[kofu]

Hi, this is my first post on this forum,
even if i'm a xbmc user since i had this good old black xbox



My kid grows up and he wants its own device, I think i'll give to him a used laptop with limited access (no internet)

I dream on a "kind of thing" to sync user accounts upon all our devices (watched status, song scores...), manage access rights and manage bandwidth distribution.

Here is our network setup :
NAS (DNS323) <-> 1000/100/10 SWITCH (cat6 RJ45)
<-> HTPC
<-> ISP's box <- WIFI -> Laptops, tablets, smartphones ...

builtin uPnP module on the dns323 is not an option (last media discovery took 50+ hours ...)
I know a hack exists to root it and install linux packages including mysql.
I'm not sure i want to do it as i spent so much time to backup all my CDs and DVDs
and i don't want to do it again if the hack fails...


Here are our needs
1. One account for each user, to split media by interest. (ie. I don't want shakira in my media lib, she doesn't want Nina Simone in hers)
2. Keep my kid sanity as safe as possible (I don't want him to access "Bad taste", or "brain dead" right now)
3. This must be running smoothly and user friendly

What's already done :
1. Medias are splitted in different directories named "dad", "mom", kid1.0, kid2.0, dog, whatever ....
2. On htpc's xbmc, each member of the familly has his own xbmc account with selected pathes

Where i stuck is how to spread this single device setup on all our devices and keep the whole thing running smoothly :

Question 1 (xbmc related) :
How would you do to :
Let me watch a 1080p movie in the living room on the windows HTPC
My wife access her account on her ubuntu laptop (wifi) watch a 720p drama
My son access his account from his android tablet (wifi) and watch a 720p cartoon

Is mySQL on the dns323 the solution ? I'm quite afraid of version syncing (windows, linux, android clients and an R-pi will be added in the bedroom next week)


Question 2 (less xbmc related) :
What would you do to get two 720p or 1080p streams working on wifi network ?
I have few spare wifi routers I can add if it can help

[Ned Scott]

XBMC MySQL (wiki) sharing works across all supported platforms. Sounds like a combo of MySQL (wiki) with profiles (wiki) (meaning multiple MySQL DBs using the <name> tag) might be your closest bet.

[l'pc]

For streaming to multiple devices at the same time, you have two bottlenecks : your NAS, and the network.
You can test your NAS simply by launching 3, 4, 5 different movies at the same time on a (gigabit-ethernet connected) computer.
For the network, you should use ethernet whenever possible. I suppose you now have wifi -g; if it is the case, you may want to upgrade to wifi -n if XBMC needs to buffer too much.

For your first question, I also think MySQL is the way to go. Why not install it on a dedicated Rasberry Pi if you are afraid of rooting your NAS ? But I have no idea if that might impact performance, I never played with a Rasberry Pi.

[sapper6fd]

The Pi is a great device, but the XBMC Menu's are very slow. While the Pi is powerful enough to run XBMC (if you go this route, i would strongly recommend OpenELEC as its less resource intensive than installing XBMCbuntu) it does have some issues that will frustrate you beyond belief after a while. DO NOT use wireless with the Pi and XBMC either, make sure your hard wired in. When oon WiFi it has problem streaming and you will suffer from buffering issues from time to time, especially on large movie files. I used the Raspberry Pi for the first month when I first found XBMC (I bought the Pi for this very reason, a cheap HTPC with XBMC) and had to stop using it for my media center.

[aptalca]

I am thinking the nas should be able to handle multiple streams easily

the real bottleneck is going to be wifi. Definitely switch to -n and you can try putting some of the devices on different networks through different wifi routers and set their channels far apart enough that there is the least amount of interference. Now, that should only be a problem when multiple devices are streaming through wifi at the same time

[PobjoySpecial]

...

[l'pc]

The Pi is a great device, but the XBMC Menu's are very slow.

I think l'pc was suggesting installing MySQL on a Pi, not XBMC.

I was indeed, I'll clarify it in my first post.

[nsviper]

My current setup, which i'm very happy with and is working great:

- Central NAS, all media stored on here and NFS used as protocol to access. MySQL also running on the NAS
- Pi, running XBian 1.0.5alpha, but upgraded to XBMC 12.2. Pi SD card modded slighltly so that it actually runs XBMC from a USB key plugged into the Pi. Pi is USB powered (from TV0, HDMI connected to my surround sound, and wired network to my powerline adapters
- 2 ATV2's, both running XBMC 12.2. Wired to network via powerline adapters
- Pi and ATV2's all configured with same sources.xml (pointing at NFS sources) and all configured to use same MySQL central database
- Fanart etc is all cached locally on each of the devices. Theres a textturecache program available under supplementary tools that I used to force the Pi to update as I had an issue with it not doing it automatically.
- All my content is 720p, apart from the dozen or so 3D MKV's I have available that are 1080p SBS format MKV's (approx 10GB+ each in size)
- The ATV 2's play all the 720p MKV h264 content flawlessly. The Pi also, and in addition, it plays the 1080p SBS format MKV's to my 3D TV fine as well (no glitches, stuttering etx).
- ATV 2's and Pi handle 5.1 channel sound via my surround sound system fine. All 3 configured with AC3/DTS passthru.
- ATV 2's and Pi all running Confluence Mod 2 skin - nice and slick. ATV2's running GUI at 720p, Pi running GUI at 1080p.
- Pi controlled via HDMI/CEC so using my normal TV remote to control it - just brilliant

I've got a 2nd Pi on order for testing etc. which may end up replacing my ATV2's...