What are you streaming your UnRaid to?

[Chris Pollard]

Yep,  no HD Audio on the Mac.  Optical out does not support HD audio on any platform anyway (But does do DTS, Dolby Digital etc).

 

(EDIT : Mac Mini does have optical out by the way)

[defected07]

That's why I struck-out my text I knew I was getting in over my head.

 

The thread I linked seems to correspond with the last two posts: DTS, DD -- Yes; HD Audio -- No. Where HD Audio is lossless, correct? I know DTS and DD are compressed. And optical out can handle 24bit lossless audio--but I guess it's lossless HD audio that's a problem? What codec/format is that specifically?

[bkasten]

I have waited to respond to this post/survey.

 

Initially, I was going to respond with "I use a WD TV Live", which is/was true, but I have had a change of heart since.

 

I got this idea from a friend who is doing the same thing, so I really can't take credit for the idea.

 

I was more or less satisfied with the WD, would play most things, some things, no. But I have since been turned on by a different way of doing it. I like to think of it as yet another variation of K.I.S.S. method, Keep It Simple St..., well, you know the rest.

 

I have looked at the other methods, Boxee, PS, WD, etc., and all fall short (IMO). I have also investigated MythTV and those type of things, too much effort for me. Finally I looked at XMBC as well, and frankly, it does much more than I want.

 

I just want to watch my videos on my wide screen TV, nothing more. I don't need meta-data, I don't need pictures, and a fancy browsing menu, I just want to watch my stuff.

 

So with that in mind, what I saw my friend doing was simply using VLC, from an old computer, that was destined for the trash heap, and running it in full screen. Too simple.

 

VLC is on all the major platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux, and it runs EVERYTHING (well, all most everything). It takes almost nothing to run, so almost any spare computer can do it. All you need are the barest of hookups. In my case, that's a DVI out, and Optical out. Done.

 

There is little or no learning curve, I know how to run VLC, and I know the OS, it was my own computer once, and I know how to browse my own server.

 

The simplicity of unRAID appealed to me. Not counting all the add-ons, all it does is make a great file server. Simple.  The simplicity of this solution (VLC) also appeals to me as well.

 

So that's my answer, VLC on an old house computer. 

 

Bruce

[lionelhutz]

That's why I struck-out my text I knew I was getting in over my head.

 

The thread I linked seems to correspond with the last two posts: DTS, DD -- Yes; HD Audio -- No. Where HD Audio is lossless, correct? I know DTS and DD are compressed. And optical out can handle 24bit lossless audio--but I guess it's lossless HD audio that's a problem? What codec/format is that specifically?

 

What is typically referred to as "HD audio" are the specific 7-channel formats (DTS-HD for example) which can be included on BluRay disks. The HDMI connection is the only connection with enough bandwidth to bitstream these formats to a receiver. Bitstreaming means the data is sent as it appears on the disk directly to the receiver with no processing done by the PC.

 

You are correct that you can stream 24-bit data over optical, but only 2 channels or stereo. The optical connection just can't handle the data rate required for 7 channels of 24-bit audio. Also, I believe what you are referring to as 24-bit in this case isn't bitstreaming but rather just sending a PCM signal. You can use higher bitrates too, such as 96kHz. My older Yamaha receiver will switch the surround processing off and show "PCM 96kHz" when I set 96kHz in the sound options.

 

The Mac Mini can likely be used to take HD Audio and convert it to 7 channel PCM, which could then be sent to a receiver over HDMI. This is no longer bitstreaming since the PC is now processing the audio. However, it would still give a high quality audio experience that would be very similar to bitstreaming the HD audio. This PCM workaround was an easy addition to the Nvidia integrated chipsets to allow the HD audio to be played even though it couldn' be bitstreamed.

 

Similarily, certain HD audio capable onboard sound processor IC's will produce 7.1 channels as analog outputs that you can hook to a receiver via patch cables. This is a good solution if your receiver has the analog inputs but no HD audio processing capabilites. For example, you could connect an older 5.1 receiver using the front, center, sub and side surrounds via analog cables and then just turn-off the rear surround speakers in the computer setup.

 

Here is a good description of the audio formats.

 

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1064

 

Peter

[opentoe]

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've done just about every kind of streaming. With a bluray disc I'll either rip it using ClownBD into a full bluray structure on my unRAID or a single M2TS file. I'll keep full resolution so the picture quality isn't hurt. OR I'll put the bluray disc in my computer's bluray drive (which is shared on the network) and use my Dune or Popcorn via SMB and play that way. Or, of course just use my Sony bluray player. So many different ways to skin a cat.

 

 

[madburg]

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/

 

Thanks for the URl!!! I can confirm in my brief testing a while back, I had a BD, that I ripped its HD track was native LPCM and it passed it through. Sad about not being able to pass other HD audio formats. Good news is if he does decode them to LPCM and fowards that, its a gold mine as well. We'll see what happens.

[johnm160]

 

I've done just about every kind of streaming. With a bluray disc I'll either rip it using ClownBD into a full bluray structure on my unRAID or a single M2TS file. I'll keep full resolution so the picture quality isn't hurt. OR I'll put the bluray disc in my computer's bluray drive (which is shared on the network) and use my Dune or Popcorn via SMB and play that way. Or, of course just use my Sony bluray player. So many different ways to skin a cat.

 

Ok so if you rip to a full bluray structure how do you play it back? Does your Dune or Popcorn hour play a bluray structure?

For most things I will probably just rip to a single M2TS for a few where we want access to deleted scenes, commentary ect I would like to be able to have that option without having to go locate a disk (and simplicity for the wife and kid) as I no longer like the look of a full dvd library in the living room. Too many disks, too many shelves, looks like too much clutter. In an ideal world I would love to rip them, box them and store them.

[johnm160]

 

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

 

 

I would like to know how you have MyMovies set up on WHS to work with UnRaid. I am going to most likely set up WHS again for pc backups and I have always liked MyMovies as a central database

[pfp]

 

I've done just about every kind of streaming. With a bluray disc I'll either rip it using ClownBD into a full bluray structure on my unRAID or a single M2TS file. I'll keep full resolution so the picture quality isn't hurt. OR I'll put the bluray disc in my computer's bluray drive (which is shared on the network) and use my Dune or Popcorn via SMB and play that way. Or, of course just use my Sony bluray player. So many different ways to skin a cat.

 

Ok so if you rip to a full bluray structure how do you play it back? Does your Dune or Popcorn hour play a bluray structure?

For most things I will probably just rip to a single M2TS for a few where we want access to deleted scenes, commentary ect I would like to be able to have that option without having to go locate a disk (and simplicity for the wife and kid) as I no longer like the look of a full dvd library in the living room. Too many disks, too many shelves, looks like too much clutter. In an ideal world I would love to rip them, box them and store them.

 

The Popcorn Hour C-200 will play the play a blu-ray structure.  The A-200 will play the largest M2TS file in the blu-ray structure which is usually OK, but for branching discs is problematic.  I use ClownBD to strip everything but the movie with the audio / subtitle tracks I want.  The result is a single M2TS file still in the blue-ray structure.  Even the branching discs play perfectly on my A-200 this way plus I save a good amount of disc space by chopping out things I don't care about.

[johnm160]

 

I've done just about every kind of streaming. With a bluray disc I'll either rip it using ClownBD into a full bluray structure on my unRAID or a single M2TS file. I'll keep full resolution so the picture quality isn't hurt. OR I'll put the bluray disc in my computer's bluray drive (which is shared on the network) and use my Dune or Popcorn via SMB and play that way. Or, of course just use my Sony bluray player. So many different ways to skin a cat.

 

Ok so if you rip to a full bluray structure how do you play it back? Does your Dune or Popcorn hour play a bluray structure?

For most things I will probably just rip to a single M2TS for a few where we want access to deleted scenes, commentary ect I would like to be able to have that option without having to go locate a disk (and simplicity for the wife and kid) as I no longer like the look of a full dvd library in the living room. Too many disks, too many shelves, looks like too much clutter. In an ideal world I would love to rip them, box them and store them.

 

The Popcorn Hour C-200 will play the play a blu-ray structure.  The A-200 will play the largest M2TS file in the blu-ray structure which is usually OK, but for branching discs is problematic.  I use ClownBD to strip everything but the movie with the audio / subtitle tracks I want.  The result is a single M2TS file still in the blue-ray structure.  Even the branching discs play perfectly on my A-200 this way plus I save a good amount of disc space by chopping out things I don't care about.

 

Awesome, so I can probably do C-200's for the bedrooms and debate between a C-200 and a HTPC for the living room.

 

 

[defected07]

Any word about a 300 series from Popcorn Hour?

[EndiSky]

Finally have my setup just about how I want.

 

From my Unraid, I stream mainly to the living room which is running a WDTV Live Plus w/ bRads custom firmware.  I have set up movie sheets for pretty much all of my movies/tv shows and I absolutely love it!

 

The picture below isn't mine but looks exactly as mine does.  It takes awhile to learn,  but once you have an understanding of how to do the sheets, it only takes about 20 seconds per movie to create a sheet.

For TV shows, I can do a sheet for each episode and a season sheet/ series sheet in about 5 minutes.

[opentoe]

 

I've done just about every kind of streaming. With a bluray disc I'll either rip it using ClownBD into a full bluray structure on my unRAID or a single M2TS file. I'll keep full resolution so the picture quality isn't hurt. OR I'll put the bluray disc in my computer's bluray drive (which is shared on the network) and use my Dune or Popcorn via SMB and play that way. Or, of course just use my Sony bluray player. So many different ways to skin a cat.

 

Ok so if you rip to a full bluray structure how do you play it back? Does your Dune or Popcorn hour play a bluray structure?

For most things I will probably just rip to a single M2TS for a few where we want access to deleted scenes, commentary ect I would like to be able to have that option without having to go locate a disk (and simplicity for the wife and kid) as I no longer like the look of a full dvd library in the living room. Too many disks, too many shelves, looks like too much clutter. In an ideal world I would love to rip them, box them and store them.

 

Dune has full BD structure playback. If you rip to the BD structure and play it with the Dune it will emulate playing a full bluray disc. Popcorn does not support full BD menu playback. They will usually just play back the main movie without any menus at all. This is why I like my Dune a little better than my Popcorn.

 

 

[neilt0]

Dune has full BD structure playback. If you rip to the BD structure and play it with the Dune it will emulate playing a full bluray disc. Popcorn does not support full BD menu playback. They will usually just play back the main movie without any menus at all. This is why I like my Dune a little better than my Popcorn

 

The PCH C-200 does full Blu-ray playback with menus etc.

[Warp3]

Living room: Zotac Zbox HD-ND02-U (Atom 330 + ION 2) running XBMC Live

Bedroom: An old Dell Dimension 2350 (with a GeForce 8400 GS video card installed so it can do hardware video decoding) running Ubuntu and XBMC

 

Due to the anemic CPU of that Dell, I originally planned to buy a second Zbox for the bedroom, but then I realized it was much smarter to at least try a cheap video card in the computer first (which only cost me $40 vs $300-ish for another Zbox+SSD setup).  That machine is too old for PCI-e and finding a suitable Nvidia-based AGP card proved virtually impossible, but it still plays high bitrate videos just fine even with its PCI video card.  I've found very few files that won't play well on these two setups.

[johnm160]

Ok this is probably a very obvious question but I have been working 12 hr overnight shifts and my brain is fried !

 

If I purchase popcorn hour A200 for my bedroom, and stream a 1080p source from my unraid to the popcorn hour which is connected to a 720p tv. The transcoading is done on the Popcorn hour box and not adding addition processing load to the server correct ?

 

Thanks

 

John

[ibixat]

Ok this is probably a very obvious question but I have been working 12 hr overnight shifts and my brain is fried !

 

If I purchase popcorn hour A200 for my bedroom, and stream a 1080p source from my unraid to the popcorn hour which is connected to a 720p tv. The transcoading is done on the Popcorn hour box and not adding addition processing load to the server correct ?

 

Thanks

 

John

 

Yeah there really isn't any transcoding happening all that is happening is the A200 will scale the 1080p source to 720p for output, it's not re-encoding the frames it's just scaling them to 1280x720 resolution from a 1920x1080 source. There is zero impact to the unraid server, it's streaming the video to the player at whatever bitrate it's encoded or whatever speed the player is reading it, which is the same if the player is outputting 720p or 1080p

[1080p]

I have a Mac Mini for playback in my home theatre and unRAID runs Plex Media Server so it can stream to my droid and roommate's MacBook/iPhone.

[guiri]

I actually like my WD TV Live (or both of them). The Iomega screenplays I had before were horrible. NEver got them working and I had them replaced SEVERAL times 

Also, their support sucked!

[johnm160]

Ok this is probably a very obvious question but I have been working 12 hr overnight shifts and my brain is fried !

 

If I purchase popcorn hour A200 for my bedroom, and stream a 1080p source from my unraid to the popcorn hour which is connected to a 720p tv. The transcoading is done on the Popcorn hour box and not adding addition processing load to the server correct ?

 

Thanks

 

John

 

Thank you, just wanted to be sure I was not going to be adding stress to the server if i picked up a couple of bargin 720p TV's for the bedrooms to replace the old CRT's I have in there.

 

Yeah there really isn't any transcoding happening all that is happening is the A200 will scale the 1080p source to 720p for output, it's not re-encoding the frames it's just scaling them to 1280x720 resolution from a 1920x1080 source. There is zero impact to the unraid server, it's streaming the video to the player at whatever bitrate it's encoded or whatever speed the player is reading it, which is the same if the player is outputting 720p or 1080p

[sosdk]

I stream FLAC to Sonos around the house. I leave the disk that my music in on spun up at all times as Sonos will timeout before the disk spins up.

 

And mkv, DVD and Bluray to my Dune and laptop.

[johnm160]

It seems the Popcorn hour are prepetually out of stock and every time a ship date gets close they seem to push it back. Dune seems to be basicly out of stock also. What other options are there for players that will handle bluray rips and the hd audio formats?

 

[baggies]

Xbmc to ATV1

Xbmc to ATV2

oplayer to IPhone

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[johnm160]

Xbmc to ATV1

Xbmc to ATV2

oplayer to IPhone

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Are you running XBMC on two computers or on another device?

[Rajahal]

Xbmc to ATV1

Xbmc to ATV2

oplayer to IPhone

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Are you running XBMC on two computers or on another device?

 

He is referring to the Apple TV versions 1 and 2.  Both can support XBMC or Plex, but they can only output 720p video.