Messages

1

Users / Re: Cool My 0710 MD is running 64 bit

« on: January 09, 2008, 07:30:07 pm »

Hello Andrew,

Well yes it does... you probably see about a 8-10% performance improvement over 32bit on the same processor. This will improve over time as the 64bit code base improves and expands.

8-10% is not a small number, but never the less hardly noticeable by the average user, is it?

Any particular area where these speed improvements show in the MD? I am currently running 1080p on via ATI 2600XT to a NEC PG 6 (I know, there are better resolutions for the beamer), and I see heavy tearing. The tearing slightly improves if I change deinterlacing from best to something less CPU intensive. The CPU is something like a 4400 x2 AMD. Is this a problem of the ATI driver in general, or a problem with not enough CPU power?

rgds
Oliver

8-10% is huge if the system is just barely able to handle the load in 32 bit mode...obviously less of an issue if you've got more horsepower...my system can just barely handle 1080p (handles 720p no problem)...with the odd stuttering...I'm hoping the extra percentage will solve the stutters, and save me $150-$300 for a new Mobo/CPU...!

2

Users / Re: Media Storage Idea

« on: January 07, 2008, 06:55:17 pm »

Here's another related question...

What's the best platform for the storage?...NFS?...Jbod (local disk)?...or Samba/Cifs?

On the data safety standpoint...the idea of unRaid sounds appealing to me and it seems I need to do a little reading on that one...from a backup perspective...I'm using Mosy...4.95 per month for unlimited on-line system backup....it's going to take me a year to get everything backed up a 700K/sec, but then it'll be safe in the event of any catastropy...I wonder if they'll still like me as a customer once I get 4Tb backed up there... 

I dont' knwo if Mosy has a unix client...I do mine from my windows server.

3

Users / Re: 0710 beta 2 available-problem with network boot

« on: January 02, 2008, 04:59:17 am »

OK, I've got the 0710 beta installed in a VM, and it appears to be up and running.

I cannot seem to get the network boot working.   I've tried using my existing MD (which network boots from my production core with no problem), and a VM MD and neither one will network boot from the new 0710 core.

It gets an IP addy from the dhcp server on the core, but TFTP fails...I get a message:
PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout
TFTP...

I've reinstalled the core twice and see the same problem.  I've got all firewalls turned off on the core and on the system hosting the VM, so it *should* work?!

I even tried adding the MD device manually.  It looks like the appropriate TFTP boot files are where they're supposed to be, but it's almost like the tftp server isn't running on the core...

When I try to manually start the TFTP service on the core, it reports that the port is busy...so I'm guessing TFTP runs as an inetd service...I don't see any logging of tftp connections, but I'm not exactly sure where to look...

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
David

4

Users / Re: All I want for christmas!!!!!!

« on: December 20, 2007, 07:41:07 pm »

To the tune of "all I want for christmass is my 2 front teeth..."

All I want for xmass is my 7 1 0,
my 7 1 0
down-load my 7 1 0

Gee if I could only have my 7 1 0...
Then I could watch movies in 10-80p

 



We all feel the same way....

Anyone else got any adapted holiday songs to share???

-David

5

Users / Re: Is it just me?

« on: December 20, 2007, 07:35:48 pm »

Seems like there's a bit more activity here in the forums as well......I know I've posted more due to the fact that I've been here looking every day...

 

6

Users / Re: WARNING - XL1B 200 CD/DVD disc changer

« on: December 19, 2007, 11:19:47 pm »

Hmmmm....

Very strange...I have not seen anyone else here reporting this issue, so hopefully it's defective hardware on your end, and hopefully Sony replaces those damaged disks...

When you opened it up, could you tell what caused the damage?...was there a metal burr somewhere?...internal to the drive maybe?....

We look forward to hearing what Sony has to say...

I have one of these that I just purchased, but have not yet setup...I think I'll wait a bit, and definately test with non-commercial/replaceable discs!

7

Users / Re: Are you happy with your system and includes both core and md under $1k?

« on: December 05, 2007, 07:14:06 pm »

Thanks I always wondered what WAF stood for and was to lazy to google it.
 

anytime...since I found out what it stands for, I find i'm using it all the time....makes for a good mantra when setting up technology around the house....


;-}

8

Users / Re: Are you happy with your system and includes both core and md under $1k?

« on: December 04, 2007, 06:17:23 pm »

Just curious - knowing what you know now, would you buy the working firestation combo for $1300, rather than slog through your own setup to save $300?

From where I'm looking the difference might well be worth it for a lot of folks - but then a lot of us actually "enjoy" the tinkering.

If you're a system tweaker, who likes to putz around with systems, certainly building your own is going to provide much more bang for buck...

However, it's been my experience recently, that some of these high-end systems require some tweaking to ensure they're stable under stress...and LinuxMCE will put some stress on a MD machine...especially with HD output.   The upside to dealing with a system like the fiire, is that they've done the testing and tweaking to ensure stability already....when WAF (Wife acceptance factor) is critical, stability is of primary concern.

That's largely the reason i'm using the dell systems....same deal....tuned and tweaked already for stability....if I didn't have them on the shelf, I likely would be looking very seriously at the fiire systems.

On the tweaking front...I've seen some AMD motherboards where, depending on the CPU and Memory brand, you have to adjust voltages on the memory sticks to get them to perform reliably (and that's not overclocking...just plain old stability)....

So if you're the type who likes to tweak and figure out if it's hardware or software that's failing...and we need those types to populate the wiki with system configurations that are tested!...then build your own system and save $300.00....if not, then it's likely worth the slight price premium for a solid out-of-box experience....

9

Users / Re: Are you happy with your system and includes both core and md under $1k?

« on: December 03, 2007, 09:54:59 pm »

OK, here goes my config:

under $1000, one core pc, one md pc....

I'm not using myth, so i don't have a video capture board yet...(maybe that brings this over 1k?)

I have 2 pc's...both Dell precision 460's, XEON 2.4 ghz with 1 Gig ram, and 60 Gig hd's.  Got em for $420 each on Ebay with 2 year warranties.

Added a second 1 Gb nic to the core pc, and put an nvidia 6xxx video card in the second one (can't remember which, but it was $79.00)

This has proven to be a very good setup for testing/playing with linuxmce...the pc's are big and noisy, but I have them in a closet so it doesn't matter....the hard drives are a bit small, but again, for testing purposes, they work well, and hold a fair amount of video...My plan is to use my file server (yet another box) as the primary storage anyway.

Linux mce dropped onto the core system from the DVD install very nicely...took no time at all.   setting up the MD was even easier.  I'm currently driving my 47" LCD at 720p, and looking forward to 1080P with the 0710 release.   It seems like the processor is fast enough to playback 720p HD video streams...not sure about 1080p yet....

I'm not sure I would have bought these specifically for linuxMCE, but I had them from another project I was working on and they've migrated themselves to mce quite nicely.

I've been looking at the fiire systems and drooling...but what I've got is working fine at this stage...

-David

10

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Version 0710 release date

« on: December 03, 2007, 07:42:28 pm »

Concerning .mkv files detection...  I have a few of these and would like to be able to play them  also, about half of my 450 movies on my nas are .mp4 which are not detected...  I was told in the forum to rename them to .mpeg but haven't done it yet.......  will 7.10 detect .mp4 files without having to rename them to .mpeg??  I would like to not rename them if possible for a couple of reasons...  also, is it possible that the integration of mplayer into 7.10 that this will help with files (other than HD) that xine will not play, to play within mplayer automatically??  of my collection of movies.. xine will not play a lot of them..  however mplayer will play every single one....  in my opinion this is a MAJOR problem with linuxmce...  I can't believe that I'm the only person having this problem....  unless I'm one of the few that have as many movies that are encoded differently..  I probably have just about every type of .avi, .mp4 and .mkv out there....  encoded with divx, xvid, h.264, x.264..  you name it....  but mplayer will play ALL of them..  xine only plays some of them... the win32codecs package is installed of course...  but I had the same problem with ubuntu and xine before I tried linuxmce...   I had both xine and mplayer installed on my ubuntu machine and only mplayer would play all my files..  I keep reading posts with people bashing mplayer, but hell, at least it plays everything..  and quite well for me....

Rambo:
Yea, I've got the same issue...many many many mkv and avi files with every codec under the sun....I haven't really tried them with mplayer, so I'm glad to hear you can play all the ones you have.   I've been testing them with xine by renaming them to .avi, and some play, but many do not...I've definately noticed that 1080p source files do not play with xine for me....

So here we are anxiously (or should I say patiently!, developers, please do not rush it out the door with bugs!) awaiting 0710...

Mods: maybe you should make this thread a sticky so it stays at the top and nobody else posts a "when does 0710 come out" posting...or put a sticky that only the developers can post to with the current status....because I think I speak for many of us when I say that I don't want them to rush---we want a good solid quality product so that new-adopters do not have any issues--but we also want to install it ASAP when it's released!

This is a great product!  I can't wait to see what's coming!

-David

11

Users / Re: Linux MCE and x264 1080p video

« on: November 29, 2007, 02:23:38 am »

Getting mPlayer to work as Xine does under 0704 would be a pretty big job... and it would just be replicating what 0710 will give you anyway. I would just wait until 0710 is released as mPlayer and HD playback  will be there as standard. I can't say when 0710 will be released but it wont be long now ;-)
[/quote]

Thanks.  That's pretty much what I thought...I'll just hang in there...

On a related note....do you know if the Nvidia Linux drivers will be supporting x264 acceleration with the 8xxx series cards under Linux?....Their specs say the 8000's support it, but don't reference a platform...I'm thinking about gettting a new card with a native HDMI port on it (so I can send digital audio to my set)....I'm currently using a DVI->HDMI adapter, but that doesn't pass through audio, so I've got to do audio the old fashioned (Analog RCA) way....Kinda sux that my Magnavox 47" LCD doesn't support any form of digital audio in other than over HDMI.   

12

Users / Re: Linux MCE and x264 1080p video

« on: November 28, 2007, 08:43:35 pm »

Arum:

I don't think he'll have any issues with the X2 4200+ as the core...from what I can tell (please correct me if I'm wrong), the core is just a file server...he implies that he's going to be using a different system as the Media Director.

I have been struggling with getting 1080P mkv files to play, and actually with 720p and 1080i mkv files as well.   Some play OK, some play with green blotches on the left side of the screen, some play with no audio, and some just don't play at all.   From what I can tell it's a problem with XINE's support of MKV...In fact, I've had to rename my mkv files to avi in order to get them to be recognized at all with the current release of LinuxMCE.

From what I can tell, the next release, due out any day now (0710) is supposed to replace or at least suppliment Mplayer for Xine...I'm hoping this helps...I'm not sure how to get MPlayer to work under the current release (I've read some postings implying that it's near impossible, and others, like yours, that seem to imply it's quite easy...

Could you clarify how to implement mplayer under the current release?   I believe I can run it under KDE, but how do I get LinuxMCE to use it instead of XINE?

/*
Would any users please tell me there experiences with linux mce and playing 1080p video encoded in x264 using a .mkv wrapper.
*/

use the mplayer with opengl video output.

/*
Well first for the core i am planning on converting my windows home server.  The specs on it are: 
CPU- Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Windsor 2.2GHz
Motherboard-  BIOSTAR TForce TF7025-M2
Memory- 1gb corsair ddr2 800
Video card-uses the integrated geforce 7025
2 hard drives
Will this be ok for a core computer, it is just going to stream the file to the media director right? Its not doing any decoding locally is it?
*/

its too weak for 1080p... if u use linux. on windows the coreavc codec or the nvidia pure video hw codec can play full hd on 4200+ x2. but with ffdshow what is formaly ffmpeg can't. the 720p and 1080i 6..10mbps will work, but u will dont enjoy. because some timing problems of linux players the video will be lagy.

if u need, i can give u my mplayer.conf and xorg.conf what is work on some machine. with excelent picture quality over hdmi, because sw yuv->rgb conversion implemented on nv6150 gpu. its work well with 720p, but the video not smooth as windows player like zoomplayer or nero player on this pc.

13

Users / Re: Device already enabled popup keeps coming back

« on: November 28, 2007, 08:29:19 pm »

The next update, which is due in a couple days, will fix this, and include a new mythtv with schedules direct.

webpaul:  I'm assuming that this was referencing the now-current release 0704?   

Did the problem go away for everyone?...I appear to be having it now with my windows server.   Does anyone know if this will be fixed with the new release that's just around the corner (days away?)...or if there's a configuration option to resolve this?

Thanks!
_David 

Yes WebPaul was referring to lmce-0704 which is the current release. Many of the messages we all see under lmce-0704 are just the system reporting an activity or status. The next release lmce-0710 has a feature which allows you to set the level of system messages per MD. So this enables you to suppress all messages, let only important messages through or show allmessages and you can set this per Orbiter.

OK, thanks!    It's definately a nuisance right now...seems like it pops up repeatedly for a while, then stops, then starts up again...suppressing the messages would be very helpful.

14

Users / Re: Device already enabled popup keeps coming back

« on: November 27, 2007, 09:05:23 pm »

The next update, which is due in a couple days, will fix this, and include a new mythtv with schedules direct.

webpaul:  I'm assuming that this was referencing the now-current release 0704?   

Did the problem go away for everyone?...I appear to be having it now with my windows server.   Does anyone know if this will be fixed with the new release that's just around the corner (days away?)...or if there's a configuration option to resolve this?

Thanks!
_David