XBMC and WDTV???

[statica]

I have worked with a opensource mediacenter program called XBMC before and I remembered that it allows for sharing and streaming over ftp, upnp, smb and a few other. Im downloading the latest version of it now as I looked at their homepage and it seems to me it should be able to use XBMC on a computer for sharing and mounting folders to the WDTV. I wanted to share this idea so those who might have some sparetime could try and see if they can get it working with WDTV. Im gonna try and have a look at it myself as I tried an older version I had and I was able to see the WDTV from my Windows pc over my network so I think it should be possible to get it to work.

The program is opensource so freeware and is available at www.xbmc.org

Also guides and articles there on how to make XBMC stream files over different protocols.

So join my quest 

[Jimmi]

That would be awesome if possible.

I read the thread over at XBMC forums and there seemed to be some reservations about how feasible it would be, XBMC would be great running on the WDTV though.

[videomilk]

you can get xbmc and plex etc sharing upnp but I doubt you could actually get xbmc running on wdtv as the processor is severely under powered.  Even the apple tv struggles with boxee and the wdtv chip is weaker.  Sorry to be a stick in the mud.  Frankly I would love scraping on the wdtv.  I think it's the biggest flaw of the unit.  The data should organise it's self. 

[redindian]

You should already be able to use XBMC as a UPnP server and then use the WDTV as a client.

XBMC software is never going to run on the WDTV. It hasn't got the CPU power.

We could get something similar, but with less animation and speed.

Personally, I love XBMC, but I'm starting to love some of the mods for the WDTV as well. And I love being able to make them using fairly simple tools and stuff I know.

Scraping is already possible with the script from rezmus, and my scraper is real close to it's release. Also I've added a scraper for music which turned out quite nicely.

[statica]

Thanks for the input. Its nice to have some feedback from people who know something about programming, scripting etc. as I am only use to the hardware and not the actual code and the possibilities in this.
My idea is not to run XBMC from the WDTV but install XBMC on my NAS and then let XBMC mount and stream to the WDTV. I was looking for a solution which is more GUI based so its easier for people to mount their folders and share them. So using XBMC to stream files to the WDTV. So upnp, ftp, http or smb that will give the best and most stable transfers?

[redindian]

The WDTV does not really support streams. It will handle SMB/CIFS, NFS and UPnP server with a modified firmware. Best results are with NFS. Not sure about performance with UPnP.

[Jimmi]

You should already be able to use XBMC as a UPnP server and then use the WDTV as a client.

XBMC software is never going to run on the WDTV. It hasn't got the CPU power.

We could get something similar, but with less animation and speed.

Without knowing the technical side too well I don't really understand that as the xbox struggles with 720p while the WDTV plays 1080p.

I do agree though that modding within the WDTV source is a better alternative that trying to shoehorn XBMC onto a system that was never designed for it. I don't know what the limitations are but it would be nice to see the presentation side of the WDTV improved and implementing covers made a little easier, and of course improved codec support.

[statica]

Well I got NFS working some time ago and if that is the best solution then im not gonna spend more time on XMBC for now. I found out that a good way to test the speed you get on LAN to the WDTV is to put on a rather large (>10GB) movie in 1080p and then in the movie you fast forward. I use DU Meter to track the speed from my NAS to the WDTV and depending on the speed at which I fast forward I have had it up around 45-50 Mbit at 16x fast forward. Thats the peaking speed and when watching movie in normal playback speed its usually at around 25-30 Mbit so there should be enough speed for 1080p playback. But more is almost always better but if XBMC cant do it better than my current NFS then ill drop it for now 

[redindian]

The WDTV has a dedicated chip that does all the 1080p decoding. The Xbox has to do it using only it's CPU to decode.

Your main concern for full hd 1080p over the network would be you LAN adapter. Also the Xbox is 100mbit and the WDTV can do 1000mbit with a USB Gigabit LAN adapter. Full HD over 100mbit is probably not going to work. I can stream most 1080p over my 100mbit network, but with high compression and low bitrates.

[pacorob]

The WDTV does not really support streams. It will handle SMB/CIFS, NFS and UPnP server with a modified firmware. Best results are with NFS. Not sure about performance with UPnP.

I recently started testing all kind of media players on the server end on my Windows Vista desktop pc. And connecting my WDTV via Upnp to it as a client. For some reason I can't seem to get a connection with NFS to my files via my internet browser (http://192.168.1.105) by connection to my WDTV > NFS.

---------------------------
This is my setup:
Desktop pc: TVersity / XBMC / Twonky

USB Stick in WDTV:
Unofficial WDTV firmware from B-rad.cc: WDLXTV 0.5.6.1
http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv
WDTV essential Application: B-rad.cc Upnp (0.2.2)
http://b-rad.cc/326/wdlxtv-app-pack-upnp-djmount
Other WDTV Applications: Weather&RSS (webserver addons 0.2), Apple Trailers (0.3.3.1beta), YouTube (r249), Shoutcast (no audio)

My hardware specs:
Windows Vista Home Premium desktop pc
WDTV
Wireless USB stick: Linksys wusb600n with WPA2 (ralink rt2870) plugged in the WDTV
USB Stick: 16GB Sony stick plugged in the WDTV
W. Router: Linksys (Cisco) WRT160N router
10240 kbps / ADSL2+ 10Mbps (according to speedtest.net / speedtest.bbned.nl)
---------------------------

My experience with Twonky / TVersity is that Twonky is able to play 720p files without any problem on the WDTV. TVersity showed an audio problem when 720p files were played.
The nice thing to such kind of mediaplayers is that they also have Youtube, Shoutcast kind of features build in which are in most cases more stable then the ones build recently for the WDTV as Apps.

See more detailed experience here: http://www.twonkyforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6805

But back to the XBMC I will be testing it this weekend what does/doesn't work when used the setup above.
I will let you guys know what my experience is. I've also posted this on the XBMC forum: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?p=412035#post412035

[statica]

I you cant get a connection then try to disable firewall if you have one installed. Even Windows firewall caused me problems until I got the config right but it took some time. Try to ping the WDTV and see if there is a reply. If no reply then it could be the firewall. Im trying to get jumbo frames to work at the moment but cant seem to get the WDTV to work with it so havent worked with XBMC for some time so I look forward to your experience with it

[Ernis]

@pacorob: You got me interested here. You say you are able to connect the wdtv to tversity and play videos (e.g. from youtube) via that connection? I have tried before but didn't get anything to show in the UPnP folder on the wdtv. Get message "folder is empty". Can you share anything about how you got it to work?

Edit: Apologies, now that I got a signal that it should work to connect to Internet via TVERSITY I got to test  a number of different things. Turned out I was using an old verion of the upnp-djmount application, as well as an old tversity. A couple of months makes a big difference... it now works after installing the latest versions. Thanks for the tip anyway, great feature!

[pacorob]

I have tried XBMC today and yesterday for a while with the setup as described in my previous post.

These are my experiences with the program.
First of all I'll have to say that the shortcut in the Windows Vista Start menu and in the quick program launch in the Windows taskbar both gave errors when used to start the program. However using the file directly from Program files>XBMC.exe did work nicely and I could create a shortcut within my quick start without any problem. Pretty weird shortcut error. But anyway back to the experience with the software itself.

Videos I have tested (via WDTV > Video > Upnp > My video files > folder(s) chosen on XBMC):
480 and lower - works nicely. Play/Pause works almost directly. Rwd/FFwd 4/8/16 works but slower then when used on usb stick ofcourse.
720p - plays correct audio/video op movie/series. Rwd/FFwd 4/8/16 works very slow. When used speed 16 it skips 1 minute (if you wait long enough)
I also tried to use YouTube and other video plugins that I have installed in Program files/XBMC/plugins/video however they only show up as folders. I think the plugins only work on a XBOX. But I'm still searching the web to read more. If anyone can help out please say so. Should I be able to get e.g. this plugin running and watch 123video.nl both via my desktop pc and WDTV?

Audio tested:
mp3 - files play but takes a bit long to hear sound and see the screen where you can see artist/track/cover.
         also I wasn't able to go to next song. I could only ffwd and rewind in the track.

Photos tested:
.jpg - images show however 1.5MB> pictures show up very slow. Also previous/next image doesn't respond

---

Ernis: I haven't played YouTube yet with TVersity. I only saw that it was possible to use it. I tested TVersity quite shortly because it didn't work correctly with 720 mkv files I haven't tested it further. Twonky did work but is not a free program. I shouldn't have mentioned youtube in my previous message.

[Ernis]

@pacorob: following your experiences with interest  

I am using youtube via tversity now after your tip. It works pretty well! There are a number of built in youtube feeds that you can just select in tversity, like most viewed (today, week, ever) and most popular etc. I've added feeds for a number of those to tversity and can now watch those videos from the wdtv. Usually there are around 25 clips available in each category. Among other feeds I have also one for the clips that I have selected as favorites in youtube, I think this is an undocumented feature. The address that I paste into the tversity rss feed is http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/youryoutubeusername/favorites  (replace with your own youtube user name). And you can use a search string embedded in the address as well. e.g. for IDOL 2009: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos?q=[idol 2009]&client=ytapi-youtube-search&v=2  (replace with your own search text)

Just wanted to share this since you say you haven't tested youtube via tversity yet. I think that perhaps elmarwebers youtube app is more dynamic where you can do search from within the wdtv interface, so that is more flexible that this solution. But it is good if there are things that you want to subscribe to and always get fresh content "automatically".

P.S. I wasn't able to get a stable environment just adding the upnp-djmount-app-bin 0.2.2 to a stick with all my other apps on it, so I created a separate usb stick with only upnp and samba on it. I reboot with this separate usb stick now if I want to access youtube and other internet video feeds.

P.S2. Apologies if I am slightly off topic here. I just got a bit excited over this possibility that I wasn't aware of, triggered by what pacorob wrote.

[Lixx]

Hi pacorob. I am using
1GB FAT32 USB key connected to USB0 on WDTV
Linsys WUSB600N USB wireless network card connect to USB1 on WDTV through included usb cable
Linsys WRT310N gigabit router
B-Rad's WDLXTV 0.5.6.1
wirelessmod-wdlxtv.app.bin 0.2
I was trying to set up wireless connection for my WDTV recently using the net.config and RT2870STA.DAT files you posted in AVS forum. However the led light on my WUSB600N never lit up no matter how I tried. I know it's good since it worked on my laptop. The boot up log showed that the usb network card was detected by WDTV. But I am not a Linux guy and could tell what was wrong. Did your usb network card light up before you got it to work? Do you have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.