Boxee running movies off a networked HD

[lammerkowski]

So, I finally got a mini and have it running Boxee on a 47" 1080 TV.

Great.

I have a huge collection of movies and TV shows (1.5TB) saved on a Drobo unit, which is plugged into my Power Mac, which is actually sitting only about 6 feet away. I turned on "SHARING" for the Drobo unit, and it appeared on my Boxee browser - so far, so good.

Boxee only has managed to "find" about 1/4 of my video files, but that's mostly my problem - I need to edit the metadata on that front.

So, I fire up one of the movies that Boxee has found and that's where the trouble starts:

1. It takes about 2-3 minutes for the movie to start.

2. Once the movie is running, it frequently stops/stutters for periods of 10-15 seconds.

ARGH.

I think my network is fast enough to run movies - I have a PS3 and have done the same thing (run movies off of the Drobo) with NullRiver's Medialink.

Any ideas? Is this not possible?

The movie was a 700mb AVI file, and after it failed I didn't even try with the larger size full DVD rips.

I hope this is possible to improve - Boxee is great, but he Drobo needs to be plugged into my PowerMac, and there is only one USB port on the Drobo. Any way to split that USB so I can connect the Drobo to both my mini and my PowerMac? I can't run Boxee directly on the PowerMac because it's a PowerPC chip.

[nvme2976]

How are your computers networked? Wireless? G or N? I had a lot of trouble with my wireless G network. I upgraded to an N network and everything is peachy now. I am steaming 4.5 gig HD .mov files.

[lammerkowski]

interesting.

i have an older Airport Extreme - can anyone recommend a good wireless router for this purpose?

[SmileyDude]

The current Airport devices support N -- the mini, however, doesn't.

Since you said the PowerMac is only about 6 feet away, why not run some network cable instead of using wireless? I'm assuming that the Airport is in the same general area -- just connect your mini directly to the Airport Extreme in one of the LAN ports. If they are full (the current ones have three -- dunno about the older ones), get yourself a switch (100mbit should be fine, but 1gbit aren't that expensive these days) and move all the wired connections to the switch and connect the switch to the Airport Express.

Personally, I've got a mixed network at home with some devices on wireless (802.11g) and others on wired (1gbit). The wireless devices have issues streaming video, and I'm planning to run wire to them. The wired devices, however, never have any problems with video steaming.

[lammerkowski]

Hmm, wired, why didn't I think of that?

Thanks very much, an easy and simple solution.

[skadeb87]

Hmm, wired, why didn't I think of that?

Thanks very much, an easy and simple solution.

Yes... Always choose a wired connection over wireless... when available

Also, I have a Drobo as well with about 4tb full of dvds and avis. I love it to death although its really only best for a backup solution... unless you are using Firewire800. Even though USB2.0 is supposed to be 480Mbps I'm getting less than 100Mbps. I have tested this out on both windows and OS X as well as another Drobo. Your data rate can only be as fast as the slowest connection.

[pax85]

For me, even Wi-Fi 802.11g worked fine for 720p movies, when nothing was transfered via wifi. Wi-Fi N should easily handle everything, not even talking about ethernet here (peace of cake).

[jnk5y]

I use a mac mini with a wireless g connecting to a windows computer's external usb hard drive which is wired to the router. I've run 720p tv shows off of it ~ 46min runtime at 1.09 GB and it worked just fine.

My router is a linksys wrt54gl running dd-wrt.

[SmileyDude]

For the people saying HD works fine even over a 802.11g connection -- that's great it works for you, but for some people (myself included), it just doesn't work very well or at all. There are a number of reasons this could be, including too many wireless devices or some other sort of interference.

In general, if you have the ability to connect it in wired, don't even think too hard about if you should or not :)

[lammerkowski]

Yeah, my internet has always been subpar.

I would guess that a lot of people get way below advertised speeds - and it really can hamper video playback.

Are people happy with the newest version of Airport Extreme? Thinking of buying one. I have the old cone one.

[stldoug]

Are people happy with the newest version of Airport Extreme? Thinking of buying one. I have the old cone one.

I have both wired network and the newer Airport extreme running through my house. I run Boxee off a new Macbook pro and a lot of times I don't bother (or forget) to hook it into my wired network. It plays all the TV shows and all my movies with no noticable difference.

So, to answer your question, yes, very happy.