CyberNet News http://cybernetnews.com Technology News Wed, 16 May 2012 10:18:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 41.75253-88.048645XBMC: Web Interface and Chrome Extensionhttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-web-interface-chrome-extension/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-web-interface-chrome-extension/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 10:18:54 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22424

Xbmc web remote control

XBMC has a built-in web interface that you can use to control media playback on any of your XBMC instances. The nice thing about the web interface is that it lets you quickly navigate your media library to see what you have available. It also comes bundled with an on-screen remote control that you can use to navigate the entire interface, and even though the graphic they use for the remote could be a little better it still serves its functional purpose quite well.

To get rolling the first thing you’ll definitely need to do is switch the HTTP interface on. This is done by going to the Settings -> Network -> Services, and turn on the Allow Control of XBMC Via HTTP. You’ll also need to specify a port number, username, and password:

Xbmc enable web interface

After you’ve done that you should be able to connect to XBMC from your browser to make sure it is working. The most sure-fire way to get to it is to use the IP address of the machine running XBMC followed by the port number. Example: http://192.168.1.10:8080

If you see the web interface that means you can start experimenting with other things. A good example of something that takes advantage of the web interface is this Chrome extension that provides a virtual remote to control the media playback. This is pretty convenient for me because a lot of times I’ll be on my computer while watching TV, and having this extension means I can quickly pause a video without having to hunt around for the remote control.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: Web Interface and Chrome Extension

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-web-interface-chrome-extension/feed/ 0 XBMC: AirPlay on Windowshttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-airplay-on-windows/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-airplay-on-windows/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 10:46:15 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22392

Xbmc airplay

The XBMC developers added AirPlay support in version 11, and this is one of the features that really drew me to the software. One of the very reasons I contemplated getting the Apple TV was because of the streamlined AirPlay support, but with the addition of AirPlay support to XBMC 11 I thought that it would also fit my needs.

I’ll be upfront and say that the AirPlay support in XBMC is not as extravagant as what’s in the Apple TV, but it supports basic operations like sending YouTube videos or videos recorded on your device to the TV. It does not support iOS mirroring, but I’m not as concerned with doing that as I am being able to quickly watch a video on the TV that a friend just sent me. That’s not to say XBMC won’t eventually support AirPlay mirroring since some third-parties have already figured it out, but as of right now you’ll need to be satisfied with watching videos and flipping through photos when using AirPlay on XBMC. I should also note that the Windows version of XBMC doesn’t support AirPlay audio/music playback, but the Mac and Linux variants do.

So how do you get this set up? On a Mac it’s as easy as turning it on in the settings, but on Windows it takes an extra step:

  1. Windows users need to download and install the Bonjour Print Services for Windows 2.0.2
  2. In XBMC go to Settings -> Network -> Services and turn the Allow XBMC to Receive AirPlay Content setting on. When you flip this on the Announce These Services to Other Systems via Zeroconf should also get turned on automatically.
  3. While on that same screen (Settings -> Network -> Services) scroll up to the top and enter in the Device Name you want to appear in the AirPlay menu on your iOS device.
  4. Test out the connection on your iOS device by opening, for example, a YouTube video and selecting the XBMC install in the AirPlay Menu.

Now you should be able to stream content from your iOS device to XBMC in just a few taps.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: AirPlay on Windows

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-airplay-on-windows/feed/ 0 WrapUp: Evernote Acquires Penultimate, Using Google to Find Where Photos Were Taken, and Morehttp://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-evernote-acquires-penultimate-using-google-to-find-where-photos-were-taken-and-more/ http://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-evernote-acquires-penultimate-using-google-to-find-where-photos-were-taken-and-more/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 06:12:51 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22492

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Xbox 360 consoleMicrosoft Officially Announces $99 Xbox 360 with Kinect, and a 2-year Contract
Microsoft Stores in the US have started to sell Xbox 360s with the Kinect for $99. You’ll need to agree to a two-year contract though, which also entails payments of $15 per month.

Evernote penultimateEvernote Acquires Penultimate
Evernote has added another member to its family with the purchase of the iOS app called Penultimate. Penultimate is an app that makes handwritten notes look really nice on iOS, and I’m excited to see Evernote scoop it up.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Google photo locationUsing Google to Find Where a Photo Was Taken
This clever tip shows how you can use Google’s “Similar Image search” to try and find out where a photo of yours was taken even when the EXIF data isn’t available.

Windows video thumbnailsGet Video Thumbnails in Windows 7
Do you like to download videos in obscure formats that don’t display thumbnail previews in Windows 7? Media preview is a free app that adds thumbnail support for just about any type of video you can find.

–Downloads–

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
WrapUp: Evernote Acquires Penultimate, Using Google to Find Where Photos Were Taken, and More

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-evernote-acquires-penultimate-using-google-to-find-where-photos-were-taken-and-more/feed/ 0 XBMC: Stream Hulu, Food Network, and Morehttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-stream-hulu/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-stream-hulu/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 08:27:09 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22418

Xbmc hulu plugin

A lot of people assume that using an application like XBMC means that you are pirating all of the material you are going to watch, but there are plenty of legal video streaming solutions available as well. There are a bunch of developers that have put together plugins so that a lot of online video streaming sites can be accessed directly through add-ons in XBMC.

What you’ll want to do after you get XBMC installed is head on over to the video plugins section, which can be found in Settings -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons -> All Add-ons -> Video Add-ons. Here you’ll find plugins available to stream shows from HGTV, Food Network, and dozens of other video sites including podcast networks like TWiT.

You aren’t limited to just what’s available in the default add-ons repository either. If you venture over into the XBMC forums you’ll find that there are a lot more add-ons available for services like Hulu. So just because you don’t see one of your favorite video services listed in the add-ons repository doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find an add-on that works with it. Since Hulu is so popular I thought I’d give a quick rundown on how to get it set up in XBMC:

  1. Download the “repository.bluecop.xbmc-plugins.zip” file
  2. In XBMC navigate to Settings -> Add-ons
  3. Select the option to Install From ZIP File
  4. Browse for the repository file you downloaded and add it
  5. You may need to wait a few minutes before continuing on otherwise the add-on may not show up yet, or you can just restart XBMC.
  6. On the Add-ons screen go to Get Add-ons -> Bluecop Add-on Repository -> Video Add-ons -> Hulu. You should now see the Install button to install the Hulu add-on.
  7. You can configure some of the settings (such as how many ads you want to see and when you want to see them), or you can just flip over to the Videos section of XBMC and starting watching shows from Hulu.

Keep in mind that the list of shows can be pretty overwhelming (currently over 1600), but you can save your favorites by highlighting the show, pulling up the context menu (“C” on the keyboard), and choosing the Add to Favorites option. That will serve as a makeshift bookmark, and will be accessible directly from the Videos -> Favorites menu in XBMC.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: Stream Hulu, Food Network, and More

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-stream-hulu/feed/ 0 XBMC: More Advanced Settingshttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-advanced-settings/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-advanced-settings/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 09:12:57 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22421

Xbmc

While XBMC is a versatile piece of software there are always a lot of things that advanced users wish they could configure, but the developers can’t possible cram it all into the XBMC interface. That’s where the advancedsettings.xml file comes into play. This file will let you adjust a dizzying number of settings that are not configurable any other way, and gives you even more control over your XBMC experience.

You’ll find the advancedsettings.xml file in your profile folder:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  • Windows: %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\

Once in your profile directory find and open up the advancedsettings.xml file, or create the file if it doesn’t already exist. After you’ve got the file open you can start changing some of the hundreds of settings that are available.

What settings have I changed? I’ve covered a few in past guides including setting up a media library that is shared amongst multiple machines, and I’ve even provided configuration tips to help resolve buffering issues. I have a few other tweaks that I haven’t mentioned yet…

Video Library:

There are several settings that I change related to the video libraries:

<videolibrary>
<flattentvshows>2</flattentvshows>
<hideemptyseries>true</hideemptyseries>
<recentlyaddeditems>50</recentlyaddeditems>
</videolibrary>

Here is what each of them mean:

  • flattentvshows (2): Shows all episodes for a TV show at the same level rather than sorting them by season.
  • hideemptyseries (true): Hides TV shows that don’t have any episodes in them. This is especially useful if you delete shows after you watch them.
  • recentlyaddeditems (50): Increases the number of items that are displayed in the recently added list.

Splash Screen:

This is a simple setting that disables the splash screen when XBMC is starting up. It’s something a lot of people probably won’t care about changing, but since it is available I thought it wouldn’t hurt to turn it off:

<splash>false</splash>

Debug Log:

I don’t always use this, but if I’m trying to troubleshoot a problem it can be useful. This will let you adjust how much info gets logged:

<loglevel hide="false">1</loglevel>

These are what the various values are used for:

  • -1: All logging is OFF
  • 0: Normal logging, only logging errors (Default)
  • 1: Debug logging
  • 2: Debug logging with free memory, frames-per-second and CPU usage shown on screen
  • 3: Debug logging with free memory, frames-per-second and CPU usage shown on screen; Plus full SMB logging

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: More Advanced Settings

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-advanced-settings/feed/ 0 XBMC: Test Your HTPC with High Bitrate Sample Videoshttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-high-bitrate-sample-videos/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-high-bitrate-sample-videos/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 08:25:11 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22414

Now that you have XBMC set up and configured it’s probably good to run through a test to see how well your system performs. I’ve been able to run through a 1080p flawlessly when I followed all of the buffering recommendations we covered yesterday. Not all videos are created equally though, and as a result you may find that some 1080p videos work fine for you while others don’t.

So what’s different between videos? Generally the thing that will have the biggest affect on smooth video playback will be the bitrate it’s encoded with. Many times videos will use what is referred to as a variable bitrate which means that scenes with little movement will have a low bitrate while action scenes with lots of movement will have a higher bitrate.

I have a list of videos below that you can use to test your setup, along with the average bitrate of the video. The one with the highest average bitrate is at the top, and the bitrate drops as you go further down the list.

Bitrate test birdsBirds
HD Quality: 1080p MKV
File Size: 110 MB
Frame Rate: 23.976 FPS
Average Bitrate: 39.1 Mbps
Duration: 23 seconds

Bitrate test hddvdHD-DVD Demo Video
HD Quality: 1080p MKV
File Size: 278 MB
Frame Rate: 29.970 FPS
Average Bitrate: 17.5 Mbps
Duration: 2 minutes 1 second

Bitrate test big buck bunnyBig Buck Bunny
HD Quality: 1080p AVI
File Size: 886 MB
Frame Rate: 24.000 FPS
Average Bitrate: 12.0 Mbps
Duration: 9 minute 56 seconds

Bitrate test elephants dreamElephants Dream
HD Quality: 1080p AVI
File Size: 815 MB
Frame Rate: 24.000 FPS
Average Bitrate: 10.0 Mbps
Duration: 10 minutes 53 seconds

If you see any buffering warnings that means you either hit the limit of what your hardware is capable of, or you need to do a little more tweaking. With the HTPC that I built coupled with the buffer tweaks I previously mentioned I was able to play the “Birds” video above without any troubles along with all the other videos. There may be other things that I could still change to scrape every last ounce of performance out of the system, but given that I already have smooth streaming playback at high bitrates I’m not overly concerned with tweaking my machines any further.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: Test Your HTPC with High Bitrate Sample Videos

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-high-bitrate-sample-videos/feed/ 0 XBMC: Troubleshoot Buffering Issueshttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-troubleshoot-buffering-issues/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-troubleshoot-buffering-issues/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 09:52:01 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22416

Xbmc network

Almost all of the videos that I watch on XBMC are streaming over the network from a central computer. While the idea sounds great that means that my home network becomes yet another component that can lead to performance issues in XBMC. I’m going to share my experiences so that you can get your system working smoothly with as little effort as possible.

Where’s the Bottleneck?

Do you know where your performance bottleneck is? It could be a wide array of things that could be causing your problems, and you need to take whatever steps you can to pinpoint the bottleneck.

For starters if you’re trying to stream a video over the network and have issues playing it back maybe you should move the video to the local storage on your system to see if you still have problems with playback. This helps determine whether the underlying issue has to do with your network or something on the machine itself. If it appears that the network is your issue then that leads to the question of whether you’re doing this over wireless or not? If you are using wireless and you’re getting a lot of buffering then the problem may be as straightforward as not having enough bandwidth for streaming the videos over your network. If your network is wired (like mine) and you’re sure the performance is good enough you can continue on with the remaining tips in this guide to see if they help.

Video Card Memory:

XBMC tries to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration wherever it can, and for that reason the video card performance of your system is very important. For my particular setup I don’t have a dedicated video card, and so that means my video card steals its memory from the amount of RAM installed on my system.

In my particular case I have 4GB of RAM available, and by default my motherboard tried to automatically detect the amount of memory that should be shared with the video card. It somehow determined that 256MB was the appropriate amount, but it also didn’t know the purpose of the machine. So I took the liberty of manually doubling this from the 256MB to the maximum value of 512MB. In general this change alone led to much smoother playback.

If you are using the same motherboard as me (ASRock E350M1) you can change this setting in the BIOS/UEFI. While booting up go into your BIOS/UEFI settings, and then navigate to Advanced -> North Bridge Configuration -> Share Memory and set it to the max which should be 512MB.

Increase the XBMC Buffer Cache:

The cachemembuffersize in XBMC is the amount of bytes of memory used for buffering ahead in videos. They do warn, however, that XBMC will consume three times the amount of RAM than what is specified for this setting. So the default 5242880 bytes (= 5MB) is on the low side to ensure they don’t stress out your system too much. Since my system is dedicated solely for XBMC I had no qualms bumping this up to 524288000 bytes (= 500MB) given that I have 4GB of RAM on my machine. Something more conservative, however, might be 52428800 bytes (= 50MB).

How do you update the buffer amount? First close out of XBMC, and then navigate to your profile folder:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  • Windows: %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\

Once in your profile directory find and open up the advancedsettings.xml file, or create the file if it doesn’t already exist. Then you’ll want to add this node to the file:

<network>
<cachemembuffersize>5242880</cachemembuffersize>
</network>

The cachemembuffersize is set to the default 5MB so you will still need to update that after pasting it in. After you have updated the advancedsettings.xml file and saved the changes you can open up XBMC to see if your video playback has improved at all.

Update Your Drivers:

When streaming videos over the network my XBMC log would frequently throw an error saying:

CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get – asked for new data packet, with nothing available

As it turns out my biggest performance problem was an issue with drivers. Naturally you’d think that I’m talking about video card drivers (which are important as well), but I’m not. The drivers that were ultimately causing issues with my setup were the LAN drivers. I was using the drivers recommended by ASRock, my motherboard manufacturer, when in reality I should have turned to the manufacturer of the network card… Realtek.

I jumped over to the Realtek site only to see that the network drivers ASRock were dishing out on their site were over a year old. I downloaded the most recent drivers directly from Realtek, and astonishingly all of my stuttering/buffering/choppiness issues went away.

Still Have Issues:

Don’t give up. If you’re still having issues you can try dropping a comment here, and I’ll do my best to help out. The XBMC forums might be a better location to reach out though since many of the developers are also active in the forums.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
XBMC: Troubleshoot Buffering Issues

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-troubleshoot-buffering-issues/feed/ 2 WrapUp: Discovery Buys Revision3, Optimize Your SSD, and Morehttp://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-discovery-buys-revision3-optimize-your-ssd-and-more/ http://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-discovery-buys-revision3-optimize-your-ssd-and-more/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 06:12:38 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22487

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Samsung galaxy s iiiSamsung Galaxy S III Announced
The Samsung Galaxy S III will be coming out in June (in the USA) equipped with a 4.8-inch screen and 8MP camera.

Discovery revision3Discovery Buys Revision3 for Around $30 Million
Discovery is looking to create a strong online presence by scooping up Revision3, who has well established themselves in the world of online video streaming content.

Xbox controller$99 Xbox 360 + Kinect Coming Soon with 2-Year Subscription
The Verge is reporting that Microsoft will soon start offering the Xbox 360 + Kinect ($299 retail) for just $99, but will require a $15 monthly fee for two-years. This works out to be around $40 more than if you pay upfront for the console and Xbox Live service ($60 retail, per year).

Blackberry 10 keyboardBlackBerry 10 Unveiled
The next BlackBerry iteration was shown off last week, and developers were given devices they can play with. There are some interesting new features like the new keyboard auto-complete that are definitely worth taking a look at.

Gmail translateGmail Will Automatically Translate Emails
Google has graduated the automatic translation feature in Gmail so that it is automatically enabled for all users, and other features have also made their way out of the Labs as well.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Chrome learn languageChrome Extension Helps You Learn a New Language
This clever little extension for Chrome will replace words on the webpage you are reading with those from a language you are trying to learn.

Gmail attachments google driveSend Gmail Attachments to Google Drive
This script can be set up on your Google Docs account, and will check your Gmail for messages with attachments. It will then save any attachments to your Google Drive account.

Ssd optimizeOptimize Your SSD on Windows
This app will check various settings related to your SSD to see whether your Windows installation is optimized for your drive.

Ios window multitaskingGet Windowed Apps on Your Jailbroken iPad
Jailbroken iPad users can take advantage of this sweet tweak that will let you run multiple applications side-by-side. You can even move and resize the windows! This tweak will run you $10 and is available through Cydia.

–Downloads–

Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
WrapUp: Discovery Buys Revision3, Optimize Your SSD, and More

]]> http://cybernetnews.com/wrapup-discovery-buys-revision3-optimize-your-ssd-and-more/feed/ 0 XBMC: Adding Media Sourceshttp://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-add-sources/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-add-sources/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 09:42:17 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22409

In XBMC one of the things that is probably the most important is to get the software hooked up to your personal media. This includes media from all of your various collections like videos, pictures, and music. If you’re new to XBMC you’ll probably be better off adding your first source or two through the XBMC interface, but after that you can make the changes a little more quickly by directly updating the appropriate configuration file. So we will show you both ways.

We will even take things a step further and explain how you can have all your XBMC instances share the same configuration file. With that in place anytime you add a new source to the configuration file that same source will be added to any XBMC instance using that file.

Note that our tutorials below are going to focus on videos, but a similar process can also be applied to music and pictures.

Adding Sources in XBMC

Here are the steps you need to follow if you want to add your media to XBMC through the built-in interface.

  1. Go to Videos -> Files -> Add Videos
  2. XBMC will let you add sources in one of two ways:
    1. Click the Browse button and browse for your media based on the type of source:
      Xbmc browse shared media
    2. If you know the path to your media source you can just enter it in manually:
      Highlight the None option and press Enter:
      Xbmc manual media 1
      Enter in the path and select Done:
      Xbmc manual media 2
  3. Enter a name for your media source at the bottom of the window and press Enter:
    Xbmc media source name
    1. Select the type of media the folder contains so that it can scrape information from the Internet for each of the files contained within the folder:
      Xbmc media source type

    Adding Sources in the Config File

    If you have a ton of folders that you want added to XBMC then using the interface above may not be the most efficient and practical method. You can speed things up a bit by editing the configuration file directly. For starters go ahead and close out of XBMC, and then navigate to your profile folder:

    • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
    • Windows: %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\

    Once in your profile directory find and open up the sources.xml file. If the file doesn’t already exist I recommend adding a source in the XBMC interface first so that you can see what the structure of the file looks like. When it comes to videos you’ll be adding nodes in the <video> section of the file that look like this:

    <source>
    <name>Movies</name>
    <path pathversion="1">smb://192.168.1.10/XBMC/Movies/</path>
    </source>

    In my particular case this will create a source pointing to a shared SMB/Samba/CIFS folder for movies that I had set up. You can also use paths to local folders or any of the supported source types.

    There is one caveat that I should mention about adding media directly through the sources XML file. While any changes you make to the file should be reflected in XBMC once you restart the app you’ll still need to go in and update the type of videos contained in the source. Here’s what you need to do:

    1. In XBMC go the Videos -> Files
      Xbmc video content scraper 1
    2. Highlight the source you just added, and then open the context menu by pressing “C” on the keyboard. Then select the Change Content option:
      Xbmc video content scraper 2
    3. Now you can choose the type of media contained in the source (TV shows, movies, music videos):
      Xbmc video content scraper 3

    Sharing One Config File

    How about we take a look at sharing the XML file now that you have already familiarized yourself with the file itself. The process is pretty simple, and for a more detailed explanation I will refer you to our guide on sharing configuration files in XBMC.

    For more experienced users I will point out that all you need to do is add the following lines to your advancedsettings.xml file:

    <substitute>
    <from>special://masterprofile/sources.xml</from>
    <to>smb://192.168.1.10/XBMC/Settings/sources.xml</to>
    </substitute>

    Just update the path with the shared location of the sources.xml file. Repeat this process for every instance of XBMC you have running in your house and they should all pick up any sources that you add or remove.

    After doing all of this may need to run through the steps mentioned above for setting the content type on each of the sources since that’s not configurable through the sources.xml file, but that’s just a minor step.

    CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

    Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
    XBMC: Adding Media Sources

    ]]>     http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-add-sources/feed/ 0     XBMC: SMB on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-smb-mac/ http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-smb-mac/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 06:47:58 +0000 Ryan http://cybernetnews.com/?p=22400

    Mac lion smb samba

    arrow Mac Mac only arrow
    When setting up my XBMC instances, I wanted to have a central machine in my house serve up all my media, and for that I chose to use my Mac OS X Lion machine. Since my XBMC machines are being powered by Windows 7 I ran into a bit of a predicament. In Mac OS X Lion, Apple started using the SMB2 protocol that Microsoft introduced in Vista back in 2006. Naturally this would be a welcomed change since the original protocol has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, but XBMC doesn’t include support for SMB2.

    There are some alternative protocols you can try using, such as AFP or FTP, but even those have their drawbacks. XBMC 11 added built-in support for AFP shares which is file sharing protocol that Apple prefers. In my case AFP isn’t even an option since Windows doesn’t natively support AFP, which means my XBMC machines don’t see the AFP shares. As far as the FTP goes Apple removed that functionality in Lion, but it can easily be restored. I didn’t want to go that route though because FTP connections limit some of what you can do with the media in XBMC, such as not being able to delete videos directly from the XBMC interface. So for me Samba/SMB was still my best option.

    After some searching I came across a free app called SMBUp that restores the old-school SMB protocol compatibility in all its glory on your Mac OS X Lion install. You just have to download the app, open it up, and it will install a version of Samba that works beautifully with XBMC. As you can see in the screenshot above you’ll be provided a full interface for managing all of your shares, and you can even enable guest access to shares making it even easier to hook XBMC up to them.

    A lot of geeky people will argue that using the older protocol will drastically limit your transfer speeds compared to other methods, but I have not found that to be the case. In fact before installing SMBUp I was able to transfer files at 92MB/s to a Windows machine, which was being done with the newer SMB2 protocol. After installing SMBUp I saw speeds to the same machine reach 98MB/s, and that was with the older protocol. Not bad, and that shows that my gigabit network is on par to my expectations.

    Tip: Most people treat the Samba and SMB terms as one-in-the-same, but in reality they are not. SMB/CIFS is pretty much only found in Microsoft Windows, whereas Samba is the free and open source version that you’ll find in the Mac and Linux OS. Samba was originally developed by reverse engineering SMB.

    SMBUp Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

    CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

    Copyright © 2012 CyberNetNetNews.com
    XBMC: SMB on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

    ]]>     http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-smb-mac/feed/ 0