Noobie questions Live vs windows etc
#1
Hi guys

Having spent more time than I care to admit to trying to find a lounge media player that would do exactly what I needed, I decided at long last to check out this XBMC thing that keeps cropping up in various forums. As a trial I installed Dharma over my Windows 7 desktop and needless to say it has totally blown me away. Why, oh why have I spent countless hours B*%%ӣing around with the likes of A.C. Ruin etc. when the final solution was out there all along?

As a result I now have a Zotac ZBOXHD-ID40 on order to go under/behind the TV. I propose to use this with a 2GB stick of ram and a WD Scorpion blue that I have lying around. Yes I know that an SSD would be faster and totally silent but we pay a lot for our gear in the UK, so I have to save a few quid from somewhere and my old ears are probably no longer good enough to hear a 2.5” drive from more than a few feet away!

Anyway I have a question or two that are real noobie stuff and I am sure if I read every relevant thread on this board the answers are probably already out there. I did find one particular thread about similar hardware that may have held the answers but after page 40 of 80 odd quite frankly I was in danger of losing the will to live. So, at the risk of being put firmly in my place, I’m gonna ask them anyway.

1. Am I correct in thinking that Dharma already incorporates all the drivers that I need for this ION2 hardware? ( No slipstreaming of other drivers needed )

2. I am inclined to go for a lean, mean pure installation of XBMC live. However I could install over Windows as I have a spare license for XP and also one for Vista (yuk) lying around doing nothing. Other than the flexibility of being able to drop into Windows for internet surfing etc would this bring any other advantages?

3. Given the hardware I propose, would an installation over Windows be a noticeable performance hit?

By way of background all my media is held on a 2 x 4 TB NAS running Freenas 0.7. She who must be obeyed is a technophobe so the WAF needs to be extremely high. I have decent experience with windows, virtually none with anything else. Video will be via hdmi, audio via SPDIF.

Any crumbs of wisdom would be gratefully received.
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#2
The hardware acceleration doesn't work with Windows XP, and I share your view of Vista! ION2 machines work very well with Windows 7, but that would mean more expense, so XBMCLive seems the best option. Try it and see. You can boot it off the CD to test it and only install to the hard disk if you're happy everything works. Note that Live doesn't mount the internal hard disk by default. There are instructions on how to mount internal disks on wiki.xbmc.org somewhere, or search the Live forum.

JR
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#3
Really there is nothing more I could add... Jhsrennie has said it perfectly. The beauty of the Live CD is that you can boot off it, and JUST RUN it off the CD first... to see how it works... see what is recognized etc and if video and audio works. It's just a fantastic way to go. If all is good... then reboot and do the actual install.

You can also just use a USB stick if you don't have a drive in the Zotac or an external USB DVD drive.

The latest version of Dharma, has drivers right out of the box that will work with your setup. It works flawlessly. If you REALLY want to, once you've installed the Live CD, you can press on the keyboard Ctrl+Alt+F2 – this will bring you to a command prompt, from there you only need like 2 or 3 commands (I have them written on my notebook at home so will post later), that allow you to simply get updates and upgrades etc. Very easy. Again not needed for your setup.

Once installed -- and you can start looking at the settings, making sure your audio is working and you've identified what your audio out is, (that was my only issue I had, in the system settings I had to tell it to use HDMI for audio). Then you can, under Videos, add source which will be your NAS. From there it's a matter of of getting the movie/TV show info (scrapping)... make sure your movies and shows are named properly -- that always causes issues unless you do it right. Movies should always be in the format such as: Sneakers (1992)
Tv shows as Big Bang Theory S01E01 etc. Anyhow you probably know all that.

Not sure how you will be controlling your XMBC system but I got a dinky Microsoft Media remote for like $12. Installed the usb receiver to the back of my unit and I was off to the races. Then I figured out that my Harmony remote has a profile for the media remote and hence now I just use the harmony like I do for every other piece of hardware in my living room.

Not sure how you will connect to your network -- I had some issues ONLY under wireless. By that I mean the built in wireless card in my system was not auto recognized by XBMC Live and honestly back then I had no idea how to get drivers for it. I eventually went wired since my router was actually pretty close etc. Anyhow again you can test and play with all that when you do the test from the CD the first time.
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#4
Thanks JR and Bobokatt you have confirmed my initial thoughts that a 'Live' installation is the way to go. Just for info I too have ordered a cheap MCE type remote kit from Amazon just to get the IR receiver. I actually intend to use my Harmony One for control. Connection to my NAS is by Gigabit wired network although the speed will be somewhat limited by 200Mb Homeplugs. However in my previous experience they are plenty fast enough for HD streaming. I was realy impressed with my trial on my desktop that XBMC scraped all but a few of my 300 movies perfectly.

Any other comments will be gratefully received. Otherwise I hope not to have to bother you guys too much and hope to learn enough to help someone else one day.
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#5
Kenco Wrote:Just for info I too have ordered a cheap MCE type remote kit from Amazon just to get the IR receiver. I actually intend to use my Harmony One for control.

If the receiver isn't an eHome/RC6 receiver (i.e. Microsoft compatible) you may struggle to get it to work. With XBMC Live using an MS compatible receiver is easy as support for it is built in. The harmony handsets have a Microsoft emulation mode built in as well, so there's no "code learning" needed. See http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Remote_Control_Reviews for known MS compatible remotes. See http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Usi..._with_XBMC for general comments on using a remote with XBMC.

JR
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#6
Thanks JR for the warning about the remote. More by luck than judgement the one I have ordered is an unbranded Taiwanese manufactured device but it claims to be MS compatible and it does appear identical to one in the wiki list of remotes that work. Hopefully therefore I'll be OK. If not, it was not hugely expensive.
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#7
i use the live usb on my acer revo ion...
for browsing/ playing old games (quake, wolfenstien:enemy territory), i hit ctrl-alt-f3 type in startx and launch firefox from fluxbox desktop. (its not convenient but i rarely have a keyboard/ mouse in my living room).
...
i use a $20 media center remote and usb ir dongle i found on amazon.

it works ok but sometimes xbmc fails to navigate the menu with it (not sure if it is software or hardware problem)
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#8
Thanks Schneidz, thats useful info. I will post here with my experiences when the kit arrives.
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#9
Got the Zotac and the results are impressive. I have one small problem with the remote. It's one of those generic VRC-1100 models. All works fine except for the 'power' button which should put the machine to sleep and wake it. This button does nothing with XBMC LIVE (although the receiver flashes) but it works perfectly on the same hardware with the XBMC Windows version (Win 7).

Clearly I need to do something to enable 'LIVE' to use this button. I have tried reading many of the threads here about remotes and now my head is spinning. Can anyone help by explaining exactly what I have to do in very simple words of one syllable, or perhaps point me to a thread that does just that. Thanks
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#10
wake from usb works kinda' wonky for me...
you would need to put this line in /etc/rc.local or something:
Code:
echo "USB0" | sudo tee /proc/acpi/wakeup
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Noobie questions Live vs windows etc0