Really easy guide for this here:
http://lifehacker.com/5634515/how-to-synchronize-your-xbmc-media-center-across-every-room-in-the-house
Initally, this worked, but made things VERY slow - like 15 seconds to go into the Movies section. Needs one addition - you must add:
skip-name-resolve
to the my.ini file in C:\progam files\mysqlXXX\
in the [mysqld] section
Restart mysql after this.
Now it's basically the same speed as a local library.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Updated nvidia drivers
I have updated the nvidia drivers on my install (see link in post below).
So far no issues and the better video quality and corret colour/brightness is back like with the other two installs.
So far no issues and the better video quality and corret colour/brightness is back like with the other two installs.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Settling in with the Shuttle
Ok now that the B3 is working so well, I have had more time to actually use the thing and it's going quite well in all. No major nasties to report, certainly seems as stable as my Camelot install, and it's of course completely silent which is a big bonus - but other than that in practise it is really much the same as my ASRock.
The one big feature I really miss from the maverick/XBMCFreak installs is the better/brighter video quality. I plan to update the NVidia drivers soon, to get the new colorrange options - this will mean the need for 'vdpau studio levels' or a brightness boost/contrast drop of 56/43 will be obviated. Hopefully these drivers play nicely with Dharma without unhoped for issues :)
My current thinking is I will move to final release Dharma with the latest NVidia drivers as my stable platform, and then experiment with the ASRock and SVN versions until a nice stable SVN seems to be around (I really want the 'delay video start by x seconds' feature that SVN currently has - this will make for a much neater, immediately in sync video play startup).
This is how you update the nvidia drivers:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMCbuntu#Method_4:_Using_X_Updates_repository
It is MUCH nicer to have to two toys to play with (even if they're not quite the same hardware, the processes are really much the same for each). Previously having jsut one set up meand always being worried about breakage - now if it goes wrong I can always pop the other player in temporarily...
The one big feature I really miss from the maverick/XBMCFreak installs is the better/brighter video quality. I plan to update the NVidia drivers soon, to get the new colorrange options - this will mean the need for 'vdpau studio levels' or a brightness boost/contrast drop of 56/43 will be obviated. Hopefully these drivers play nicely with Dharma without unhoped for issues :)
My current thinking is I will move to final release Dharma with the latest NVidia drivers as my stable platform, and then experiment with the ASRock and SVN versions until a nice stable SVN seems to be around (I really want the 'delay video start by x seconds' feature that SVN currently has - this will make for a much neater, immediately in sync video play startup).
This is how you update the nvidia drivers:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMCbuntu#Method_4:_Using_X_Updates_repository
It is MUCH nicer to have to two toys to play with (even if they're not quite the same hardware, the processes are really much the same for each). Previously having jsut one set up meand always being worried about breakage - now if it goes wrong I can always pop the other player in temporarily...
Friday, October 15, 2010
3rd run on the Shuttle
This time I went for vanilla beta 3 Dharma.
Had to add the network driver (see below) and update lirc for my funky remote receiver (see below), and add USB0 to /proc/acpi/wakeup for remote suspend/resume, and now everything is working well. Audio is fine out of the box (set output/passhthrough to HDMI/Nvidia HDA HDMI/Nvidia HDA HDMI).
Very simple and everything appears to be working well - better than all the other tries for a lot less effort! All the little glitches seem gone - no slow ui, no pauses browsing lists etc
Problems (all very minor):
- No sounds on iphone 4 movie files
- wrong aspect ratio on DV video files
- bluray support is AWOL - mpls and bdmv, neither play (not sure if Live is supposed to do this - does libbluray come with live?
The video quality is much the same as Camelot - the UI and video play is dark again (it msut be the newer nvidia drivers on Maervick/XBMCFreak fixing this) - and overall it somehow intagibly doesn't look as good, I presume the newer ION drivers include various video quality tweaks. Smoothness is good, much better than Camelot, and VC1 works finally.
All in all a good, stable experience so far. But there are some nice features in svn I already miss - such as being able to define a pause after a refresh rate switch so that video/audio start at the same time (instead of audio starting and then a second or two later video kicking in as with Camelot & Dharma).
Had to add the network driver (see below) and update lirc for my funky remote receiver (see below), and add USB0 to /proc/acpi/wakeup for remote suspend/resume, and now everything is working well. Audio is fine out of the box (set output/passhthrough to HDMI/Nvidia HDA HDMI/Nvidia HDA HDMI).
Very simple and everything appears to be working well - better than all the other tries for a lot less effort! All the little glitches seem gone - no slow ui, no pauses browsing lists etc
Problems (all very minor):
- No sounds on iphone 4 movie files
- wrong aspect ratio on DV video files
- bluray support is AWOL - mpls and bdmv, neither play (not sure if Live is supposed to do this - does libbluray come with live?
The video quality is much the same as Camelot - the UI and video play is dark again (it msut be the newer nvidia drivers on Maervick/XBMCFreak fixing this) - and overall it somehow intagibly doesn't look as good, I presume the newer ION drivers include various video quality tweaks. Smoothness is good, much better than Camelot, and VC1 works finally.
All in all a good, stable experience so far. But there are some nice features in svn I already miss - such as being able to define a pause after a refresh rate switch so that video/audio start at the same time (instead of audio starting and then a second or two later video kicking in as with Camelot & Dharma).
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
2nd Run with Shuttle XS35/XBMC - Install on Ubuntu Maverick
Quick notes that I will update as I go:
Installed final Maverick Desktop.
Logged in & it prompted be to update to latest NVIDIA drivers (260.19.whatever).
Added lirc - apt-get install lirc, told it I had an MCE remote/receiver and no transmitter. Ran irw - works fine, so the post below is now superflous.
All hardware seems to work out of the box - ethernet, wireless, the remote, etc.
Install XBMC
This was WAY harder than expected. Camelot was easy - just add-apt-repository team-xbmc, apt-get update, apt-get install. But I wanted Beta2 or SVN - using the team-xbmc-svn ppa didn't work with broken packages (xbmc-data and xbmc-skin-confluence). In the end I followed this guide to compile SVN from source. Needed to apt-get install autopoint for the bootstrap to work but other than that exactly as per the guide. Post install to run it I needed to apt-get install mesa-utils to get glxinfo.
This gives a working XBMC (SVN R34654).
I followed the autofs guide below to mount all my shares the no-hang way...very important to have the entry in the hosts file so ubuntu can find your local server or that doesn't work.
To get audio & auto start working I followed this post.
At this point it appears thunderbirds are go. Now I need to do some testing...and will update this as I go, but so far (apart from having to learn how to compile xbmc from source) - this is far easier than XBMCLive really as you get networking etc out of the box.
I still have to properly test suspend/resume but so far it seems to be working better than XBMCFreak B2T3 which was my last try.
Installed final Maverick Desktop.
Logged in & it prompted be to update to latest NVIDIA drivers (260.19.whatever).
Added lirc - apt-get install lirc, told it I had an MCE remote/receiver and no transmitter. Ran irw - works fine, so the post below is now superflous.
All hardware seems to work out of the box - ethernet, wireless, the remote, etc.
Install XBMC
This was WAY harder than expected. Camelot was easy - just add-apt-repository team-xbmc, apt-get update, apt-get install. But I wanted Beta2 or SVN - using the team-xbmc-svn ppa didn't work with broken packages (xbmc-data and xbmc-skin-confluence). In the end I followed this guide to compile SVN from source. Needed to apt-get install autopoint for the bootstrap to work but other than that exactly as per the guide. Post install to run it I needed to apt-get install mesa-utils to get glxinfo.
This gives a working XBMC (SVN R34654).
I followed the autofs guide below to mount all my shares the no-hang way...very important to have the entry in the hosts file so ubuntu can find your local server or that doesn't work.
To get audio & auto start working I followed this post.
At this point it appears thunderbirds are go. Now I need to do some testing...and will update this as I go, but so far (apart from having to learn how to compile xbmc from source) - this is far easier than XBMCLive really as you get networking etc out of the box.
I still have to properly test suspend/resume but so far it seems to be working better than XBMCFreak B2T3 which was my last try.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Add time remaining display to Confluence - Dharma
Super simple mod to add Time Remaining display to Confluence.
\usr\share\xbmc\addons\skin.confluence\720p\DialogFullScreenInfo.xml
2nd control from bottom, change one line:
\usr\share\xbmc\addons\skin.confluence\720p\DialogSeekBar.xml
Find this and change two lines:
Done!
\usr\share\xbmc\addons\skin.confluence\720p\DialogFullScreenInfo.xml
2nd control from bottom, change one line:
<control type="label">
<description>Player Times</description>
<posx>890</posx>
<posy>115</posy>
<width>500</width>
<height>25</height>
<label>$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.TimeRemaining, / ]$INFO[Player.Duration, / ]</label>
<align>right</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<font>font30_title</font>
<textcolor>grey</textcolor>
<shadowcolor>black</shadowcolor>
</control>
\usr\share\xbmc\addons\skin.confluence\720p\DialogSeekBar.xml
Find this and change two lines:
<control type="label">
<description>Elapsed Time Label</description>
<posx>20</posx>
<posy>27</posy>
<width>240</width>
<height>20</height>
<font>font10_title</font>
<textcolor>white</textcolor>
<align>left</align>
<aligny>center</aligny>
<label>$INFO[Player.Time] / $INFO[Player.TimeRemaining] / $INFO[Player.Duration]</label>
<visible>!Player.Seeking</visible>
</control>
Done!
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