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MythTV how-to video – Part 2

This is a continuation of Part 1 and in this video I just walk you through a Mythbuntu installation and what options you want to use. The next parts will be about configuring the software past the initial installation.

Sorry for the sound quality. I had to use my digital camera for video (which is what I used in part 1) but for some reason there was a ton of static on the recording.

MythTV how-to video – Part 1

I have been working on my MythTV box for some time now and finally got around to editing the first part of the how to I recorded when setting it up. The first part is just about setting up the hardware (not much new), but the second part (and probably third and forth) is going to be on setting up the software and getting things configured just the way you want them to be.

HP MediaSmart Server ex485 review

I bought my HP MediaSmart Server quite a while ago and I have had a few random posts about it but I wanted to do an official review to let you know what I think of it. In order to successfully review this I am going to break it up into 2 sections: hardware and software.

Hardware:

The hardware is almost identical to HP’s old ex475 MediaSmart servers on the outside but the inside now has a Intel Celeron 2.0 Ghz processor with 2 GB of RAM. That is a pretty big upgrade compared to the old AMD 1.8 Sempron with 512 MB RAM. One of the biggest jumps internally for the ex485/ex487 is the jump to a 64-bit processor. While this currently doesn’t matter to much, Microsoft’s next version of Windows Home Server is going to be built off of Windows Server 2008 R8 which is 64-bit only. This means that the ex480 family can technically run the future software without another hardware upgrade.
Externally, the hardware is great. Four hard drive bays right where they should be, three USB in the back, eSATA, and gigabit ethernet. At first I didn’t even think I would use the front USB port but I find that I use it quite often when copying large amounts of information to the server.
I can’t say much about the hardware except for the fact that it is wonderful. I haven’t had any hardware problems and the device is small enough and quiet enough to leave next to my laser printer and no one knows it’s there. The device is fairly quite, but one of my hard drives is a bit old and I think makes more noise than necessary. I would say I have never heard the device over the TV being on, but when the room is completely silent, the hard drive noise is enough to not let me fall asleep.

Pros:
Small
Relatively Quiet
Lots of storage options (4 hard drive bays, 4 USB ports, 1 eSATA port)
Plenty of speed

Cons:
The bays were a little awkard at first
eSATA not replicating (no daisy chaining eSATA devices like you could with the old systems)

Software:

First of all, the NAS solutions I have used in the past have always been DIY solutions. Even the Buffalo Linkstation I hacked so that I could load a full Debian Linux install on it for more flexibility. Other than that I have used Ubuntu Server, FreeNAS, Windows, and a few other solutions, and have looked at solutions like unRAID, Linksys, and QNap. So far every single system I have used just seemed pieced together and not a finished product. That was until I used Windows Home Server.
Windows Home Server is built off of Windows Server 2003 and this is a very good thing. Windows Home Server is available as a retail purchase or you can buy it pre-installed on a lot of NAS systems out there. The retail version allows you to build your NAS from the ground up. Everything from the hardware, OS, and add-on software can be customized which is great for people that want a bit more control but don’t want all the headaches of some Linux incompatibilities. Plus if you buy the software retail you can start with cheap hardware and then work your way up as you get small amounts of budget instead of plopping down ~$600 for a all-in-on retail solution.
The key feature of WHS is the folder duplication. It allows you to use any hard drive and adds all the storage to a pool of available space, similar to the Drobo. The reason this kicks the Drobo’s ass is if your WHS machine dies, all of the drives are formatted with NTFS so you can just pull the hard drives and get the information off of a new computer. With the Drobo, if your Drobo dies, so does everything stored on it cause it uses a proprietary format. This type of storage is really the way things are moving because people are finally realizing that RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is for speed and eliminates down time, period.
The software does what you would expect and the configuration is handled in a stupidly simple Home Server Console. I actually dislike the console just because I feel like it makes things too easy. As much as you can do with the console some things just aren’t there yet (such as copying from a local USB drive to a share). But because the system runs Windows Server you can just RDP to the machine and copy things that way. I hope small tasks like this are fixed in future releases and it would also be nice to see some sort of official add-on store/repository or at least a official Microsoft site for them. It gets annoying trying to rummage the internet to find the best add-ons.
Add-ons is one area that I find very feature lacking and yet is something that should be so much better. Where is the add-on to let me ping my DNSomatic account? How about the one that integrates with my webcam for security viewing/recording when there is movement? Home automation? Game server? Heck even some more advanced features like Active Directory would be nice for the power users, and people with more than just 1 computer in the house.
I haven’t tried printer sharing through the system but the good news is, if it works in Windows Server 2003 it will work in Windows Home Server. And that is the main thing that separates Windows Home Server from all of the other DIY and Linux systems I have used. Windows Home Server takes a very successfully platform and strips it down to just what you need, and then they allow anyone to make minor additions to the system using add-ons. The software is the same across all platforms that use Windows Home Server. It doesn’t matter if you build it yourself or buy it from HP, Acer, or Shuttle.
This kind of flexibility makes me very excited for the next release which is based off of Windows Server 2008 R2 (a.k.a. Windows 7). If the next version of Windows Home Server lives up to 1/2 of it’s expectations it will still be a killer system that will be worth every penny for a upgrade.
Pros:
DIY availability
Add-ons are compatible with any WHS system
Easy to use
Remote desktop
The first NAS I don’t manage on a weekly basis
Cons:
Console can sometimes be too simple
Key Add-ins are missing
Network warnings for stupid things (firewall turned off, updates needed, etc.)

The HP MediaSmart Server came with one other thing that you won’t get on any other WHS system. Custom HP software built just for the MediaSmart servers. When I first bought the MSS the software wasn’t very feature rich for my needs. I don’t use iTunes so I don’t need the iTunes music server, I don’t have a Mac so I don’t need Time Machine backups, I don’t use snapfish, flickr, facebook, or Picasa for my pictures so I don’t need the Photo Publisher, and I don’t want the server collecting all of my media and putting it wherever it wanted to so I don’t want the HP Media Collector. The other features the MSS includes that retail installs of WHS don’t get are Twonky Media Server, Remote Access, HP Media Streamer, and HP Video Converter. Here is why they all suck.
Twonky Media Server is basically why I bought a MSS and didn’t build my own. You can easily buy Twonky from their site for $30 and install it and you are probably better off. HP by default locks me out of a lot of the advanced settings (but there is a way around it), but at the time I thought I might actually use some of the other features HP includes. Also to compare, I had Twonky on my Linkstation Live and it worked wonderfully with my PS3. With the MSS, Twonkey reports that I don’t have any music, photos, or videos stored on my MSS.
Remote Access lets you set up a website so you can access your WHS from anywhere in the world. While this is just fine (and Microsoft allows for free sites using *.homeserver.com), HP wants you to pay for a TZO site at $30 $10 a year. Not terrible but when free sites like www.dyndns.org and a million others let you do this for free it just seems like a waste. As a matter of fact before the HP 2.5 upgrade there was no option to have a *.homeserver.com site so you had to pay to get access to your server. Unless of course you set that portion up on your router.
HP Photo Viewer is probably the best software out of all the crappy software HP includes in the MSS. Of course first you have to publish all of your pictures locally to the HP Photo Viewer and make sure you put them in albums manually. Once they are “published” you can password protect them let users order prints download a full album view pictures full screen view the pictures in a small area of your web browser. OK maybe this software does suck. Don’t use it. The only benefit it could possibly have over online sites is you have unlimited storage because it is served locally. But if you need that just buy a domain and set up a gallary2 installation, or pay for flickr, Picasa, etc. At least then you get a off site backup of your pictures at the same time.
So how about the HP Media Streamer and HP Video Converter those at least are worth looking at right? Not for me. The idea is the Video Converter runs in the background and converts your files so that you can share them in the HP Media Streamer and to your iPhone/iPod Touch. The media streamer is supposed to play your music, pictures, and videos to a flash player in your browser wherever you are. The good news is the HP Media Streamer is password protected so at least not just anyone can access your files. The bad news is, ever since I upgraded to the 2.5 version software the HP Media Streamer doesn’t see any of my music or videos. That seems to defeat the purpose. Oh and the video converter converted all of my video files and then seems to have misplaced them because it started to convert all of my video files again, thus overwriting the old video files it just converted. So I just turned it off and forgot the feature was even there. I also have yet to be able to play any music, photos, or video to any of the 3 iPhones I have tested. Every single one either says it cannot connect or there are no files to be played.
Pros:
A good feature list to compare to other WHS’s on the market
Cons:
Nothing works the way it is advertised

Closing

My next WHS box will probably be a home built system with 8-10 hard drive bays. In the long run that will probably be cheaper and I can make sure only the software I need is installed. I still do like the MSS and if you don’t want to mess with it (or have Apple products) it really is the way to go for mass storage on your network.

How-to map network drives based on network location

This has been driving me crazy and I cannot figure out how to do it. Here is my problem:
I have a work laptop that I obviously use at work as well as at home. At work I have 6 network drives that are mapped automatically if I log into my computer while at work. At home I have a Windows Home Server with 5 shares that I wrote a batch script to connect to them when I get home. The WHS Connector also adds a shortcut to the shares on my desktop but I want the shares mapped so I can use them as local drives in programs. I also had to write 3 more scripts (1 to disconnect my work drives, 1 to connect my work drives, and 1 to disconnect my home drives) in case I go between work and home without fully turning off my computer and instead just putting it to sleep. I am fairly certain this problem can be fixed with AutoIT or some other tool but I am just surprised this sort of functionality isn’t built into ANY operating system. My laptop has Vista and Linux Mint on it but I know this functionality isn’t in OSX either.
Is there anyone out there that can can suggest something to accomplish this? All I want is something that monitors what network I am connected to, and if that network happens to be home or work, map the appropriate drives. I am going to work on this in AutoIT but I am open to suggestions if you have any.
As soon as I find more information or someone points me to a solution I will update this post with how it works.
Leave your idea’s in the comments.

MediaSmart server advanced Twonky settings

With a new MediaSmart server I was excited to get the TwonkyMedia server up and running to be able to stream all my music and videos over to my PS3. I have some experience with Twonky from my Buffalo NAS and it was the best DLNA server I have ever used. I was a bit disappointed that the server configuration was dumbed down and limited to the MediaSmart console.

Access is restricted to MediaServer configuration!

To enable to regular Twonky configuration pages you need to do the following steps.

1. RDP onto the server using mstsc.exe from a run command. If you have a version of Windows without remote desktop you will need to find a way to install it (I don’t know how) and open up C:\TwonkyMedia\twonkyvision-mediaserver.ini
2. Locate the line

# Web access
enableweb=1

3. Change it to

# Web access
enableweb=2

4. Save the file
5. Restart the TwonkyMedia service by opening services.msc from the run command, find the service on the list, and click restart on the left column.

Now all you need to do is browse to your home server in a web page and go to port 9000.
http://hpserver:9000
You should be greeted with the normal Twonky configuration settings now.

I hope this helps someone, it certainly helped me.

Mythtv Log

I decided I needed a better way to keep track of myth MythTV systems I have used in the past, and what I needed to do to get the systems up and running. I started a MythTV Log page that should show up on the left (or the links section depending on my skin). I mainly posted this to help other people that are setting up their own MythTV computers using similar hardware. Check out the hardware I am using, and have used in the past, by looking through the logs.
Let me know if you have any good tips on keeping installation logs organized. I am fairly new to all this.

Vantec NexStar MX enclosure review

So, when I bought my NAS I started transferring over everything I wanted to keep on it. But then I realized that 500 GB would not be enough room to store everything. Instead of returning the NAS and getting a bigger one, which I did not have money for, I decided to keep the 500 GB NAS for only the things that I really wanted to have available on my home network (pictures, music, and videos). The other stuff that was more just there for storage (program installs, backups) could be put on a external hard drive. So I headed back to Fry’s looking for a USB hard drive enclosure. Here is the one I ended up with.

I bought the Vantec NexStar MX HDD enclosure from Fry’s for 3 reasons.
1. The price: I got the unit for $30. Not sure if it was a sale or if they were making way for the new NexStar with eSATA. Either way I feel like it was a good price for the features.
2. Dual SATA enclosure. Most enclosures I found in this price range would either only hold 1 hard drive, or would only use IDE hard drives. I had 2 SATA drives sitting in my closet that I needed to use. So this would let me use both of them without buying two enclosures.
3. Build quality. The whole unit is brushed aluminum and the enclosure alone seemed thick enough to stop a bullet. Well maybe not bullet proof but it felt good enough to hold my monthly backups.

I don’t feel like re-inventing the wheel with the review so I am just going to link to a couple much more thorough reviews than I could have ever done and tell you my thoughts.
Here are a few reviews for you to read on your own time. Virtual-Hideout, thinkcomputers, and futurelooks.

Overall, I am completely satisfied with my purchase. The drive is a little bit loud but I rarely have it plugged in anyway because it is only for occasional backups and long time storage. If you are looking for something that you want on all the time I would spend the extra money for a unit with more than just USB and something quieter. But if you have a couple extra SATA hard drives and need some long time storage than this is probably the device for you. The software it comes with is Windows only so I didn’t care for it but I was surprised to get any software at all for $30. The price on amazon is $70 and that is probably more than what I would pay for this enclosure. I feel the enclosure is easily worth $50 though if you can find it in that price range.

Compile Lirc on an AOpen mp945-dr with Ubuntu

I recently traded in my Mac Mini for a AOpen mp945-dr to see if it would work any better with MythTV and Boxee. I started off with Ubuntu 8.10 installed but found some random problems with video not displaying every time the computer would start so I went back to 8.04. On problem I had with both installations was that the remote sensor did not work out of the box. I did some digging and found that Lirc does work with this machine but the latest development branch was not included in Ubuntu for stability reasons. Here are the steps I had to take to get the remote sensor working.

As a overview we are going to:
1. Download the tools needed to compile software in Ubuntu.
2. Download the latest version of Lirc using CVS
3. Compile Lirc source
4. Test it real fast to make sure it works.

If you have Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) see the notes at the bottom.

1. Download the needed compiling tools.
sudo su
apt-get install libtool autoconf automake linux-headers-`uname -r`-generic cvs
This will download and install the compiling tools.

2. Download Lirc
First lets make a folder to put it in

mkdir ~/lirc
cd ~/lirc

Then we will download the newest source from sourceforge. We are using a tool called CVS to read more about it check out here.
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@lirc.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/lirc login
cvs -z8 -d:pserver:anonymous@lirc.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/lirc co lirc
Because we ran that command while in the ~/lirc folder everything downloaded there so we just need to run the commands to configure everything before we build it.

./autogen.sh
./setup.sh

In the graphical interface I selected Driver config > USB > mceusb2 (new)

Then continue with compiling

make
make install
modprobe lirc-mceusb2

Because Ubuntu does things slightly different we need to copy a couple files to where Lirc expects them to be.

cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_dev.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_dev
cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_mceusb2.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_mceusb2

Then we can continue with installing the new Lirc into the running kernel.
rmmod lirc_mceusb2
rmmod lirc_dev
lsmod|grep lirc
/etc/init.d/lirc restart
Everything should be compiled and in place now.

4. To test it out run
irw
and then push some buttons on the remote. You should see the commands you press displayed in the terminal. If you see that then you can just push Ctrl+C to stop irw and you should be all set to go.

I had to change this tutorial slightly from where I originally posted it in the Ubuntu forums so that it would be more universal. If you have problems please leave a comment and check out the original thread here.

I hope this helps.

For Jaunty (9.04) I did not need to install the headers (it actually failed because it was already the newest version) I also needed to install “dialog” and “build-essential”. I had to create the “/lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/lirc/” folder before I could copy the configurations, and the folder I created also changed slightly to cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/misc/lirc_dev.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`-generic/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_dev
cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/misc/lirc_mceusb2.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/ubuntu/media/lirc/lirc_mceusb2
More updates as I find them.

How I stay digitally organized: media files

As a follow up to my “How I stay organized post” here is how I keep my music, pictures, and videos organized.
First I need to talk about where/how to store important files like media files. All of my media files are stored in one place as a master and multiple other places as copies. I keep my master copy on my home NAS and then I have secondary copies on my laptop, desktop, and MythTV. I also keep a backup of the master on one of my USB hard drives and a second backup on my webhost (no you can’t have access). This is the ideal way to keep this information backed up for me. If I ever find a file that is labeled wrong I change it on the master copy and eventually it will filter down to the copies. Storing everything in one place has helped my organization habits more than anything.
My music folder is organized with the following folder structure.
Artist
Album
Songs
In order to keep all of that organized I had to make a standard naming scheme for all my files too. Here is what I chose. My album folders are named %Artist% – %Year% – %Album% and my songs are named %Artist% – %Album% – %Track% – %Title%. I chose this naming scheme so that if a file gets lost somewhere where it does not belong, which they often do with this many computers, I can easily find where it goes. Two extra things that I make sure all my music folders have is every album folder has a folder.jpg file of the album cover art and every artist folder has a copy of the folder.jpg named after each album I have. For example I have the artist Bush. Inside of that folder I have two folders for the two albums I have and two pictures for those albums. This way when I view the artist folder I can see what albums I have without even opening the folder. This doesn’t work so well in OSX or Linux but works great on my Windows machines and Xbox Media Center.
I have used TagScanner to edit all of my songs by hand. Yes it has been very tedious but I have yet to find a automatic tagging system that did well for me. I also use TagScanner and Album Art Downloader to embed album pictures into all of my songs. This took a while but is worth it when you see the album art in XBMC, on an mp3 player, or any other player that supports viewing album art from within the ID3 tags.
My pictures are stored in folders with the “Date (Event)” so Halloween is “2008-10-31 (Halloween)” This sorts my pictures by date taken, and then with a description of what the event was. If the event is multiple days I use the first day for the date and then I have sub folders for day 1, day 2, etc. I keep a few category folders for folders I don’t want to have to sort through every time I view my pictures. Some of the main folders I have are Automotive, Desktops, Misc, Downloaded, and folders for Beth and I. Desktops and Automotive are pretty obvious but Misc is for 1-2 pictures for a event, screenshots, icons, and drawings. Downloaded is for fun pictures online that I have found. The user folders are for project pictures and other misc stuff that Beth and I want to keep.
Finally, videos are stored by type. Not filetype but more source type. Movie, TV, Web, Shot are the main categories I have. Most of my shot video is actually in my pictures folder with the event it is tied to.
Once all my media is organized on one source it is fairly easy keeping it maintained (so long as I am the only one writing to the NAS). Got any tips or questions just let me know in the comments.

Well that was stupid…easy MythTV fixes

Just a real quick tip for anyone having problems watching live TV or recording shows in MythTV. After a fairly fresh install I could not watch live TV. My screen would go black for a second and I would be kicked back to the main menu. I also was not able to record shows. The recording would show up on the schedule but nothing would happen when the time to record would actually come. So my tip is check your log files!!! They are stored in /var/log/mythtv (at least they are in ubuntu). You should have mythbackend.log*, mythwelcom.log, and mythfrontend.log* in that directory. The log files are incremented making the highest number the oldest file and the one without a number your newest file. So check the newest file first.
As for my problem I checked my frontend log first, but I didn’t see much information besides the fact that I changed skins. So I decided to check the backend. Here is what I found.

2008-11-23 10:26:22.432 TFW, Error: Opening file '/media/mythtv/recordings/1941_20081123102621.mpg'.
eno: Permission denied (13)
2008-11-23 10:26:22.436 TVRec(1) Error: RingBuffer '/media/mythtv/recordings/1941_20081123102621.mpg' not open...
2008-11-23 10:26:22.437 TVRec(1) Error: CreateLiveTVRingBuffer() failed
2008-11-23 10:26:22.438 TVRec(1) Error: Failed to create RingBuffer 1

Now this may not be too obvious to most people but take a look at “Permission denied (13)”. DOH! I forgot to give my user permissions to the directory I set up to record my shows in (as well as my live TV folder).

sudo chmod 777 /media/mythtv/*

and now I am able to watch live TV and record whatever shows I feel like.
Just thought I would save you the hassle if this happens to you.