Ah, I see, thank you for the clarification.  It is starting to make sense now.

I use a Dune player and it's pretty rock solid.  I haven't run across anything it won't play yet, and it does bitstream or decode/send PCM the HD audio formats.  There are several movie jukeboxes out there that work with it, and at least one music jukebox.

 

I also have a WDTV Live I am about to replace with a 2nd Dune.  The WDTV in addition to not working with HD audio formats, can't seem to handle a full bitrate blue ray file. 

 

I think I will be converting to unRAID next week!

I use it stream to 4x Win7 HTPC's running WMC and MyMovies. I also use a SFF WHS V1 to manage the database for MyMovies and the store music for Apple devices and Sonos multi-room music system. The reason for keeping music on WHS is the spin-up delay, whilst acceptable for movies, it is a little too slow for Sonos and Apple TV's and sometimes they time out... So my unRaid box is purely a storage appliance for serving up DVD and BD titles and archive storage for other data.

The media is about 500 DVD's, 200 BD's and 800 episodes of TV shows. The DVD's are ripped to video_ts folders and BD's are ripped to .iso images. The clients are SFF pc's (Acer & ASRock Atom CPU with ION GPU) with Bluray drives and arcsoft TMT 3.

I started out with WHS as the network storage device, but Disk Extender & Migrate (now dropped in the new WHS) made bluray streaming virtually unusable.

 

The reason for keeping music on WHS is the spin-up delay, whilst acceptable for movies, it is a little too slow for Sonos and Apple TV's and sometimes they time out... So my unRaid box is purely a storage appliance for serving up DVD and BD titles and archive storage for other data.

 

Interesting.  Can you select one single drive to have unRAID keep spinning? 

sage tv server serving 2 hd200 extenders. The hd200 won't do dts audio, other than that, no complaints.

Of course google just bought sage so thats the end of that...

 

 

Yeah I have not got around to sage I had wanted to, seems this time my procrastination paid off.

 

So what options do we have that would play DTS or TrueHD audio?

 

The Dune does both.  I think the PCH does as well.

Just to clarify, the devices I listed as the only ones that could stream HD audio are the only PC based devices that do it. There are a number of "set-top" devices that can playback HD Audio.

 

Peter

Just to clarify, the devices I listed as the only ones that could stream HD audio are the only PC based devices that do it. There are a number of "set-top" devices that can playback HD Audio.

 

Peter

 

Which set top boxes Peter? I do think my Main playback unit will be a HTPC, I don't think they are practical for every tv. If you could list a few I would appreciate it rather then wadeing thru thousands of posts over at AVSforums.

 

Thanks

 

John

I know this is not an A/V forum but with all of the media we are storing in UnRaid surely there are some ideas on what to stream the media to.

 

Currently I am using a WDTV Live. It works, I like it, but don't love it. It does not like all audio formats. I have several files that it plays the video for but will not play the audio.

 

I am storing more and more of my media in an HD format when possible, but only one tv in the house is HD. I guess this means if I stream to more than one tv there will have to be some transcoding involved. Is it better to let the server do this or the box it is streamed to?

 

So what are you streaming to?

 

I use my unRAID server for document storage, photo storage, software storage, and video storage. I mostly stream to two of my media players. Dune Prime 3.0 and a Popcorn A-200. I did have trouble with the internal bluray player in the Dune so I bought a Sony bluray player with network support that adds Netflix to my network and a bunch of other online services.

 

 

Which set top boxes Peter? I do think my Main playback unit will be a HTPC, I don't think they are practical for every tv. If you could list a few I would appreciate it rather then wadeing thru thousands of posts over at AVSforums.

 

Thanks

 

John

 

I don't know because I have never used any of the set-top boxes and really have no desire to at the present time. It seems some of the Dune and Popcorn Hour units will. I also think both of those can use YAMJ which creates a very nice interface. I really have no idea on anything else but if it's the cheapest one you can find with a network port then it likely won't stream HD audio.

 

Peter

Thanks for the info Peter and Opentoe,

 

How have you handled streaming bluray iso's? Is is still not really possible? For some movies I like to still have the special features so iso would be the way to go. This has got to be a wife friendly process though.

 

Thank you all again for the info.

 

 

I don't do iso's.

 

Peter

mainly mkv to Boxee Box.

 

also had the WDTV Live.

Thanks for the info Peter and Opentoe,

 

How have you handled streaming bluray iso's? Is is still not really possible? For some movies I like to still have the special features so iso would be the way to go. This has got to be a wife friendly process though.

 

Thank you all again for the info.

 

 

 

Popcorn hour C-200 is supposed to handle full blu-ray rips.

Popcorn hour A-200 with my own customized 2.35 YAMJ Aeon skin - I LOVE it!

 

What's customized about it? Care to package it up and share?

The biggest change is for the scope AR.  Other than that it's a handful of minor little things like colors, more genres,  top 250 in genres, bigger space for description & actors, etc.

 

You can see it here:

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=25534&pid=465930#pid465930

 

I'll gladly share it, in fact I think I have a link to it in that thread a bit further down.

I didn't update the TV screens for the scope screen though.

 

Right now I'm playing with the Eversion skin and I'm fairly certain that I'll use this going forward. 

 

 

I'm currently using Zappiti-lookalike GT skin. I like the simplicity of it, plus the index screen with the various icons.

 

I would like to use a Calm index, or duplicate the index screen for Zappiti, and create individual jukeboxes for TV and Movies (maybe even break that down to HD and SD movies -- just so I can make Jukebox scanning and re-creation a bit easier--not having to rescan my entire library with each addition to only TV).

 

Do you have any recommendations? I want it to be nice! But not sure what the best approach would be...thanks.

 

Edit: Eversion looks really cool, too bad my measly A-110 can't support Flash

The reason for keeping music on WHS is the spin-up delay, whilst acceptable for movies, it is a little too slow for Sonos and Apple TV's and sometimes they time out... So my unRaid box is purely a storage appliance for serving up DVD and BD titles and archive storage for other data.

 

Interesting.  Can you select one single drive to have unRAID keep spinning? 

 

Yes, you can.  With unRAID you can give each individual disk a different spin-down timer, ranging from 15 minutes to never.  I prefer to leave all of mine at the default 1 hour, but in keyvan's case I can see an argument for setting a few to 4 hours or never.

Why wouldn't the Zbox just stream any type of audio that it couldn't decode?

 

The ION chipset can not stream HD audio. There must be a PAP = protected audio path to stream HD audio and the ION chipset does not have the PAP. Only the Clarkdale, Zacate and certain ATI (4xxx and 5xxx series) and Nvidia graphics cards have the PAP. The PAP is basically a connection that is hard to crack/hack so that people can't record the data stream as the video plays. I have no idea why it matters and personally I think it's retarded. There is software to rip and re-encode BluRay (it's pretty much wide open now) and if you can convert/edit/play the BluRay disk to a playable file anyone can use then there is no need to protect it from being recorded as it plays.

 

Your Zbox is an ION right? If so, it can convert the HD audio to PCM and send that to the receiver but it can't stream the HD audio. You will never get the receiver DD+, DTS-HD or Dolby-TrueHD lights to turn-on with the ION chipset. To playback HD audio using PCM you need to send 7 channels which does require the HDMI connection.

 

You are likely just streaming DD (also called AC-3) and DTS to the receiver over the HDMI. This could be done just as easy using an optical or coax cable.

 

Peter

 

 

I was going to post but you beat me to it. I don’t know about DD+ or Dolby-TrueHD at the moment but DTS-HD has two parts, a core (just DTS) and the Master Audio (MA) portion (I have to highly assume the other 2 are the same or simular for backward compatibility). When your receiver doesn’t decode MA, it should just play the core.

 

Note: HDMI is a requirement as more bandwidth is required and that protection scheme is implemented via that medium. You cannot get HD audio to go through optical/digital connections.

 

What I am wondering (as I did not get my new receiver yet) is 1) Is PLEX capable to pass-thru the whole DTS-HD/DD+/ Dolby-TrueHD track? As it relies on ffmpeg and I cannot find anywhere if ffmeg does. If it does and PLEX has this latest version of ffmpeg, has anyone successfully tested it via the latest mac-mini (hdmi port version)?

 

It would be great to know. Or any other device (popcorn hour, etc…)

 

As it seems where it stands we are getting HD video (1080P) but SD Audio…  :'( and if you remember the first time you saw a true HD movie on a nice screen compared to 480i. That’s how good the sound is from a HD audio track on a good sound system compare to what now is know as core audio.

 

I know the Popcorn Hour is capable of passing through all of its audio for the receiver to decode. 

 

DTS, Dolby Digital, AAC, and WMA Pro can each do Analog (PCM) or Digital (RAW) -- and DTS can also do DTS-HD (RAW).

 

HDMI Audio can be turned off to utilize optical audio in cases of not enough HDMI ports on your receiver. And Surround Mode is configurable to Stereo or 5.1.

 

Not sure if that's what you're looking for But it's some audio info on the Popcorn Hour A-110 (future gens should be as capable at the least)

The reason for keeping music on WHS is the spin-up delay, whilst acceptable for movies, it is a little too slow for Sonos and Apple TV's and sometimes they time out... So my unRaid box is purely a storage appliance for serving up DVD and BD titles and archive storage for other data.

 

Interesting.  Can you select one single drive to have unRAID keep spinning? 

 

Yes, you can.  With unRAID you can give each individual disk a different spin-down timer, ranging from 15 minutes to never.  I prefer to leave all of mine at the default 1 hour, but in keyvan's case I can see an argument for setting a few to 4 hours or never.

Thank you for your kind suggestions regarding the spin-up issue with instant playback on sonos / airplay.

There are a number of reasons why I run WHS alongside unRaid. They are (in order of priority):

1. MyMovies central database manager for clients

2. iTunes server - this is accomplished by running itunes as a process in WHS so that with home-sharing enabled it can serve media to Apple TV's / airport express / other airplay enabled devices - apple lossless is the format of music files.

3. Music files for sonos

4. Back-up of lan connected pc's

5. photos & home movies (videos) which are accessed via WMC front end.

 

Other reasons are that the WHS Acer box I got was fairly cheap (£200 for 2x 1TB Acer with 2 bays free) - I can somewhat manage power consumption in WHS (which would be the justification to keep data on spun down disks) by using a combination of Lights Out (a utility for making WHS go to sleep) and WOL from clients to wake up the server.

It is not the most elegant solution but it works...

mac-mini (hdmi port version)?

 

I don't think that thing will bitstream HD audio. There are no motherboard/integrated HD audio bitstreaming solutions for the C2D processors. You completely bypassed considering the hardware capabilities.

 

Peter

 

Plex on Mac Mini's in the Lounge and Bedroom and Plex for Android on my Motorola Xoom on the road.

mac-mini (hdmi port version)?

 

I don't think that thing will bitstream HD audio. There are no motherboard/integrated HD audio bitstreaming solutions for the C2D processors. You completely bypassed considering the hardware capabilities.

 

Peter

 

 

:'( (I had a bad feeling, hope you are wrong, but I dont believe you are)

Doesn't the mac mini have an optical out? Even if it's mini-toslink out, it'll still stream digital audio... Shutting up...

 

Refer to this thread:

 

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/14755-mac-mini-hdmi-uncompressed-audio/

Doesn't the mac mini have an optical out? Even if it's mini-toslink out, it'll still stream digital audio...

 

Yes, but that connection will not send HD Audio. Must be over HDMI. as Peter stated you do have to have internals that can send the HD audio over thought, then you receiver (if capable) will decode it.