Watching TV Shows without network access

**subvertbeats** · December 19th, 2009, 03:31 AM

So my net access was down a couple of days ago.

I opened boxee, the latest beta build, and after a while as expected it allowed me to login without net connection.

Went to TV shows, My Shows, tried to open one (think it was Curb Your Enthusiasm), and boxee timed out - seems like perhaps it was searching for remote content even though I was logged in disconnected?

Havent confirmed, but might well happen with Movies too?

http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-3743

**gatherlight** · December 19th, 2009, 05:18 AM

yeah, this is a concern of mine as well.

The Boxee.tv website was down last night for a couple hours and I was locked out of Boxee. It would be good to have an option to still load boxee with just local content when Internet might be down.

**judgeschambers** · December 19th, 2009, 07:09 AM

Hmmm, Alpha worked fine that way.

I'll unplug my modem and test beta. It should let me connect to my home network and server where all the content lives. Should....better!

If not, I bet it has to do with validation of the user name and/or finding web versions of each show. I'll report back.

UPDATE: Latest Beta r9816-unplugged cable modem.
Ok, Boxee let me log in and gave warning of limited option availability.
Local networked SMB shares like TV, Movie and Music did work and play.
TV shows would show all the cover art, but when you opened a TV show to view the seasonal episodes, boxee would think for about 30-60 seconds before showing the episodes available on the local network. Occasionally, it would come up with nothing. I could go back and then into the episode listing a second time and they would show and play.

So, a little laggy and an occasional no show on first try while it is searching for Internet versions of each episode, but I could usually play the content with minimal wait. Movies listed Local availability instantly and played with no wait.

TomyLo · December 19th, 2009, 09:19 AM

I still have no idea how to populate my TV shows (on my external drive that is connected to my router) onto Boxee TV Shows... I keep hitting scan library and does nothing...

**judgeschambers** · December 19th, 2009, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by TomyLo

I still have no idea how to populate my TV shows (on my external drive that is connected to my router) onto Boxee TV Shows... I keep hitting scan library and does nothing...

Go to Settings>Media>Network Sources. Select Add New Source. It should be listed there or maybe under UPNP. Then add the entire drive or a folder. Then check if video and how often to scan for new media. Click Done and wait for it to populate.

I do not have a network hard drive, only a home server, so I"m not totally sure how those are listed in the SMB shares in boxee. But follow my guide above and see if you can at least see the drive listed and go from there.

TomyLo · December 19th, 2009, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by judgeschambers

Go to Settings>Media>Network Sources. Select Add New Source. It should be listed there or maybe under UPNP. Then add the entire drive or a folder. Then check if video and how often to scan for new media. Click Done and wait for it to populate.

I do not have a network hard drive, only a home server, so I"m not totally sure how those are listed in the SMB shares in boxee. But follow my guide above and see if you can at least see the drive listed and go from there.

I did that and still I cannot load my TV shows... here's a screencast video i did.. its only 10mb .mov download it and check it out.

http://www.filedropper.com/isuhd

**judgeschambers** · December 19th, 2009, 08:05 PM

Ok, I see that you are loading two folders that end in TV Shows.

Two things:

1- They are both called /My Book/TV Shows. so Im confused which is not working.

2- One starts with smb://Linksys/My Book/TV Shows Which looks correctly done. The other is not listed properly and I suspect is the one not working. It starts with only /Volumes/My Book/TV Shows. It's missing the SMB:// or a drive location.

Not knowing exactly what you are using system wise, I think your address is incorrct on the second sare.

TomyLo · December 20th, 2009, 08:01 AM

Here's what i did...

Deleted the /volume...

But still I cannot get the TV shows to list...?

**judgeschambers** · December 20th, 2009, 09:31 AM

Originally Posted by TomyLo

Here's what i did...

Deleted the /volume...

But still I cannot get the TV shows to list...?

I think your missing what I'm saying. You need a full address for Boxee to know where this folder is. To me, it looks like a local or incomplete file address, so it's not finding it.

The string should look like this:
SMB://Lynksys/Volumes/My Book/TV Shows
or
C://blah/blah/blah

The key here is having SMB:// or C:// or D:// without it boxee can't see it. Just /Volumes/My Book/TV Shows or /Lynksys/Volumes/My Book/TV Shows will not work. It's like trying to find a house with only a street name and no house number.

Be sure you are looking in Network Sources to add the folder. You should see all the files for that network drive. Also, does your network drive require a user/password to log into it? If so you need to add that in Boxee under Settings Network SMB Client. Until you do, you will not see the drive and adding it manually will not work.

**StevenR** · December 20th, 2009, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by judgeschambers

The key here is having SMB:// or C:// or D:// without it boxee can't see it. Just /Volumes/My Book/TV Shows or /Lynksys/Volumes/My Book/TV Shows will not work. It's like trying to find a house with only a street name and no house number.

I think they are using a Mac, and therefore /Volumes/My Book/TV Shows is perfectly acceptable as a path. Any internal drive or mounted external drive appears like that in Mac OS X by default (in the format /Volumes/disk label). For example, I have an external hard disk connected to my iMac with a label of MediaStore which appears with a path of /Volumes/MediaStore and the path to the TV Shows directory on the drive appears in Boxee as /Volumes/MediaStore/TV Shows.