HP ProLiant MicroServer

DJ... said:
Tried that numerous times already.

EDIT: wait - in the source? What do you mean in the source? As in the parent directory or changing the content of the actual drive it is sitting on?
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theres a setting where you can change the content of the drive/source
to tv show, movie, music etc
 
rodga said:
theres a setting where you can change the content of the drive/source
to tv show, movie, music etc
Click to expand...

Oh yeah I tried that numerous times already to no avail. I've resigned myself to the fact that a reinstall will be in order...
 
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On the self help video's to only install supported hard drives due to power and heat concerns. Does anyone know of a listing of these anywhere? Currently looking at a WD® Caviar® Green™ 5400 Series - 3TB Serial ATA III - Serial ATA 6Gbps With 64MB Cache @ 5400RPM
 
Ok. So special happening on monday 28th, HP employees only. N40L with Turion, 1x250GB, 2GB, 150W. Those with contacts feel free to contact, others that are interested please, PM me.
 
Elax said:
On the self help video's to only install supported hard drives due to power and heat concerns. Does anyone know of a listing of these anywhere? Currently looking at a WD® Caviar® Green™ 5400 Series - 3TB Serial ATA III - Serial ATA 6Gbps With 64MB Cache @ 5400RPM
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Hey man, I'm running 4 x 3TB Seagate 7200RPM drives with a non passive NVIDIA GT520 in with no issues, just dont put the server in a cupboard or box cause then it'll get warm in there. No issues with running it all however
 
GhostSixFour said:
Ok. So special happening on monday 28th, HP employees only. N40L with Turion, 1x250GB, 2GB, 150W. Those with contacts feel free to contact, others that are interested please, PM me.
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Is this for the cape town okes as well. i am also in the market for a hp microserver. what price are we looking at?
 
KOPITE said:
Is this for the cape town okes as well. i am also in the market for a hp microserver. what price are we looking at?
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Don't know about CT guys.. This is johannesburg only.

Guys, if you want this, let me know, as this is monday only.
 
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So, I decided to try out Plex. I already had the Plex media server set up on my main Linux box so I could use the Plex app for the iPad, which by the way is really awesome.

Now unfortunately Plex doesn't have a client for Linux so I couldn't just install it on to my current htpc (my Microserver) which is running Ubuntu and XBMC so I popped Win7 on to a spare hard drive I had lying around. I booted up installed the latest Nvidia drivers and the Plex client. Plex was is surprisingly simple to set up, because all I had to do was install it and run it and it automatically picks up that I'm running the server on the same network.

Now for the but... I don't know if I am doing something wrong but there are some serious issues with Plex. The main issue I have is if for some reason the server side app goes offline when I have the client running and I try to access the library, the entire program just hangs and has to be killed via task manager. This is very annoying as I only have a remote hooked up for input so I have to connect a keyboard every time the thing hangs. Another issue is that I can't seem to find the video quality settings - I say this because it looks to me like the the video is getting transcoded to a lower bitrate as the quality is definitely not the same when compared to playing the original file on my xbmc setup. I see there is a transcode option in the settings menu, but its off so I don't know why it wouldn't just stream the original file over the network (gigabit wired network). The quality looks quite bad when playing 1080p streams and I get strange artifacts and ghosting when skipping forward and backwards.

Another small issue I am having is that the client is not being picked up by the iPad app, so I can't use the remote function on the iPad. This is not a major thing, but its a cool feature I cannot get to work and it seems like there are few people complaining about this on the Plex forums.

I am now back to my xbmc setup as Plex for Windows was quite a letdown. If there are any Plex gurus out there it would be great if you could maybe point out what I am doing wrong. I am willing to give it another go if I can resolve these issues as I would really like to have the libraries synced up so I can make full use out of the iPad app and maybe a future client side setup in another room.
 
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DrJohnZoidberg said:
So, I decided to try out Plex. I already had the Plex media server set up on my main Linux box so I could use the Plex app for the iPad, which by the way is really awesome.

Now unfortunately Plex doesn't have a client for Linux so I couldn't just install it on to my current htpc (my Microserver) which is running Ubuntu and XBMC so I popped Win7 on to a spare hard drive I had lying around. I booted up installed the latest Nvidia drivers and the Plex client. Plex was is surprisingly simple to set up, because all I had to do was install it and run it and it automatically picks up that I'm running the server on the same network.

Now for the but... I don't know if I am doing something wrong but there are some serious issues with Plex. The main issue I have is if for some reason the server side app goes offline when I have the client running and I try to access the library, the entire program just hangs and has to be killed via task manager. This is very annoying as I only have a remote hooked up for input so I have to connect a keyboard every time the thing hangs. Another issue is that I can't seem to find the video quality settings - I say this because it looks to me like the the video is getting transcoded to a lower bitrate as the quality is definitely not the same when compared to playing the original file on my xbmc setup. I see there is a transcode option in the settings menu, but its off so I don't know why it wouldn't just stream the original file over the network (gigabit wired network). The quality looks quite bad when playing 1080p streams and I get strange artifacts and ghosting when skipping forward and backwards.

Another small issue I am having is that the client is not being picked up by the iPad app, so I can't use the remote function on the iPad. This is not a major thing, but its a cool feature I cannot get to work and it seems like there are few people complaining about this on the Plex forums.

I am now back to my xbmc setup as Plex for Windows was quite a letdown. If there are any Plex gurus out there it would be great if you could maybe point out what I am doing wrong. I am willing to give it another go if I can resolve this issues as I would really like to have the libraries synced up so I can make full use out of the iPad app and maybe a future client side setup in another room.
Click to expand...

i have a fix for you - just google it :D
 
Keeper said:
Reminds me, I should try the XBMC App for iPad :)
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Yep, unfortunately to run xbmc on iOS, the device must be jailbroken which isn't an option for the new iPad yet. There is the xbmc constellation app which is cool but really just a glorified remote control.

Plex on the other hand is a full on app which blows all the other video apps out the water. Video is silky smooth and I am able to stream 1080p video to the iPad on my local network and can also watch from anywhere (which is nice having, but being limited to 512kbit upstream on my adsl line, not ideal in this country).
 
Cant comment on running PMS on Linux. My experience is limited to PMS on Windows, and here for me it runs near flawlessly (latest v0.9.6.2b) stable & fast.

At first I also had a few glitches, but every one of them turned out to be network (performance) related. You may think your networking is working properly, but its only when you try stream high capacity media (1080p) consistantly that you find out if its truly optimal (the acid test is fast forward on a 1080p file). I had to go through a bit of cable fiddling, WiFi AP firmware and server NIC driver updates before thinks started humming.

As far as transcoding goes, my understanding is there is none between PMS -> PMC. With full PMC, all video decoding is done client side, while with other clients this is not the case e.g. Apple iOS client.

So I would advise diagnosing the networking side, but cant help on the PMS freezeups, has never happened for me on Win.
 
Roman4604 said:
Cant comment on running PMS on Linux. My experience is limited to PMS on Windows, and here for me it runs near flawlessly (latest v0.9.6.2b) stable & fast.

At first I also had a few glitches, but every one of them turned out to be network (performance) related. You may think your networking is working properly, but its only when you try stream high capacity media (1080p) consistantly that you find out if its truly optimal (the acid test is fast forward on a 1080p file). I had to go through a bit of cable fiddling, WiFi AP firmware and server NIC driver updates before thinks started humming.

As far as transcoding goes, my understanding is there is none between PMS -> PMC. With full PMC, all video decoding is done client side, while with other clients this is not the case e.g. Apple iOS client.

So I would advise diagnosing the networking side, but cant help on the PMS freezeups, has never happened for me on Win.
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Thanks for the insight. Maybe it's something to do with the Linux server side, I'll check now if I'm running the latest version. As for the network, I'm pretty sure its fine as my xbmc box also pulls the media off the same server and runs 1080p flawlessly even if its busy copying other stuff over the network at the same time. Just did a quick test and looks like I get about 40MBytes/sec when pulling stuff from the server to the htpc, not optimal for a gigabit network, but not bad considering I'm using an elcheapo D-link 5-port switch.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Just did a quick test and looks like I get about 40MBytes/sec when pulling stuff from the server to the htpc
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Well I was in a similar position, file copying (SMB over unacknowledged UDP) was fine, but acknowledged TCP which Plex uses, was another story. Only once I had put a network load testing sw on various devices, could I start figuring out where the issues may lie, by process of elimination.
 
Roman4604 said:
Well I was in a similar position, file copying (SMB over unacknowledged UDP) was fine, but acknowledged TCP which Plex uses, was another story. Only once I had put a network load testing sw on various devices, could I start figuring out where the issues may lie, by process of elimination.
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Meh, that sounds like way too much effort. I did update PMS, but still two versions behind because the maintainer of the repo for Fedora hasn't updated the newest build yet and I don't feel like compiling from scratch right now. I will try again at a later stage.
 
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