[blueberrypi]

Hello all,

First and foremost I want to say this community of xbmc enthusiasts has really gotten me into raspberry pi's and having a new way to watch and stream media. My wife has graciously given me 2 months to get this system up and running and so far, like many other threads, I have been unable to fully satisfy the requirements and now look to post a long thread message as a last straw before I may have to go back to paying Directv way too much for crap results. I will work this thread from the top down and any advice will be greatly appreciated. The three things that are needed are:

1) Free Netflix/Hulu on xbmc (I already have accounts for both)
2) Play recorded TV shows that I record through windows media center (wmc)
3) Watch live television

For the first one, I haven't been able to find any recent .zip files to download for Netflix or Hulu, so unless something has just come out this one may be a moot point. Google searching has come up with results from 2010 (Bluecop repository that doesn't work) and 2011 (Lifehackers article that talks about a paying service to acquire these xbmc addons)

For the recorded TV show issue, my current setup is:
-Windows 7 (64 bit) laptop 2.4GHz processor, 4GB RAM
-Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT flashed to it
-SiliconDust HDHomeRun PLUS 2-Tuner ATSC DLNA/UPnP HD Compatible Streaming Media Player, HDTC-2US
-Mohu Leaf Indoor HDTV antenna ($29.99 one)
-RASPBERRY PI MODEL B 756-8308 Raspberry Pi B overclocked to 800MHz
-Gotham pvr version 0.2.99
-ServerWMC version 1.0.0.36, build 1154
All the connections are hardlined to the router and receive approx 40mb/s download and 12mb/s upload according to speedtest.net

Issue with recorded tv:
Like what most people say, it plays great on my laptop so I can rule out the antenna giving bad data to WMC. However, when I attempt to play it on my raspberry pi I get delays in the video where the audio is way off and it becomes unwatchable after the first 30 secs. After a few weeks of googling, I have tried to edit the settings file in serverwmc to allow for more buffering wait time. I have also added the advancedsettings.xml file to openelec (rpi equivalent of xbmc) in order to allow for more cache and more buffer time. Still to no success. Here is the log: http://pastebin.com/aQEuqFWu

My next troubleshooting step will be to try to load Openelec onto a usb stick in hopes that I can overclock the raspberry pi because I am all out of options and watching the recordings on my laptop won't cut it.

Finally, issues with watching live TV in real time (not recorded) has been even less successful. Here is a log for that: http://pastebin.com/mtsVcdp9

TLDR: You guys rock and thanks for any help! I really want this to work and I am googling potential solutions as you read this

[krustyreturns]

As far as I know you can't get Netflix and hulu on the rpi.

Whey you say that live-tv is less successful, what exactly happens? Because according to the log, the streams are starting without problems.

[Dilligaf]

Most PI can reach a stable overclock of around 1000mhz with a good power supply so first step is more overclock. Next try changing your cache settings in advancedsettings.xml I use this

Code:

<network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode>
    <cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>2.0</readbufferfactor>
  </network>

See here http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW..._the_cache for options and explanation

[blueberrypi]

@krustyreturns, when I say live-tv is less successful I mean that I encounter pixels that appear on the screen that are like stars twinkling in the sky, random pauses throughout my live-tv watching and the audio/video being off. Here is another log I just took with the problem: http://pastebin.com/2tGM9pFb

@Dilligaf, I will change my advancedsettings.xml to your settings. I didn't have my cachemembuffersize set to 0 because I was afraid of the excess read/write cycles put on the raspberry pi to damage it faster. I tried to overclock it to 900MHz before and corrupted the SD card. I probably don't have a good power supply since I connect my raspberry pi to my television usb. That way it turns on/off when I turn my tv on/off. Do you use the standard overclock settings to reach 1000Mhz?

Thanks again for the quick replies!

[Dilligaf]

Connecting to the TV usb is probably the worst thing to do as you won't have controlled shutdowns which will eventually corrupt something. My config.txt looks like this

Code:

hdmi_force_edid_audio=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
config_hdmi_boost=4
arm_freq=1000
core_freq=500
gpu_freq=500
isp_freq=500
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=6
disable_overscan=1

[blueberrypi]

How would you advise being able to turn the rpi on remotely then? Do you think moving xbmc to a USB stick would allow me more flexibility with improper shutdowns and overclocking?

[Dilligaf]

I leave all my Pi constantly running, they take less power than most TVs or other devices take in standby/soft off a USB stick may help with <cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize> as this forces cache to be written to the hard drive/sd/usb to save memory on low memory devices like the Pi

[merschdawg06]

I don't have a RPi, but my understanding is you need to buy an MPEG2 license for OTA video to work correctly(since OTA is MPEG2). Have you bought this license yet?

[scarecrow420]

Also to determine if the problems are related to the raspberry Pi or to XBMC/ServerWMC, you should use your laptop as an XBMC client and see whether recordings, liveTV etc works there. If so, then the raspberry Pi may not be suitable for you. I use Intel NUCs which are of course 4x the price but also alot more powerful and never had any problem with them.

in terms of netflix etc I think you can only get it on windows (as a WMC addon) and use a launcher to flick from XBMC into netflix and back again etc. Again, raspberry pi isnt going to let you run windows but an intel NUC or other normal HTPC will

[blueberrypi]

@Dilligaf, I will definately start leaving my Pi on constantly. And try the overclocking after I attempt to do what scarecrow420 said.

@merschdawg06, Yes I already have the MPEG2 and WVC1 licenses installed. I do get video, so the MPEG2 license is working.

@scarecrow420 I hadn't thought of that yet, it's quite confusing to think about. Since that would involve me having ServerWMC running and the xbmc pvr client running on the same computer at the same time. If it does work on the laptop then I can blame the raspberry pi. However, if it doesn't work on the laptop xbmc but still works in Windows Media Center than what conclusion can I draw from this?

[scarecrow420]

@scarecrow420 I hadn't thought of that yet, it's quite confusing to think about. Since that would involve me having ServerWMC running and the xbmc pvr client running on the same computer at the same time. If it does work on the laptop then I can blame the raspberry pi. However, if it doesn't work on the laptop xbmc but still works in Windows Media Center than what conclusion can I draw from this?

Alot of users have an "all in one" setup where they have WMC, ServerWMC and XBMC (with pvr.wmc addon) all running on the one box. Really this is the "best" setup since there is no network traffic or SMB paths involved, it is all pure local file system access etc. Of course it fails other criteria like having a server in the basement, distributed setup, multiple clients etc etc. Certainly most people do run a local client (and possibly remote clients as well) and its definitely a good configuration for testing, to eliminate various complications.

In answer to your question, if things dont work in XBMC under this local configuration but they do work in WMC, then you can draw the conclusion that ServerWMC is at fault. I dont think you will find that though considering we have many (mostly) happy users with working setups, here on the forums.

If you find that it works fine in a local configuration then it would indicate either the raspberry pi clients or the networking is causing an issue. When you said you had hard wired networking, is this GB LAN or is it somehting like Powerline adapters, out of interest?

Other steps you can try is a remote windows based client (assuming you have more than 1 PC in the house)

[blueberrypi]

It's a GB LAN connection to the back of the router. Figured I would say that to eliminate the HD streaming over wifi concern. I have heard that SMB can be the choke point for HD videos. Is there anyway around this on a Windows machine or am I sorta stuck in that department?

If all the logs I have submitted do not show any issues with serverWMC, then I shall voice my concern on the raspberry pi media forums. I am currently too obsessed with raspberry pi to go any other route for the time being and this could be my demise. Onward and upward!!

This community is top notch. You all are great!

[sbthomas]

@blueberrypi,

I use a raspberry pi (512MB) with Openelec 4.0.7 with the same version of wmc as you and don't have issues with video... I have not overclocked or adjusted the memcache parameters. Openelec is installed on an 8GB class 10 SDHC card.
So, don't get discouraged, we'll figure out what's up...

What version of the raspberry pi do you have? Model B with 256MB RAM by any chance? Folks have had pretty serious issues with performance on XBMC Gotham if I remember correctly. Of course right now I can't find anything about it... While watching on the pi, press o on the keyboard to bring up the codec information. On the line beginning with a C there will be cache:0 B XX% which tells you how full the buffer is. During live TV this isn't as accurate as there isn't much to buffer but mine alternates between 13 and 25. If it gets to 0, playback will almost certainly pause to allow the cache to build.

Let us know what XMBC installed on the same machine as ServerWMC/MC yields.

[blueberrypi]

@sbthomas, It is the Model B with 512MB ram: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009SQQ...UTF8&psc=1
I also am using the NOOBs SD card since it was an extra $5: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ENPQ...UTF8&psc=1

I am also using openelec 4.0.7, and when I checked LiveTV I noticed that the cache:0 B XX% was at 0 for the first 10-15seconds of LiveTV and then actually hovered around 80-95. It possibly doesn't get started out on the right foot or something. Here is the log for it: http://pastebin.com/dDkbsdxF

I haven't given up I have just started posted on the raspberry pi forums as well to get help from that end. Will install XBMC on my laptop later today. I know this isn't the right place for this comment, but I read that some folks with Openelec have to clock-sync to "audio" in the XBMC settings to keep the audio in sync.

[blueberrypi]

After I ran up XBMC on my laptop the recordings successfully worked so I eliminated all the issues except the raspberry pi. Then I went ahead and overclocked to the 1000Mhz or Turbo setting in the config.txt file with the the initial_turbo=30 uncommented out and the raspberry pi wouldn't boot up.

Then I proceeded to cross my fingers, pray to something, and I went ahead and commented back out the initial_turbo=30 in the config.txt and VOILA! The raspberry pi booted up and now dynamically overclocks to 1GHz without a problem and the HD streaming of LiveTV and recorded tv have all gone away. The only thing that is still there is the pixeling on the television but I can fix that at a later time. I also took the advice given and run the raspberry pi off of wall power to maximize "clean" power and allow for proper shutdowns.

Thanks for all the help! XBMC for lyfe!