Messages

klovell - this is not the same as the wake over LAN feature.  Wake over LAN (WOL) is a hardware feature that allows devices to be turned on from a completely powered down state when they receive a "magic packet" targeted at the correct physical (MAC) address.

The feature you're describing is resuming the system from standby based on some event - whether it be a USB device - like a mouse being shaken - or a network device - like a request for a file.  The key difference is that the device is powered up, and can respond to more than just the "magic packet".

Lets make sure that we architect any Orbiter implementation such that we can make sure that there is no lockin to the clutter libs and that we can easily build Orbiters for other devices/OS's etc. We must separate the graphical implementation so that we can implement Orbiter even on devices with very basic display capabilities even ie we'd like to be able implement new Orbiters even on devices with simple text only displays.

I second this.  This issue is of key concern when redesigning the Orbiter.

Thom, I understand you're mainly looking at UI concepts right now, but it is worth considering even as you make silly sample programs.  If this separation is incorporated in sample programs, the code produced for prototypes will be more useful down the road, which will limit the amount of time spent re-developing things that already work for one application.

There must be an MD entry for that system in the device tree.  Look in the web admin.

The DCERouter wakes all MDs every time it is reloaded, I believe.  You can watch the DCERouter.log file - the command is "General Info Plug-in: Wake Device", I believe.  (It is not the "Power On" command on the MD - that doesn't work, since you can't send a command to a computer that isn't running...)

The layout is nice, the idea is applicable.  Remote compatibility would be an issue - if you can't control it with any orbiter, it's useless.  Maybe the people/person working on the replacement browser device could use this for ideas/improvements.

Is this free software, or...?  I didn't find any licensing agreements on the site anywhere... Just links to beta versions, and links to buy the goofy looking remote.

Yes, the id3 files are portable.  They will be automatically applied to files that match the same name, from what I remember - so you can send them to whoever you want.

I'm not sure you're going to save me "hours upon hours" of work, since I'll have to rename all my files to match your names... Why not just do IMDB searches on my own?  Also, any DVD I put in is automatically identified, so I generally don't even need to do the search manually...

There are tools to view and edit id3 tags - these files are not a LinuxMCE-specific format.  I believe this is the correct Ubuntu package (though for the wrong version): http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/id3

I'm not sure why you would want to edit the tags "in windows"... You know Linux has graphical environments too, right?  I haven't ever heard of a windows program that reads ID3 files next to video files to import metadata.

Watch DCERouter.log for the commands, would be a good start, I believe.  You could also look into the DVD import code or orbiter regeneration code and see how it's done there.

Who exactly is "we" and what do you mean by "share"?

I like it, thanks.

It would be great if there were a wiki page describing the use of the matrix template.  It could have links to the mediawiki documentation on templates for those not familiar with the syntax or interested in learning.

the DB should understand limited hierarchies for boxed sets, 2-disc and multi-sided DVDs, and TV series.

You're confusing things based on a very small view.  The database does, in fact, understand relationships between most of these concepts, however the UI does not have functionality to use that information to build a hierarchical representation.  Since the database understands the relationships, you can use the search which will give you some of what you're looking for.  These are the current features.

If you search the forum, you will see multiple discussions about how to design and implement such hierarchical views of the media, but this feature is not available currently.

Also - I'm finding filtering under 08.10 does't work.

This is simply not true.  I use the filters and searches every day.

Before I posted all this, I tagged a disc as 'Drama' and 'TV Show' and did an Amazon metadata lookup in Media Sync. 
...
In writing this post I've just discovered that filtering on Genre now works if I have a user selected in the filter, rather than just 'Public', but why that should make a difference is beyond me and it doesn't affect filtering on 'TV Show'.

If you get no results when you expect results, you probably have not tagged the media properly.  For 'TV Show' vs 'Movie' filtering, you must set the "Media sub-type" drop-down in the "media file sync" section of the web admin.  This is a completely separate setting from the "Attributes" section.  Make sure you hit the "Save" button to save your changes.

Beware - when you do Amazon or IMDB metadata lookups, you may replace any tags you have manually applied.  There is a radio button to choose the behavior just before you accept the new tags, I believe.  The media you think is 'Drama' may be something different to Amazon or IMDB, or the lookup may not provide a genre at all.  I'd suggest using IMDB instead of Amazon - the data is much cleaner, and I know for a fact that genres are included.

The fact that things work if you have a user selected means that the media belongs to a specific user.  Read about file structure in the FAQ - you probably have a storage device owned by the wrong user or have put the media under a user's directory.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/FAQ#How_are_media_files_organized.3F

I'll put a wiki entry in for this then and thanks for the support! Actually, I was also thinking of some style guidelines for the wiki as well, maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer it if the pages were consistent I've looked at a lot of pages in quick succession and some consistency would be good! I'm gonna start a new thread to discuss this....

Yes, the template is the way to go, without a doubt.  Even then - if for some reason we decide to make a category (which we should NOT) it could be programatically applied via the template.

Eventually, we should have a more formal hardware compatibility database - there have been at least a couple unsuccessful attempts to make such a thing, but nothing useful came from those, so the wiki will have to do for now.

If you can find a way to normalize the input to the template - for instance, only allow "working", not "it works", "good", "crappy device", etc - that would be excellent.  I'd suggest the following categories:
- working plug-and-play (for PnP devices)
- works with minimal effort (for devices that have templates, but are not PnP)
- works with significant effort (for devices that need additional software to be manually installed)
- not working


I applaud your efforts and dedication.

It might not be so bad if movies and TV were not all lumped together in a generic video view, but they are

This isn't quite right... There are different media types, and you can filter by any combination of them.  The default is "All".  Look under the options, and select "TV Shows" to filter out the movies.  Assuming everything is tagged correctly, this works.

You can also search by title.  Once you select a title, you will see only episodes from that TV show title.  See Thom's screen casts on media tagging.  They are on the forum somewhere.

1.  Is there a way to add cover art to DVDs quickly, without havign to sit in Media Synch for a day and manually search Amazon?
2.  Is there a way to handle boxed-sets, so that I would select, say "The Wire Season 3" and then see all the discs within that title?

And for bonus points, is there a trick to getting Blueray to play over LinuxMCE?

1. Someone made something for this recently.  It's not too pretty, and it's very tricky to use.  I'm not sure if it's in the 0810 releases or not.  Search the forum and wiki - it was built as part of the web admin.
2. The attributes to do this exist, but the UI doesn't use them.  We have the same problem with recorded TV.  Look at the attributes you can attach to each file - there are fields for all the things you're looking for.  If you record any TV with MythTV, you'll see that they're all populated properly.  You can even search them using the search tool.  You just can't have a hierarchical filter like you're talking about, though it has been discussed several times.

There is no reliable BluRay playback in any open source Linux distribution due to licensing restrictions.

you guys should try to make this a mediawiki template, so that you can easily insert this with parameters on the relevant pages.

Look at the meta mediawiki for instructions.

-Thom

Yes, template is the way to go for sure.  See the docs here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Template

You can find some pretty ridiculous examples on wikipedia.  Just edit a page and look for the template include:

Code Select Expand

{{ template_name | parameter }}

Then you can go look up the source of the template by editing the template page.  Remember to add the Template namespace, like so:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox&action=edit

PXE over using a WiFi bridge will not work reliably, since WiFi has very high data loss rates - even if no one else is using WiFi near you.  Save yourself hours of frustration and make your system much more responsive and more reliable by buying some cabling and raceways.