Boxee Box as an extender? (xbmc perhaps?)

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by ybrew

I'm about ready to give up...

If you can wait until the weekend I'll have some time to take a look at this for you. Real life is busy right now but over the weekend I will be able to connect my Boxee and help you out.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by oldfolkie

ybrew,

Like you, I had this exact same problem, tried just about everything to fix it, and was also ready to give up. Then, for some reason that I don't recall, I created a new recording directory, stopped Sage, moved a few of my recordings into the new directory, and restarted Sage. I then checked those recordings in the Sage app on Boxee and...Bingo!...they played! I then moved one of the recordings back into the original directory, tried it on Boxee, and it still played!

I ended up moving all my recordings temporarily to the new directory, then back to the original directory (between Sage stops and starts) and now they all work in Boxee.

So my problem seems to have been with pointers in the Sage wiz.bin file, which were cleared up with the moves (or at least reset so that the Boxee app could use them). I don't know if this will help you, but it's worth a shot to give it a try on a recording or two.

Good luck!

oldfolkie

Will do - thanks for the tip!

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

If you can wait until the weekend I'll have some time to take a look at this for you. Real life is busy right now but over the weekend I will be able to connect my Boxee and help you out.

And thank you!
I can most certainly wait.

I'm not gonna be online at all tomorrow - going camping with the scouts. Should be back sometime sunday morning.

It's definitely frustrating, but I really appreciate all the work you and everyone else put into this project.

[ybrew]

Hallelujah!!!!

It's working and it's amazing.
I changed a lot of things so not entirely sure what fixed it yet but I'm 99% sure it was a sharing setting in windows 7. It was set to require password to share files. I disabled that setting and it seems ALL files are working. *(Not True)Also don't need to put anything in UNC paths it appears.(Not True)*

I won't likely be back online much till Sunday but I'll post more info than.

Thanks again everyone!

Everything is working now. I had a bit more time to spend with it. Had to do my UNC paths and all recordings play perfectly.

YAY!!!

[Deacon Crusher]

Is anyone who is using the boxee as a Sage Extender also using a prime or Ceton to create recordings? And if yes, are you able to play back those recordings reliably?

Last time I tried my boxee couldn't play back recordings made off my Ceton. QAM, ATSC and HD PVR recordings all play back fine.

Thanks

Originally Posted by ybrew

Hallelujah!!!!

It's working and it's amazing.
I changed a lot of things so not entirely sure what fixed it yet but I'm 99% sure it was a sharing setting in windows 7. It was set to require password to share files. I disabled that setting and it seems ALL files are working. *(Not True)Also don't need to put anything in UNC paths it appears.(Not True)*

I won't likely be back online much till Sunday but I'll post more info than.

Thanks again everyone!

Everything is working now. I had a bit more time to spend with it. Had to do my UNC paths and all recordings play perfectly.

YAY!!!

[MattHelm]

All,
I've just jumped back to using my Boxee Box as an extender, and ran into a weird problem. I can play back new shows fine, but old show (same directory) don't want to play!!! Any suggestions on what might be causing this?

BTW, all play fine from my SageTV client and with VLC over the net. (though a few seem to be taking 15+ seconds to start)

I've not made any changes to the server in ages, though some of the files are 1+ years old.

[darcilicious]

Two things:

1) What does "don't want to play" mean exactly?

2) Are these older files from a different tuner and/or have been re-encoded? What encoding and what container are these files?

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Two things:

1) What does "don't want to play" mean exactly?

When I select them on my Boxee, I get a message about not being able to access the file (I think that was what it said, know it didn't say anything about the file "data")

Originally Posted by darcilicious

2) Are these older files from a different tuner and/or have been re-encoded? What encoding and what container are these files?

Same tuner, just different times. There could be a slim chance they were a different version of the HDPVR firmware, but I don't think so.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

When I select them on my Boxee, I get a message about not being able to access the file (I think that was what it said, know it didn't say anything about the file "data")

And the older and newer files are all in the same folder? Because that message usually indicates some kind of permissions problem I think...

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

When I select them on my Boxee, I get a message about not being able to access the file (I think that was what it said, know it didn't say anything about the file "data")



Same tuner, just different times. There could be a slim chance they were a different version of the HDPVR firmware, but I don't think so.

Are they in the same directory as files that do play?

What I'd try -

rescan all files with Boxee
rename a couple of the files that don't play or move them to another folder and try to play them. It sounds like Boxee knew of the files, but can no longer see the files. (just my guess)

[ybrew]

I remember at some point there was concern about Boxee playing back the EDL files. Some folks mentioned they didn't like Boxee automatically playing them if comskip wasn't 100% perfect.

Is there anyway to have boxee either ignore edl files or allow you to view the commercials a bit? I've actually disabled comskip for now as comskip almost always skips the very last part of some shows and pretty much always skips previews. For now, I'm just fast-forwarding through commercials and I can live with that. Curious what other folks are doing.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by ybrew

I remember at some point there was concern about Boxee playing back the EDL files. Some folks mentioned they didn't like Boxee automatically playing them if comskip wasn't 100% perfect.

Is there anyway to have boxee either ignore edl files or allow you to view the commercials a bit? I've actually disabled comskip for now as comskip almost always skips the very last part of some shows and pretty much always skips previews. For now, I'm just fast-forwarding through commercials and I can live with that. Curious what other folks are doing.

I never could figure out a way to have boxee ignore the .EDL files. I was looking at doing something kludgy like renaming the .EDL when playback started and then changing it back when playback was complete, but that's not a very good solution

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I never could figure out a way to have boxee ignore the .EDL files. I was looking at doing something kludgy like renaming the .EDL when playback started and then changing it back when playback was complete, but that's not a very good solution

Not really a big deal. I'll probably just uninstall comskip. You all still did a fantastic job with the boxee (although to be honest, I've been renaming most of my files and letting boxee get the metadata. I prefer boxee's 'shows' interface to that of sage's. For the hd100 i've got, the renamed shows just appear in my videos folder, so it's all good.

Takes a bit of time to do it this way, but the end result is worth it to me.

Still, it's really nice to have the sage interface for some shows that either don't have good metadata or simply don't include season & episode numbers. (House Hunters is a good example).

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

And the older and newer files are all in the same folder? Because that message usually indicates some kind of permissions problem I think...

Yes, all are in one of 4 directories, and all the old ones in any of these 4 do the same thing, and all the new ones play fine.

I even changed from the simple sharing and went thru all my drives and changed ownership and added Guest read rights to them all.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Are they in the same directory as files that do play?

What I'd try -

rescan all files with Boxee
rename a couple of the files that don't play or move them to another folder and try to play them. It sounds like Boxee knew of the files, but can no longer see the files. (just my guess)

These are TV shows, not ripped movies. I don't think the SageTV front end needs those paths added????? (Been a while since I set things up)

[oldfolkie]

MattHelm, see my post on the previous page (#620) for a suggestion. Do you have your recording directories set up with UNC paths? I originally didn't, but then changed to UNC. I suspect that since my original recordings were done without UNC, that Boxee couldn't read the existing pointers properly. Since you have 4 recording directories, try stopping Sage, move one of your existing recordings from into one of the other directories, restart Sage, then see if you can access the recording that you moved from Boxee.

If this doesn't work, you might want to try moving the recording into an import directory, then back.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by oldfolkie

MattHelm, see my post on the previous page (#620) for a suggestion. Do you have your recording directories set up with UNC paths? I originally didn't, but then changed to UNC. I suspect that since my original recordings were done without UNC, that Boxee couldn't read the existing pointers properly. Since you have 4 recording directories, try stopping Sage, move one of your existing recordings from into one of the other directories, restart Sage, then see if you can access the recording that you moved from Boxee.

If this doesn't work, you might want to try moving the recording into an import directory, then back.

You are right. I just looked at one of the older recordings from my PC client, and it says for Files: "J:\Shows4\..." not "\\server\Shows4\...". I'll try your move tomorrow or Wednesday when I have no recording scheduled!!! Thanks. (file names change to protect the Innocent!)

[Toddupton]

Any news on any improvements to the boxee app? Is anyone still working on it or is is dead?

[tmiranda]

I have no plans to continue to work on it. There does not seem to be much demand right now.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by imstillme2

Any news on any improvements to the boxee app? Is anyone still working on it or is is dead?

Beside Boxee being difficult to write code for, it pretty much killed it when Boxee decided that they weren't interested in PC clients.