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Amazon Fire TV for XBMC
(2014-06-11, 02:29)lunkhound Wrote: I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...

To set it up I first hooked it up to my TV/new receiver via HDMI so I could see what I'm doing.
I was able to side-load XBMC 13.1 along with AutoPilot. I used AutoPilot to automatically start XBMC on boot. I configured XBMC so that it could find my music files on the network, and enabled the ability to control XBMC remotely via smartphone.
All this is working fine.

The problem comes when I boot the FTV with nothing connected to the HDMI port. I can tell that XBMC is starting up on the FTV because the XBMC Remote app on my phone starts working and I'm able to browse my music library and queue up tracks. However it doesn't actually play them--it stalls at the beginning of the first track.
Also I discovered that when it is stalled like this, if I connect the HDMI cable to it, the queued up tracks begin playing immediately. I can then disconnect the HDMI and the playing continues fine (listening on the optical output).

So it seems that XBMC will not play audio on the SPDIF (optical) output until the HDMI output is connected to something at least once after bootup. That makes it pretty much useless as a headless music streamer unless you've got some HDMI device you can hook it up to.
I suspect that this is caused by something in the FTV's OS rather than XBMC. Undecided

Anyone know of a way around this? I can't think of anything else to try.
IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)
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(2014-06-12, 00:22)nickr Wrote:
(2014-06-11, 02:29)lunkhound Wrote: I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...
IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)

Well my music library lives on a Solaris box (a ZFS server) and logitech media server doesn't work on that OS. So that's why I don't use squeezebox.
Besides, I've been using XBMC as a headless music streamer for years, albeit running on a PC. It reads the music files over the network via SMB, no special server software needed. It works fine headless as long as you've got a smartphone or tablet to control it from.
(2014-06-12, 02:33)lunkhound Wrote:
(2014-06-12, 00:22)nickr Wrote:
(2014-06-11, 02:29)lunkhound Wrote: I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...
IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)

Well my music library lives on a Solaris box (a ZFS server) and logitech media server doesn't work on that OS. So that's why I don't use squeezebox.
Besides, I've been using XBMC as a headless music streamer for years, albeit running on a PC. It reads the music files over the network via SMB, no special server software needed. It works fine headless as long as you've got a smartphone or tablet to control it from.

+1 on that. Using something like constellation on an ipad to control and play music remotely work perfectly on a windows install. I wish openelec and AFT would work headless.
Gotham constantly crashes for me (I think it is the addons)
Frodo cannot play my 1080 files
SPMC has been my best option but I cannot find the path to push a keymap. Does anybody know what it is?
I installed XBMC 13.1 on fire tv but TVOnline CC is not wortking.

Please help.
(2014-06-12, 16:37)skkvusa Wrote: I installed XBMC 13.1 on fire tv but is not wortking.

Please help.

no support for that request here - go elsewhere
Got a weird one here... so I upgraded to Windows 8.1 and got everything else all set up again to offload the database and thumbnails to my desktop. Same shares, usernames, passwords, dbs, etc. For whatever reason xbmc (13.1) won't write data files to my thumbnails share but it will, however, create folders and drop 0 byte jpegs to the folders. :/

I'm really confused about this. It can obviously read/write to the share. I've connected to the share from another computer as well as my Android phone and created folder and files just fine. I don't see how it could be the firewall (I haven't tried disabling that yet) as it can at least create folders and 0 byte files.

I've temporarily moved this shared folder over to my NAS and adjusted my xmls until I can figure it out (which works just fine - mysql on desktop, thumbnails on NAS).

Any ideas??
(2014-06-11, 04:22)Knocks Wrote: If I accidentally press "Back" during playback, how do I make the file selection prompt go away?

So I got an answer to this in another thread:

(2014-06-12, 20:56)airyphary Wrote: You would need the "Fullscreen" button, or whichever button is mapped to that feature. On a keyboard it's the Tab key that serves this purpose.

Or you could avoid pressing the back button - a more intuitive option is to stop the video entirely, do whatever you need to do, and then when you go to play the video again it will have the option to resume at the place you left it.

How are we going to handle it on Fire TV? Should I open a ticket to have this fixed by using another FTV button?
Does it really require a ticket to map a button? I don't think so.

However you might be running out of buttons!
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Well, the menu button is currenty unused, and so is voice search.
(2014-06-13, 04:59)Knocks Wrote: Well, the menu button is currenty unused, and so is voice search.


Voice button can't be used.. And I use the menu button over here for menu/codec overlay via keymap 3 from the wiki

Using Yatse on a phone might be a better choice for u, it has that button u are looking for, or getting a remote with more buttons to map
Main System - HTPC - Intel I3 6300 - Asrock z170 - 16 GB DDR4 - 128gb SSD - 65" UHD HDR Sony Android TV - Pioneer VSX 1130-K - 7.2.2 speakers
Other devices currently in use - 55" 3D UHD LG TV - 2 Fire TV's - Nexus Player - MiniMX s905 - Voyo Vmac Mini
Ubuntu Server - 12 TB NAS - MYSQL - Torrent Box
(2014-06-12, 02:33)lunkhound Wrote:
(2014-06-12, 00:22)nickr Wrote:
(2014-06-11, 02:29)lunkhound Wrote: I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...
IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)

Well my music library lives on a Solaris box (a ZFS server) and logitech media server doesn't work on that OS. So that's why I don't use squeezebox.
Besides, I've been using XBMC as a headless music streamer for years, albeit running on a PC. It reads the music files over the network via SMB, no special server software needed. It works fine headless as long as you've got a smartphone or tablet to control it from.

I'm not sure if this will work for you if you have the same issue I do.
I am unable to get optical audio out to work if I do not have an HDMI
display connected. You can refer to my previous post on how I am
not able to get optical audio out to work with a DVI monitor (using an
HDMI to DVI adapter), but I also figured out that it would fail with no
display connected. So, in short, no HDMI display connected, no audio
out through optical.
(2014-06-12, 02:33)lunkhound Wrote:
(2014-06-12, 00:22)nickr Wrote:
(2014-06-11, 02:29)lunkhound Wrote: I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...
IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)

Well my music library lives on a Solaris box (a ZFS server) and logitech media server doesn't work on that OS.
Yes it does (or should). It is open source and perl.

Quote:Logitech Media Server is Open Source Software and written in Perl. Logitech Media Server runs on pretty much any platform that Perl runs on, including Linux, Mac OSX, Solaris and Windows.

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Lo...dia_Server
If I have helped you or increased your knowledge, click the 'thumbs up' button to give thanks :) (People with less than 20 posts won't see the "thumbs up" button.)
(2014-06-13, 08:01)wunderdrug Wrote:
(2014-06-12, 02:33)lunkhound Wrote:
(2014-06-12, 00:22)nickr Wrote: IMHO this is a very strange setup. XBMC is not designed to be a headless music player. Why not use logitechmediaserver and install squeeze player (android software) on the FTV?

Or buy a squeezebox, which is actually designed to do what you want :-)

Well my music library lives on a Solaris box (a ZFS server) and logitech media server doesn't work on that OS. So that's why I don't use squeezebox.
Besides, I've been using XBMC as a headless music streamer for years, albeit running on a PC. It reads the music files over the network via SMB, no special server software needed. It works fine headless as long as you've got a smartphone or tablet to control it from.

I'm not sure if this will work for you if you have the same issue I do.
I am unable to get optical audio out to work if I do not have an HDMI
display connected. You can refer to my previous post on how I am
not able to get optical audio out to work with a DVI monitor (using an
HDMI to DVI adapter), but I also figured out that it would fail with no
display connected. So, in short, no HDMI display connected, no audio
out through optical.

Yes fire is an hdcp compliant device, it requires a handshake at least at start up. It is a video device with an hdmi port and that is why it was built this way. There are no other video ports on this device. There are some 3rd party devices that can be attached that will simulate the handshake. An example of a device that can do this is a HDMI splitter.

I hope this helps.
I still get the "time 0:00 and no skipping forward" problem sometimes. I upgraded to 13.1. I can get rid of the problem by restarting the Fire TV (hold play and select on the fire remote until it restarts). I havent been able to figure out what causes the problem to happen. It might start happening after the netflix app is loaded from within XBMC and then later exited and returned back to XBMC.
Anyone able to nail down what causes this?
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