unRAID Server release 4.5-beta1 available

Hi all

The old faithfull XBOX classic is being retired, as it cant play HD media.

What are the alternatives that has the same play-all as the XBMC, in a non PC-based unit ?

/Rene

The Popcorn Hour is getting a lot of positive chatter

http://www.popcornhour.com

This is why I keep insisting that people use actual bitrates, rather than amorphous "HD" or "SD" or "1080p" descriptions of media.  MKVs of HD material are generally transcoded to bitrates 1/4 to 1/10 of the bitrate of the raw VC-1 or MPEG2 source on the original media.  Some HD disks are already compressed to a moderate level H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and thus already have lower bitrates (although higer level h.264 (level 4.1 and above) have bitrates of 200Mbps to nearly 1 Gbps).

 

I can take a Blu-Ray, 1080p source, transcode it to H.264, and still retain the 1080p resolution, so it is 1080p HD material, but the bitrate be so low, due to aggressive compression, that it will play without stutter on 10MB Ethernet.  You can also have uncompressed raw SD 480i material that will choke Gigabit Ethernet.

 

HD disks standard, for example, has multiple profiles... the HL profile spec is a max resolution of 1920x1152, and a bitrate of 80 Mbps.  But Suppose you have a raw source... you'll need up to 3 Gbps to handle it realtime (1080p60)

 

Clear as mud... eh?

 

Post your bitrates... then you are comparing apples to apples without ambiguity.

I use Handbrake with the "Film" preset to convert to MKV and cannot tell the difference and I don't waste all of that space...but thats my eye and my opinion 

I have both dvd and blu-ray based conversions and they both look great, blu-ray based looks better of course 

blu-ray based looks better of course

There is absolutely no basis for this statement.  There is good coding and crap on both BR and HD.

blu-ray based looks better of course

 

There is absolutely no basis for this statement.  There is good coding and crap on moth BR and HD.

Forgive me I am not knowledgeable on this at all but thru my test it seemed to me the MKV I ripped from blu-ray looked better. I do not may blu-ray based MKV's so I cannot be certain that is what it is all I know is the resolution was much higher.

Thanks for your input 

MKV is just a container...not a codec.  An MKV can contain media in any number of different formats and codecs,  An MKV, like an AVI, can contain media encoded to MPEG2, DiVX, Xvid, H.264, or a host of other codecs.

There is a WIDE variation in quality of encoding and image processing on all DVDs, BR, and HD movies.  I've seen some BR and HD videos that were nothing more than upscaled DVDs.

BRn can hold more data than HD, but there have been only a handfull of releases that utilized the extra capacity, and that was always for "extras" and other crap... not to give more data to the movie.  Some players couldn't' handle the bitrate if they did!

Two versions of the same movie, at the same bitrate and same codec, on BR and HD will appear identical to the human eye.  An MPEG2 and an H.264 encoded copy of the same movie at the same bitrate, and the H.264 will be sharper.

Two versions of the same movie, at the same bitrate and codec, will have approximately the same resolving power and appear about the same to the human eye -- even though one is 1080p24 and the other is 480p24.  They will both play the same over your LAN.  That's why bitrate matters in these discussions.

Thanks for the explanation bubbaQ.

On the popcornhour, I had read good review and it seem verstatile.

But this thread make me rethink, as it seems very easy to brick the thing.

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=8124&page=1

/Rene

PCH only has 100MB Ethernet... no Gigabit.  It won't handle high bitrates (>30Mbps) over the wire.... but it will play them fine from a built-in hard drive.

PCH only has 100MB Ethernet... no Gigabit. It won't handle high bitrates (>30Mbps) over the wire.... but it will play them fine from a built-in hard drive.

I have both the original PCH (A100) and the newer unit (A110) and have no problems streaming my Blue-ray M2TS files and HD-DVD (converted to TS). Both units are specified to support SMB and NFS at ~38Mbps. As long as I do not use the fast forward and other trick play stuff it works well. The only files that cause problems are some of the trailers I have downloaded from the Apple website (10000 BC for example).

Can you give some examples of movies or the specific type of content that should cause it to choke?

Regards, Peter

p.s. I am running 4.4 using SMB. I will test 4.5 shortly

I actually believe my problem started at some iteration of 4.4, but I am running 4.5 and still have this issue.

I have port xx21 forwarded to port 21 of my unraid server and I used to be able to ftp remotely over my wan IP.  Now, I can only connect via FTP locally via my lan IP.

The FTP client seems to connect, but I get the following error:

500 Invalid PORT Command

could not retrieve directory listing for "/"

Does anyone have any ideas??

Hi all

The old faithfull XBOX classic is being retired, as it cant play HD media.

What are the alternatives that has the same play-all as the XBMC, in a non PC-based unit ?

/Rene

Try XBMC on Linux? runs on OSX and Winders too - can even be doneon an Apple TV but the CPU and memory suck and it chokes on much more than 720P video.

just a note, OSX users will need to use the following export options:

 

*(rw,insecure)

 

otherwise the shares won't mount

Thanks for this, but Im getting "could not connect to server because the name or password is not correct."

Samba connection is fine Any ideas?

Mark.

Try XBMC on Linux? runs on OSX and Winders too - can even be doneon an Apple TV but the CPU and memory suck and it chokes on much more than 720P video.

As you describe it then, hmm: no thanks.

:-)

/Rene

Anyone have success getting the TViX media server to work w/ NFS?  The TViX comes w/ it's NetShare software which automatically configures Windows for NFS.  I entered *(rw) for my "tvixhd1" movie folder share, but my TViX just doesn't see the contents.  It can successfully ping my unRAID IP though.

Anyone have success getting the TViX media server to work w/ NFS?  The TViX comes w/ it's NetShare software which automatically configures Windows for NFS.  I entered *(rw) for my "tvixhd1" movie folder share, but my TViX just doesn't see the contents.  It can successfully ping my unRAID IP though.

You are entering the actual share names on the Tvix aren't you?  Not "tvixhd1" when using NFS and TViX Netshare? 

Also, you may need to give user permissions to the shares with a username & password both set to "tvixhd1".

Mark.

You are entering the actual share names on the Tvix aren't you?  Not "tvixhd1" when using NFS and TViX Netshare? 

I'm not clear what you mean.  My share name is "tvixhd1" and it's what I have entered on the TViX.

Also, you may need to give user permissions to the shares with a username & password both set to "tvixhd1".

Do you mean in addition to *(rw)?  Do you mean telnet into the unRAID and change permissions on the "tvixhd1" share?

thanks for your help.

You are entering the actual share names on the Tvix aren't you?  Not "tvixhd1" when using NFS and TViX Netshare? 

 

I'm not clear what you mean.  My share name is "tvixhd1" and it's what I have entered on the TViX.

 

Also, you may need to give user permissions to the shares with a username & password both set to "tvixhd1".

 

Do you mean in addition to *(rw)?  Do you mean telnet into the unRAID and change permissions on the "tvixhd1" share?

 

thanks for your help.

 

I thought you meant you were having trouble using NFS on the Tvix with the TVIX "NetShare" NFS Software.  If you mean using the UnRaid's NFS the I also haven't managed to get that working with the Tvix.  In theory the Windows machine should be irrelevant/redundant with the NFS in the latest beta of unraid, you shouldn't need it at all between the Unraid and the TVix, but I haven't got it working yet either.

The fact you mentioned the Windows machine made me think you where using TviX Netshare on the Windows PC and NFS on the TVIX.

What are you trying to achieve? Are you using TVix Netshare and setting the Tvix network link to access the IP of the PC?  or Connecting directly to the IP of the UnRaid using NFS?

Mark.

PS>  I won't reply again tonight as already had far too many beers to give a coherent reply

 

What are you trying to achieve? Are you using TVix Netshare and setting the Tvix network link to access the IP of the PC?  or Connecting directly to the IP of the UnRaid using NFS?

Sorry, we had a misunderstanding.  I'm trying to connect TViX to unRAID using NFS (currently using SAMBA).  Are you saying that connection won't benefit from NFS?  Though this clearly isn't a TViX forumn, I'm getting some TViX hiccups on a particular .m2ts (Blu-Ray) movie on my unRAID, which I'm thinking is a bandwidth issue b/c the TViX says it's a 40MBs file (which is way more than other movies I have).

PS>  I won't reply again tonight as already had far too many beers to give a coherent reply

Guess I have some catching up to do.

Very poor performance of NFS on version 4.51-beta1 when doing random access to a file on a USER share.

- Sequential access over NFS to USER share is perfect, and the Unraid CPU utilization is very low.

- Random access via NFS directly to the DISK share works perfectly as well.

When playing a movie (using Popcorn Hour) over NFS USER share, and trying to jump to a far location in the movie, the playback stutter.

The same movie works ok, when played from a DISK share on the Unraid.

I checked the Unraid CPU utilization using "top" and "vmstat". When the movie was stuttering remotely the Unraid CPU utilization was almost 100%.

Most of the CPU utilization was in the "wa: Time spent waiting for IO".

Hello;

I've got a couple of issues which I've just encountered using the new beta..

1) a remote directory listing mounted on a Windows XP machine is not automatically refreshed when I change anything in it (add, remove, create directory, rename etc). Each time I have to do a manual refresh to check if my action has been completed.

2) I lost all user shares in the web menu a couple of times, by trying to create a new user share. I've checked and they've also disappeared from the network neighborhood. The only way to get them back (in the menu and in the network neighborhood) was to reboot the server. Stopping and restarting in the menu, was not good enough.

I've not experienced this behavior before, in the stable versions. I'm almost sure it is related to the new beta.

Now I don't feel comfortable to get into these issues - is it ok to revers to 4.3.4 (the version I was on) or 4.4, by copying the old bzroot and bzimage back on the flash drive?

Thanks

Very poor performance of NFS on version 4.51-beta1 when doing random access to a file on a USER share.

 

- Sequential access over NFS to USER share is perfect, and the Unraid CPU utilization is very low.

- Random access via NFS directly to the DISK share works perfectly as well.

 

When playing a movie (using Popcorn Hour) over NFS USER share, and trying to jump to a far location in the movie, the playback stutter.

The same movie works ok, when played from a DISK share on the Unraid.

 

I checked the Unraid CPU utilization using "top" and "vmstat". When the movie was stuttering remotely the Unraid CPU utilization was almost 100%.

Most of the CPU utilization was in the "wa: Time spent waiting for IO".

 

Have you done any "read ahead" tweaks described elsewhere on the forums?

Hello;

I've got a couple of issues which I've just encountered using the new beta..

1) a remote directory listing mounted on a Windows XP machine is not automatically refreshed when I change anything in it (add, remove, create directory, rename etc). Each time I have to do a manual refresh to check if my action has been completed.

2) I lost all user shares in the web menu a couple of times, by trying to create a new user share. I've checked and they've also disappeared from the network neighborhood. The only way to get them back (in the menu and in the network neighborhood) was to reboot the server. Stopping and restarting in the menu, was not good enough.

 

I've not experienced this behavior before, in the stable versions. I'm almost sure it is related to the new beta.

Now I don't feel comfortable to get into these issues - is it ok to revers to 4.3.4 (the version I was on) or 4.4, by copying the old bzroot and bzimage back on the flash drive?

 

Thanks

1) Never seen this either.

2) ditto.

You can restore a previous release by copying over the "bzimage" and "bzroot" files to the Flash and reboot.  We're about to release a new beta, please report is this solves the problems you are seeing.

Very poor performance of NFS on version 4.51-beta1 when doing random access to a file on a USER share.

 

- Sequential access over NFS to USER share is perfect, and the Unraid CPU utilization is very low.

- Random access via NFS directly to the DISK share works perfectly as well.

 

When playing a movie (using Popcorn Hour) over NFS USER share, and trying to jump to a far location in the movie, the playback stutter.

The same movie works ok, when played from a DISK share on the Unraid.

 

I checked the Unraid CPU utilization using "top" and "vmstat". When the movie was stuttering remotely the Unraid CPU utilization was almost 100%.

Most of the CPU utilization was in the "wa: Time spent waiting for IO".

 

Have you done any "read ahead" tweaks described elsewhere on the forums?

I saw that the current read ahead default value is 1024. Do recommend higher number like 2048, or smaller number to improve random read?

I'm not finding any 4.5 betas listed at http://lime-technology.com/dnlds/

Also, wasn't there a mention of an imminent 4.5-beta2 awhile back?

The v4.5-beta1 release has been replaced by the v4.4.2 release.  unRAID v4.5-beta2 has not been released yet.  Please see the Release Notes.