2010-01-25, 19:53
I'd just like to say first that XBMC is changing the way I do my home media entertainment. I am so excited to finally be out from under the burdensome Apple ecosystem of media management. Thank you to all who put your hard work and precious free time into this amazing project.
Secondly, While I have an Apple TV running XBMC I though I would post this issue here as I took a quick look and it seems mine is not the only platform affected.
Like I said I have an Apple TV 3.0.1 and finally installed the latest launcher via patchstick, initially to give boxee alpha another try. My aTV grabs wirelessly the streams served by my bedroom media server - a mac mini with a 1TB external. From within the apple ecosystem this worked flawlessly - but trying to stream the same files through boxee was a total failure.
So I though to just give XBMC a go, for kicks.
While initially I was really pleased, after testing I found some videos would NOT stream properly in XBMC, while streaming perfectly from the aTV native interface.
Initially XBMC was configured to smb to the network share. When streaming started to break I thought it must be throughput issues. But my final configuration for streaming had me place the external HD connected via USB 2.0 to my downstairs repeater (Apple Airport Extreme 802.11N) as a network share connected 100Mbit wired from the repeater to the aTV. Thats a full duplex 100Mbit connection over 15 feet from the media to the aTV running XBMC.
And it didn't matter, still stuttered and buffered, especially on the higher bit rate stuff (no HD at all though!).
After that I figured it can't be an network issue, it must be some issue with the smb client for XBMC. So I installed nitoTV with the proper recovery partition to enable AFP. After that I updated XBMC to look at media through the AFP mount and video streamed PERFECTLY - not one hiccup. I was able to move my media ALLL the way back to the bedroom and still stream perfectly through the AFP mount.
Sorry if this is a little long, didn't want to leave out potentially important details.
I post this because while I was able to resolve my issue it was only by 'obtaining' restricted property in the recovery.dmg so that I could enable a proper AFP install through nitoTV. This worked for me but not everyone will have this option or be willing to go through such nefarious lengths to get network streaming to perform properly.
Secondly, While I have an Apple TV running XBMC I though I would post this issue here as I took a quick look and it seems mine is not the only platform affected.
Like I said I have an Apple TV 3.0.1 and finally installed the latest launcher via patchstick, initially to give boxee alpha another try. My aTV grabs wirelessly the streams served by my bedroom media server - a mac mini with a 1TB external. From within the apple ecosystem this worked flawlessly - but trying to stream the same files through boxee was a total failure.
So I though to just give XBMC a go, for kicks.
While initially I was really pleased, after testing I found some videos would NOT stream properly in XBMC, while streaming perfectly from the aTV native interface.
Initially XBMC was configured to smb to the network share. When streaming started to break I thought it must be throughput issues. But my final configuration for streaming had me place the external HD connected via USB 2.0 to my downstairs repeater (Apple Airport Extreme 802.11N) as a network share connected 100Mbit wired from the repeater to the aTV. Thats a full duplex 100Mbit connection over 15 feet from the media to the aTV running XBMC.
And it didn't matter, still stuttered and buffered, especially on the higher bit rate stuff (no HD at all though!).
After that I figured it can't be an network issue, it must be some issue with the smb client for XBMC. So I installed nitoTV with the proper recovery partition to enable AFP. After that I updated XBMC to look at media through the AFP mount and video streamed PERFECTLY - not one hiccup. I was able to move my media ALLL the way back to the bedroom and still stream perfectly through the AFP mount.
Sorry if this is a little long, didn't want to leave out potentially important details.
I post this because while I was able to resolve my issue it was only by 'obtaining' restricted property in the recovery.dmg so that I could enable a proper AFP install through nitoTV. This worked for me but not everyone will have this option or be willing to go through such nefarious lengths to get network streaming to perform properly.