What device do you run OPENELEC/XBMC/KODI on?

blass

Looking to buy a device that runs OPENELEC well with no issues. The WIFI must work. What do you use?

tommycahir

I use it on a Rpi B but have it cabled so guess that's not much use to you.

livEwirE

Running XBMC Gotham on a custom built HTPC(120gb SSD/8GB RAM/WIN 8.1), hard wired too

scary

Raspberry pi 2 I have a wireless dongle connected to it and runs no probs.

blass

livEwirE wrote: »

Running XBMC Gotham on a custom built HTPC(120gb SSD/8GB RAM/WIN 8.1), hard wired too

what was your base for the HTPC?

blass

scary wrote: »

Raspberry pi 2 I have a wireless dongle connected to it and runs no probs.

Could yousend me a link to the wireless dongle you use please?

scary

blass wrote: »

Could yousend me a link to the wireless dongle you use please?

its this little fella

http://www.belkin.com/us/support-product?pid=01t80000002w68FAAQ

bazzz

blass wrote: »

Looking to buy a device that runs OPENELEC well with no issues. The WIFI must work. What do you use?

What kind of money you willing to spend?

Sir Osis of Liver.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057341412

xtal191

Raspberry Pi 2, it'll have much better support than all these Chinese Android boxes.

blass

xtal191 wrote: »

Raspberry Pi 2, it'll have much better support than all these Chinese Android boxes.

Agreed, staying clear of Android altogether, been there had my fun and want something a bit more reliable now.

livEwirE

blass wrote: »

what was your base for the HTPC?

Some would say it's OTT for a HTPC but it suits me perfectly

Streacom FC8 EVO Mini-ITX Fanless Case in Black (passively cooled heat pipes installed)
Gigabyte F2A85XN-WIFI Motherboard
AMD APU A6 6400K Black Edition Quad Core Processor (Socket FM2, Dual Core, 3.9GHz, 65W, Richland) with Radeon HD 8470D
Samsung 840 EVO SSD
Power Supply = Mini-Box picoPSU-120-WI-25 + Genuine Channel Well Technology (CWT) 12V 10A, 120W AC adapter.

blass

scary wrote: »

its this little fella

http://www.belkin.com/us/support-product?pid=01t80000002w68FAAQ

Sorry, I thought you were referring to an external WIFI dongle type thing.

califano

Openlec Kodi 14.1 on Matricom MX2 box.

Fallschirmjager

kodi on intel nuc - connected to surround sound and kodi on rasp pi 2 upstairs.

NyOmnishambles

I have Kodi 14.1 running on an Ouya, the wifi in the Ouya is poor so it is cabled

I also have Kodi 14.2 running on a Lenovo Yoga 8" tablet which is used to watch TV in the bedroom with a Chromecast, occasionally when I start a stream there will be a bit of lag on the audio to the Chromecast but generally restarting the stream fixes it

No major issues with either set up, have all my media on a NAS and have ditched the UPC boxes and watch Live TV through Kodi using Filmon and various other addons for sport etc

Johnboy1951

Kodi 14.2 (I think) on

main PC running PCLinuxOS
laptop dual booting PCLinuxOS and Win (uses wireless)
R-Pi B+ Openelec
R-Pi 2 Openelec
Intel NUC Openelec
Backend HTPC, LiveTV with tuners Openelec

All devices (except laptop) are wired, all can view Live TV and stored recordings and video files as well as recording LiveTV to HTPC for all to view.

Distributed via sub-lan with gigabit router .... all wired as due to interference with Wifi signal I was never happy with wireless.

Oh yes also tablet runs liveTV as well as stored videos, but not using Kodi on that .... maybe I should see if it is available

Access

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Kodi 14.2 (I think) on

main PC running PCLinuxOS
laptop dual booting PCLinuxOS and Win (uses wireless)
R-Pi B+ Openelec
R-Pi 2 Openelec
Intel NUC Openelec
Backend HTPC, LiveTV with tuners Openelec

All devices (except laptop) are wired, all can view Live TV and stored recordings and video files as well as recording LiveTV to HTPC for all to view.

Distributed via sub-lan with gigabit router .... all wired as due to interference with Wifi signal I was never happy with wireless.

Oh yes also tablet runs liveTV as well as stored videos, but not using Kodi on that .... maybe I should see if it is available

I take it your backend pc has to be always on to record/view from?

Is it usb twin sat tuner cards and a digital usb tuner?

Johnboy1951

Access wrote: »

I take it your backend pc has to be always on to record/view from?

Is it usb twin sat tuner cards and a digital usb tuner?

Yes the backend PC is on full time.

It has two dual tuner PCI-e TBS cards, one DVB-T and the other DVB-S.

At present the backend PC is an old P4 3 GHz dual core Dell that I received because it was being dumped.

I have hopes of changing it for a server box in the near future.

captain_boycott

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Yes the backend PC is on full time.

It has two dual tuner PCI-e TBS cards, one DVB-T and the other DVB-S.

At present the backend PC is an old P4 3 GHz dual core Dell that I received because it was being dumped.

I have hopes of changing it for a server box in the near future.

My backend is set to sleep when inactive, and wakes up for recordings. Using the advanced Wake up on LAN add-on in kodi let's the clients wake it up when needed. Using mediaportal under Windows but assume same setup is possible under Linux.

Johnboy1951

captain_boycott wrote: »

My backend is set to sleep when inactive, and wakes up for recordings. Using the advanced Wake up on LAN add-on in kodi let's the clients wake it up when needed. Using mediaportal under Windows but assume same setup is possible under Linux.

No reason to suppose otherwise, if the hardware supports it.

captain_boycott

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

No reason to suppose otherwise, if the hardware supports it.

good point - the hardware needs to support WOL on the LAN card.

I originally built my HTPC using a Q6600 CPU, and was worried that with it on all the time, it would use a lot of electricity. Hence I built a Core i3 system to ensure it was as economical as possible. Its only afterwards that I realised that using WOL/Sleep mode, the back-end can be in sleep most of the time and only powered up when needed. Only wish I knew that before spending money on new hardware - an old Pentium 4 machine I have here gathering dust would probably have worked out just as well!

Johnboy1951

captain_boycott wrote: »

good point - the hardware needs to support WOL on the LAN card.

I originally built my HTPC using a Q6600 CPU, and was worried that with it on all the time, it would use a lot of electricity. Hence I built a Core i3 system to ensure it was as economical as possible. Its only afterwards that I realised that using WOL/Sleep mode, the back-end can be in sleep most of the time and only powered up when needed. Only wish I knew that before spending money on new hardware - an old Pentium 4 machine I have here gathering dust would probably have worked out just as well!

The P4 does admirably well as a backend .... but I question if it would have the capability to act as a front end driving a TV as well.
But I guess if a suitable graphics card was fitted it might manage it with the card taking all the graphics load.

I don't have a spare PCI-e slot to test that here .... the two slots are filled by the tuner cards.

Roark

Raspberry Pi B as Nas, running Raspbian, 2 x 2TB external hard drives attached and media folders shared with NFS.

Network is wired gigabit ethernet.

Have openelec running on a Raspberry Pi 2. It's a big improvement over the previous model. Menus and library load a lot faster. 1080p Blu Ray rips play over the network without any issues. I haven't tried streaming plugins much yet (only received the Raspberry Pi 2 last week) but 1channel seems to run ok.

Access

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

The P4 does admirably well as a backend .... but I question if it would have the capability to act as a front end driving a TV as well.
But I guess if a suitable graphics card was fitted it might manage it with the card taking all the graphics load.

I don't have a spare PCI-e slot to test that here .... the two slots are filled by the tuner cards.

Believe it or not i still have an old dell optiplex GX620 SFF desktop with a pentium D 3.4 Ghz running XP under the tv in our family room running KODI on a daily basis. (dont know if pentium D is older than Pentium 4? - but it does the job) It has a 1GB graphics card in the PCI-e slot and connected to tv via HDMI.

I can see me eventully swapping it out for a smaller, less power hungry machine (prob RPI 2 as happy with that setup in another room.

Id love to know more info on the backend side of things, i think my next step is to be able to view and record live tv from sat/tv tuners as well as what i have now, which is just being able to watch tv/movies from our NAS.

Any pics of your machine Johnboy? would love to see other peeps setups.

Where should i start with research on how to do the backend setup? Id know a reasonable amount about home networks but this would be above my head.

howamidifferent

Running Openelec Kodi 14.1 on Xtreamer Ultra Mk1

Blurb: The Xtreamer Ultra is a portable HTPC equipped with 6 USB, eSATA, 4 Gb DDR3 RAM, HDMI, an integral IR remote control and powered by the nVidia ION2 Chip that allows vivid and crisp playback of FULL HD multimedia files.

http://www.xtreamer.net/ultra/

Johnboy1951

Access wrote: »

Believe it or not i still have an old dell optiplex GX620 SFF desktop with a pentium D 3.4 Ghz running XP under the tv in our family room running KODI on a daily basis. (dont know if pentium D is older than Pentium 4? - but it does the job) It has a 1GB graphics card in the PCI-e slot and connected to tv via HDMI.

The graphics card will be taking the load off the CPU for the display.

I can see me eventully swapping it out for a smaller, less power hungry machine (prob RPI 2 as happy with that setup in another room.

I have done this feeding the TV client devices from the backend/server box, which is left running.

Id love to know more info on the backend side of things, i think my next step is to be able to view and record live tv from sat/tv tuners as well as what i have now, which is just being able to watch tv/movies from our NAS.

Any pics of your machine Johnboy? would love to see other peeps setups.

Where should i start with research on how to do the backend setup? Id know a reasonable amount about home networks but this would be above my head.

Hehehehe .... no, no pics ..... all is there is the inside of a PC with a couple of tuner cards in (PCI-e).

I use tvheadend as the backend software to deal with everything I need from the tuners.

When I selected the tuners there were two main considerations for me ...
1. They had to be usable in Linux so drivers had to be available
2. Each tuner had to expose the complete mux/transponder that it was tuned to, and not what you get from a cheap tuner which only provides one channel.

#2. above meant that all TV points can tune in all Saorview channels as we currently have only two muxes.

I chose TBS cards in the end .... available from Dabs amongst others.
I had intended to get Blackgold, but they reneged on their promise of Linux drivers for many months until I eventually made my decision.
I am happy I chose TBS now ... there are now appearing open source drivers for the cards so I don't even need the TBS official drivers.
The open source drivers seem to give better results too.

Tvheadend is not an easy thing to get your head around ..... it requires a large learning curve, or did for me

It was well worth the effort though.

I spent many days setting up the tuners and re-doing it and setting up EPG and so on.
It is VERY comprehensive, and under continual development.

There are alternative backends but I know little about them so cannot give a comparison unfortunately.

***

I originally built a HTPC for the living room .... total cost was about €700 ...... nice case, special quiet PSU, CPU with integrated graphics capable of good HD out through HDMI, and all the 'tweaks' one does to try to reduce the impact of such a device on noise levels.
I recently passed that on to a friend and bought two new cards and dropped them into the P4 (I got two of those Dells for nothing after Xmas - they were being dumped) and have been using it since (>2 months). I think I had it lock up on me once, requiring a reboot. I have had much more trouble with the gigabit router than with the P4.
(TBH, the Dells look like they were built using server boards)

So at some time in the future - should I obtain a PC with a couple of PCI-e slots and a low power consumption, I can swap to that.
What I will pay extra for elec in the meantime would not warrant buying especially for it.

I hope to put the cards into a HP Server I bought for little money a couple of years back .... and never got set up. I am playing with that server at the moment .... trying to move a few TBs of data across the LAN to it.
Unfortunately one of the drives in it (4) seems to have gone faulty

So everything is rather delayed there.

I do expect that machine to act as a Server/NAS/backend when (IF) I finally get it working to my satisfaction.
There is a problem with fan speed control .... HP firmware takes over and turns up the fans if a PCI-e card it 'does not recognise' (read HP approved) is inserted. I will have to by-pass that, but have not done so as yet. It will mean veroboard, components and soldering iron

***

One thing I can say now ...... I am very glad indeed I went along the lines of distributing everything from a backend/server PC to client devices at the TVs, or software running on other devices like PCs, laptops, tablets and even phones.
To my way of thinking it is far superior and flexible than any other system I considered. .... and less costly than most

Good luck with whatever you decide to do

.

captain_boycott

Access wrote: »

Where should i start with research on how to do the backend setup? Id know a reasonable amount about home networks but this would be above my head.

The hardest part of the backend set-up for me was the tuning in of channels, removing the unwanted stuff, and just hours and hour of tweaking to get it just right!

As Johnboy says, one of the key decisions it the tuner card(s) to use. I went with a Blackgold card, purely because I saw one on adverts for sale! But it worked out well as I did not want to go the Linux route and its well supported by Windows. While just the one card, it has dual Terrestrial and Satellite tuners, so meets all my needs for Saorview and Freesat. BTW, the card is also probably the single biggest cash outlay as well!

I tried several windows based solutions - Argus, Windows Media Center, NextPVR before settling on MediaPortal for the backend server. Found it the easiest to get set up and working with full over the air EPG support.

It was a pretty time intensive but fun project to get everything working smoothly, but well worth it. What drove me to this is the lack of a reliable set top box to replace Sky, and allow for series linking for recording. Not only does the HTPC deliver on this, but also its so easy to expand to anywhere in the house - just drop in a Pi2 and you're done. FreeSat and Saorview can be streamed anywhere without having to worry about running coax feeds from the dish/antenna.

Its also nice to have Kodi as a single all purpose front end for live TV and streaming and control everything from a single remote control!

conor052001

tommycahir wrote: »

I use it on a Rpi B but have it cabled so guess that's not much use to you.

Maybe stupid question but with a cable setup how does the pi pull info for xbmc? Posters, movie info etc, must you connect a dongle too or is it possible for it to use the wifi capacities in a smart TV? Have a smart TV and a 2tb external hard drive of movies and just trying to figure out the best way to set it up., any suggestions?
Thanks

Johnboy1951

conor052001 wrote: »

Maybe stupid question but with a cable setup how does the pi pull info for xbmc? Posters, movie info etc, must you connect a dongle too or is it possible for it to use the wifi capacities in a smart TV? Have a smart TV and a 2tb external hard drive of movies and just trying to figure out the best way to set it up., any suggestions?
Thanks

Ethernet cable as opposed to wireless is what was meant ..... so the Pi is connected to a router which has internet access.