Hi there, sorry to drag this topic out again but I've searched and read and searched and tried to make my setup work to no avail, so here I am.
I need help with
1. Setting up my Time Capsule and attached USB Hard Drive as an SMB share
2. Setting up sources in XBMC on my Apple TV
Let's start with the Time Capsule....
I have a Maxtor USB HD connected to the Time Capsule. I have setup my TC for SMB sharing as per instructions I have read. My Windows XP laptop happily sees the share \\TIMECAPSULE\Maxtor160 and I can view and play movies etc. so I think that confirms that the TC is sharing via SMB. I have 3 folders in the Maxtor160, Music, Movies and TV. The Music folder has my iTunes library in it, the Movies folder has well, movies in it and the TV folder has recorded TV programs in it converted from EyeTV format to AppleTV format.
So I would assume that XBMC on my Apple TV which is connected to my network would be able to see the share as well.
All through the site I see talk about an "Add Sources" button eg.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Media_Sources but the File Manager is the only place I was able to find an Add Sources option. If I go into Music, Videos or Pictures I'm not able to see "add Sources" anywhere. So I tried just setting up a Source in the File Manager to see if it would work but it always failed.
Can someone explain to me the steps I need to take to add my Music and Movies sources?
Thanks very much in advance.
oobie
oobie,
What you need to get up is the Context Menu for Movies, TV Shows and Music. For example go into 'Videos' / 'Movies' (Depending on what skin you're using it will be called something different). Once selected navigate to movies then hold down the "Menu" button the Apple TV Remote. A Context Menu will appear where you'll see "Add Source". Go into this, navigate to SMB section and if you're network is setup correctly you'll see your SMB Share there. Select it to set "Movies" to your SMB Share\Movies folder.
Hope that helps
Blade
Thanks Blade for your help. I'll give it a try tonight after work.
Cheers,
oobie
Found the Add Sources option but it never found my SMB share. Just kept getting Error 2 - Share not found or something along those lines. The AppleTV was connected to the network, my PC laptop saw the shares and connected straight away but no luck with XBMC. I'm going to quietly slip back to FrontRow which works OK. My level of tolerance for tinkering is low. But thanks for your help Blade.
WEnt and installed some of the FrontRow plug-ins like nitoTV etc. and noticed that there was an update for XBMC launcher, so I ran it and tried XBMC again...
this time when I browsed for a source, I saw WORKGROUP and lo-and-behold there was my TC and external HD. Cool.
A few questions arising from this though...
1. I tried playing one of my movies and it stuttered pretty badly. 1.4G file encoded for AppleTV in Handbrake streaming over "n" wireless. Bummer. Is it my encode or am I going to have to copy files over to my AppleTV somehow?
2. I have my iTunes library on the external HD attached to the TC but I can only navigate to each audio file and play it. Is there a way to get XBMC to see it as an iTunes library and present it that way? Also, when I started playing a file, I couldn't stop it. When I pressed stop, it would just restart the track.
3. I really like the Media Stream skin but there seems to be parts of it cropped off the edge of the screen. I'm running a 40" Samsung full HD LCD.
4. Is there a way to remove all of the default sources or perhaps just open my Movies share folder for example rather than having to scroll down the sources list?
Dragged back from oblivion but still with some hurdles to overcome.
Thanks in advance.
1. Frontrow utilizes the GPU to decode. XBMC does not. Thus, some high bitrate, high level h264 stuff may not run well.
2. To be honest, it's better to point at the individual files, and then scan them into XBMC's music library. That way you have all the goodness of XBMC's library which is way better than iTunes. Ensure that album and artist lookups are disabled in music settings, then context menu (hold menu button) -> Scan item to library on the folder that contains your itunes music.
3. Tried "Just scan" on your samsung TV (picture options IIRC)? Otherwise, you can calibrate within XBMC (settings->Appearance->Screen).
4. Context menu on your movies share-> Set Default.
Cheers
Jonathan
Oobie,
Good work mate at least you have it running. But you have achieved something I have not (As yet) and that is you're seeing your SMB Share on Time Capsule. I have tried plugging my HDD drive into the USB port on the Airport Extreme and Browse for that Share. XBMC doesn't find it. When I have the drive plugged into my iMac's USB and just "Share it" XBMC finds it no problem but that means I have to have the iMac on when watching something.
The other major issue I'm finding is upon playing a media file from the SMB Share across Wireless N it will play for say 10, 15 , 20 minutes then drop back to the XBMC movie folder. I'll turn logging on and see what errors I'm getting but it seems like a Network issue. Whilst playing the Media though it streams perfectly and I have the LAN Cache set to 16Meg. The odd thing is it worked perfectly fine for the first 2 weeks I installed it but after a few 'upgrades' it's now having problems. I might revert to earlier versions of Launcher /ATV and experiment. I read one User suspects it's the drive going to sleep and it will just play out the remaining Buffer before dropping to the Menu. Anyway the Logs will reveal all and I'll upload to the Devs this weekend. Apart from that XBMC is fantastic.
I'm now wondering if the latest Airport Extreme Firmware (7.4.1) has added a bug. I might revert to the older Firmware and retest.
Cheers
Blade
I downgraded the Airport Extreme Firmware to 7.3.2 (From 7.4.1) and media no longer drops to the XBMC Menu! Tested for 3 hours.
Thanks for your info guys, I'll move on and see how I go. I can tell you, when I do get things settled down, I will be very pissed off if something upgrades and things don't work anymore....