I`m lost ! squeezebox + popcorn .. how do you get it right?

[admin_exported]

Hello,

I`m the happy owner of the squeezebox duet ... for 6 months now!
I`m adding something similar to squeezebox, but for video purposes , called popcor hour c200.

This devide (popcorn) has the ability to have it`s internal device viewable as a NAS drive, (NFS, Samba). Will I be able to transfer all my current music to this Internal hard disk on the c200 and be able to use the squeezebox duet to stream music from this hard disk. In other words will the internal Nas drive inside the popcorn c-200, be viewable on my squeezebox?

Thanks,
Kevin.

 

[Anonymous]

You need to have Squeezebox server running in order for your Duet to see the music. I would expect that the Popcorn does not have this capability. Therefore you would still need to have your PC running. If you do that the PC could see the Popcorn as a network drive and see the music there - but I don't think you gain much.

You could use the Popcorn as your music player and sell the Duet - unless you intend to use the Duet for another room. Someone with a Popcorn already will give you better answers, such as if it is controllable from an iPhone/Touch etc, that way you would still get the cool apsects of remote control with cover art.

Neonk

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for your post

From what I read squeezebox is better than popcorn for music, so I don`t intend to sell it.

I think that The best thing to do is to buy a NAS drive and install squeezebox server on it, and also save all video media on it. I could use the nas drive without the pc being on.

Is this possibile?

 

[Gerrardasnails]

daspaceman:
thanks for your post

From what I read squeezebox is better than popcorn for music, so I don`t intend to sell it.

I think that The best thing to do is to buy a NAS drive and install squeezebox server on it, and also save all video media on it. I could use the nas drive without the pc being on.

Is this possibile?

I'm not sure what the dac is like in the Squeezebox or in fact the Popcorn Hour - I use an external dac. However, for music the Popcorn Hour will be at least as good as the Squeezebox if you use digital out and let another device do the dac work. I really don't see the point of having both units. I gave the A-200 and music sounds superb.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

daspaceman:
thanks for your post

From what I read squeezebox is better than popcorn for music, so I don`t intend to sell it.

I think that The best thing to do is to buy a NAS drive and install squeezebox server on it, and also save all video media on it. I could use the nas drive without the pc being on.

Is this possibile?

The Popcorn Hour acts as a NAS as well. I have a 1tb internal drive and a 1.5th external drive attached to it. Both are networked to my pc. I have all my video on the external and all my music on the internal. I can also stream from my pc. The UI is very good and within the next few months will be brilliant as they are working on a new one.

 

[Anonymous]

I need the duet because of the remote... wifi .. and good looking with lcd screen

 

[mattjax05]

NAS route is fine but you will need to ensure that the NAS supports squeezebox server 'out of the box' otherwise I hear it's a pain to install.

How do you like the duet controller? I use my iPod Touch.

 

[Gozaradio]

As has been mentioned, any NAS you buy will need to run Squeezebox server. I know various QNAP devices do this and I have a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo which runs Squeezebox server out of the box (though I've yet to try it). There are also others.

On the matter of buying a media player, there is an alternative to the Popcorn Hour C-200 you should consider. It's called Xtreamer. I'm very happy with mine and it's really good value in comparison as it costs around £81 with no HDD. Add a 500Gb Hard Disk and already it's got greater capacity than the PCH and still less than half the price at £130 and it will act as a NAS if you want it to.

You could then use the money saved to either buy a NAS for SB duties or a Blu Ray player. You could even buy a Blu-Ray Drive and rip your Blu-Rays to watch on the Xtreamer. It plays Blu-Ray ISOs and DVD ISOs or just the movie files if that's how you wanted to go.

It's also a lot smaller than the C-200.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your post. It really helped, i`m checking online about the Xtreamer,

cheers

 

[Anonymous]

I pulled the trigger on a XTREAmER PRO with+ 2tb e-sata + wifi, for euro300 delivered. That is much cheaper than a popcorn hour c200. I will report back with my findings once the unit arrives.

Cheers

 

[Gerrardasnails]

daspaceman:
I pulled the trigger on a XTREAmER PRO with+ 2tb e-sata + wifi, for euro300 delivered. That is much cheaper than a popcorn hour c200. I will report back with my findings once the unit arrives.

Cheers

Good luck with it mate. I have done a lot of research on these things and I'm on my 3rd different product. I didn't consider the Xtreamer as I wanted HD audio and m2ts file playback. I've just had a quick look and there seems to be issues with audio played over a network. ALL media players have foibles and you learn to live with them. It will be interesting how you get on - you will be hunting the media player forums for answers soon!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

daspaceman:

Hello,

I`m the happy owner of the squeezebox duet ... for 6 months now!
I`m adding something similar to squeezebox, but for video purposes , called popcor hour c200.

This devide (popcorn) has the ability to have it`s internal device viewable as a NAS drive, (NFS, Samba). Will I be able to transfer all my current music to this Internal hard disk on the c200 and be able to use the squeezebox duet to stream music from this hard disk. In other words will the internal Nas drive inside the popcorn c-200, be viewable on my squeezebox?

Thanks,
Kevin.

I've just seen your questions on the NMT forum and I have a couple of questions. I know that you have ordered the Xtreamer but do you need the player to play discs? The C-200 from PCH is basically the same as the A-200 that I have but with a disc spinner incorporated. I have a BD player so there was no need for that for me. My other question is if the media player does what you need, is there any need for the Squeezebox? I've no experience with the Squeezebox and probably don't fully understand what it does. To give you an idea, I have an internal drive and an external drive attached to my PCH. It's connected to my PC via ethernet. I can stream music from my PC, send files from my PC and although I can watch video streams, I prefer to play from the drives. Everything is controlled with the PCH remote control with my LCD screen.

 

[Anonymous]

Gerrard,

The Xtreamer and Xtreamer Pro are different. The pro plays m2ts and also Hdaudio. I will be copying files from my pc to the internal hard disk of the xtreamer pro by means of a network connection but I will play the HD movies directly from the Xtreamer pro, there is no need for a network.

I will be buying an internal hard drive for audio on my current pc to expand the capacity for audio storage. I will still place audio into the xtreamer`s pro as it acts as a Nas drive. I will still try and figure out how to install squeezebox`s software on the nas drive . I read somewhere that it is possible.

 

[Gozaradio]

Gerrardasnails: I didn't consider the Xtreamer as I wanted HD audio and m2ts file playback. I've just had a quick look and there seems to be issues with audio played over a network. ALL media players have foibles and you learn to live with them. It will be interesting how you get on - you will be hunting the media player forums for answers soon!

You're right about foibles for all the different players. I have to admit that I haven't come across any audio problems and I play all my media over a a wired network; mostly full quality DVD ISOs and some HD MKV / M2TS files.

On the HD Audio front, both the current Xtreamers will pass through HD Audio with the most recent firmware update. I have the original Xtreamer with different chipset, so I can't do that, even with latest firmware.

 

[Gozaradio]

daspaceman:
Gerrard,

The Xtreamer and Xtreamer Pro are different. The pro plays m2ts and also Hdaudio. I will be copying files from my pc to the internal hard disk of the xtreamer pro by means of a network connection but I will play the HD movies directly from the Xtreamer pro, there is no need for a network.

I will be buying an internal hard drive for audio on my current pc to expand the capacity for audio storage. I will still place audio into the xtreamer`s pro as it acts as a Nas drive. I will still try and figure out how to install squeezebox`s software on the nas drive . I read somewhere that it is possible.

The current Xtreamer Sidewinder (smaller version) should have all the same playback abilities as the Pro. It can play all the same formats and pass through HD Audio. The first version of the Xtreamer (which I have), isn't able to pass through HD audio.

It's all a bit confusing as they haven't released their models as Xtreamer 1 and Xtreamer 2 which would make it easier to identify which version someone has!

Interface looks nice on the Pro though and the extra On board HDD space is nice. Good Luck setting it up with Squeezebox!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Gozaradio:
Gerrardasnails: I didn't consider the Xtreamer as I wanted HD audio and m2ts file playback. I've just had a quick look and there seems to be issues with audio played over a network. ALL media players have foibles and you learn to live with them. It will be interesting how you get on - you will be hunting the media player forums for answers soon!

You're right about foibles for all the different players. I have to admit that I haven't come across any audio problems and I play all my media over a a wired network; mostly full quality DVD ISOs and some HD MKV / M2TS files.

On the HD Audio front, both the current Xtreamers will pass through HD Audio with the most recent firmware update. I have the original Xtreamer with different chipset, so I can't do that, even with latest firmware.

I meant with FLAC audio files for music. I've read that it's a nightmare.

 

[Gozaradio]

Ah, I see. Sorry, misunderstood. I haven't really used it for playing audio. The interface is pretty clunky for wading through a large music library (30,000 tracks). I use it purely for video.

Got an Apple Airport Express which handles audio at the moment until I save some pennies for a Sonos or Squeezebox.

 

[Anonymous]

This took me three days to do on my own, so I've prepared a guide as i am sure there are others reading who would like to get this working but are as confused as I was about how to go about it.

1. The first requirement is that you download to your p.c. the Community Software Installer:

http://www.nmtinstaller.com/?p=download

This gives you an executable - so put this on your desktop for convenience. You are going to use this to put IPKG on your popcorn hour....

2. Get ipkg here: http://a110progs.googlecode.com/files/i-...3-nmt3.zip

Once you have this on your desktop run the C.S.I. exe, and choose install from file. Point to the IPKG file on your desktop and now this will be installed upon your popcorn hour.

What IPKG does is allow you to add small apps (small apps like squeezeboxserver) to your popcorn hour. However installed it does not point to the repository containing squeezeboxserver so you have to add it. To make it point to the correct app repository, you have to edit the ipkg.conf file, which you will find at :

POPCORNHOURshareAppslocaletc

There are two repositories to add, and to be honest I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but I just couldn’t get it to point at the correct ones. I finally managed it, and I think it better if I paste my ipkg.conf for you just to copy and paste over yours (then save it of course!):

# /etc/ipkg.conf -- Configuration for ipkg, the Itsy PacKaGe management system
#
# Must have one or more source entries of the form:
#
# src <src-name> <source-url>
#
# and one or more destination entries of the form:
#
# dest <dest-name> <target-path>
#
# where <src-name> and <dest-names> are identifiers that
# should match [a-zA-Z0-9._-]+, <source-url> should be a
# URL that points to a directory containing a Familiar
# Packages file, and <target-path> should be a directory
# that exists on the target system.
#
# Blocked by Google Code

#src c200local http://c200local.googlecode.com/files/
src c200local http://sourceforge.net/projects/c200ipkg/files
src borrowedandblu http://sourceforge.net/projects/popcorn-ipkg/files
src vaidyasr http://cdnetworks-us-2.dl.sourceforge.net/c200ipkg
#src c200ports http://cloud.github.com/downloads/x-ray/c200ports
src c200ports http://c200ports.googlecode.com/files

#src openlink-unstable <<<unstable feed url>>>
#
dest root /share/Apps/local
#dest ram /mnt/ramfs
#dest ext /mnt/hda
#
# Proxy support:
#
#option http_proxy xx.xx.xx.xx
#option ftp_proxy xx.xx.xx.xx
#option proxy_username <username>
#option proxy_password <password>
#
# Offline mode (for use in constructing flash images offline)
# option offline_root ipkg-root

3. Hurrah! Now your popcorn will point to the repo’s where squeezeboxserver is. What you have to do now is telnet into your popcorn hour. You do this by enabling telnet if you have win 7:

http://www.fettesps.com/windows-7-enable-telnet/

4. Now you can run telnet from a command prompt: start-->telnet.
Once the telnet console opens what you have to do is connect to your popcorn hour. You will need it’s i.p. address. Find this in computer-> network and right click on your popcorn hour to see it properties and i.p. address.

Now back to the telnet window. Type:

Open (your popcorn i.p. address) [23]

And telnet should connect to your popcorn hour. Once it has done this we need to update the ipkg installation we have already made with our new repositories that we just pointed to in ipkg.conf.

Type: ipkg update

Hopefully now telnet will give you a message saying that the ipkg repositories have been updated. We are getting close!
Now we need to tell ipkg to install squeezeboxserver. Type:

Ipkg install squeezeboxserver

Now squeezebox should install. It might fail however and tell you that it wouldn’t install because the installation wanted to downgrade a version of perl. Don’t worry. For each version of perl it refuses to downgrade just type:

Ipkg -force-depends remove (here put the name of the perl file it is protecting)

Then again type: ipkg install squeezeboxserver

You may have to go through this a few times with each time a new perl file coming up. Don’t worry – just “ipkg –force-depends remove” each file and soon you will see that squeezeboxserver has installed successfully.

5. Now using your browser got to: http://popcornhouri.p.address:9000
And you should see the squeezeboxserver web interface. Point the server to your music directory on your popcorn hour and you are nearly there!!!Give your popcorn a decent name too – I just went with popcorn!

6. On my touch, I had to go to settings--->advance--->networking--->remote libraries--->connect to remote library and then enter the popcorn hour’s i.p. address for the squeezeboxserver to see my touch and vice versa. From there my music-->switch library-->popcorn!

And you are done. Squeezeboxserver on your popcorn, streaming seamlessly to your device.

I hope people find this guide accurate. As I said, it took me three days of playing around to get this to work, but with the above instructions I reckon you should be good to go in under a hour!

Cheers,
mooro