Cheap XBMC Box = Raspberry Pi ?

[dheerajjotwani]

No its a standalone squeezelite over raspbian with modified kernel. Also available as a build by truehl called squeezebox distribution for rpi

 

[John]

While my experience with R-Pi running Openelec has been good so far, I am facing a problem playing HD movies over the LAN (using the Pi as a "NAS").

My media PC in the home theater (running XBMC over Windows) is connected via the LAN network to the Pi (Samba on Openelec). I can browse to the shared folder (on an external 1 TB USB drive) on the Pi, the file will start playing but will pause every few seconds, seems to be a buffering issue. I think the bottleneck is the USB controller on the Pi itself because I can play files from another (Windows 7 PC) on the network without any issues. Do correct me if I doing anything wrong. The Pi runs off a 2 Amp 5 Volt USB charger and the USB drive is powered directly off the Pi. Should I use a powered-USB hub instead, and will this circumvent the problem?

 

[manniraj]

While my experience with R-Pi running Openelec has been good so far, I am facing a problem playing HD movies over the LAN (using the Pi as a "NAS").

My media PC in the home theater (running XBMC over Windows) is connected via the LAN network to the Pi (Samba on Openelec). I can browse to the shared folder (on an external 1 TB USB drive) on the Pi, the file will start playing but will pause every few seconds, seems to be a buffering issue. I think the bottleneck is the USB controller on the Pi itself because I can play files from another (Windows 7 PC) on the network without any issues. Do correct me if I doing anything wrong. The Pi runs off a 2 Amp 5 Volt USB charger and the USB drive is powered directly off the Pi. Should I use a powered-USB hub instead, and will this circumvent the problem?

How are you doing the playback on your media pc via the UPNP share from PI? If yes then I think the transcoding of the movie file will happen on the PI before getting transmitted to your media pc. The tiny processor on PI may not be able to process/transcode the movie files before transmitting. Try to use the windows share instead where the file will be transcoded on the media pc and the PI will be used only for just network share (container folder).
To give an example I have all my music files on my Pogoplug device, and when I play the FLAC/WAV file on my PI via the UPNP share then it buffers. My Pogoplug is a tiny Linux server without much of processing power. So I changed the path directly to the shared folder and the PI in turn transcodes the files and plays back without any buffering issues.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

@john and @manniraj

Try setting and using nfs shares in place of samba and upnp

 

[John]

How are you doing the playback on your media pc via the UPNP share from PI? If yes then I think the transcoding of the movie file will happen on the PI before getting transmitted to your media pc. The tiny processor on PI may not be able to process/transcode the movie files before transmitting. Try to use the windows share instead where the file will be transcoded on the media pc and the PI will be used only for just network share (container folder).
To give an example I have all my music files on my Pogoplug device, and when I play the FLAC/WAV file on my PI via the UPNP share then it buffers. My Pogoplug is a tiny Linux server without much of processing power. So I changed the path directly to the shared folder and the PI in turn transcodes the files and plays back without any buffering issues.

Manniraj, sorry bud, I think I am not sure of your question. But the setup is something like this. Please ask me anything in case I am unclear myself

1) Home theater has a dedicated windows 7 based HTPC running XBMC.

2) The Pi runs on Openelec, while primarily being used as a download rig also has Samba running (via Openelec).

3) 1 tb usb drive attached to the Pi for downloads. The same folder is shared on Samba.

4) I am playing the movies from the HTPC in the media room by browsing directly to the Pi's shared USB drive.

5) I think you are right in that the movie gets transcoded in the Pi before "playing" on the HTPC.

Question: When you are asking me to windows share, do you want me to copy the file to the other windows PC? Sorry bud, but I did not get this part.

@john and @manniraj

Try setting and using nfs shares in place of samba and upnp

Sorry, but how do I do this?

 

[dheerajjotwani]

There will be no transcoding if the client pc has source added as smb or nfs share.

The source being the share on ur openelec rpi

@john
Google for setting nfs on rpi and openelec. Lots of easy guides out there. File sharing over nfs works extremely well on rpi due to its limited resources when compared to samba.

 

[manniraj]

Manniraj, sorry bud, I think I am not sure of your question. But the setup is something like this. Please ask me anything in case I am unclear myself

1) Home theater has a dedicated windows 7 based HTPC running XBMC.

2) The Pi runs on Openelec, while primarily being used as a download rig also has Samba running (via Openelec).

3) 1 tb usb drive attached to the Pi for downloads. The same folder is shared on Samba.

4) I am playing the movies from the HTPC in the media room by browsing directly to the Pi's shared USB drive.

5) I think you are right in that the movie gets transcoded in the Pi before "playing" on the HTPC.

Question: When you are asking me to windows share, do you want me to copy the file to the other windows PC? Sorry bud, but I did not get this part.



Sorry, but how do I do this?

What I am saying is that when you map the path in your media pc (XBMC) try to map a windows shared folder of PI (in fact I think what Dheeraj says to use NFS share) and do no try to map the path from the UPNP devices list. No need to copy the files from your PI to the media pc. Its just the path should be different on your xbmc based media pc. To be very specific on your dedicated windows 7 based HTPC running XBMC when you "Add Video" source choose the path under the Samba/NFS shared folder of your PI rather than choosing the same files/folder through UPNP devices list.

Normally the UPNP/DLNA are used to playback movies/music/files on your tab/TV where the transcoding part may not be possible as a dedicated media player.

 

[manniraj]

There will be no transcoding if the client pc has source added as smb or nfs share.

The source being the share on ur openelec rpi

@john
Google for setting nfs on rpi and openelec. Lots of easy guides out there. File sharing over nfs works extremely well on rpi due to its limited resources when compared to samba.

I haven't used NFS but looks like I need to try it out. Reading on the net as per your suggestion the NFS shares are better compared to Samba especially on PI.

 

[John]

Guys the file I was trying to play was DTS-MA. However, normal file played okay. Have not tried NFS yet.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Lol... now that's pushing it John

 

[John]

Lol... now that's pushing it John

hyeah: Well, we crazy folks!

 

[prasanna.kole]

Nfs share should be same as samba

 

[manniraj]

Nfs share should be same as samba

NFS (Network File System) and Samba are file sharing services but as far as I read it online the NFS is slightly faster compared to Samba and also can easily handle large file sizes especially HD movies over the LAN and hence lot of people prefer. But yes Samba is simple and most of the devices support compared to NFS.