Options re: Media Client/Server

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'm coming closer to getting and running some sort of NAS with media servicing/organizing backend... media files will be added frequently and I do want them to be meta (info/image) scrapped and organized automatically and the kicker is I want it be low-power usage system.

I have mixed feelings about my current media client - NeoTV550:
On one hand it does play almost everything I throw at it - including probably importantly (in this order) - mkv,HD audio codecs pass-thru, DVD & BD ISO (both with full menu support)

On other hand - the gui is simply horrible. Slow, almost no customizations and definitely not Wife ready.

a) Possible solution a)
I think Jinuku runs PCH 2xx (?) + YAMJ - I seen the results and I do like them, but have few issues and concerns about this: I heard yamj is pretty resource needy and slow scanning. If I install it on small nas box like qnap(luckily it is possible) (dual core arm/atom) how robust I could expect it to be and most importantly I will need to run at-least every hour or two.

I heard PCH C300 does it's own scraping software - NMJ v2, but some people on forums mentioned some issues with it (one is horribly slow) , but give large user base it should get resolved soon.

b)
BMX is pretty happy with Dune - which is again bare bones interface and doesn't scrape by its onw.
I did find couple of tools to make it pretty (yaDIS,Movienizer) , but again I do not know if it's possible to automate the tools and if possible to run in low power land ....

c) Plex. Plex server runs on qnap nas, but doesn't support dvd/bd menus or iso. also lacking hd codecs support. Also I am confused about frontend for Plex - there are couple of hardware frontend support it, but it seems pretty limited at the moment - Google TV, Roku and some Samsung/LG equipement (not sure about them)

Roku channel might work, but given low muscle on it I really have really low expectations about it... Hacking older Atv model seems like a drag and it's completely unsupported (and probably very limited as well)

Ideas and suggestions are welcome

 

[sholling]

I still haven't found anything I like better yet. I we nt back to my HTPC for a few weeks just as a reality check and I'm now back to the NeoTV550. I'm also concerned that newer products may be impose advanced copy protection. But I don't store that many videos electronically, only those I watch a lot like concert videos.

 

[Grador]

I'll throw XBMC in the mix (I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on this...)

Advantages: Scraping and database are built in, and usually work quite well. Database can use an external mySQL database, allowing your NAS to run just the mySQL server, which I believe the qnap will, leaving all the hard lifting for client end. (setting this up is NOT the simplest of tasks, but with some technical know-how and guidance it's not that bad) It will run on several embedded platforms....with a little work. I hear it works quite well on an ATV2/3.

Biggest advantages are in customizeability and wife-ready UI

Disadvantages: Given that the scraping would all be done client side you would need to set one [or all] of your clients to scrape at startup. This adds a little extra time-to-media, but it's not that bad. Bluray iso is supported....but from what I hear menu support isn't 100%. (I rip main movie to .m2ts, so I don't really know how well it works) Any embedded device is going to be a little bit of work to get going.

Biggest disadvantages are difficulty in setup.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'll throw XBMC in the mix (I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on this...)

Advantages: Scraping and database are built in, and usually work quite well. Database can use an external mySQL database, allowing your NAS to run just the mySQL server, which I believe the qnap will, leaving all the hard lifting for client end. (setting this up is NOT the simplest of tasks, but with some technical know-how and guidance it's not that bad) It will run on several embedded platforms....with a little work. I hear it works quite well on an ATV2/3.

Biggest advantages are in customizeability and wife-ready UI

Disadvantages: Given that the scraping would all be done client side you would need to set one [or all] of your clients to scrape at startup. This adds a little extra time-to-media, but it's not that bad. Bluray iso is supported....but from what I hear menu support isn't 100%. (I rip main movie to .m2ts, so I don't really know how well it works) Any embedded device is going to be a little bit of work to get going.

Biggest disadvantages are difficulty in setup.

Xmbc/plex show real potential, but still fall short especially on embedded devices ...
I guess from this xbmc tree right now out of the box, Boxee box could be winner - they offer excellent format support and wife ready interface. My issues with bb is it's A) stupid form factor and b) noisy fan

I seen pics of new Boxee box - they got rid of weird box (and qwerty remote ) and hopeful removed noisy fan.... They will offer clear QAM tuner and some DVD functions, but we'll see if it's any useful

AFAIK - ATV3 is yet to be jailbroken. You say XMBC plays BR m2ts files (I could live without menus and iso), but does it offer hd codec passthru on hdmi or only transcode to dd/dts?

I'd like to know what are limitation of running xmbc/plex on atv2? (aka codec and resolutions)

So far pch/dune/boxee box probably top contenders

ps: just found there is a simple mod to kill fan on boxee box

 

[Grador]

Xmbc/plex show real potential, but still fall short especially on embedded devices ...
I guess from this xbmc tree right now out of the box, Boxee box could be winner - they offer excellent format support and wife ready interface. My issues with bb is it's A) stupid form factor and b) noisy fan

I seen pics of new Boxee box - they got rid of weird box (and qwerty remote ) and hopeful removed noisy fan.... They will offer clear QAM tuner and some DVD functions, but we'll see if it's any useful

AFAIK - ATV3 is yet to be jailbroken. You say XMBC plays BR m2ts files (I could live without menus and iso), but does it offer hd codec passthru on hdmi or only transcode to dd/dts?

I'd like to know what are limitation of running xmbc/plex on atv2? (aka codec and resolutions)

So far pch/dune/boxee box probably top contenders

ps: just found there is a simple mod to kill fan on boxee box

ATV2 will have trouble with 1080, you'd have to wait for ATV3 or go with the [still quite beta] android version and it's single hardware accelerated hardware. {or wait a little while longer for a raspberry pi to have full DVD support}

I'm a little shaky on current HD codec passthrough, it is most certainly in the bleeding edge builds but I'm not sure about current releases, my hardware does not support HD passthrough so I haven't paid much attention (I have been reencoding audio to multichannel FLAC for this reason).

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks for ideas so far, but I yet to hear from several other member who I'd love to hear their opinion:
Jinjuku, BMXTRIX and our self proclaimed htpc expert LordHumus

Also dkane360 and adk highlander. Guys, I know that you are using YAMJ/ (yaDIS,Movienizer) tools. What are the option to automate them (if any) ?


Last, but not least is another minor concert - video keying - which replaces regular Fast Forward, instead of VHS like rewind it kinda skips throw - makes FF so much faster. This is not must have, but really neat to have. I know that Plex and WMC do that.

 

[adk highlander]

I have the PCH C-200 and am using YAMJ (latest version) with Unique Black Glass Skin. I also use YAYMan to update cover art and descriptions.

My server is a Windows Server 2003 box using hardware RAID5 array. 8TB with about 6TB of usable space. The boot drive is a 500GB SATA drive.

I use AnyDVD HD to break encryption and rip the movie to BR folders. I then use ClownBD to extract the main movie and selected audio tracks.

YAMJ is fairly time intensive the first time you run it on your library. This is somewhat dependent on your internet connection which mine is slow so it takes around 2hrs to do all ~120 movies I have ripped if I want it to run from scratch. The more often it is run it will only scan the new movies so if I have run within the last week it can go as quick as a couple of minutes. If I go a month or two without running it then it will re-scan each movie and be back up to the two hour mark again.

I don't see any kind of automation built in to YAMJ. I would probably just write a batch file and then schedule it to run when I wanted. I can believe there would be an issue if it was running automatically while I was accessing the jukebox as it has to rewrite the HTML & XML files while it is running and if your client machine is trying to access them at the same time there would be some kind of failure.

Why would you want to run it so often? I guess as I have a particular way I want to save my movies the process is manual so running YAMJ manually is not an issue.

I have not use the PCH NMJ nor do I do any music with this machine. It is dedicated just to do the movie playback from the server and I do not use it for anything else. The latest PCH's use a flash based jukebox and there is rumor that eventually this will be available for the 200 series that I own. I now see they are releasing the 400 series so I am not holding my breath.

I have been very happy with this setup and it works well for us. I have not done one of these for anyone else in my family yet as it does take some technical skill and patience (which I know you have ) to get this running. It is by no means a plug and play system but the results can be a poor mans kalidascape.

 

[jinjuku]

After a few different media players (Asus, WDTV, Boxee, Mythbuntu) I am full circle and dyed in the wool fan of:

Win7 MCE with Netflix Plug in and OTA tuner.
MyMovies 4.XX
AnyDVD HD

I still like MS's 10 foot tall media center interface better than anything I've seen on the market. If Hulu or Pandora want my business they will integrate.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

YAMJ is fairly time intensive the first time you run it on your library. This is somewhat dependent on your internet connection which mine is slow so it takes around 2hrs to do all ~120 movies I have ripped if I want it to run from scratch. The more often it is run it will only scan the new movies so if I have run within the last week it can go as quick as a couple of minutes. If I go a month or two without running it then it will re-scan each movie and be back up to the two hour mark again.

I have good internet pipe and pretty solid main machine. 2h initial scan is nothing as it was reported NMJv2 runs for 8-10 hours and has yet to finish.

I don't see any kind of automation built in to YAMJ. I would probably just write a batch file and then schedule it to run when I wanted. I can believe there would be an issue if it was running automatically while I was accessing the jukebox as it has to rewrite the HTML & XML files while it is running and if your client machine is trying to access them at the same time there would be some kind of failure.

This is disappointing, but I guess it's might just need a bit more fiddling work

Why would you want to run it so often? I guess as I have a particular way I want to save my movies the process is manual so running YAMJ manually is not an issue.

One answer - TV shows - They will "magically" be added to nas I guess as often as few times a day and I don't want to manually run scraper every time

The latest PCH's use a flash based jukebox and there is rumor that eventually this will be available for the 200 series that I own.

Could you please explain this part a bit more...

I have been very happy with this setup and it works well for us. I have not done one of these for anyone else in my family yet as it does take some technical skill and patience (which I know you have ) to get this running. It is by no means a plug and play system but the results can be a poor mans kalidascape.

I got the skills alright , but the real challenge is to make (mostly) self sufficient and wife friendly system...

Kaleidoscope - Ha - I do believe we can do better than their way overpriced stuff

 

[BMXTRIX]

I like my Dune player, but I certainly see many areas of improvement for it and consider it a long way from perfect. Unlike on the MPC forums were I get pretty seriously burned for suggesting a product is less than perfection, I will spell out my issues here, as I know you will appreciate them.

1. The Dune players are bare bones from start to finish... Very little in the way of documentation on the product, so you really have to look at online resources (MPC) to get detailed information about the product.

2. It is very geeky to setup. The more you know about PCs the more you will get out of the entire product.

3. It offers several media wall plug-ins. Yadis and Zappiti I have used. I believe MyMovies is available as well along with a new Flash version. The good of this is that it looks amazing when a plug-in media wall is used, the bad is that it is an add-on that is not natively supported by Dune and must all be run....

4. Externally! Yes, you must run all the scraping software from your PC. It is a manual process to run it. The big plus in this is that you have your PC and a full keyboard/mouse to edit and tweak as is necessary. It can take quite a while to run through the different media wall software to get it setup and working properly. BUT - This process falls on your shoulders, not on the shoulders of your family.

5. You can't lock the media wall. That is, you can't keep people from exiting from the media wall of the Dune and back to the boring main menu. In my home, with a 7 year old and 4 year old (and wife) using my Dune this has proved to be a non-issue. When they exit by mistake, they learned quickly how to relaunch it.

6. Speed is pretty good from the media wall. Not Apple smooth, but still responsive and quick enough to not leave people waiting or hitting keys multiple times.

7. The Dune HD Base 4.0 is expected around year-end... I would wait. It is the first hardware update in a few years.

I have a post over at MPC in which I really get into what I don't like about the product, but I don't think this is a unique issue with Dune vs. the other products. A lot of people like their XBMC, but last time I went to use it, it was difficult to setup as anything else and did not natively support BD ISOs... has this finally been resolved?

This is my MPC thread, and I am not gentle on them, so I got a lot of crap from others about my criticism of their product.

When Is HDI Going To Get It? - MPC Club Community Board

That said, I would still be hard pressed to go with another product at this time.

 

[adk highlander]

One answer - TV shows - They will "magically" be added to nas I guess as often as few times a day and I don't want to manually run scraper every time

Sickbeard is interesting. It is not viable for me with my connection speeds but I would love to get Game of Thrones.

Could you please explain this part a bit more...

It has been a while and I have not been keeping up with all the changes but here goes.

Before PCH released the NMJ v1 software and YAMJ was the best game in town there were two types of skins that you could run. HTML (like what I use) and a Flash based one called Everson (sp). This was all with the 100/200 series units. When the 300 series came out and NMJ v2 was developed it is also Flash based. These 300 series units cannot use the older HTML based skins and only the Flash based versions. As I have not used any of the Flash based skins I cannot comment on the differences. One thing I do know is that if they ever release the NMJ v2 upgrade to the 200 series you will not be able to revert back to use what I am using now. So unless I see some major enhancement or it craps out I will stick with what I know works and like.

 

[adk highlander]

This is my MPC thread, and I am not gentle on them, so I got a lot of crap from others about my criticism of their product.

When Is HDI Going To Get It? - MPC Club Community Board

That said, I would still be hard pressed to go with another product at this time.

Wow you did get kind of a beating just for asking the correct questions. One guy did not get it with his "I set it up in 5 minutes" comments.

I look at it this way. The communities are the ones who have built the best interfaces (YAMJ, Zapatti, etc.) Why don't these companies get their collective heads out of their a$$es and do what other companies do and hire these guys and build the best interface.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I like my Dune player, but I certainly see many areas of improvement for it and consider it a long way from perfect. Unlike on the MPC forums were I get pretty seriously burned for suggesting a product is less than perfection, I will spell out my issues here, as I know you will appreciate them.

1. The Dune players are bare bones from start to finish... Very little in the way of documentation on the product, so you really have to look at online resources (MPC) to get detailed information about the product.

2. It is very geeky to setup. The more you know about PCs the more you will get out of the entire product.

3. It offers several media wall plug-ins. Yadis and Zappiti I have used. I believe MyMovies is available as well along with a new Flash version. The good of this is that it looks amazing when a plug-in media wall is used, the bad is that it is an add-on that is not natively supported by Dune and must all be run....

4. Externally! Yes, you must run all the scraping software from your PC. It is a manual process to run it. The big plus in this is that you have your PC and a full keyboard/mouse to edit and tweak as is necessary. It can take quite a while to run through the different media wall software to get it setup and working properly. BUT - This process falls on your shoulders, not on the shoulders of your family.

5. You can't lock the media wall. That is, you can't keep people from exiting from the media wall of the Dune and back to the boring main menu. In my home, with a 7 year old and 4 year old (and wife) using my Dune this has proved to be a non-issue. When they exit by mistake, they learned quickly how to relaunch it.

6. Speed is pretty good from the media wall. Not Apple smooth, but still responsive and quick enough to not leave people waiting or hitting keys multiple times.

7. The Dune HD Base 4.0 is expected around year-end... I would wait. It is the first hardware update in a few years.

I have a post over at MPC in which I really get into what I don't like about the product, but I don't think this is a unique issue with Dune vs. the other products. A lot of people like their XBMC, but last time I went to use it, it was difficult to setup as anything else and did not natively support BD ISOs... has this finally been resolved?

This is my MPC thread, and I am not gentle on them, so I got a lot of crap from others about my criticism of their product.

When Is HDI Going To Get It? - MPC Club Community Board

That said, I would still be hard pressed to go with another product at this time.

BMX, You have no idea how much appreciate all these details !!!
This just goes to confirm my previous ideas as to Dune and PCH are both basically bare bone products and would be almost in same boat as my netgear - aka good hardware - shitty software, but these two support html/flash modifications to gui

While end result (aka Yamj nmt or yadis on dune) look pretty similar and good in both case there is one big difference which would be the biggest deal breaker for dune:
YAMJ could work almost on anything with java AND be scheduled with Cron (vi skills needed )
Adding Cron Jobs to a QNAP server | Technology Treason
Add items to crontab - QNAPedia

So right now, PCH A300, Yamj + Everson, NAS and many hours of work might be what I am looking for

Currently looking into building my own NAS, bsd/linux based machine as good performance nas boxes are expensive ...
Intel Celeron G630T + ASRock B75M-GL LGA 1155 should do the trick

G630T cpu, while run on meager 35W TPD (only 10-15 watt more than E350/Atom) runs circles around any them

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Wow you did get kind of a beating just for asking the correct questions. One guy did not get it with his "I set it up in 5 minutes" comments.

I look at it this way. The communities are the ones who have built the best interfaces (YAMJ, Zapatti, etc.) Why don't these companies get their collective heads out of their a$$es and do what other companies do and hire these guys and build the best interface.

I 100%. BMX was suggesting exactly correct things and got most hostile responses... PCH is at least trying - NMJv2 seems to be almost there

Also PCH community is much bigger than Dune owners - this is only of major criterions I will go by

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Wow you did get kind of a beating just for asking the correct questions. One guy did not get it with his "I set it up in 5 minutes" comments.

I look at it this way. The communities are the ones who have built the best interfaces (YAMJ, Zapatti, etc.) Why don't these companies get their collective heads out of their a$$es and do what other companies do and hire these guys and build the best interface.

Samsung have their heads in the right play - they give away their top end devices to CyanogenMod so they will get CM faster and provide indeep dev support for them. I wont be surprised to see some of CM features on next Samsung phones

 

[BMXTRIX]

The one thing worth adding is that the forthcoming Dune is expected to continue its support of full BD ISOs w/full menus. PCH, to my knowledge, still does not support for BD ISO menus. The new Dunes should be faster than the existing ones and will be 3D compliant.

Of course, there are all the tweaky guys looking for it to piss Skittles, while all I want is the darn thing to scrape the web automatically and for me to have a way to lock it into a media wall interface so I can get some predictable results.

There are definitely some cool things going on with both PCH and Dune, but neither is a gravy product yet. If I had more time, I would love to play with more web development of the interface and take it into a Crestron system with cover art.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

The one thing worth adding is that the forthcoming Dune is expected to continue its support of full BD ISOs w/full menus. PCH, to my knowledge, still does not support for BD ISO menus. The new Dunes should be faster than the existing ones and will be 3D compliant.

Of course, there are all the tweaky guys looking for it to piss Skittles, while all I want is the darn thing to scrape the web automatically and for me to have a way to lock it into a media wall interface so I can get some predictable results.

There are definitely some cool things going on with both PCH and Dune, but neither is a gravy product yet. If I had more time, I would love to play with more web development of the interface and take it into a Crestron system with cover art.

PCH A2x0 do support BDLite menus in iso (unofficially), but not full BD-Live (bd profile 2.0). A300 does too, but more limited most likely to lack of progress on SDK.
Only C200/C300 do support them fully.
Not sure about upcoming soon PCH A400, which is spec'd to have dual core processor and support for hdmi 1.4 and 3D BD ISO

Bottom line is you right - neither product is truly average consumer ready... maybe Pch is a just bit closer


Speaking more of NAS: there pretty easy way to integrate all the backend software I want on freenas 8.x :
FreeNAS 8.2 - SABnzbd, Sick Beard, CouchPotato, Headphones, Maraschino plugin install - YouTube
Maraschino plug (which I never heard until 10 minutes ago look especially good)
https://github.com/mrkipling/maraschino#readme

It's starting to look more and more doable

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Update: So while less busy at work I built a Freenas box to play around with.
Found some really easy guides and installed Sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato, headphones and few others really easy. All of them running without any issues so far - did only very basic configs so far...
Setting up jail for freenas is somewhat was the hardest part.

Now the real struggle starts. Java (which required for jamj to run) is not really supported. I need to figure out how to install the damn thing on the box.
It based on FreeBSD 8.3 - but it doesn't help me much...

To be continued...

 

[itschris]

Hey I'll just throw this out there since I've been trying to figure out the very same thing. I'm convinced there's no perfect solution... not even a near perfect solution... however.. you can get "somewhat close", wife friendly, and easy now.

I've had my PLEX, iPad, AppleTV setup now for a 3 weeks or so. It's doing absolutely everything I want it to. Granted, I can't play ISO's, but I've got other HD files that I'm pushing to my iPad than simply Airplaying to my system. I'm getting surround sound, though I don't think I'm getting HD surround... but you know what... for everything I've gained by this setup, it's not much to give up.

I'm sure Airplay or things like Airplay will become a standard here in the near future. So there will be a little box that will play everything. For me, the best thing is using the iPad, because I have this super slick interface with all my media. I have the control, the ease and comprehensive control, that I was wanting. It's essentially working as remote almost.

 

[Grador]

So a little bit of a development you might be interested in. So I've been messing around in my spare time setting up a raspberry pi as an XBMC client. I didn't suggest it before for a few reasons, the first being that the software is still considered an alpha [though it is fairly stable], and the biggest being that it did not support DVD iso's. This month they finally added ISO support.

Pros: Cheap, VERY cheap. $35 for the board, $5 for the SD card, plus wireless and a power supply if needed (powered off USB, has a microUSB port). Flawless DVD and bluray playback (no BDlive menues), though I'm not sure about HD audio codecs.

Cons: Menus can be a little slow, it is a very underpowered device. As purchased it is a a bare board, no case at all. Setup will be a little more of a challenge than other options.

Raspberry Pi | An ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!
Building and Installing OpenELEC for Raspberry Pi - OpenELEC Wiki