Popcorn Hour

[starcat]

I also recommend the C-200 with YAMJ/AEON, I don't have any issues whatsoever.

[aiden]

Wow... okay.  The boards over on NMT's site are just full of C-200 chatter, so it's hard to tell what's fixed and what isn't.  About all I know is that the C-200 is not a replacement for the A-110s, and that a non-optical version of the C-200 will be coming out in a few months.  So, a C-200 WILL handle the BD ISOs in all their glory with YAMJ, assuming I'm running the latest beta.  I could redo all the ISOs into folders, but that's such a pain to do.  Does that significantly cut down on overhead over the network?

[neilt0]

Wow... okay.  The boards over on NMT's site are just full of C-200 chatter, so it's hard to tell what's fixed and what isn't.  About all I know is that the C-200 is not a replacement for the A-110s, and that a non-optical version of the C-200 will be coming out in a few months.  So, a C-200 WILL handle the BD ISOs in all their glory with YAMJ, assuming I'm running the latest beta.  I could redo all the ISOs into folders, but that's such a pain to do.  Does that significantly cut down on overhead over the network?

 

I've stopped looking at everything on the NMT boards apart from the Beta forum (not accessible unless you are a Beta tester).

The Beta forum has a small number of users and most of us are fairly technical. The rest of the forum is a mess. There are a large number of posts from newbs, and people trying to play "out of spec" files, which makes it hard to work out what's working and what's not.

 

All I play is 1:1 Blu-ray rips, the occasional TV show (H264 or MPEG2, not recoded) and a few FLAC music files. That stuff works pretty well.

 

I do not store my BD rips as ISOs, only as folders (BDMV). This is for a number of reasons -- the A-110 can play them, the C-200 plays them better than ISOs etc.

 

I understand the C-200 should now play most BD ISOs well, but I can't guarantee it. It has to do more "work" to play the ISO than the BDMV folder.

I would expect future firmware builds to improve on this or make BD ISO playback as good as BDMV, but who can tell? Of my 400 BD rips, about 10 were ISOs, and I ripped them back to BDMV folders a few months back.

 

YAMJ can't read BD ISOs at all, unless they've changed that recently. Look at the YAMJ changelog to find out, or ask on the forums.

[aiden]

Thanks for the info.  It sounds like I should just bite the bullet and ditch the ISOs for BDMV.  It also sounds like a C-200 is in my near future.  Thanks for doing the beta work on it.  From the sound of things over there, you would think Syabas had shipped bricks with no code and THEN started to develop.  Thanks again.

[neilt0]

Thanks for the info.  It sounds like I should just bite the bullet and ditch the ISOs for BDMV.  It also sounds like a C-200 is in my near future.  Thanks for doing the beta work on it.  From the sound of things over there, you would think Syabas had shipped bricks with no code and THEN started to develop.  Thanks again.

 

No problem. I wouldn't say they shipped a brick, but the firmware was barely alpha, and we've all been alpha testers so far -- even the normal users.

 

I'd say with the "Special Xmas BD Beta" (which has not been generally released yet), it's at a good beta state. There was another new Beta issued today, which I haven't looked at yet, and if that fixes the bugs it claims to, it'll be close to a working solution. I only use my A-110 for playing discs with PIP now (rare).

[WeeboTech]

As cool as the popcorn hour and C-200 are, I decided to sell my popcorn our B-110 Baseline ITX motherboard.

I believe this was a pre-release of the C-200 before they engineered a case.

If any one is interested in my board let me know.

 

 

I ended up building a HTPC with a OCZ Vertex SSD the Gigiabyte i-RAM for swap/pagefile/tempfiles.

I'm running WinXP and also XMBC switching between either depending on needs.

 

For the bedroom I purchased an ASRock ION330-HT NVIDIA ION 2 x 200Pin NVIDIA ION graphics Black Barebone

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856158011

I'll drop XBMC on it with an SSD.

 

The popcorn hour and other units like this are nice, I just found it to be slow and limiting in the interface speed.

Wading through many levels of directories and files became tedious.

 

What is cool about the architecture is the openness of it. It was very easy to drop in a few programs and have shell.

I was also able to rsync my music collection to the popcorn hour yielding a hot backup with the ability to play music should my unRAID server be off.

Made a quick lil backup nas too. I just decided to consolidate all my "media players" into one HTPC.

No more DVD changer, CD changer, Media players,  Just an HTPC and Receiver.

[prostuff1]

As cool as the popcorn hour and C-200 are, I decided to sell my popcorn our B-110 Baseline ITX motherboard.

I believe this was a pre-release of the C-200 before they engineered a case.

If any one is interested in my board let me know.

 

 

I ended up building a HTPC with a OCZ Vertex SSD the Gigiabyte i-RAM for swap/pagefile/tempfiles.

I'm running WinXP and also XMBC switching between either depending on needs.

 

For the bedroom I purchased an ASRock ION330-HT NVIDIA ION 2 x 200Pin NVIDIA ION graphics Black Barebone

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856158011

I'll drop XBMC on it with an SSD.

 

The popcorn hour and other units like this are nice, I just found it to be slow and limiting in the interface speed.

Wading through many levels of directories and files became tedious.

 

What is cool about the architecture is the openness of it. It was very easy to drop in a few programs and have shell.

I was also able to rsync my music collection to the popcorn hour yielding a hot backup with the ability to play music should my unRAID server be off.

Made a quick lil backup nas too. I just decided to consolidate all my "media players" into one HTPC.

No more DVD changer, CD changer, Media players,  Just an HTPC and Receiver.

 

Thanks for the link to the Asrock.  It is pretty much what I have been looking for, though a little more then I wanted to spend.

[aiden]

ION2 chipset is just around the corner, so the prices on the ION boxes should drop a little.  There are multiple models of ASRock nettops.  WeeboTech's link is for the model with remote control.  There's also a model that includes a Blu-Ray drive. 

 

The Acer Revo 3610 comes with Windows 7 and is about $330, although they are pulling them from the shelves to replace with a new model that includes a VESA bracket. 

 

The Zotac MAG HD-ND01 is very sweet looking, comes without an OS, and is $300 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173001&cm_re=zotac_ion-_-56-173-001-_-Product

 

Both of those models need an IR + remote kit.

[WeeboTech]

ION2 chipset is just around the corner, so the prices on the ION boxes should drop a little.  There are multiple models of ASRock nettops.  WeeboTech's link is for the model with remote control.  There's also a model that includes a Blu-Ray drive.

 

I almost bought the blu-ray model. But I only need DVD in my bedroom. What I needed is wireless, a remote and an SSD. So the money I saved for the blu-ray will go towards an SSD. The bedroom machine must be extra silent. The monitor I have there does not have HDMI and I do not own blu-rays right now. So I can wait. By the time I get into Blu-ray, I'm sure I''ll score a slot load slim drive (Which is what I really wanted).

 

With all the various media players I've acquired over the years. The sale of them will pay for the asrock. I was thinking of the revo boxes, but I need the size of the ASROCK to fit onto of the stereo that it is connected to.

 

The popcorn hour is a great box. Just not what I really wanted as far as user interface. I'm digging XBMC more.

[tafkap]

Hi all,

 

i bought the PopCorn C200, now i would like to connect it to my unRaid server but i don't know how to do this. In the menu there are two options : Network and Sharing Network. I suppose I must turn towards the second option, isn'it ?

 

If yes, how can i setup my unraid server with address 192.168.0.2, it doesn't like the format '192.168.0.2' or '//192.168.0.2' but which then ?

 

Thanks for your help.

[starcat]

Either you put nfs-tcp://192.168.0.2:/mnt/user/shareName or smb://192.168.0.2/shareName

 

.. this is in case you are on the nov firmware. If you are on the january firmware then you just put the stuff from above in separate fields not following a predefined syntax.

[tafkap]

Hi,

 

in your example at the end of the address there is a colon, it's normal ?

 

I tested all synthax and it doesn't work 

[betaman]

FYI, the colon after the IP address is not normal at least for an smb share.

[tafkap]

Ok thanks betaman,

 

but i can't make it work, tirelessly the C-200 tell me it can not connect to my share. I don't understand. Application Samba is running. I don't understand.

 

Can i ping my unRaid server under the C-200 ?

 

 

[neilt0]

Ok thanks betaman,

 

but i can't make it work, tirelessly the C-200 tell me it can not connect to my share. I don't understand. Application Samba is running. I don't understand.

 

Can i ping my unRaid server under the C-200 ?

 

 

 

You don't have to do anything. Just browse the network from the C-200. There's no need for any setup whatsoever.

C-200 manual: http://support.popcornhour.com/article.aspx?ID=1100

[tafkap]

From my PC under Windows 7 i can access to my unRaid server, i know it work fine. With C-200 it don't work. I will post my setup with share user and other.

 

In the manual (page 40), normally i can browse my connected Network Shares, go to the Media Source > Network Browser and select WORKGROUP to see the available Network Shares on my network, but the problem is that i don't see WORKGROUP on the screen.

 

Thanks

[starcat]

FYI, the colon after the IP address is not normal at least for an smb share.

 

It is normal for NFS with the NMT, look here: http://www.networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/Network_Share

 

The NMT syntax for mounting a NFS share should be:

nfs://<hostname or ipaddr>:/foldername (colon after hostname required)

nfs-tcp://<hostname or ipaddr>:/foldername (colon after hostname required)

 

The older firmware didn't allow to put nfs-tcp when browsing the network, with the newer 01.2010 firmware you may browse the network and select your share and then specify the protocol, as neilt0 has suggested.

 

 

 

[cguffey]

Hello all, new UnRaid and Popcorn C-200 user here and I'm hoping to get some recommendations and feedback from those who have had the time to optimize their configurations.

 

I just got my UnRaid server up and running and setup a BluRay Movies share and copied a raw bluray file from the STREAM folder for the movie Monsters Vs. Aliens.  On the C-200 I setup a SMB share and was able to play the video file with full picture no problem, but the audio drops out every few seconds.  I know the C-200 is somewhat buggy, so wasn't sure if there was something with the settings I was missing or if I need to be patient with future updates on the C-200.  Seemed like a bandwidth problem to me, but I didn't understand why the picture was fine but the audio was dropping out.  Any advice/feedback is appreciated.

[starcat]

Go and get you the latest firmware update for the C200.

[aiden]

Seemed like a bandwidth problem to me, but I didn't understand why the picture was fine but the audio was dropping out.  Any advice/feedback is appreciated.

 

There are so many variables here, network configuration, cabling, switches being used, and of course, what is the mood of the C-200 at the moment.  If I understand correctly, audio streaming from a single BluRay file has been buggy thus far on the C/A-200s.  Perhaps you should rip the BD structure to ISO and see what that produces?  Is your C-200 running 10/100 mode only, or is it set to Auto?  unRAID is comparatively steady and reliable in relation to the latest PCH models, so I would tend toward the NMT forums for more informative remedies.  neilt0 might have some ideas as well.

[neilt0]

Seemed like a bandwidth problem to me, but I didn't understand why the picture was fine but the audio was dropping out.  Any advice/feedback is appreciated.

 

There are so many variables here, network configuration, cabling, switches being used, and of course, what is the mood of the C-200 at the moment.  If I understand correctly, audio streaming from a single BluRay file has been buggy thus far on the C/A-200s.  Perhaps you should rip the BD structure to ISO and see what that produces?  Is your C-200 running 10/100 mode only, or is it set to Auto?  unRAID is comparatively steady and reliable in relation to the latest PCH models, so I would tend toward the NMT forums for more informative remedies.  neilt0 might have some ideas as well.

 

You have it backwards!   The C-200 plays BDMV folder structures from an unRAID server perfectly. ISOs are more problematic.

 

You should set the C-200 network configuration to 10/100 (not Automatic), and ideally connect it to a 10/100 port on your router (not a gigabit port).

 

I've played hundreds of complete Blu-rays to my C-200 from unRAID, and they have worked from day one of the C-200's release.

[cguffey]

Sorry, I always forget to add all the required info.  I currently have the C-200 set to 10/100 and is connected directly to a Linksys WRT54G wireless router.  When I hit the info button on the remote and display all the movie properties I thought I saw a number on the lower right that stated 4.86mb/s, is that the speed of the network connection for streaming the movie?  Before the UnRaid I had the same file on a Thecus 4100+ box streaming and had the exact same issues with the sound dropping out.  I thought it might just be a speed issue with the Thecus because I never got transfer rates over 6mb/s when coping to the Thecus NAS.  The DVD files in a DVDR-MS structure seem to work just fine.  I'm going to try a few other files tonight to see if it's consistent across all of files or just that one.

 

The popcorn is hooked up to an Integra DTC 9.8 via HDMI to a JVC RS2 projector, for that side of things.

[aiden]

... a number on the lower right that stated [glow=yellow,2,300]4.86mb/s[/glow], is that the speed of the network connection for streaming the movie?

 

...I thought it might just be a speed issue with the Thecus because I never got transfer rates over [glow=yellow,2,300]6mb/s[/glow] when coping to the Thecus NAS.

 

Those numbers indicate to me that you have some kind of network issue going on.  And sorry neilt0 about getting it backwards, but I thought the latest firmware had largely fixed the ISO playback problems?

[cguffey]

Yeah, that's what got me thinking about it because when I had the Thecus I never got transfer speeds above 6mb/s when copying files to JBOD or Raid 1 configuration of the 4-750Gb drives in the Thecus.  Any ideas of where to look for possible problems slowing the network, would it just be a problem or obscure setting in router, cable (don't think this is possible either works or doesn't?), or setting on a PC slowing all traffic down possibly?  Sorry, i'm not overly proficient on the networking side when it get's down to the details and just looking for suggestions on possible problems to look for or tests to try to narrow down a problem.

[aiden]

I'm not a network guru either, but it can be a combination of the quality of switches you're using, how your topography is laid out, etc.  Maybe one of the networking guys will pick this up and get you some more detailed information.