XBMC is Dead ?

Currently XBMC can be used to play almost all of the popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback allowing you to stream multimedia directly from your NAS via HDMI to any monitor or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available.

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Bingstroller
Posts: 17
youtube meble na wymiar Warszawa
Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2014 10:58 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by Bingstroller »

.
Tit
yupsolo
Posts: 32
Joined: Tue Jul 29, 2014 11:25 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by yupsolo »

Me, I'M back to raspberry pi+xbmc


it's a letdown from Asustor...
twofingertyper
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:48 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by twofingertyper »

Another 302-T owner here; have submitted a request for support to ASUSTOR as this is frankly amazingly poor.

It was meant to be an all in one NAS - media server and all; currently XBMC is unworkable, and we don't have Kodi available to us...

Not inspiring!
Tsburt
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 5:06 am

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by Tsburt »

Two fingers - can you post the reply? I'm interested to know whether there is an update....
Thanks

EDIT: That final word is supposed to be 'u p d a te' but for some reason that word is censored on the forums. Which I find hilariously ironic.
twofingertyper
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:48 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by twofingertyper »

Okay. It's dead as far as I can see.

A snippet from support email:
XBMC Group will no longer maintain scraper in the Add-on and close their Server for downloading.

We hope very much that we can also up da te the XBMC for AS2, 3, 6 series to Kodi also... But the fact is that the Intel CPU capability and driver of AS2, 3, 6 is not enough for the upgrade, nor Intel has the support for it.
If we can do the upgrade, we would have done it at the same time as AS5 or AS7 series because we have the same software of Kodi but just can not do it with the hardware limitation. Only the newer hardware can be up-gradable.
So, I looked at some other forums for other NAS support and found a different provider who says that this issue is down to Intel who have not published a workable Open Source build tree with the build information for supporting the Atom SoC CE5xxx as well as the Atom SoC D2700/D2701, so it ends up being not just ASUSTOR that have this issue.

BUT

It does mean that I am left with something that is no longer fit for purpose after a year of ownership!
Kerry
Posts: 457
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 9:35 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by Kerry »

when you play with XBMC, the mPlayer comes out in the process. The decoder is mPlayer and not XBMC which might explain why Intel is not willing to invest further in this open source. For this specific Intel SOC, the embedded player should be only mPlayer instead of XBMC so it can leverage the hardware accelerator to play up to 1080P. Very likely, even with Kodi upgrade, it will be only the skin and it will still be using mPlayer.
MikeG.6.5
Posts: 917
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 1:56 am

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by MikeG.6.5 »

twofingertyper wrote:Okay. It's dead as far as I can see.

So, I looked at some other forums for other NAS support and found a different provider who says that this issue is down to Intel who have not published a workable Open Source build tree with the build information for supporting the Atom SoC CE5xxx as well as the Atom SoC D2700/D2701, so it ends up being not just ASUSTOR that have this issue.
I have been saying this for a while, as people get on and complain about their NAS not living up to the HT aspect when they bought it. Right now there are no NAS manufacturers out there with consistently good HDMI output with Kodi or XBMC (which is now DEAD!) to use as an HTPC. There is a solution, but it's going to require you buying a Roku, chromecast or something similar and installing Plex on your NAS. But no one here wants to hear that....

Oh well... GL with that HTPC you thought your NAS was, because it ain't going to be one any time soon... And it's Intel's fault, not Asustor's.....
twofingertyper
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:48 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by twofingertyper »

Sorry, I must have missed your posts - surely if it's a known issue (and with XBMC being defunct) the kind of guide that you're offering should be made a sticky and reference point?

Certainly I would be willing to learn about Plex and Roku/Chromecast as a workable way to watch movies on the hardware I do have - it'd be a lot cheaper than buying another NAS and hitting the same issues!
MikeG.6.5
Posts: 917
Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 1:56 am

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by MikeG.6.5 »

Well, for starters, install Plex on your NAS from App Central. To do any of the following, you are also going to need to have WinSCP or another shell client running on your PC. Since WinSCP is free, just get that, and don't mess with anything else.... If you only have a MAC, well, I'm sorry, you'll have to do your own legwork to find an app like WinSCP for yourself.

There is only one model of NAS Asustor makes that can handle Real Time transcoding at the moment. That is the 700xT model. It has a real CPU in it and not a glorified cell phone CPU so it can handle some serious power compared to other models. The other models can't come close to handling the CPU demands required to do on-demand transcoding, so you want to reduce or eliminate the potential of it happening completely. To reduce the chance of on demand transcoding you need to convert all of your media from MKV's, AVI's, MOV's, MPG's, etc. to MP4 H264 with AAC audio in the first track and AC3 in the second if the original file has it. If you have DTS or something else you will need to edit the scripts.

This conversion is simple, as I have scripts that do this for you. Send me a PM for the FTP site to get the scripts. You make a shared folder called /misc and drop the scripts in my FTP into the folder. (So the full path is going to be /volume1/misc/Convert) Then you edit the cron file which I've got a few tuts already telling you how to do to put in the call for the conversion script and start dropping in the media. If you have a 64-bit NAS it's ready to run. If not, download the 32-bit version of ffmpeg from the original site (not App Central) and edit the ini file to point to the right versions of ffmpeg.

It takes the original media file, converts it, deletes the old file and puts the new file in a folder called /volume1/media/watch. From there you rename according to Plex's naming standards and drop it into your Plex Library according to media type. (Movie, TV show, etc.) You can get programs to run on PC or MAC to help with the naming. For movies I use FileBot on a PC, and for TV Shows I use TV Rename. I'm sure that these steps could be automated, Clinton Hall has some rathe nice scripts for his SickBeard/SickRage and SABnzb+ and in fact the scripts I have are based on his, but I've never gotten his scripts to work with my conversion scripts. Naming conventions for Plex can be found here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/sectio ... edia-files You have to follow this pretty strictly to get the shows and movies matched up correctly.

These scripts are not mine. I edited scripts I got from the Plex forums, from one of the users there. They can take the existing srt encoded subtitles and make a stand alone copy along side the media. (MP4's don't support embedded srt's without them being hard coded into the stream, which defeats srt completely.)

I've already helped Jagstyles get this running on his 500x, and he and I did a lot of posting both int eh Tips forum and the Plex forum here at Asustor's forums. After you get Plex installed and running on your NAS and before you get too many streaming sessions going, you are going to want to install Python 2.7 from App Central if you haven't already. And you are also going to want to install PlexPy. This provides historical tracking of who, what, when, where and how your media has been used. It also can give you graphs showing a lot more details than Plex itself provides. You can get information on it here: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/16959 ... ng-program

This should be enough to get your started. Send me a PM if you want me to take a look at your set up or tweak things via a TeamViewer session. First one is free. After that I charge by the hour... :)
twofingertyper
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:48 pm

Re: XBMC is Dead ?

Post by twofingertyper »

Thanks MikeG.6.5 - I'll take a look at this and come back with any queries if I have - although perhaps not very quickly given that it's the festive period and I have a demanding two year old...!
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