The G4-500dp has been replaced by an imac on my desk. Wahoo! So the G4 has been moved to a corner, sans monitor, to simply serve video and music to my two eyehome's. An sata card is on the way so I can replace the external 250gb drive with dual 250 sata internal drives.

Probably the most interesting part of this setup is how I got network access to the machine. I didn't want to run wire so I took a spare airport extreme base station and used it to extend my existing wireless network. Then an ethernet cable runs from the base station to the computer. It still picks up the correct ip address which my new airport base station specifies for that mac address. I played some music and a video this morning and it appeared to work flawlessly. As I use it more I'll report back.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

EyeHome's Rock!!

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

i have the same machine in essentially the same duty. i highly recommend setting retrospect or something similar.

---

So this is basically a very large AppleTV ? Or am I missing something ?

Alright, now you've got to explain how the machine serves data to the eyehome devices... Please!



Jeff

The G4 is holding ALL of the video and sends it to the eyehome's as needed for playback (on demand). The advantage of this setup over the AppleTv is:

1) cost. My setup cost me a $50 sata card and some existing equipment. To duplicate I'd have to buy two appletv's at a price of $600.

2) flexibility. The Appletv's are pretty limited in what they can playback right now while the eyehome's can play back "just about" any drm free files. I have ton's of files the appletv could not currently playback.

3) bloat. I can't imagine loading hundreds of gigs of video into the itunes library. Backup would become difficult. It just doesn't make any sense to me to put video into the itunes library. The eyehome just shows whatever is in your movies folder.

I think I will eventually move to the appletv's but they will need to gain the ability to playback various file format's first. For now I'll keep getting my investment out of the eyehome (even though it has it's own warts).

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

kj4btkljv, I have a brand new airport extreme which has three ethernet (lan) jacks on the back. Two run under the house to the eyehome's while the third runs to my new imac.

The media server (g4) is plugged into an older airport extreme's lan port which is configured to extend the existing wireless network. That way the g4 uses the same ip scheme as the rest of the network and I didn't have to run any wires to it. It also allows me to move the media server to whatever location it needs to be in.

So far the speed of the wireless appears to be adequate for serving up video but of course more time will reveal any flaws. I will be doing most of my downloading from the imac which is hard wired to the main base station so it won't create any wireless traffic, so I think this will work out.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2007 11:08AM by davemchine.

Quote
kj4btkljv
Alright, now you've got to explain how the machine serves data to the eyehome devices... Please!



Jeff

Small java servlet runs on your server(s), you can run as many as you want. Your servers can be low horsepower, I have run my 4 EyeHomes from an iMac DV 400 with no problems.
There are several different types of "Servlets" out there, even for PC's!
It runs a webserver called "Tomcat" which serves up your data to the EyeHome(s).
The EyeHome finds your server(s) via Bonjour.
They are all derived from a design by Syabas,:
[www.syabas.com]

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

I only have two problems in using the eyehomes. One is that I cannot fast forward or reverse the video any longer. They did an update awhile back and now that feature no longer works. From reading eyehome forums it appears most people are just living without it. Two, sometimes the itunes library can't be read. I haven't figured this one out yet. Turning the eyehome on and off a few times, or restarting the eyehome application fixes the problem but it is annoying.

This is one reason I'm going with a dedicated machine for the eyehome's. I'm going to lock in the OS level and stop doing any upgrades on that computer so it will continue to work and not lose any further features.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

I have my MDD acting as the server but was forever having issues with the EyeHome software being corrupted, I'd install the latest and it wouldn't work right so I'd roll it back to 1.5 and after a few weeks it get corrupted again. Much like yourself I ended up relegating the MDD to server duty, but now I run the EyeHome from the iMac instead and not only is it running the latest upgrades it hasn't had any problems since I switched over. Try running the software from the iMac and it may solve some of your issues.

---

Quote
davemchine
I only have two problems in using the eyehomes. One is that I cannot fast forward or reverse the video any longer. They did an update awhile back and now that feature no longer works. From reading eyehome forums it appears most people are just living without it. Two, sometimes the itunes library can't be read. I haven't figured this one out yet. Turning the eyehome on and off a few times, or restarting the eyehome application fixes the problem but it is annoying.

This is one reason I'm going with a dedicated machine for the eyehome's. I'm going to lock in the OS level and stop doing any upgrades on that computer so it will continue to work and not lose any further features.

Dave

Couple of questions, what type of data are you trying to stream, also what EyeHome forum are you talking about where the folks are the living with the "no FF or Reverse" situation? Never heard of that problem.
Really strange, been using EyeHome since the beta days, never heard of the strange problems you folks (DM & SLM) are having.
I am running the latest and greatest of OSX and EyeHome servlet.
If you want to discuss how to fix the situation, PM me.

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

Hi Rusty, there is an eyehome yahoo group which used to be fairly active but in the last year the administrator has abandoned it. Now it is full of spam and is useless.

In reviewing my posts to that group I can see that the fast forward problem started with the 1.6 update. Several other people posted similar problems at the same time and many regressed back to 1.5.3. A google search shows that there are many others having this problem. I believe I wrote to elgato at one time and they responded that the bitrate needed to be (absurdly) low for the fast forward to work anymore. I stopped using it.

The problem with iTunes could be something particular to my machine. I have no idea.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

Quote
davemchine
Hi Rusty, there is an eyehome yahoo group which used to be fairly active but in the last year the administrator has abandoned it. Now it is full of spam and is useless.

In reviewing my posts to that group I can see that the fast forward problem started with the 1.6 update. Several other people posted similar problems at the same time and many regressed back to 1.5.3. A google search shows that there are many others having this problem. I believe I wrote to elgato at one time and they responded that the bitrate needed to be (absurdly) low for the fast forward to work anymore. I stopped using it.

The problem with iTunes could be something particular to my machine. I have no idea.

Dave

You mean Jonathan Greene's EyeHome Yahoo group?
I belonged since the beginning, never saw that thread, I'll go back and review the archives.
Again, what format, and what bitrate are you speaking of?
The specs have never changed since day one for file formats and bitrates.
The only thing that has changed was that Apple wouldn't license the iTunes DRM so ElGato rolled out a firmware update so EyeHome couldn't play purchased iTunes. I purchase CD's and rip my own so it didn't affect me.
I record all my TV shows at DiVX Home Theater Highest, it is a 720X480 4Mbs data stream, I have absolutely no problem zipping forward, or reverse, MP2, MP4, VOB, files never an issue either.
If ypu think it is the EyeHome servlet causing the problem, try one of the others to test your theory.
Neuston.:
[www.neuston.com]
Also Snazzi* Net Cinema has a nice servlet, it isn't on the net, if you need it drop me a PM.

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! The files i get via bittorent are encoded with the xvid codec. I used ffmpegx to convert a file to divx at the exact same bitrate and the resulting file CAN be fast forwarded thru. Apparently the eyehome doesn't deal as well with xvid for some reason.

What is interesting to me is that all three formats, divx, xvid, and mpeg4 are supposed to be very close cousins. Yet the eyehome deals with them all very differently.
divx - plays back well, can fast forward and rewind
xvid - plays back well, cannot fast forward or rewind
mpeg4 - rarely will playback at all

So I don't know if the problem is in the firmware, the decoder chip, or in the servlet.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

I installed the neuston software but it didn't work very well. It didn't display my movies at all, and although it could see my iphoto library it could not display my pictures. Was fine for itunes. Internet radio didn't work at all.

I tried to find the snazi version but didn't have any luck.

The eyehome group i subscribed to was at [tech.groups.yahoo.com]

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2007 01:16AM by davemchine.

Quote
davemchine
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! The files i get via bittorent are encoded with the xvid codec. I used ffmpegx to convert a file to divx at the exact same bitrate and the resulting file CAN be fast forwarded thru. Apparently the eyehome doesn't deal as well with xvid for some reason.

What is interesting to me is that all three formats, divx, xvid, and mpeg4 are supposed to be very close cousins. Yet the eyehome deals with them all very differently.
divx - plays back well, can fast forward and rewind
xvid - plays back well, cannot fast forward or rewind
mpeg4 - rarely will playback at all

So I don't know if the problem is in the firmware, the decoder chip, or in the servlet.

Dave

It is not a problem with hardware/firmware/software, it is operator error, plain and simple you are feeding the EyeHome formats it can't decode. The formats you posted are related, but they are only wrappers, it is what is inside is what the EyeHome has to decode. All four of my EyeHome's play XvID, DiVX, and Mpeg4 with ease. Have you even read the EyeHome faq?
Hate to say this,you need to do some research.
This is why AppleTV will make it, it shields the user from the internals, the scary settings, and experimentation. It wraps it pink cotton candy called iTunes.

Running the Neuston servlet on my 400+++ DVD server, finds the movies just fine, don't know where you hid yours.
As I said before, the Snazzi* is not available on the net.

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."

I won't claim to be a video expert but I know a little bit. Divx and xvid are codecs usuall "wrapped" in an avi file. See the following links and if you have information to the contrary post it.
[en.wikipedia.org]
[en.wikipedia.org]

The neuston software has no preferences that can be adjusted so I would assume it looks for video's in the users movies folder but for some reason it cannot see mine. The neuston software does see my iphoto library, sees the picture names, but they just appear blank. I can't see how this can be user error.

You say I'm feeding the eyehome files it can't decode and then you immediately state that you are feeding the exact same file types to it. That doesn't make alot of sense. In addition to that the faq you reference says the eyehome CAN playback those files. Playback isn't my problem anyway, just fast forwarding.

"What movie formats can EyeHome display?
EyeHome can play the following movie files: MPEG-1 (.mpg), MPEG-2 (including unencrypted .vob), MPEG-4 (.mp4), 3IVX and XVID (including DIV3 and DX50 codecs)."

I always appreciate your help rusty but ease up a bit on the bashing.

Dave

---

Ukulele music I couldn't find anywhere else.
[colquhoun.info]

Quote
davemchine
You say I'm feeding the eyehome files it can't decode and then you immediately state that you are feeding the exact same file types to it. That doesn't make alot of sense. In addition to that the faq you reference says the eyehome CAN playback those files. Playback isn't my problem anyway, just fast forwarding.

"What movie formats can EyeHome display?
EyeHome can play the following movie files: MPEG-1 (.mpg), MPEG-2 (including unencrypted .vob), MPEG-4 (.mp4), 3IVX and XVID (including DIV3 and DX50 codecs)."

I always appreciate your help rusty but ease up a bit on the bashing.

Dave

Hmmm...Bashing?
Divx xvid mpeg mean nothing without the basic information I asked for, since you don't want to provide even that info, I will move on.
All FOUR of my EyeHomes work great.
Your situation is obviously PEBKAC.

BGnR

---

"Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster."
"Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."
"A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2007 03:32PM by BigGuynRusty.