Hey all,

 

Wanted to get your opinion on something.  I'm moving away from my whole house SageTV system which did a great job of playing all my 1080p mkv files from unraid.  I will be replacing it with a couple of WD Live boxes and want to know what ways could or have you guys connected them to unraid?

 

I know I can use smb shares, it just seemed a little, well not so user friendly for the family.  I didn't know if I would gain anything by running a mediaserver on unraid.  If so, what one would you recommend?  Thanks.

 

I have two of them in my house and I simply use the SMB shares and they work great. I know others have tinkered with them and got NFS working.

 

I had PS3Mediaserver and I also tried minidnla and just said forget it and why run over head when I could just watch them via smb. Since I'm using user shares with the preset password all my family has to do is click on

Videos > Network drive > Tower

click on what they want aka Mp3, TV, Movies and scroll around and click to play.

 

Sure my 5year old can't see the pictures that XBMC displays in the living room, but honestly I can police what he watches a bit more since I have to help him find what he wants.

Thanks for the reply.  And I do agree that it is easy to do smb, just isn't as "pretty" as the old setup.  Understandingly, I could go with a different/more expensive setup than the WD, but I think it is good bang for the buck.  My biggest problem with the WD smb side is that it displays all my available smb shares and on any given day, I could have up to (7) networked PCs plus other things showing up in the list.  That's why I didn't know if the media server would help.

Ah I see. You have everything under the sun broadcasting their shares.

 

I have the same thought in my living room. I have XBMC running with all the bells and whistles and when people come over I have to show off all the slickness. My office and guest room I rough it.

 

You could go with movie sheets, but I haven't personally looked into how it all works.

i have one of these WD TV Live and it works great. I have it using the SMB shares, and like you said it displays everything. I wish there was a way (easy way) to add a graphical element to the share. Right now it is just the folders, but it works.

 

 

I am running a WDTV Live Plus in the living room and have set it up with MovieSheets as well.  As for network shares, you can easily xmount just a certain folder or folders to show up as local drives on the WDTV.  This is the easiest way to ensure that you are not having to hunt through folder after folder of files.  *IF*  you have the time you can set up movie sheets, however, the learning curve takes a minute.  After awhile though, it only takes about 30 seconds to set up a good movie sheet and a few minutes to set up TV seasons.  Keep in mind that this all depends on you putting custom firmware on the WDTV, which is REALLY easy.

 

Personally I plan on stepping away from the WDTV despite all the time I have put into setting up my "sheets".  I have just started playing around with XBMC, and so far, I am loving it compared to my WDTV.  The main difference that I notice is that going through a list of files is MUCH quicker on XBMC, i.e. lets say a folder w/ 100 movies; WDTV, browsing beginning to end is about 3-4 minues, XBMC, about 30 seconds.

 

Sorry for the long winded response, hopefully it helped.

I know this is mostly WD live stuff but some other networked media players can run YAMJ like the popcorn hours and a few others too.

 

Josh

I use WDTV Live's as well.  I completely agree, the path to get to your unraid network shares via SMB isn't ideal.  I've always considered other options (XBMC probably the best), but I just keep coming back to how cheap, quiet, and painless the WDTV live is to have.  I've never had trouble with them, and quite honestly, for the amount I use them, it seems worth the savings.

 

As for Endisky mentioning it takes 3-4 minutes to browse through a list of files, that seems really strange to me.  If you just hold down the up or down arrow, you can fly through the list in seconds.

I have been reading about the custom software and was planing on putting that on.  But xmount appears to be the answer to my smb woes, if it works like I read it.  Thanks for chiming in everyone.  So the consenses is that no one is running media server software on unraid and connecting there WD to it.

Keep in mind that the only reason there is a delay in viewing my lists is BECAUSE of my movie sheets.  Running just a list of files is quick and painless. 

 

As for the original question, there is no real reason to run any software to direct your media if running a wdtv.

Is xmount part of the custom firmware or is it included in the original firmware?