This is an absolute dream. Best bang for the buck in terms of $ / GB

[url="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822165298&name=External-Hard-Drives"]Newegg.com - BUFFALO DriveStation 12TB USB 3.0 Quad USB 3.0 RAID Hard Drive Array HD-QL12TU3R5[/url]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Those things are still sooo expensive for the # of drive slots you get imo which I think kind of sucks.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[url="http://lime-technology.com/products/md-1510-server"]MD-1510 [/url]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Has anyone jailbroken their Apple TV? It is only 99$ and it would be a fun toy project if I could properly jailbreak it, but only if it will support playing 1080p x264 encoded mkv files.

This looks like a good resource for jailbreaking apple tv's but I haven't read much of it yet: [URL="http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Main_Page"]AwkwardTV[/URL]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

A buddy of mine who has it has been considering it and (combined with my latest iPod touch addiction) I am seriously considering buying it to fool/jailbreak it. But my last jailbreak experience on the iphone 4 has been less than beneficial. The phone slowed down immensely over 6 months and started behaving like early beta versions of Android Gingerbread in terms of smoothness and stability. So even if I do get the Apple TV, I'm undecided whether I'll go down the jailbreaking route. The WD-TV looks like a worthy contender though.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

any mainstream Tivo can upload movies/videos directly from your computer using wireless. I have a mac and use pyTivoX to upload video's to my tivo in the background. Usually HD mkv files take longer because of the size but once started, normally you can start playing them instantaneously from the tivo box while it is uploading wirelessly. and if you get one of those tivoHD boxes with the huge hard drive, you can keep it on there for as long as you wish in most cases. i am the kind of person that uploads something once, watches it then deletes it so TB of storage really isnt needed in my case.

but i must say, jailbreaking an applytv does sound like fun :) although from what i am reading, this can only be done with appletv v1 & 2, ie: no working break for the current model.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[QUOTE=res0nat0r;1066151]Has anyone jailbroken their Apple TV? It is only 99$ and it would be a fun toy project if I could properly jailbreak it, but only if it will support playing 1080p x264 encoded mkv files.

This looks like a good resource for jailbreaking apple tv's but I haven't read much of it yet: [URL="http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Main_Page"]AwkwardTV[/URL][/QUOTE]

I can't wait to jailbreak my Apple TV 3. My friend's Apple TV 2 plays MKV but he says the hardware (?) only supports 720p.

Even converting a 1gb 720p mkv to mp4 in Handbrake takes 1hr, way too long.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Ugh I dont want to have to do that then. A 2 hour 1080p movie would take hours to convert over.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Imagine what folks with a massive collection of untouched bluray rips would be up against.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Yeah converting any of that crap takes too long. Plus converting stuff around just degrades the quality anyway. I'd rather have something that supports as many formats as possibly. So xbmc type stuff based on vlc/mplayer it is. Sadly anything Apple only likes to support their Quicktime shit format and a few other things, which doesn't work for me.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

WD TV Live. I am very close to taking the plunge with it.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

I've seen those before it actually looks pretty bad ass. It supports a ton of streaming sites plus tons of file formats: [url="http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2698/p/208%2C393/session/L3RpbWUvMTM1MTY5NzUwNi9zaWQvQS1EcDU2YWw%3D"]List of compatible media file types for all WD TV and WD Elements Play Products[/url]

I'd love to play with one and see if it can decode everything. My problem is I serve my files up via NFS since I'm all linux based. I bet this doesn't support mounting NFS dirs

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My only hitch in considering it is that I need a Gigabit Connection, which the Live doesn't have (The WD TV Live "Hub" does) and so playing large files could be a major hiccup for me.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

I play 1080p encoded mkv files via my 10/100Mbit LAN without any problems at all.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Is it compressed 1080p or Uncompressed? As in untouched Bluray rip?

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Its compressed into x264 format stored in an mkv. I've played copied VOB's or whatever fine w/o any issues too.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Generally, compressed 1080p flicks are between 8 - 12 GB, uncompressed BluRay rips are 30+ GB. So yea it will stutter on 10/100 MBIT. VOBs are DVD9 format and generally under 8.7 GB so those will stream like a charm.

There's a reason key areas of my house are wired with Gigabit ;)

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[QUOTE=feather;1066702] My friend's Apple TV 2 plays MKV but he says the hardware (?) only supports 720p.

.[/QUOTE]

Does anyone have an idea as to why some mkv files don't play audio when streaming through my jailbroken Apple TV2?

Would love some insight into this. I now have a sudden urge to convert my movies to 720p mkv .. I'm thru watching lo-res avi files.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Correct me if I'm wrong, if your movies are lower res to begin with, you can't upconvert like mp3s.

For your current MKV no-audio problem, [URL="http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=111514"]you can try going to ATV settings and changing the audio to 16 bit[/URL].

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Thanks for the link feather, I will check it out.

And yea I suppose you're right, I will not be able to convert my dvd's to 720p mkv's but maybe only my Blu-ray Discs. Or would I be better off converting to mp4? I'm pretty sure there is any other thread around here about hi-res video compression, but can't seem to find it.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[QUOTE=res0nat0r;1067015]I play 1080p encoded mkv files via my 10/100Mbit LAN without any problems at all.[/QUOTE]

How are you streaming these files? I seem to be having a little bit of buffering and I have a Gbps connection. I am using Plex media server on my PC with the stored movies and streaming off the laptop.

I took the plunge and bought the Drobo N (only affordable option) now I am wondering if there is gonna be an issue streaming my 1080p mkvs..... any suggestions?

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Drobo N (I forget which gen) has read speed hiccups. This is why I built a server from scratch and connected it over gigabit. If you have 1080p files under 15 gig, you should be fine.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[QUOTE=dusk;1110372]How are you streaming these files? I seem to be having a little bit of buffering and I have a Gbps connection. I am using Plex media server on my PC with the stored movies and streaming off the laptop.

I took the plunge and bought the Drobo N (only affordable option) now I am wondering if there is gonna be an issue streaming my 1080p mkvs..... any suggestions?[/QUOTE]

My hosts are all linux based so I'm serving stuff over NFS. I don't know but SMB / Windows might be a bit more heavy handed and cause issues. I can't really say about the Drobo though as I've never used it.

You shouldn't need gigabit though for it to work, my stuff is over a 10/100 standard ethernet cable and I can stream just fine without network issues.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

[QUOTE=res0nat0r;1110418]

You shouldn't need gigabit though for it to work, my stuff is over a 10/100 standard ethernet cable and I can stream just fine without network issues.[/QUOTE]

So there is something fishy with my network then cause like K said, if my files are under 8 Gb... I really shouldn't have a problem.. but I definitely seem to be having an issue.

.....not a happy camper!

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Really the size of the file shouldn't matter, as the software will just incrementally read the file as the movie plays, so the size overall shouldn't matter I don't think. Unless you downloaded or ripped a bluray with an obscenely high bitrate, then that would be the only thing file wise I see causing an issue as the software would have to process lots of MB/sec and that could cause some processor lag. But really thats not common I dont think.

I can stream a 12GB 1080p mkv file just as well as a 4GB 720p, the encoding rate is what matters. I think maybe your network settings might be an issue? I don't have any experience with Plex, but do only certain formats do this? I know on my old xbmc install on my linux box I had to enable a certain mode who's name I can't remember now for it to offload the video decoding to the nvidia chip. Without that everything was very laggy.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

File size is everything for digital content res0. If you watch a 4gb file and a 12 gb version of the same movie, your network has to transmit 12 gb vs. 4 in the same time that is the duration of the movie. Granted buffering can be caused because of many reasons, network issues is generally at the top.

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

A lot of it is the bitrate of the encoding. If you have a 15 minute flick that is encoded in some crazy shit like 10 megabit, or whatever then you have to ingest that quickly yeah. So it really depends. That bigass file could be 90% DTS tracks since they decided to encode the english, french, german and commentary, so it really depends than just the size of the file.

It is hard to really tell what is going on above without really testing things out and seeing exactly where the problems are happening.