[AndreG]

I seen at Transparency demo on you tube and like they way it displays TV shows. i.e. click on the show, get a list of seasons, click on a season get a list of all the episode Names.

My question is do you need to put the episode name in the file name for this to work or will this skeem work

\TV Show\Space 1999\101.mp4

If this will Not do the above after scrapping thetvdb then what format will?

thank you in advance

[tamplan]

Hi,

This works :

Code:

\TV Show\Space 1999\S01E01.mp4

[seand]

No absolute episode numbers don't work. It has to be either S01E05 or 1x05 with a couple of variations possible.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=TV_Shows_%28...Library%29

For my kid I got a bunch of old Sesame Street episodes that are absolute numbered i.e. Episode 643, Episode 721, etc. and the TVDB that XBMC uses can't identify them. Also specials or extra episodes should be labelled as Season 0 if they are going to be identified.

Edit: I assumed you were asking about episode #101. Previous poster assumed you meant Season 1 Episode 1. Former does not work if you can't reverse engineer what seasons the episodes were in.

[AndreG]

Handbrake defaults to file extension .m4v, should I change this to MP4?

If you happen to use handbrake what settings do you use for TV Shows off DVDs?

[seand]

I'm pretty sure XBMC will play either m4v or mp4 file extensions. Best encoding is largely dependent on the hardware you are playing the file on. The old Apple TV 1's don't like high bit-rate h264 mkv's, especially it involves AC3 digital audio, struggle with HD generally but do OK with some "BRRip" divx avi's strangely. The newer ATV 2's tanscode 1080 down to 720 but prefer h264 mkv's specifically because they have hardware acceleration for that file compression scheme. HTPC's vary wildly on the hardware they are running.

[Ned Scott]

Handbrake defaults to file extension .m4v, should I change this to MP4?

If you happen to use handbrake what settings do you use for TV Shows off DVDs?

The file extension should not matter.

I used to use "Apple Universal" so I could throw movies onto my second gen ipod touch without re-encoding, but if you have an iOS device that is 3rd gen and up (including ATV2 and iPad, which are technically first gen), or you do not have an iOS device and/or do not care, just use Normal or High Profile.

The descriptions here should give you a basic idea of what each ones does:
https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/BuiltInPresets

[AndreG]

Thank you for the responces.

I will be putting all the files on a "server" in the basement hooked up to windows 7 homegroup. At each TV will be a Nettop (Asus Eee once they come out with one with a Bluray inside). This Nettop will serve up XBMC from the libary stored on the network and play blurays from its internal drive. In the theater the Nettop will be connected to the AV reciever. I wired the house with CAT6, so I will be connecting the Nettops that way. Internet comes in the house and goes to an older Dlink gaming router, this is connected to our two main computers directly and the third connection out of the Dlink goes to a linksys switch which has all the house CAT6 lines going into it.

[seand]

If you are bothering to do all that networking and using the cat6 instead cat5e I'll assume your router is gigabit. Although there is supposed to be some performance improvement from cat6, its my understanding that cat5e is fine for gigabit in a home setting. Its what I ran because I had a big spool of wire to use up. It would be silly to run the more expensive wire and not have your router and switches up to gigabit, for example. Beyond that "new" is a relatively meaningless term.

If live broadcast is part of your plan you might check out the HD Homerun. I don't have any experience myself but basically its two tuners in box that stream what they recieve over ethernet. So you could have two clients away from the tuner itself watching two different live signals or watch one live signal while a PVR set-up like tvheadend or mythbox or Sage or whatever recording a second signal. Adds a lot of traffic to your network obviously.

[AndreG]

When I built the house in 01 Cat6 was "newer" and I got 2 spools for very cheap so I went that way, Tthen you have to make sure your wall connections for gigabit, then you have to make sure your patch cables from the wall to the computers are gigabit...etc etc. I do beleive the Dlink and Linksys are gigabit, the Dlink will eventually be replaced since it only has wireless at 801.2g. I wonder if there is a little gizmo that you can plug into and ethernet wall socket to make sure its gigabit compatible.

Besides the upcoming Nettops all the TVs have HD cables boxes with PVRs for watching "whatever is on TV at the moment, if anything". They cost enough when I bought them that I will not be replacing them until they are pooched.