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Seagate's New Networked HD Media Player (WDTV2's Competitor) - Page 4

post #91 of 366
6/28/10 at 8:51am
Is this unit really that unpopular, or are the people using it just not having any problems, hence nothing to complain about.
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post #92 of 366
6/28/10 at 10:11am
I have this unit setup in my living room. I have a Rapsody N35 for my home theater and also have a PopcornHour A-100 player. All media players have some limitation for somebody. There isn't one player that seems to satisfy all. It really depends what your primary data formats and usage needs are.

I've found that some media players with local USB disks suffer from long delays when accessing data on the disk, especially on device power-up. That is true of the FAT+ and the PopcornHour. The Rapsody N35 has the best local disk access I've found, but it uses NDAS to mount the disk and doesn't feel the need to catalog the whole disk at power-on. The FAT+ does a pretty good job of accessing data over a network if you have a wired network setup, though the FAT+ does not make it easy to access a network share like the PopcornHour player does.

I use my media players strictly for standard definition DVD material. It is important for me to have full menu support. The FAT+ works very well for this limited need. Someone else will have to chime in to report on FAT+'s HD capability.

I've found problems with accessing web content using the FAT+. But then I don't use it for that purpose. I haven't used the Netflix streaming feature. I stream Netflix using my TivoHD and then only for documentary and TV programming, not for feature-length films, so quality isn't that important.

The FAT+ is a major pain to set brightness and contrast using calibration DVD material, but at least it offers that control so you can properly setup multiple video sources.

All video media players are terrible for playing music. They simply access music as files within a disk structure. They do not present the music as networked music devices such as the Sonos or Squeezebox music players. I have a Sonos for playing music and it is absolutely the best!

So there's my two cents. The FAT isn't perfect by any means, but it's mostly usable and really cheap if you don't buy their companion USB disk. No player out there is the definitive networked media player. You have to choose your poison.
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post #93 of 366
6/28/10 at 12:48pm
I ordered one from Amazon when it was a gold box deal a couple weeks or so ago. I've had a WDTV (Gen1), CinemaTube, and WDT Live+. I returned the FAT+ after a few days.

The first thing I noticed is the poor response time when using the remote. It seems like you have to hold the button down a split second for it to respond. Too short, no response. Too long, double input. I'm sure most people could adjust just fine and I would have too, but there were other problems.

People comment on the interface being ugly. They are not kidding. It's ugly.

I also watch a lot of container files (like .mkv) with subs and dubs, and on several files, from several sources, when I tried to change the audio or enable subtitles it would stop responding and eventually reboot. And yes, this was with the newest firmware.

Overall I can see why people would like it - it's less expensive than other options featuring Netflix, and it did play many of my files just fine, but it struggled (or crashed) with several that my WDTV Live+ plays just fine, so it went back to Amazon.
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post #94 of 366
7/7/10 at 2:32pm
Searched the forums and this thread is the closest that talks about the Seagate Dockstar NAS adaptor.

I am trying to find out if it is possible to stream Bluray rips from a 2TB drive attached to the Dockstar to a TViX player.

I found a way to install squeeze server on it using openpogo or pogoapps but I could not find if anyone has had success in streaming BR rips from HD.
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post #95 of 366
7/7/10 at 6:27pm
I'm confused by the comments about the UI sucking. I think the UI looks quite nice. I picked up a clearance-priced Theater+ unit from BB, along with a WDTV Live Plus, with the intention of comparing the two to eachother as well as to XBMC. Here's the Seagate page with a pic of the UI:
http://www.seagate.com/www/products/...t_theater_plus

I think the home screen looks quite nice. Slick design and usable. And I'm not seeing/feeling the slowness that some are reporting.

I still haven't put either device though their paces yet, and so far I've only used it with a hard drive connected locally, so it's still too early to give a final opinion. So far my guess is that either unit will make a nice "travel" box, which is how I used them this past week. I took a small external 1TB drive along with them on a vacation. At home, the size and silence of both units is great, and the UI of the Seagate seems nicer to me and potentially great if they make some tweaks to it. But I suspect that XBMC will still win out on the UI front. From what I understand, no device out there seems to do what XBMC can do in terms of combining multiple directories into one or more "logical" directories. Instead, most/all of these units seem to require you to drill down into your "C:" drive, then each and every sub-directory.

The only other thing I can report is that I played a couple of high-def (Blu-ray rip) files and seemed to notice a very subtle pause every so often. It wasn't terribly bothersome, and I even second-guessed myself as to whether I was really seeing it (a good thing I guess), but I do think it was real, and considering that I was playing the files via my locally-connected USB drive, this probably doesn't bode well for network playback, which is how I would need my boxes to work inside my home.
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post #96 of 366
7/8/10 at 4:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by srauly View Post

I think the home screen looks quite nice. Slick design and usable. And I'm not seeing/feeling the slowness that some are reporting.

The best thing about the Seagate UI is the amount of information available on the screen. The WD TV Live arbitrarily restricts the width of the screens so the titles of the files can't be read. The FAT+ uses a smaller font and uses more of the TV screen so you can a lot more files at the same time.
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post #97 of 366
7/9/10 at 8:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DigitalKnight View Post

Searched the forums and this thread is the closest that talks about the Seagate Dockstar NAS adaptor.

I am trying to find out if it is possible to stream Bluray rips from a 2TB drive attached to the Dockstar to a TViX player.

Since no one can answer your question directly, I may be able to provide some info that hints at the answer. Since I bought the FAT+, I've been streaming DVD rips from my Seagate DockStar (poor man's NAS) over wireless-G connection. Once I got the wireless router properly placed to maximize the signal, the streaming performance has been flawless. As to HD, I have also been able to stream broadcast HD titles, recorded on my TiVo HD, from the DockStar through the FAT+; again without issue over a lowly wireless G connection. If you are wondering if the DockStar has the throughput to stream a BD rip over a wired 100baseT network, I would say yes. I sent a 20GB BD rip (the .m2ts file) to the DockStar from my PC (wired 100baseT) and it took less than 1 hr for the write operation. So I would say the DockStar has enough bandwidth on a read operation (as long as you are pulling a single stream) to stream a BD rip. If you are really curious, I could pull a BD rip from the DockStar to my PC and see how long it takes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by srauly View Post

The only other thing I can report is that I played a couple of high-def (Blu-ray rip) files and seemed to notice a very subtle pause every so often. It wasn't terribly bothersome, and I even second-guessed myself as to whether I was really seeing it (a good thing I guess), but I do think it was real, and considering that I was playing the files via my locally-connected USB drive, this probably doesn't bode well for network playback, which is how I would need my boxes to work inside my home.

I would be curious what kind of USB HDD you are using. For the past couple days, I've been using a 1 TB FreeAgent Go drive direct-connected (USB) to the FAT+ to stream BD rips. I have connected the Go drive by either USB cable to the front port or docking it in the top cradle. I have been watching these videos very intently -- not really watching the movie but studying the picture on the screen, trying to judge whether or not the PQ difference of BD vs. DVD was worth it for me -- and have not seen anything that even remotely resembles a slight pause in playback. IMHO the performance has been great and playback has been flawless -- and I like the fact that the FAT+ will play a BD .ISO file. Just makes life easier for me.

On a general note: I like the 1.55 UI just fine. It is clean and simple. I'm not a thumbnail kind of guy, I like titles. As was mentioned the FAT+ UI uses the whole width of the screen to display the title names and has sort/search keys to facilitate selection. The response of the UI to key-presses is not instantaneous but is fast enough for the patient -- actually quite a bit faster than changing channels on my TiVo so I'm used to it. When streaming from network shares, the drilling through network layers is tedious and I do wish there was an effective shortcut to a NAS share. But there isn't and from what I read, all media players suffer from this so the FAT+ is no worse in that regard. All in all this box does exactly what I need it to do: streams DVD rips, BD rips, decrypted TiVo HD files and Netflix. It does it with very few hiccups. It's never crashed on me and the only infrequent glitch I've experienced is that it will get out of HDMI synch with my AVR and lose audio on occasion after a FF or RW. This is easily corrected by RW at 1X for a couple seconds then hitting play again. If I can keep my girls quiet during a movie so I don't have to RW a scene, I never have a problem. With an eye to the future the only additional feature I would really like to have is some sort of NAS support like the "WD Live+" so I could access an attached USB drive over the network. That way, I could tuck a 2TB external drive/power adapter in behind it and never worry about having to pull it out for loading. But I will say that in lieu of NAS support, these dockable FreeAgent Go drives fit the bill, are really convenient and carry 5yr warranties.
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post #98 of 366
7/9/10 at 11:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

So I would say the DockStar has enough bandwidth on a read operation (as long as you are pulling a single stream) to stream a BD rip. If you are really curious, I could pull a BD rip from the DockStar to my PC and see how long it takes.

It took 38 min to pull a 20GB BD rip off the DockStar to my PC over wired 100baseT.
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post #99 of 366
7/9/10 at 2:43pm
I had some time to kill while waiting for the Verizon guy to fix my DSL connection and I was curious myself, so I dug out a 50' ethernet cable and ran a hard-line from my router to the FAT+ (I took out the wireless adapter to make sure it was running wired). I was playing a 20GB BD rip of "Night At The Museum" that was stored on a Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Go drive. First I docked the drive in the DockStar -- sorry, not promising. The title played but every so often (4-5 min) it would stall and stutter a bit, then straighten up and play fine for a while. Next I pulled the Go drive out of the DockStar and attached it to a USB port on my PC and shared the BD rip folder. I replayed the same chapters of "Night At The Museum". This time playback was smooth with no stutters or stalls.

So, it looks like the answer to your question = NO. The DockStar can't keep up with streaming a BD rip. And this was just a 20GB .m2ts. It definitely won't keep up with a high bitrate title, say a 30GB .m2ts. It's only good for DVD rips and TiVo files.
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post #100 of 366
7/9/10 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

Since no one can answer your question directly, I may be able to provide some info that hints at the answer. Since I bought the FAT+, I've been streaming DVD rips from my Seagate DockStar (poor man's NAS) over wireless-G connection. Once I got the wireless router properly placed to maximize the signal, the streaming performance has been flawless. As to HD, I have also been able to stream broadcast HD titles, recorded on my TiVo HD, from the DockStar through the FAT+; again without issue over a lowly wireless G connection. If you are wondering if the DockStar has the throughput to stream a BD rip over a wired 100baseT network, I would say yes. I sent a 20GB BD rip (the .m2ts file) to the DockStar from my PC (wired 100baseT) and it took less than 1 hr for the write operation. So I would say the DockStar has enough bandwidth on a read operation (as long as you are pulling a single stream) to stream a BD rip. If you are really curious, I could pull a BD rip from the DockStar to my PC and see how long it takes.
I would be curious what kind of USB HDD you are using. For the past couple days, I've been using a 1 TB FreeAgent Go drive direct-connected (USB) to the FAT+ to stream BD rips. I have connected the Go drive by either USB cable to the front port or docking it in the top cradle. I have been watching these videos very intently -- not really watching the movie but studying the picture on the screen, trying to judge whether or not the PQ difference of BD vs. DVD was worth it for me -- and have not seen anything that even remotely resembles a slight pause in playback. IMHO the performance has been great and playback has been flawless -- and I like the fact that the FAT+ will play a BD .ISO file. Just makes life easier for me.

On a general note: I like the 1.55 UI just fine. It is clean and simple. I'm not a thumbnail kind of guy, I like titles. As was mentioned the FAT+ UI uses the whole width of the screen to display the title names and has sort/search keys to facilitate selection. The response of the UI to key-presses is not instantaneous but is fast enough for the patient -- actually quite a bit faster than changing channels on my TiVo so I'm used to it. When streaming from network shares, the drilling through network layers is tedious and I do wish there was an effective shortcut to a NAS share. But there isn't and from what I read, all media players suffer from this so the FAT+ is no worse in that regard. All in all this box does exactly what I need it to do: streams DVD rips, BD rips, decrypted TiVo HD files and Netflix. It does it with very few hiccups. It's never crashed on me and the only infrequent glitch I've experienced is that it will get out of HDMI synch with my AVR and lose audio on occasion after a FF or RW. This is easily corrected by RW at 1X for a couple seconds then hitting play again. If I can keep my girls quiet during a movie so I don't have to RW a scene, I never have a problem. With an eye to the future the only additional feature I would really like to have is some sort of NAS support like the "WD Live+" so I could access an attached USB drive over the network. That way, I could tuck a 2TB external drive/power adapter in behind it and never worry about having to pull it out for loading. But I will say that in lieu of NAS support, these dockable FreeAgent Go drives fit the bill, are really convenient and carry 5yr warranties.

Thank you for the reply and the very good information Kelson.

I have me Dockstar on order and will give it a try with BR rips and report back.
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post #101 of 366
7/9/10 at 3:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

I had some time to kill while waiting for the Verizon guy to fix my DSL connection and I was curious myself, so I dug out a 50' ethernet cable and ran a hard-line from my router to the FAT+ (I took out the wireless adapter to make sure it was running wired). I was playing a 20GB BD rip of "Night At The Museum" that was stored on a Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Go drive. First I docked the drive in the DockStar -- sorry, not promising. The title played but every so often (4-5 min) it would stall and stutter a bit, then straighten up and play fine for a while. Next I pulled the Go drive out of the DockStar and attached it to a USB port on my PC and shared the BD rip folder. I replayed the same chapters of "Night At The Museum". This time playback was smooth with no stutters or stalls.

So, it looks like the answer to your question = NO. The DockStar can't keep up with streaming a BD rip. And this was just a 20GB .m2ts. It definitely won't keep up with a high bitrate title, say a 30GB .m2ts. It's only good for DVD rips and TiVo files.


Well that is not good...

Guess I will be using it for music and backup files then... :-(
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post #102 of 366
7/9/10 at 3:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

I had some time to kill while waiting for the Verizon guy to fix my DSL connection and I was curious myself, so I dug out a 50' ethernet cable and ran a hard-line from my router to the FAT+ (I took out the wireless adapter to make sure it was running wired). I was playing a 20GB BD rip of "Night At The Museum" that was stored on a Seagate 1TB FreeAgent Go drive. First I docked the drive in the DockStar -- sorry, not promising. The title played but every so often (4-5 min) it would stall and stutter a bit, then straighten up and play fine for a while. Next I pulled the Go drive out of the DockStar and attached it to a USB port on my PC and shared the BD rip folder. I replayed the same chapters of "Night At The Museum". This time playback was smooth with no stutters or stalls.

So, it looks like the answer to your question = NO. The DockStar can't keep up with streaming a BD rip. And this was just a 20GB .m2ts. It definitely won't keep up with a high bitrate title, say a 30GB .m2ts. It's only good for DVD rips and TiVo files.

One quick question... is your router 10/100 or 10/100/1000 (Gig-E)?

Not sure if that would make a difference or not but just wondering....
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post #103 of 366
7/9/10 at 4:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by digitalknight View Post

one quick question... Is your router 10/100 or 10/100/1000 (gig-e)?

Not sure if that would make a difference or not but just wondering....

10/100
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post #104 of 366
7/10/10 at 2:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

So, it looks like the answer to your question = NO. The DockStar can't keep up with streaming a BD rip. And this was just a 20GB .m2ts. It definitely won't keep up with a high bitrate title, say a 30GB .m2ts. It's only good for DVD rips and TiVo files.

I have one sitting around waiting to be connected. I had tried a PogoPlug and liked that and the Dockstar is similar, but with smb support. As I recall with the Pogoplug I would get much better performance when using ext2/3 formats vs ntfs or hfs+. Since these devices are Linux they are relying on fuse type programs to r/w to ntfs/hfs/etc... I doubt the ntfs driver is optimal. It would be interesting to try streaming from an ext3 drive. Perhaps only writing would be very different. In any case within a few days I'll have tried that.

philip
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post #105 of 366
7/10/10 at 4:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pmcd View Post

I have one sitting around waiting to be connected. I had tried a PogoPlug and liked that and the Dockstar is similar, but with smb support. As I recall with the Pogoplug I would get much better performance when using ext2/3 formats vs ntfs or hfs+. Since these devices are Linux they are relying on fuse type programs to r/w to ntfs/hfs/etc... I doubt the ntfs driver is optimal. It would be interesting to try streaming from an ext3 drive. Perhaps only writing would be very different. In any case within a few days I'll have tried that.

philip

Keep us posted.

Waiting for mine to arrive to test...
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post #106 of 366
7/10/10 at 11:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DigitalKnight View Post


Keep us posted.

Waiting for mine to arrive to test...

Should be ready to test within 2 days. It's on a gigabit network which will make a difference. I recall with the PogoPlug transferring a large file at around 25MB/s which was pretty amazing. The processors in these plug computers are often faster than those found in dedicated NAS devices, such as my dns32. I also have a Drobo FS which is very fast, so there's more to it than just cpu speed. I am convinced the overhead in translating from ext2/3 to ntfs is a real bottleneck.

philip
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post #107 of 366
7/11/10 at 6:17pm
I'm truly a novice WRT playing BD rips on a media player, so I would appreciate if someone could explain this observation.

I understand that the FAT+, like most media players, will not pass the HD audio signal through to an AVR and supports at most DD 5.1 or DTS 5.1. I did a BD rip of the main title for StarTrek (2009) selecting only the DD TrueHD/5.1 audio track. I put the entire BDMV folder structure on the HDD attached to the FAT+. When I browsed "Movies" it listed the root folder name (StarTrek) as the title and upon selecting it and pressing play, it proceeded to play the title with audio. My AVR displayed it was receiving DD 5.1 -- so far so good, the FAT+ was converting the DD TrueHD/5.1 to regular DD/5.1.

Then I removed the BDMV folder structure and left only the .m2ts file for the main title and renamed it to StarTrek.m2ts. Again upon browsing "Movies" it appeared in the list as StarTrek.m2ts and started to play when selected. However, this time there was no audio and the FAT+ displayed an error message on the screen "unrecognized audio".

So, what is going on here? Is there some information in the BDMV folder structure that is telling the FAT+ to convert the audio to DD/5.1?
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post #108 of 366
7/12/10 at 12:43pm
I have been comparing media players, like the FAT+ for at least 4 months and decided on the FAT+ a few weeks ago. Saw them on Amazon for ~ $89. Did not see any online at BB but I went to a BB store, on a whim. The salesperson could not find such an animal on his PC but said that he would check one more thing. He went to the Seagate website and then NewEgg.com's site (funny, he angled his monitor down, so his peers and bosses wouldn't see ) and finally had a model #. He entered that in his computer and was shocked that it showed that the store had one. We poured over the Seagate drives and then he went to the back room and came out with one. Surprised!

I still have not hooked it up but wanted to let you all know that I'm part of the club now. I have AT&T U-Verse and since I use Coax, I do have the free RJ-45 port on the STB as a pipe to the LAN. Cool. I plan on suing the FAT+ to view backups (avi and ifo's) as opposed to dragging out the physical disk.

The box has a date (manufacturing?) of 09/09 which means that FW may be really outdated. HOWEVER, I have heard that the 1.55 FW is really buggy and really only adds Netflix streaming. Since I don't do Netflix, I won't upgrade past 1.45. The Seagate forums recommend turning auto FW updating off before connecting to the net. What FW do you all like? I also use TVersity and may try PlayOn, too.

Thanks.
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post #109 of 366
7/12/10 at 5:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

I'm truly a novice WRT playing BD rips on a media player, so I would appreciate if someone could explain this observation.

I understand that the FAT+, like most media players, will not pass the HD audio signal through to an AVR and supports at most DD 5.1 or DTS 5.1. I did a BD rip of the main title for StarTrek (2009) selecting only the DD TrueHD/5.1 audio track. I put the entire BDMV folder structure on the HDD attached to the FAT+. When I browsed "Movies" it listed the root folder name (StarTrek) as the title and upon selecting it and pressing play, it proceeded to play the title with audio. My AVR displayed it was receiving DD 5.1 -- so far so good, the FAT+ was converting the DD TrueHD/5.1 to regular DD/5.1.

Then I removed the BDMV folder structure and left only the .m2ts file for the main title and renamed it to StarTrek.m2ts. Again upon browsing "Movies" it appeared in the list as StarTrek.m2ts and started to play when selected. However, this time there was no audio and the FAT+ displayed an error message on the screen "unrecognized audio".

So, what is going on here? Is there some information in the BDMV folder structure that is telling the FAT+ to convert the audio to DD/5.1?

I believe that when you rip the entire BR disc you are getting all the audio tracks and the FAT+ is just picking up the DD track that is included on the disc. If your were to us say tsMuxer you could convert the DD True HD track down to a DD track and include that track in the .m2ts file.
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post #110 of 366
7/12/10 at 5:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dhascall View Post

The box has a date (manufacturing?) of 09/09 which means that FW may be really outdated. HOWEVER, I have heard that the 1.55 FW is really buggy and really only adds Netflix streaming. Since I don't do Netflix, I won't upgrade past 1.45. The Seagate forums recommend turning auto FW updating off before connecting to the net. What FW do you all like? I also use TVersity and may try PlayOn, too.

Thanks.

I upgraded to FW v1.55 as soon as I got the unit hooked up. I like it, it has been very nice and I've had no problems. Then again all I do is stream DVD rips, some TiVo files, NetFlix and most recently BD rips. Nothing unusual and no odd stuff off the Internet.

I would forget about using a DLNA server on your PC and just use PC shared folders. It works like a charm under XP SP-3. A NAS is even better.
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post #111 of 366
7/12/10 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DigitalKnight View Post

I believe that when you rip the entire BR disc you are getting all the audio tracks and the FAT+ is just picking up the DD track that is included on the disc. If your were to us say tsMuxer you could convert the DD True HD track down to a DD track and include that track in the .m2ts file.

Thanks DK, I did some more playing around and I think I have it.

I used DVDFab Decrypter to extract the main title and only the DD TrueHD audio track. The FAT+ apparently recodes TrueHD to DD/5.1 and DTS HD MA to DTS/5.1 on it's own. It usually works. Sometimes when I turn on the FAT+ the main menu comes up and it looks ready, but it really needs a little more time. The problem is the lag in establishing a connection with the wireless adapter. I was trying to play those files "too soon" and the FAT+ wasn't ready. I power-cycled the FAT+ and waited a couple minutes after it finally flashed the message it had detected the wireless adapter. I then could play StarTrek from the file structure, an .ISO of the file structure or the .mt2ts file directly and the audio was fine. My AVR indicated it was recieving DD/5.1 in all cases.

In the future, DVDFab has a checkbox to "Remove HD Audio" in which it does the transcode down to DD/5.1 or DTS/5.1. gives the FAT+ a break and saves a few GB in the process.

Added in edit: The bitrate of the StarTrek BD was 34Mbps (from MediaInfo). They don't get much higher than that, The FAT+ played the BD-rip from an attached Seagate HDD perfectly. Not a single stutter, pause, flicker whatever. Tomorrow I'm going to rip AVATAR.
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post #112 of 366
7/13/10 at 10:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

I upgraded to FW v1.55 as soon as I got the unit hooked up. I like it, it has been very nice and I've had no problems. Then again all I do is stream DVD rips, some TiVo files, NetFlix and most recently BD rips. Nothing unusual and no odd stuff off the Internet.

I would forget about using a DLNA server on your PC and just use PC shared folders. It works like a charm under XP SP-3. A NAS is even better.

Thanks Kelson. My question is how do I set up Shared Folders on my PC, so that the FAT+ would be able to see them? I have heard, don't know if it is true but that the FAT+ will look everywhere in the PC and puts all videos under the Movies A-Z icon. Don't think that I want the granddaughter to see "Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day." So how do I ensure that Movies A-Z, or a shortcut to my hard drive folders, only show the folders that I want to be displayed? Many thanks to all that can help!
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post #113 of 366
7/13/10 at 3:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by dhascall View Post

Thanks Kelson. My question is how do I set up Shared Folders on my PC, so that the FAT+ would be able to see them? I have heard, don't know if it is true but that the FAT+ will look everywhere in the PC and puts all videos under the Movies A-Z icon. Don't think that I want the granddaughter to see "Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day." So how do I ensure that Movies A-Z, or a shortcut to my hard drive folders, only show the folders that I want to be displayed? Many thanks to all that can help!

I can only speak to Win-XP. If that is the OS you are using, respond as such and I'll detail the steps to set up open (anonymous) printer/file sharing. Once it is set up you simply right-click on a folder you want to share and that will share the entire folder tree under it. To use it from the FAT+ your granddaughter will have to be somewhat PC savvy because she'll have to drill down at least 5 levels into the network to get to the shared folders. No separate account or password are needed for open shares.

A better way: use a NAS.
I bring this up because there is a dandy and cheap solution. The Seagate FreeAgent Dockstar is a poor-man's NAS. It is more like a HDD network adapter for USB external drives. It is a little white "box" that has a plug in power supply, a network jack and 3 USB ports (4 if you count the docking slot for a Seagate Go drive). Once set up it appears on the network like a PC and shares all the attached USB drives. I bought one when I got my FAT+ and stuck 2TB of HDD on it. It works perfectly to feed the FAT+. Go to the Seagate Website and download the manual.

I mention this because for whatever reason, buy.com is blowing them out the door for $25 each (free s/h). I paid $60 for mine a month ago.
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post #114 of 366
7/13/10 at 4:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

I can only speak to Win-XP. If that is the OS you are using, respond as such and I'll detail the steps to set up open (anonymous) printer/file sharing. Once it is set up you simply right-click on a folder you want to share and that will share the entire folder tree under it. To use it from the FAT+ your granddaughter will have to be somewhat PC savvy because she'll have to drill down at least 5 levels into the network to get to the shared folders. No separate account or password are needed for open shares.

A better way: use a NAS.
I bring this up because there is a dandy and cheap solution. The Seagate FreeAgent Dockstar is a poor-man's NAS. It is more like a HDD network adapter for USB external drives. It is a little white "box" that has a plug in power supply, a network jack and 3 USB ports (4 if you count the docking slot for a Seagate Go drive). Once set up it appears on the network like a PC and shares all the attached USB drives. I bought one when I got my FAT+ and stuck 2TB of HDD on it. It works perfectly to feed the FAT+. Go to the Seagate Website and download the manual.

I mention this because for whatever reason, buy.com is blowing them out the door for $25 each (free s/h). I paid $60 for mine a month ago.

So Kelson, are you saying you have been able to get BR rips to play fine from the DockStar to the FAT+ smoothly?

I should have my Dockstar by Friday and will be testing it out with steaming to TvIx player.

I should already have a Dockstar but the one I ordered from woot is lost in the vortex of the USPS and so, as Kelson mentioned I also found the Dockstar @ Buy.com for the same price so snatched one up.... Just have to hope it actually makes it here!

-DK
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post #115 of 366
7/13/10 at 5:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DigitalKnight View Post

So Kelson, are you saying you have been able to get BR rips to play fine from the DockStar to the FAT+ smoothly?

No, that has not been my experience. The DockStar feeds the FAT+ with everything else except BD rips. For BD I use a FA Go drive docked on the FAT+ -- that plays perfectly.
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post #116 of 366
7/13/10 at 6:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

No, that has not been my experience. The DockStar feeds the FAT+ with everything else except BD rips. For BD I use a FA Go drive docked on the FAT+ -- that plays perfectly.

Good to know. I will try and figure out the trick to get it to work with BR rips from the Dockstar.
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post #117 of 366
7/13/10 at 7:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

No, that has not been my experience. The DockStar feeds the FAT+ with everything else except BD rips. For BD I use a FA Go drive docked on the FAT+ -- that plays perfectly.

Is the problem with the DockStar or the FAT+? It sounds like the FAT+ has problems playing Blu-ray over ethernet no matter the source. I'm curious because I bought a FAT+ to experiment with, but I also bought a WDTV Live Plus (also still within return period) and own a couple of Acer AspireRevo 1600's, so your post about the DockStar definitely got me interested in that as a possible replacement for "hosting" all of my files. Currently I leave an old power-hungry desktop running Vista on 24/7 with my external drives attached to it.
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post #118 of 366
7/14/10 at 6:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by srauly View Post

Is the problem with the DockStar or the FAT+? It sounds like the FAT+ has problems playing Blu-ray over ethernet no matter the source.

In my limited experience, it appears to be the DockStar, not the FAT+. See my post #99 above. I have BD rip of Avatar on my drives so I am in a position to test again as in post #99, but this time with a high bitrate file. I'll let you know if the FAT+ can keep up or not when streamed from a PC -- I know the DockStar won't be able to.

If it can't, I won't be surprised. Apparently smooth playback of BD rips over a network is a problem for most media players including the WD Live plus. There is a current thread discussing it and posters keep citing the Dune players as the only ones that can do it with reliable smoothness. They are very expensive.
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post #119 of 366
7/14/10 at 12:53pm
Thanks Kelson. I appreciate any help. I do have XP. I just wish that the FAT+ was like my Logitech WiFi radio. Logitech provides PC software where I specify what directories I want on shared to my radio. I go to the radio and all files are listed, by artist, title and so on. Could not be easier.

I know VERY little about Networking and NAS's and such. Dockstar? Hmmm. Wonder if that is the Seagate device that I saw clearanced at Walmart for a buck?!
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post #120 of 366
7/14/10 at 4:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelson View Post

In my limited experience, it appears to be the DockStar, not the FAT+. See my post #99 above. I have BD rip of Avatar on my drives so I am in a position to test again as in post #99, but this time with a high bitrate file. I'll let you know if the FAT+ can keep up or not when streamed from a PC -- I know the DockStar won't be able to.

If it can't, I won't be surprised. Apparently smooth playback of BD rips over a network is a problem for most media players including the WD Live plus. There is a current thread discussing it and posters keep citing the Dune players as the only ones that can do it with reliable smoothness. They are very expensive.

I have no problem streaming BR rips to the Tvix 6620N player from an XP server.

Just got the Dockstar so I as soon as I get a BR rip moved over to the attached drive I will test it out...
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