP at my other house. I usually used the stand alone xbox dvd player instead of XBMC. as XBMC wouldn't play DVDs with menus. I am returning home after 4 months soon so we'll see what my impressions are now. I'm bringing the oppo to compare against too....

Cheers,
Sean

More good news....

XBMC Pimped 4/8/2006 was released yesterday and as usual it just keeps getting better and better....

HUGE for me: Memory Like in Scanning files into Music Database has been fixed. I have been having issues for a year with 20,000 song library. (not counting several thousand shortens which don't get included) I rescanned everything from scratch and its perfect.

DVD SACD's are now working. yes!

PM3 skin has cool new animations....

Smart Playlists work...

All the included scripts and python are working correctly....

Watched a movie with menus last night and that was flawless too...

Overall there were a lot bug fixes in this release and some new skin features... most stable release I have seen in a while....

Sean

More good news....

XBMC Pimped 4/8/2006 was released yesterday and as usual it just keeps getting better and better....

HUGE for me: Memory Like in Scanning files into Music Database has been fixed. I have been having issues for a year with 20,000 song library. (not counting several thousand shortens which don't get included) I rescanned everything from scratch and its perfect.

DVD SACD's are now working. yes!

PM3 skin has cool new animations....

Smart Playlists work...

All the included scripts and python are working correctly....

Watched a movie with menus last night and that was flawless too...

Overall there were a lot bug fixes in this release and some new skin features... most stable release I have seen in a while....

Sean

Can ypu post the link for donwload?

Cheers,

REquis!

Checked out the 4/8 pimped.

Does look pretty good, but I have been having an issue for a while now.

On the DVD "controller", if you try and skip fwd to the next chapter (>|), it quits play (BTW, I'm playing VOBs). If I try and go backwards, it does not go in reverse (I don't think this has ever worked). and previous chapter (|<) does not work either.

Anyone else running into this?

I'm just hoping it gets resolved by the time it's called a solid 2.0.

Do a Google search for "XBMC Pimped" and your first hit will take you there....

BTW: T3CH 4/10/2006 is out. not many changes since the 4/8 build.... tons since the last T3CH build. It can be found in all the usual places.

Sean

Does anyone know of this Microsoft Wireless Media Keyboard works with XBMC?



Microsoft Wireless Media Keyboard ZV1-00004:

http://www.microsoft.com/hardwar....dia.jpg (http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/images/keyboard/prod_top-KB-media.jpg)


Someone says it works here but not sure if it's the same product...

http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.p....ments=1 (http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.php?wakka=USBKeyboardMouse&show_comments=1)




Thanks,
Fabian.

Updated to the 4-10 T3CH last night. Seems better. I noticed some stuttering in the previous builds on some videos including some H264 encodings I had done but no more stuttering last night when I checked.

A new improvement you will notice right away are the animations in the menus. Seems a lot more flash like now and it seems it's getting close to the 2.0 release and also the MC360 skin should be out in a couple of weeks.

Question on HD video conversion:

Anyone else out there needing to transcode DV video (meaning home movies with a DV camcorder) to something more readable by the Xbox/XBMC? I'm working on this, but haven't found the best solution. I've tried Linux ffmpeg, but it dies on any file of substantial size (say 3GB+). On a small file (say 200MB) it works wonderfully, transcoding the original AVI to a DVD quality MPEG. In Windows I've tried Adobe Premier, Virtual Dub, Windows Movie Maker, but just haven't liked the results too much. Movie Maker is OK, but I don't like WMV as a very portable file format.

Just looking for some ideas so I don't have to continue trying to reinvent the wheel here.

[And while we're at it, I'd love a script to quickly resize photos so I could have an archive of original photos and an archive of Xbox/XBMC photos that are small enough to make browsing via XBMC a reasonable process.]

Would I be able to do all of this (DVD Profiler, IDMB) with an XBOX 360? After experimenting for a while just to get video files that will stream from Media Center, I settled on ripping the DVD's using DVD Shrink to one VOB file, renaming the file to MPEG. I was able to get the video to play, but I had no rewind/fast forward. I then tried (no real thought process behind it) to run the mpg file through Womble Multimedia 2003 and resave the file. (Takes about 6 minutes per file.) I was then able to play the file and able to rewind, and fast-forward with no problem. I am curious if I I could get the DVD cover art to show up, and if maybe there is a better solution to play the DVD files. Is there anyway to get Menus? Can I change the skin of the player on an XBOX 360 the way some people have to their regular xbox's? Thanks...

I am now thinking that this is the way to go for me to get a dvd server up and running. Now my biggest problem is actually finding an xbox out there. Stores don't seem to have any these days.

I walked into Best Buy, and I was shocked to see a stack of them. I thought they weren't real. I actually walked up to the salesman to ask him if they were just empty boxes. Funny thing is, I went in the store to buy a $30 Cell Phone holster, spent almost $700 and didnt get the Cell Phone Holster.

They're about $170 in the Targets around here, but I bought both of mine off eBay for $100 each.

You got an XBOX 360 for $100 on Ebay?

Would I be able to do all of this (DVD Profiler, IDMB) with an XBOX 360? After experimenting for a while just to get video files that will stream from Media Center, I settled on ripping the DVD's using DVD Shrink to one VOB file, renaming the file to MPEG. I was able to get the video to play, but I had no rewind/fast forward. I then tried (no real thought process behind it) to run the mpg file through Womble Multimedia 2003 and resave the file. (Takes about 6 minutes per file.) I was then able to play the file and able to rewind, and fast-forward with no problem. I am curious if I I could get the DVD cover art to show up, and if maybe there is a better solution to play the DVD files. Is there anyway to get Menus? Can I change the skin of the player on an XBOX 360 the way some people have to their regular xbox's? Thanks...

The 360 works different than a modded Xbox running XBMC. Windows Media Center has a My Movies plugin that should work on your MCE pc, DVD Profiler, and the 360. This is just for viewing a dvd catalog, I'm not sure if you can stream DVDs with that combination.

Question on HD video conversion:

Anyone else out there needing to transcode DV video (meaning home movies with a DV camcorder) to something more readable by the Xbox/XBMC? I'm working on this, but haven't found the best solution. I've tried Linux ffmpeg, but it dies on any file of substantial size (say 3GB+). On a small file (say 200MB) it works wonderfully, transcoding the original AVI to a DVD quality MPEG. In Windows I've tried Adobe Premier, Virtual Dub, Windows Movie Maker, but just haven't liked the results too much. Movie Maker is OK, but I don't like WMV as a very portable file format.

Just looking for some ideas so I don't have to continue trying to reinvent the wheel here.

[And while we're at it, I'd love a script to quickly resize photos so I could have an archive of original photos and an archive of Xbox/XBMC photos that are small enough to make browsing via XBMC a reasonable process.]

Do you need to transcode video to an HD format or just a lower resolution format? I've used AutoGK for dvd to avi but I believe it would work with DV also. Also try Nero Recode2.

I use ACDSee for photos and there's an option to resize a whole directory of photos.

I am now thinking that this is the way to go for me to get a dvd server up and running. Now my biggest problem is actually finding an xbox out there. Stores don't seem to have any these days.

Mike, you should go used. I know I've seen some on craigslist and some of the smaller gaming stores like Gamefellas should have used xboxes also.

Do you need to transcode video to an HD format or just a lower resolution format? I've used AutoGK for dvd to avi but I believe it would work with DV also. Also try Nero Recode2.

Just lower resolution. So an HD AVI file to a lower resolution, say DVD quality, file (preferrably AVI). I'll take a look at Nero Recode and AutoGK.

I use ACDSee for photos and there's an option to resize a whole directory of photos.

I'll try that out. It might be enough. Ultimately I'd prefer to run a script on an inserted flash card that would copy the originals to a NAS directory and then create resized duplicates in another area. But that may have to be a project for another day (lifetime?).

Thanks!

Just lower resolution. So an HD AVI file to a lower resolution, say DVD quality, file (preferrably AVI). I'll take a look at Nero Recode and AutoGK.



I'll try that out. It might be enough. Ultimately I'd prefer to run a script on an inserted flash card that would copy the originals to a NAS directory and then create resized duplicates in another area. But that may have to be a project for another day (lifetime?).

Thanks!

AutoGK will convert your files to xvid or divx and does 2-pass encoding. You can specify a certain file size, % compression, or avg bitrate along with resolution for the files to be converted and it can do batch encodings.

Nero Recode will re-encode your files using h264 I believe.

AutoGK was very nice to use. However, my 3GB file had audio sync problems right from the beginning of the clip. I'm going to try another transcode overnight and see what happens. Output quality 100%. I tried xvid and divx, both gave me files about 25-30% of the original size.

Harry,
No, I got a standard Xbox that way. I thought Mike was talking about running XBMC, which cannot currently run on a 360.
Chris

Wonderful, as soon as I update my build a new one comes out, T3CH 4-12. Fixes in the latest build doesn't seem to affect me any so I'm gonna stay with the 4-10 build for now.

Wonderful, as soon as I update my build a new one comes out, T3CH 4-12. Fixes in the latest build doesn't seem to affect me any so I'm gonna stay with the 4-10 build for now.

4-10 is certainly looking sweet to me right now. The animations are a nice touch - I love XBMC!

I didn't really like the new 4-10 build wit the animations. I noticed it kept my fan running at much higher speeds than previous builds. I have auto fan control set to ~129F and it was definately running hard!

You can turn off the animations in the settings screen.

Thanks to this thread I decided to mod my xbox and add xbmc to it. Thanks to the great tutorials available on the internet AND help from people from this forum/thread, getting xbmc on the xbox was VERY easy. I added build 4-12 but have only had a chance to use it (and xbmc) for an hour. I have a few newbie questions that I'm sure some of the experienced people on this thread can answer right away that will save me hours of searching through all the threads and hopefully be useful to others that are new to this.

1. When I ripped my DVDs, I saved the files. If you rip the movie to a single ISO file instead, does a single file show up on the xbmc menus as you navigate your movie folders? If so, I can see why people go this route. Seeing all the various files associated with a movie (IFOs, VOBs, etc.) makes it harder for a non-technical person to select the proper file.
2. Is there a way to filter the display so that it only shows the IFOs? Although I plan to rip my future movies to ISOs, I would like to make the movies I already have easier to select.
3. Accessing network folder shares. I have a NAS box that is running linux. All of those folder shares show up and are easy to find. I also have a PC running XP that has a lot of movies on it. While I have a login name, I don't have a password for this account. When I try to access this box (by selecting "workgroup" and then the computer name, it prompts me for the login name and password. When I enter the login name and leave the password field blank it just prompts me to enter the login name again. I did some searches but it seems that the samples always contains a password.
4. Is the main way to simplify the number of drives and shares available for a given category to edit and modify the XML file? I haven't even opened that file yet.

Thanks for all the help and feel free to just tell me to "keep reading" if you feel that you shouldn't have to answer basic questions like the ones above.

I will try to answer some of your questions...

1. An ISO will show up as a single file AND if you place the cover art, from IMDB as an example, in the same folder and name it the same as the ISO, but change the extension to tbn instead of jpg, it will show the cover art for the movies instead of file names.. :-)

2. All of mine are in ISO format, so I can't help here.

3. I can't help here either, my shares have both a username and pass.

4. Yes, you can modify the xml file and remove the shortcuts and drive letters you don't use and add different shares on your network. If you do this in the XML file, you won't have to be prompted for the user/pass as it is saved in the xml file.

I hope this helps you some...

-Robert

3. I can't help here either, my shares have both a username and pass.
Is your path to the machine (and it shows all of your various folder that are shared, or are your paths to each shared folder?

BTW, your reply was VERY helpful. I'll have to see if there is a way to open up my ripped file in DVD Decrypt and output them to ISO. I don't have a dual-layer DVD burner, so can't do it that way.

For my movies I have a bookmark that goes to the "media" share and then the movies folder, my music is the same but points to the "music" folder..

You can setup different "bookmarks" for Music, Movies, Pictures, etc.. They are not just one set of bookmarks that are used for everything. I know it looks that way at first, but once you open up the xml file you will see...

-Robert

avale,
I think the xboxmediacenter.xml file lets you control what file types show up in the media sections, remove the extension you don't want to see in there and xbmc won't show it. As for sharing on xp, be sure to enable sharing in xp on the folder you want to access and you should be able to access it via xbmc.

Hi All:

Haven't updated XBMC since Feb 2006. But I have tons of video files w/ cover dvd scans off imdb and alot of cover art from mp3 etc. Is there a way to keep this database of files? Which files do I save before wiping out the xbmc folder??? Also is there a way when looking up cover art for a particular mp3 track to have it save the album/track cover in both the database and the file location? That would minimize re-doing album/track scans when you update xbmc? Any ideas. Thanks.


Jonathan
Cali

When playing iso ripped dvd's via xbmc does the player allow you to adjust the delay in the sound? I'm worried about sound delay like normal dvd players on my samsung dlp.

Hi All:

Haven't updated XBMC since Feb 2006. But I have tons of video files w/ cover dvd scans off imdb and alot of cover art from mp3 etc. Is there a way to keep this database of files? Which files do I save before wiping out the xbmc folder??? Also is there a way when looking up cover art for a particular mp3 track to have it save the album/track cover in both the database and the file location? That would minimize re-doing album/track scans when you update xbmc? Any ideas. Thanks.


Jonathan
Cali

Whenever I upgrade XBMC, I usually rename the old xbmc folder and backup the tdata/udata face## folders just in case the new install goes wrong. I also use the old xbmc so I can copy stuff from that one over to the new xbmc. You can transfer over your cover art and movie/music info by copying the myvideos##.db and mymusic##.db files from the db folder, there is also an imdb folder and other folders that the thumbnails are stored in that you can copy over also.

When playing iso ripped dvd's via xbmc does the player allow you to adjust the delay in the sound? I'm worried about sound delay like normal dvd players on my samsung dlp.

There is an audio delay option but I myself have never needed to test it. There are pictures of the various menu options here (old screenshots though, there are more options now).

http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/wakka.php?wakka=MoviePlaybackOSD&v=17sd

Can someone tell me how to add thumbnails to a few of my IMDB files that do not have thumbnails available on line. I keep cover art jpg in the movie folders of all my movies that Meedio will automatiocally add to its program but xbmc does not read these , and when I have opened my IMDB folder I see all the cover art but cannot make sense where and how to add a thumnail.

I did read the xbmc maual but my computer skills just does not make sense how and where to do this. Is there a progam that will interprete what folder is what?

Thanks,

Tim

Can someone tell me how to add thumbnails to a few of my IMDB files that do not have thumbnails available on line. I keep cover art jpg in the movie folders of all my movies that Meedio will automatiocally add to its program but xbmc does not read these , and when I have opened my IMDB folder I see all the cover art but cannot make sense where and how to add a thumnail.

I did read the xbmc maual but my computer skills just does not make sense how and where to do this. Is there a progam that will interprete what folder is what?

Thanks,

Tim

Have your cover art in the same directory as your video file with the same filename with a .tbn extension. It should show up as the thumbnail after doing this. Hope that helps.

J Puhle,

Thanks for your help, it did work and put a thumbnail in my file view, but for some reason I cannot get it to show up in my title view which I use most often to show all my videos.

Thanks again,

Tim

Tim,
Are you using the latest version of XBMC? I believe the older versions would only show the imdb cover in the non-file views. More recent versions (post feb 06) would show the .tbn thumbnails instead from what I remember.

I am using the 04/12 build, it just does not seem to read it in the Title view but I will keep trying. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Tim

Maybe try rescanning your collection or recreate your movie database. I just opened up the Title view to check and it did show my custom thumbnails. I tried to get the thumb on a random movie and now it uses the imdb thumb instead of my custom thumb in file and title views....

OK, I'm hooked! Has anyone hacked their Xbox so they can turn their Xbox on and off with a remote? If so, which hack (or kit) did you use?

OK, I'm hooked! Has anyone hacked their Xbox so they can turn their Xbox on and off with a remote? If so, which hack (or kit) did you use?

The xir remote hack was mentioned earlier on page 2 and 3 of this thread.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=7009038&&#post7009038
http://cheaplpc.com/xir/xireasy.asp

I'm using this one of these right now with my remote. It's pretty convenient to turn on/off the xbox with this mod as XBMC does tend to crash now and the and it's pretty inconvenient to always have to press the power button to turn it off/on again. The X3IR remote mod is also popular.

Playback of DIVX/AVI or MPG using SAMBA with ReadyNAS X6.

Hi folks,

Been attempting to use XBMC with my XBOX 1.0 modded with XECUTER 2.2 PRO, latest firmware and 4/12/06 build of XBMC 1.1. I am able to playback ripped DVDS in VOB over SMB from my ReadyNAS, however I am unable to playback DIVX files, unless they are copied directly to the XBOX hard drive.

I have been searching in a variety of threads and forums with no luck and in looking at log files I am seeing errors such as this one:

Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [smb://PARASITE;xbox:xbox@192.168.1.15/media/videos/movies/Open Water/open_water.divx

I am able to play back music (MP3) files with no problems over Samba, and am able to browse the shares with no problems at all.

I've tried a variety of things from the xboxmediacenter.xml file and I'm almost certain that username/password samba configuration errors are ruled out, but then again, I am not 100% sure, since the files I've tried (a variety of DIVX / XVID / AVI files) all seem to work when copied locally to the XBOX hard drive, vs attempts to play over the network.

Am I missing something obvious here?

I've uploaded a log file, as well...

Thx for any insights.

Lou

Lou,
Check your video settings. For the Player settings, try a different resolution. Not sure if this would help as it should also affect a video if played on your xbox hd, as to why its a problem over LAN but not the xbox confuses me also. Maybe try messing with the cache section under System settings.

Lou, I'd also recommend messing with the cache settings. I posted some similar problems on the previous page of this thread and my cache were way too high (caching too much data), thus causing memory issues. The Xbox hard drive vs over the wire thing confuses me, too, but messing with the cache is definitely worth a shot.

Thx. I have tried playing with cache settings (default and also increasing, but not decreasing them); in debug mode, I've watched memory usage in the upper left hand corner of the screen (debug mode can be invoked with X+Y upon startup, btw) and it looks like there is plenty of memory. I've also attempted this with very small ( < 5MB ) files over the network. Still no goodness...

Did you just upgrade from a previous build of XBMC? Did you do a complete reinstall of XBMC (ie, delete/backup old install, remove the face## folders from the tdata and udata folders).

I just noticed a new CVS just came out, 4-17 build. This one could be better also. I'm still on the 4-10 build.

Anybody know if you can navigate XBMC from another win xp machine through explorer or some other Web UI, kind of like Slimserver?

Anybody know if you can navigate XBMC from another win xp machine through explorer or some other Web UI, kind of like Slimserver?

enable the xbmc webserver under network settings. then you can navigate to your xbox's ip address in a browser and voila.

Did you just upgrade from a previous build of XBMC? Did you do a complete reinstall of XBMC (ie, delete/backup old install, remove the face## folders from the tdata and udata folders).

I just noticed a new CVS just came out, 4-17 build. This one could be better also. I'm still on the 4-10 build.

Ah, I think you've gotten me on the right track! I have been attempting to use two different builds (one from 12/05 and one from 4/12) installed in two different directories. But I was mystified about your comment regarding the face## folders and I poked around and found the TDATA and UDATA folders on the same drive that the XBMP was installed in.

Sure enough, after removing them, the older build seemed to work the first thing I tested it with. The 4-12 build just hangs on a 'caching' screen; not sure what that is about, but perhaps I will just stick with the older build unless you have a specific recommendation.

Thanks again for your insights!

Lou

Lou,
If you removed those face### folders, and opened up an old build, it would've created a new face### folder. If you accessed your new build, it probably would've tried to load the face### settings from the old build. Try deleting the face### folders again and only run the new build if you haven't already.

enable the xbmc webserver under network settings. then you can navigate to your xbox's ip address in a browser and voila.


Now thats what I am talking about. Any recs on a solderless mod chip? That kind of talk ok here?

Many in this thread have done soft mods. $20 investment in a game and 30mins later they were running XBMC. I had my xbox modded soldered by someone but try reading through the thread or xbox-scene.com forums.

I use the Xecuter 2.6 CE lite. I actually soldered it into my first box (what a PITA). Took about four hours (and quite a few drinks, probably why it took four hours)

More recently I picked up a broken xbox on ebay and put the same chip in it with the solderless adapter. Much easier to do and it works flawlessly.

The solderless adapter was well worth the extra $17 or so.

I personally have not tried the solderless adapters, but I can vouch for the Xecuter line of chips. I use X3s, and have had zero problems in the installs.

I've installed XChips in 1.0, 1.2/1.3, and 1.6s. This means some soldering, and some not.

The new mounts for the XChips are awful. I'm doing a box for my brother now, and am going to try the SmartXX V3 with the Xapt3r adapter. I've heard great things about the SmartXX chips & the Xapt3r looks like a piece of cake to install.

The only thing I really enjoyed about the XChip was the ease of flashing the BIOS.

Thanks for the feedback. Do you all leave the xbox on 24/7 or just when you want to use it?

OK, I'm hooked! Has anyone hacked their Xbox so they can turn their Xbox on and off with a remote? If so, which hack (or kit) did you use?


I have it also.. the XIR easy version was a snap to install... Lovin it!!

Thanks for the feedback. Do you all leave the xbox on 24/7 or just when you want to use it?
I genreally just turn it on when I want to use it. The fan makes too much noise to leave it on when it’s not in use.

FYI, New CVS by T3CH is available at the usual place.... Lots of fixes in this one. Hopefully 2.0 is around the corner.

I ran across this thread and installed this over the weekend (had the xbox already). It's pretty awesome I must admit. A bit unstable but definitely cutting edge stuff. Props to the contributors. Now I have to spend bookoo bucks on NAS solution.....

Ripper,

Have you installed a solder installation style Xecuter 3 on a version 1.6 XBOX?

Any tips on the installation?

Where did you get your mod kits from?

Regards,
TCIII

Thanks for the feedback. Do you all leave the xbox on 24/7 or just when you want to use it?

I never turn it off.

This is the best piece of equipment in my 100K+ Crestron controlled whole house system.

If Microsoft were smart, they would buy XBMC and hire the coders... unbelievable app.

If Microsoft were smart, they would buy XBMC and hire the coders... unbelievable app.Dunno if M$ isn't smart, or if they're just plain evil. They must have been aware of how awesome XBMC is, yet the "media center" they built into the Xbox 360 is ridiculously weak and primitive by comparison. If the XBMC coders had been able to put out a commercial homebrew product for the original Xbox, M$ would have bought them out for $100 million and put something half decent into the 360. Alas, that just didn't happen.

Looks great! I've used xbmc for years, but now that we have mce in the living room, I switched to the xbox media extender in the bedroom for better compatiblity, same ui, etc.

Great tip about xir, though. I just ordered one. It resolves the last remaining issue we had with the xbox!

Derek

Dunno if M$ isn't smart, or if they're just plain evil. They must have been aware of how awesome XBMC is, yet the "media center" they built into the Xbox 360 is ridiculously weak and primitive by comparison. If the XBMC coders had been able to put out a commercial homebrew product for the original Xbox, M$ would have bought them out for $100 million and put something half decent into the 360. Alas, that just didn't happen.


If M$ were to get their hands on XBMC I promise that 80% of the functionality would be stripped for fear of copy wright violation concerns.... Things are fine just the way they are..... Stay away M$.... We like the product as is.... The reason that the 360 is functionality retarded is due to M$'s fear of being held liable for any misuse of thier product. ie. DVD iso's, Xvid... ect. ect. If you look at all of the digital media servers that are around and how limited they are and/or how they put every thing plus the kitched sink under the hood but with pathetic GUI / WAF it is easy to see who the real winner is.... And yes we all know about kaleidascope but who in the hell has 20 grand to throw at a media system.... lol.

Did kaleidoscope ever recover from the DVD licensing lawsuit a few years back? They got sued over the very feature they were mainly advertising, the ISO extraction and persistent storage feature without the need for the physical DVD [once extracted].

F.

I got my MS XPMC wireless KB / IR receiver, and XBOX USB converter cable. All is connected but I cannot get the XBMC to respond to any KB keys.

I have confirmed the KB and receiver are functionaly by using them in another PC. Several MS wireless KBs have been listed as working so I thought I would try this one.

I will try a straight USB KB today and see if it is picked up.

Is there something I need to configure on XBMC? I am running a build from around 3/20/06.

Help or thoguhts are welcome..

Fabian.

My wired USB Keyboard works great... Do we have to change anything on in XBMC to help it recognize a wireless KB using an infrered USB receiver?

F.

Hi there:

I just recently purchased a 300gig NAS and have it working fine, streaming data (music,movies, etc) w/ the xbox, mainly using xbmc. My xbox hd is juat a reg 8gig drive. Thing is I want to be able to play all the emulators & their roms off my NAS drive. The question I have is can you transfer the entire F:/Emulators directory to a NAS (smb), in other words smb://mydrive/Emulators, the have all the seprate emulators & their roms on a NAS?

What do I have to modify in the xbox settings or files, to look for the emulators,config files,roms, etc on my smb? I tried copying the folder to my NAS and editied the xboxmediacenter.xml to look in there. But no luck. Is there a xbe file I have to change. Thanks.


Thanks for the help.



J.
(Cali)

Hi there:

I just recently purchased a 300gig NAS and have it working fine, streaming data (music,movies, etc) w/ the xbox, mainly using xbmc. My xbox hd is juat a reg 8gig drive. Thing is I want to be able to play all the emulators & their roms off my NAS drive. The question I have is can you transfer the entire F:/Emulators directory to a NAS (smb), in other words smb://mydrive/Emulators, the have all the seprate emulators & their roms on a NAS?

What do I have to modify in the xbox settings or files, to look for the emulators,config files,roms, etc on my smb? I tried copying the folder to my NAS and editied the xboxmediacenter.xml to look in there. But no luck. Is there a xbe file I have to change. Thanks.


Thanks for the help.



J.
(Cali)

Never tried it myself.....but how about this alternative. Keep the emulators on the xbox hard drive and have the roms stored over the network. I believe you may be able to browse your network for the roms should the emulator support it...

Now that I think about it, as soon as you execute the emulator program, XBMC is closed and the network settings only apply to XBMC. The emu has to support network browsing in order for this to work and has to be configured with your network settings somewhere.

Hi all,

This might be a question that has an obvious answer that I am not aware of, but has "teamxecuter.com" gone belly up as they have let their web site servicing account expire as of 4/13/06.

Regards,
TCIII

Hi all,

This might be a question that has an obvious answer that I am not aware of, but has "teamxecuter.com" gone belly up as they have let their web site servicing account expire as of 4/13/06.

Regards,
TCIII

Is this their site? http://www.team-xecuter.com/

Ja Phule,

Thanks for the response. I was not getting the "-" between team and xecuter. I obviously had a band link to team xecuter from another website site.

Regards,
TCIII

Harmony Remote Question... I have just setup the XIR on my Xbox (as people have mentioned here, it is a must have!!!). I was thinking about getting a Harmony 880 remote but have one question that I do not believe has been covered in this thread. I know that the Harmony website has a profile for the Xbox remote, I also know that the Harmony website has a cool wizard for setting up macros for categories like, "Watch Movie", etc.

My question is...
Can I use the Harmony wizard to setup all the steps necessary to turn on my tv and control the Xbox remote functions and then go into that setup and manually enter in the XIR codes for turning ON and OFF the Xbox, so when I select "Watch Movie" it will also turn the Xbox ON, and I select some other function it will turn the Xbox OFF?

Also, if turning the Xbox off is mapped to hitting the "0" three times, can you program the Harmony to send that signal three times and map it to Xbox OFF?

The XIR 1.x will turn off my XBOX using a single "0" command, not three times.

I have the XIR XBOX function included in all my macros now.

F.

I'm another recent convert to XBMC after reading this thread and everything is working great except for one last piece. I'd like to watch over my LAN videos in formats that XBMC appears not to support and I found an old thread somewhere that talked about using the streaming output feature of VLC. I can get the audio portion to play but not the video even after fiddling with various stream output settings.

If anyone has been able to get this to work, I will greatly appreciate any pointers you might be able to provide.

Thanks.

(or any other way to stream arbitrary video content)

The XIR 1.x will turn off my XBOX using a single "0" command, not three times.

I have the XIR XBOX function included in all my macros now.

F.

I guess I shouldn't have bought the XIR V2 Version that requires the"0" three times. I'll have to see if this can be modified.

UPDATE: You can modify this parameter with the programming cable (which is only a couple of bucks). So the V2 Version give you more flexibility. Also, this guy provides amazing tech support.

I'm another recent convert to XBMC after reading this thread and everything is working great except for one last piece. I'd like to watch over my LAN videos in formats that XBMC appears not to support and I found an old thread somewhere that talked about using the streaming output feature of VLC. I can get the audio portion to play but not the video even after fiddling with various stream output settings.

If anyone has been able to get this to work, I will greatly appreciate any pointers you might be able to provide.

Thanks.

(or any other way to stream arbitrary video content)

What "arbitrary video content" are you trying to stream? Can you post a clip for us to try ourself?

What "arbitrary video content" are you trying to stream? Can you post a clip for us to try ourself?

I'm curious to know also... I haven't found a file format the XBMC can't stream.

Just a quick question - which USB keyboard is preferred? And for which apps would you use it for? I am adding the Xecuter control panel to my box this weekend, and will have the USB ports available. I currently control the functions using the remote.
Thanks!

P.S. - I have had no luck locating 5849 in 'usual places' and I do not have newsgroups. Any clues?

As for USB keyboards, any direct wired version seems to work great. It's when you go the wireless USB route when things get hairy. I am still wondering what it will take to get my MS MCE XP IR keyboard to work.

F.

Hi all,

This is my first post on a great bulletin board. I had modded two xboxes a couple of years ago and running XBMC on both of them. I had not updated the XBMC in a long time but after seeing the gorgeous pictures of the new interface posted by japhule, I was inspired to update, and updated one of the xboxes. I also followed japhules method of using DVDProfiler2XBMC to create the thumbnails of the movies. My question to japhule is this: How do you get the movie to play just by clicking on its thumbnail icon? I have my DVD isos on a network drive in separate folders (each iso in its own folder along with the jpg thumbnail image). The way it is set up now, when I click on the thumbnail, it takes me into the corresponding folder and I have to click on the iso icon to start the movie. I would like to eliminate this extra click and have the movie play just by clicking on its thumbnail. Is this possible? I am guessing that if I dump all the isos and their thumbnail images into *ONE* folder, that it may work, but I would like to avoid moving all the isos into one folder if possible.

BTW, is any one else having problems playing some video files on the new XBMC build? (I have the April 27th T3CH CVS build). Some of the video files fail to play on the updated XBMC (either a black screen or I get kicked back to the menu); these play fine on the old XBMC (October 2005).

BTW, is any one else having problems playing some video files on the new XBMC build? (I have the April 27th T3CH CVS build). Some of the video files fail to play on the updated XBMC (either a black screen or I get kicked back to the menu); these play fine on the old XBMC (October 2005).

This occasionally happens to me also.
I fix it by going to the advanced settings in the security tab of the shared folder properties, and checking "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects"

This occasionally happens to me also.
I fix it by going to the advanced settings in the security tab of the shared folder properties, and checking "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects"

Where is the security tab of the shared folder properties? When I right-click on the shared folder and click on "Properties" and then the "Advanced" button, I see no security tab with the options you have mentioned. I am running WinXP Pro. Am I right in assuming that you were referring to the shared folder properties on the network drive?

Don,
I think the with way XBMC works, you will need to move your isos and thumbnails into the same directory. That's how I have it and it works fine that way.

XBMC 5-5 Build was just released, I'm probably going to upgrade to this one this weekend. My current build is a few weeks old

Where is the security tab of the shared folder properties? When I right-click on the shared folder and click on "Properties" and then the "Advanced" button, I see no security tab with the options you have mentioned. I am running WinXP Pro. Am I right in assuming that you were referring to the shared folder properties on the network drive?

I think you are using simple file sharing. To get the Security tab you need to uncheck the "Use Simple File Sharing (recommended)" box in the Advanced settings in the View tab of Tools -> Folder Options

XBMC 5-5 Build was just released, I'm probably going to upgrade to this one this weekend. My current build is a few weeks old

Might want to wait until v2.0... this is from the T3CH release notes:

"* There's some -MAJOR- changes this time, Team XBMC has started to move towards a new setting system.
I can't explain it all here, but I can say this much - you will have to move some of your old folders, if you don't want to start fresh.
I suspect there will be even more changes soon, so you might want to wait with upgrading till things stabilizes a bit."

I'm curious to know also... I haven't found a file format the XBMC can't stream.

Sorry for the delay in replying; I was without Internet access for a few days.

The two I tried were both .avi files.

The first video is apparently encoded with a DiVX 5 codec. VLC can play it fine locally but only the audio streams across to XBMC using http as transport and all other settings in VLC at default.

The second video is encoded using H.264; same experience.

The files are large and I need to figure out how to extract small snippets that I can post.

Interesting, I am experiencing similar issues w/ dvds stopping and kicking me back to the main screen or not playing at all. It seems to happen more w/ ISOs versus the dvd structure backups. One of the wedding videos just starts to hesitate and freeze at the same point and kick out. It's all connected via local network (I had it streaming wirelessly before and thought that was the problem but it's not).

When is 2.0 planned to be out anyway?

What screen resolution are you running XBMC? If it's 1080i, then the Xbox may be running out of memory. Review the XBMC log file to find out. Reducing the video cache size, disabling the web browser interface , and disabling the RSS interface will help conserve memory.

What screen resolution are you running XBMC? If it's 1080i, then the Xbox may be running out of memory. Review the XBMC log file to find out. Reducing the video cache size, disabling the web browser interface , and disabling the RSS interface will help conserve memory.

I was running 1080i but switched to 720p; haven't fully tested if the problem persists. What is a good video cache size?

What screen resolution are you running XBMC? If it's 1080i, then the Xbox may be running out of memory. Review the XBMC log file to find out. Reducing the video cache size, disabling the web browser interface , and disabling the RSS interface will help conserve memory.

On the chance that this suggestion is for the streaming with VLC to the Xbox problem, I am running 1080i screen resolution and will try a lower resolution. For what its worth, DVD-grade MPEG2 files stream fine.

As an aside, I don't understand why DVDs look better played with XBMC set to 1080 rather than 480 even though I'm connecting to an ED-plasma i.e. 480 native. This Panasonic set will not accept 720p inputs.

I'm running at 720p. Where are the log files by default? Do I need to change from the default setting to increase the amount of logging? It does seem like a streaming problem....

... Where are the log files by default? .....

The log file is in the XBMC directory on the XBOX. You need to FTP into the XBOX and choose the directory where you installed XBMC

On the chance that this suggestion is for the streaming with VLC to the Xbox problem, I am running 1080i screen resolution and will try a lower resolution. For what its worth, DVD-grade MPEG2 files stream fine.

As an aside, I don't understand why DVDs look better played with XBMC set to 1080 rather than 480 even though I'm connecting to an ED-plasma i.e. 480 native. This Panasonic set will not accept 720p inputs.

I switched to 480 line resolution and the streaming works fine. In fact, I can open up the DivX video file as a SMB share!

The problem is that the picture does not look as good as at 1080 resolution even though the video itself is encoded at 640x480 resolution.

I will play with this some more.

I switched to 480 line resolution and the streaming works fine. In fact, I can open up the DivX video file as a SMB share!

The problem is that the picture does not look as good as at 1080 resolution even though the video itself is encoded at 640x480 resolution.

I will play with this some more.

I don't like the picture that xbmc gives me at 480p, 720p, or 1080i. I have mine running at 480i so I can have my display do the deinterlacing/scaling. Maybe you should try this too. In order to get 480i over component, you have to disabe 480p in the MS Dash as XBMC will not let you do 480i when 480p is enabled.

I don't like the picture that xbmc gives me at 480p, 720p, or 1080i. I have mine running at 480i so I can have my display do the deinterlacing/scaling. Maybe you should try this too. In order to get 480i over component, you have to disabe 480p in the MS Dash as XBMC will not let you do 480i when 480p is enabled.

I did a softmod that allows me to boot UnleashX which in turn allows me to run XBMC as an application. If I use the original composite video cable, I'm pretty sure its 480i since that's all the plasma will accept; when I use a Monster component cable, its 1080i.

I don't really know how to switch XBMC screen resolutions on the fly not how to disable 480p to try 480i over component :(

On the other hand, I got all my video files to play at 1080i after I copied them over to the Xbox hard disk, so the streaming from a SMB share or with VLC must cause some Xbox resource to be overstressed.

All,

On My Sammy 61" DLP (Native 720P). Video look much better overall at 480i (which is called NTSC 16:9 on XBMC) than any other setting (Thanks Ja Phule for the tip). No real difference on xvids like top gear. maybe a tad better at 480i than 720p. DVD's look hugely better at 480i with the Samsungs Faroudja DCDI doing the de-interlacing and the scaling than at 720P (using any of the many settings in XBMC). I guess I'm lucky because my TV has a great scalar and de-interlacer. I really am excited that you can now choose the Video resolution independent of the GUI resolution. Now that I have this looking decent I will compare it to the OPPO via DVI. Last time I performed this comparo against the regular Xbox DVD player (NOT XBMC) which outputs 480i to a Sammy 850 or 950 via DVI (forget which one). The sammy looked a little better but not $350 worth so it went back to CC. Wonder how the oppo will do.....

and yes be forewarned on the new builds... 5/5 video thumbnails were broken. fixed in pimped 5/6. Had to rebuild all databases. Not sure it cleaned real well so I started with a clean dir and rebuilt some stuff. works much better now. This is my test version. I have an older stable version that will be around till after 2.0 comes out. I also did notice all the Python scrips which were broken with the new Python Lib in 4/29 seem to work slightly better than nothing but still having issues...

BTW: Has anyone else notices in the last week or two that when browsing thumb nails in the file view (I have folder.jpg for each artist and like 30 screens of thumbs) that the left and right triggers now do this smooth scrolling thing instead of page up or page down very quickly as was in old releases. It kinda sucks. I could NAV the 30 screens easier with the old way. The trigger seems to repeat the last dpad click so if you click right and then right trigger the selected icon scrolls right. I liked the page up and page down features much better. Does seem to be the keymap.xml. Some change to PM3 it seems....

Sean

Sean

All,
BTW: Has anyone else notices in the last week or two that when browsing thumb nails in the file view (I have folder.jpg for each artist and like 30 screens of thumbs) that the left and right triggers now do this smooth scrolling thing instead of page up or page down very quickly as was in old releases. It kinda sucks. I could NAV the 30 screens easier with the old way. The trigger seems to repeat the last dpad click so if you click right and then right trigger the selected icon scrolls right. I liked the page up and page down features much better. Does seem to be the keymap.xml. Some change to PM3 it seems....

Sean

Sean

It probably has something to do with the new animations that came out in the last couple weeks.
Try disabling them in the GUI settings.

Good guess... didn't think of that... Just tried and that didn't do it. They scrolling is still slow and the keybindings have changed... Thanks for the tip though....

Sean