[Tbtf]

Hi, I was going to purchase an Acer Revo and install xbmc live. The problem is I used to own a mac mini and formatted my external hds for mac. Will this be a problem for xbmc live? Thanks

[BlackstarBSP]

Depending on what format you picked for your Hard Drives, then most likely they won't work at all.

Mac's standard is using HFS+ with Journaling on.

If your Acer Revo is running a form of Windows, you'd need a third party plug-in for the machine to mount HFS+ volumes at all.

Same goes for running XBMC in Linux. Not even sure if there is an add on you can use to mount HFS+ with Journaling in Ubuntu.

Easiest things, would be simply move the content off the drive(s), reformat them to NTFS or FAT32 or find third party software to mount HFS+ volumes on your OS running XBMC.

[Tbtf]

Ahhh man I was afraid of this... I am guessing there is no hope using these drives with XBMC Live since it uses Linux. I am an ubuntu noob and googled a HFS application to mount the drive in ubuntu but didnt seem to find any luck. Also another question is would I be able to upgrade the hard drive for the REVO?


EDIT: I found this link

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=92141

[davilla]

fsck.hfsplus -f /dev/sda2
mount -t hfsplus -o rw,force /dev/sda2 dst


where /dev/sda2 is your disk (change to match the real device)
and dst is some mount point that you have created.

[Tbtf]

Sorry for the dumb question but..I am guessing this will give me read and write access. And that is input into the terminal davezilla?

[cowfodder]

Alternately, just plug the drives into the mac mini then use samba to share them to the Revo.

[Tbtf]

I thought of that too but I dont know how well streaming 720p and 1080p movies will perform

[.:B:.]

The commands davilla gave you are indead meant to be entered in a terminal. You might need to install extra software (I don't run Ubuntu myself).

As for streaming, as long as you do it over a wired LAN (100 Mbps minimum) you should be just fine, given the network isn't clogged up too much. Using a WLAN is not recommended (802.11n can theoretically handle it but you'd need optimal positioning etc., don't even try it with 802.11g). I stream all my content over my Fast Ethernet LAN, no problem whatsoever, and the file server serving the media also runs a torrent client with hundreds of torrents.

[BlackstarBSP]

I thought of that too but I dont know how well streaming 720p and 1080p movies will perform

Well, if you have the Mac mini on the same gigabit wired network, streaming to the Linux box should be perfect. Just plug in the drive and set up file sharing on the Mac OS control panel. I'd put on Windows and FTP file sharing so you should have 2 options for performance and see which Ubuntu likes better. Messing around in the terminal is no fun if you're inexperienced. ( And sometimes even if you are. )

Might even get away with a 10/100 network, since many HD streamers only use 10/100 anyway. Gigabit will give you a bit more headroom as far as other network traffic is though.

This way you should not need to reformat anything, but your mini and the drive will have to be on and running anytime you want to stream to your linux box, or anything else on the network.

[.:B:.]

You don't need Gigabit - at all. Just do the math: a well-configured 100 Mbps network (note the lowercase B) will be able to achieve 90% actual data throughput (11 MBps more or less). Most 1080p media will, in practice, barely hit 50 Mbps - they'll stay far below that. I have seen 1080p rips with a 7-15 Mbps bitrate, and they looked fine.

I'm no pro, but touting a Gigabit LAN almost as a requirement is just plain bogus. That's all I want to say. 802.11g is out of the question, a regular Ethernet (10 Mbps) LAN as well. 802.11n might be doable in some circumstances but in general you're asking for trouble, since wireless is half and not full duplex, and 802.11n is even more sensitive (and has a shorter range) than 802.11g.

[cowfodder]

Just for reference, I stream from my xbmc box to my iMac via 802.11n (xbmc box hooked to airport extreme) and can do 1080p mkv no problem.

[BlackstarBSP]

You don't need Gigabit - at all. Just do the math: a well-configured 100 Mbps network (note the lowercase B) will be able to achieve 90% actual data throughput (11 MBps more or less). Most 1080p media will, in practice, barely hit 50 Mbps - they'll stay far below that. I have seen 1080p rips with a 7-15 Mbps bitrate, and they looked fine.

I'm no pro, but touting a Gigabit LAN almost as a requirement is just plain bogus. That's all I want to say.

No one said anything about gigabit being 'almost a requirement'. It's not a question of need, it's a question of using what he has and what he plans on getting in the future.

If you read my post again you'll clearly see:
"Might even get away with a 10/100 network, since many HD streamers only use 10/100 anyway. Gigabit will give you a bit more headroom as far as other network traffic is though."

Plenty of people stream HD from 10/100 just fine. Many do it from wireless and have no issues at all.
It has nothing to do with the necessary required bandwidth for HD streaming and has everything to do with taking advantage of what he already has.

The Acer Revo he plans on getting has gigabit onboard, does it not?
All the Intel Mac mini's since the first 1.5 GHz model have gigabit onboard, so it's likely his old one does too, assuming he still has it.
In his first post he said he 'used' to own it, and in his later post he said he thought of streaming from it, so it's hard to tell exactly what he really has now.
But for argument's sake, lets assume he still has access to it.

Regardless of what he has though, why would you connect two gigabit equipped ethernet devices into a 10/100 switch or router?
Gigabit switches are very cheap, less than $30 dollars:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?c...scoring=tp

What logic would posses someone to suggest intentionally bottlenecking their network on purpose?
He obviously has a large amount of files to transfer around between computers and moving them at only 10 or 11MB per second or less is a hell of a lot slower than 50 to 70MB per second.
(Which is what I get on my gigabit network).

You're honestly suggesting he corner himself into transferring his files 7 times slower because... why?
So he can save 15 bucks on a 10/100 switch instead?

Instead of saying someone else's advice is 'bogus' just because they don't agree with your suggestion, you might want to think about it a bit more. Cause what you wrote in your last post, sounds foolish.
I see absolutely no advantage to intentionally keeping to an outdated 10/100 network, especially when equipment one owns has gigabit already.

I'm no pro

No argument here. :p

[.:B:.]

No one said anything about gigabit being 'almost a requirement'.

Yet your wording is very suggestive, the other way: 'might even get away', and 'gigabit will give you a bit more headroom'. Sure, that sounds like an objective way of assessing.

If you read my post again you'll clearly see:
"Might even get away with a 10/100 network, since many HD streamers only use 10/100 anyway. Gigabit will give you a bit more headroom as far as other network traffic is though."

And as said above, that's highly suggestive, even misleading.

Plenty of people stream HD from 10/100 just fine. Many do it from wireless and have no issues at all.

Plenty of people have problems with streaming HD over wireless too. When they complain about that, 99% of the time people will suggest to abandon wireless and adopt an alternative. That says enough about the reliability of wireless. If it's your money, it's your call; I don't think one should recommend wireless based on performance and reliability - it scores low in both fields. One cannot recommend wireless unless there is a better alternative - and here, every alternative is better . If one recommends wireless, the least one can do is point out the cons, apart from the obvious pros.

Regardless of what he has though, why would you connect two gigabit equipped ethernet devices into a 10/100 switch or router?
Gigabit switches are very cheap, less than $30 dollars:

You're assuming he wants to spend money. My 'outdated' 100 Mbps network works mighty fine for HD streaming. Should I upgrade my AppleTV because it only does 100 Mbps, and has a crappy NIC (Realtek garbage)? Should I throw out my server's motherboard, which pretends to support Gigabit (another Realtek piece of junk) but can't be *rsed to attain gigabit speeds, even remotely?

What logic would posses someone to suggest intentionally bottlenecking their network on purpose?

It's a catch 22. There's *always* a bottleneck. And wireless is potentially a bigger one than a 100 Mbps LAN. So why don't we toss that suggestion?

You're honestly suggesting he corner himself into transferring his files 7 times slower because... why?
So he can save 15 bucks on a 10/100 switch instead?

I'm suggesting he looks at the options available and at what he wants to spend. You're saying 'hey you already have one gigabit capable device, why not upgrade your whole network? That's not quite how it works.

Instead of saying someone else's advice is 'bogus' just because they don't agree with your suggestion, you might want to think about it a bit more.

Maybe bogus is too strong a word. It's still bad advice though; it is based on assumptions (a gigabit network, a desire to spend money) and is misleading and one-sided (doesn't take into account the downsides of wireless, pretends that Fast Ethernet is barely enough to stream HD content).

So again: I'm no pro. But I know the coin has to sides, and I tell people about it .

[stephenvz]

I have 2 external HD's formated from a mac as HFS+ with Journaling.

Originally i had windows installed on my revo and used a program called MacDrive to read and write to it.

I found it was too slow and have since installed XBMC live (from xbmcfreak, not sure if this makes any difference). I have no issue at all with reading the drives instantly.

My only issue i havnt fixed yet is writing to it from the Revo but i havnt put too much work in trying to work this out yet.

[BlackstarBSP]

...etc etc etc...

Ah... wow. That reply is so schizophrenic I don't even know where to begin. But hey, I don't want to thread-hijack Tbtf's post so I'll reply directly to you .:B:. later when I have a chance.

I have 2 external HD's formated from a mac as HFS+ with Journaling. I have no issue at all with reading the drives instantly.

My only issue I haven't fixed yet is writing to it from the Revo but I haven't put too much work in trying to work this out yet.

Interesting, that's good to know that reading drives formatted with HFS+ and Journaling On is not an issue with XBMC Live but he might have problems writing to them.
Were these plugged into the Revo directly or via a network connection from another computer? If it's possible with your setup, could you try it with both?

I'm also curious to hear what progress or experiments Tbtf has done, if any this past week.