The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

From what I've seen online, a Pi should be fine for HD h.264. Real-life friends tell me it does just fine for them. So far I'm only using mine for SD video with the MPEG-2 license key installed and it's been quite good at that. I'd say it's a hair slower than the Windows 8.1 NUC I have in a different room, but given that it's 1/10 the price and only milliseconds laggier, I'm quite happy with the purchase.

# ¿ May 11, 2015 22:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:06

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

Rocksicles posted:

hey dudes, anyone using Kore on Android to control a windows Kodi server?

I can't make the bastard connect. XBMC Remote works perfectly. I don't get it

I am but I don't have a lot of light to share on the subject, since it worked without a hitch for me. Do you have an error message or anything?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2015 18:59

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

I finally upped my game from ripping my DVD collection to ripping my Blu-ray collection, and I've begun to encounter some playback problems on my OpenELEC Pi 2. Bandwidth tests from a PC on the same subnet as the Pi suggest I should have enough raw bandwidth (40 mb/sec), so I'm thinking it might be that I'm serving SMB from my Windows 8.1 desktop. Can anyone recommend a free NFS server for Windows I could try? I don't want to spend money because 8 months from now I expect to be serving video from a FreeNAS box anyway.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 05:26

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

Ixian posted:

NFS on Windows is better than it used to be but you aren't going to see any magical improvement from it. Also, it's still not very good.

There are a lot of different things I would try with SMB first but even before that I'd do more research in to determining if that is your actual problem. What is it that leads you to believe it's SMB/CIFs behind the problem? Are there logs pointing to something? It could be a codec problem or simply the raw bitrate overpowering your Pi 2. Since you said OpenElec I assume you are trying to play these in Kodi, which uses FFMpeg and can work wonders with a huge variety of containers and codecs but isn't always optimized for lower end hardware.

Have you tried, for example, playing the files on another PC using the exact same network connection to the source but has more power? Something like VLC on a half decent Windows PC perhaps.

Your instinct to move to FreeNAS is a good one btw, I run a FreeNAS server myself. I don't know that it would fix this issue either though, for the same reasons.

Combination of three things - I expected that with hardware decoding, the Pi 2 itself could keep up with h.264 as long as it could stream quick enough, my first round of Googling found many references to SMB/CIFS being a bottleneck, and a decent free Windows implementation would be an easy thing to try out. If there's no decent free Windows NFS server, then I'll dig deeper.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2016 06:30

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

KingKapalone posted:

I just finally got around to resetting up my old Harmony 880 to control kodi. Then I realized that my Intel NUC doesn't have IR built-in for some reason. Anyone have an IR receiver recommendation for Intel NUC + Windows 10 + Kodi? Should I just get one of the Harmony Smart remotes with a Hub?

Are you sure it doesn't have it vs the drivers not loading? I don't know about Ubuntu but every time I reload LibreElec on my NUC, I have to Google for the right magic to auto-load the IR drivers before the remote will work.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2018 22:14

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

How's the Shield in a non-networked environment, using files on the memory card? Once travel opens up again, I'd love to have a better hotel room video player, and hotel WiFi is not reliable enough for video streaming in the places I usually end up.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 19:44

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

stevewm posted:

Works fine for that.

Memory cards or USB storage devices appear as external storage. (long as you have not converted it to "adopted storage"). VLC, Kodi, etc.. pretty much any of the media players out there with a AndroidTV interface will have no problem accessing them.

Kodi would actually be perfect in this case. Point it to your memory card/USB stick and let it index your media.

Thanks!

# ¿ Apr 6, 2020 21:16

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

The Wonder Weapon posted:

Crossposting from the NAS thread in SHSC because I didn't realize the HTPC thread was over here in IYG

I have a media PC set up in my living room. It's a full W10 environment, just like at your normal computer. I've got a full wireless mouse and keyboard out there, but I don't use them often because they're unwieldly. Mostly I use one of those all-in-one keyboard things like this (but not this exact model):

It mostly sucks. The track pad is disappointing and the m1/m2 buttons are really poorly located. I'd like to replace it with something much more reliable and accurate. In an ideal world, the mouse control and m1/m2 would be operable at the same time, so that I can hold my kid in one hand and start a video with the other.

Plex is installed on the computer for local video files, but I watch Netflix and YouTube regularly too, and also will look up random odds and ends on Firefox occasionally as well. If there's a frontend that seamlessly accesses a local media library/plex as well as Netflix and YouTube I'd consider it, but I'm doubtful such a thing exists.

Do you guys have any suggestions on all-in-one keyboards for your media PCs?

I have an HTPC setup and I've got two different Logitech AIO keyboards. The newer one is a K830 that is apparently 5 years old, and I like it fine. I guess I mean that when I use it, any trouble I have with the trackpad or buttons goes unnoticed because I'm more frustrated with my distance from the TV or the pain of being an old man sitting on a hard floor. I have an older Logitech with some ugly 80s-looking color spray design and the trackpad is noticeably worse, so I'd say stick with newer models.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 19:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 10:06

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

I can't remember my NUC model numbers but LibreELEC on them has been pretty solid. Occasionally I get weirdness but I can't remember the last time we had playback problems.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2022 23:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > The HTPC Thread - Dont buy an HTPC