Can I share movies from a Windows 7 machine to an XBox?

[HungryHippos]

OK... Interesting! It does seem people are suggesting this solution is the most solid/reliable?

Questions:-
- What sort of spec unit should I get?
- Is it worth buying a small HD or justing using USB?
- And then I'd just need how mach ram?
- And then get a remote? Any suggestions there?
- You can turn the device on/off via remote?

As regards my need for optical output, is this the unit? - http://www.turtlebeach.com/product-detail/sound-cards-accessories/micro-ii/31

Many thanks!

I can't speak for the sound stuff as I just use my tv's connection to my soundbar for sound here.

For me a RPi is great at playing stuff, works pretty smoothly even for 1080p content over my wired 1Gbit network. Any spec NUC would be superior really as they have a lot more horse power (RPi is cheaper by far though).

Small USB HD attached would probably work out fine, you can get ones that self power from the USB, or configure a share from your PC over the network. If you are serious about sharing stuff around your networks do consider a NAS for centralized storage, they are really good bits of kit.

I don't work for Synology but it's a real dream to work with their NAS devices, I don't know about other manufacturers here.

RPi comes with enough RAM I think, not sure on RAM options for a NUC.

For remote I never use the menus, I have an app on my Android phone called Yatse that lets me connect to XBMC and play stuff (would work with either RPi running RaspBMC or presumably NUC running some form of XBMC). My RPi attached to my TV does support HDMI CEC for my TV remote though, which means you can navigate the menus with your TV remote too (pretty cool).

Yatse app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.leetzone.android.yatsewidgetfree&hl=en_GB

RPi is pretty slow in the XBMC menus, but Yatse (or a.n.other Remote phone app) more than makes up for it.

I never turn off my RPi, it uses about 3-4 watts at load so even keeping it on 24/7/365 only adds a few £ to the electric bill. NUC presumably you would want to turn off it draws more power so I can't really comment on that. I have not found a way to remotely turn on/off my RPi but then it's usually on when I need it to be.

I have considered trading up for a NUC as the biggest downside of the RPi is that it can take a while to update the library, that is due to the slow CPU etc with it. Right now though the cost of a NUC just for this function has not been justified in my mind so not done it yet. I think I am maybe waiting for new gen NUC's to come out or ones that offer something more over the RPi. On the other hand a gen 3 RPi which had more CPU power would be an option too if they ever make one. I don't know how a RPi would deal with 4K content but it's not mainstream yet.

 

[Xordium]

I tried but it ended up being such a faff I got a Western Digital Live TV box. It's small it play anything I throw at along with doing iPlayer etc. I steam everything to it from my main PC through the power cables in the house and it doesn't drop ever. It also has USB ports if you want them. Was quite cheap going from memory too.

 

[ubern00b]

Questions:-
- What sort of spec unit should I get? - Celeron 4th Gen NUC (DN2820FYKH0)
- Is it worth buying a small HD or justing using USB? - I just use USB and have 0 issues.
- And then I'd just need how mach ram? - 2GB is plenty.
- And then get a remote? Any suggestions there? - Can't help here, haven't got this far yet.
- You can turn the device on/off via remote? - Yes.

As regards my need for optical output, is this the unit? - http://www.turtlebeach.com/product-detail/sound-cards-accessories/micro-ii/31 - That's the one, I paid £20 for mine.

Many thanks!

 

[NeilF]

I tried but it ended up being such a faff I got a Western Digital Live TV box. It's small it play anything I throw at along with doing iPlayer etc. I steam everything to it from my main PC through the power cables in the house and it doesn't drop ever. It also has USB ports if you want them. Was quite cheap going from memory too.

Tried what? NUC?

 

[NeilF]

- What sort of spec unit should I get? - Celeron 4th Gen NUC (DN2820FYKH0)
- Is it worth buying a small HD or justing using USB? - I just use USB and have 0 issues.
- And then I'd just need how mach ram? - 2GB is plenty.
- And then get a remote? Any suggestions there? - Can't help here, haven't got this far yet.
- You can turn the device on/off via remote? - Yes.

As regards my need for optical output, is this the unit? - http://www.turtlebeach.com/product-d...es/micro-ii/31 - That's the one, I paid £20 for mine.

OK:-
NUC - £90
40gb Intel SSD - £30
2GB Kingston 1600mhz DDR3L ram - £20 (2GB will definately be enough???)
Hama MCE remote - £16
Turtle Beach sound card - £23

= £179


Hmmm.. I could buy two Boxee Boxes for that, with change... But I guess it is a very solid upto date machine for that running XBMC etc!

 

[ubern00b]

Cut out the SSD and buy a £5 USB stick for starters...

Boxee is dead and no longer under development as far as I know. If you were to hack it and install XBMC on it, it's also only going to have so far of a lifespan. At least with the NUC you can install Windows, any flavour of Linux and have complete versatility in the future. Just my 2p of course

 

[NeilF]

Cut out the SSD and buy a £5 USB stick for starters...

Boxee is dead and no longer under development as far as I know. If you were to hack it and install XBMC on it, it's also only going to have so far of a lifespan. At least with the NUC you can install Windows, any flavour of Linux and have complete versatility in the future. Just my 2p of course

I thought a SSD would be better for speed?

Actually it's got a USB3 drive on the front? So I guess just put a small USB stick in that for max speed? What size would XBMC need along with all its caching/data etc etc?

I guess a USB stick would make installing/updating easier than a SSD inside the unit?

 

[ubern00b]

I bought an "Integral Fusion USB 3.0 Flash Drive" 8GB for £7.50 which is the same silver finish as the NUC and when plugged in looks like it's part of the NUC.

You don't need much space for OpenELEC but the cost of sticks these days just get a 4 or 8GB and you can't go wrong.

 

[NeilF]

I bought an "Integral Fusion USB 3.0 Flash Drive" 8GB for £7.50 which is the same silver finish as the NUC and when plugged in looks like it's part of the NUC.

You don't need much space for OpenELEC but the cost of sticks these days just get a 4 or 8GB and you can't go wrong.

And the speed isn't an issue on these sticks? The spec (read/write) is very low on them?


OK! So assume I spend the extra money for this platinum solution... All £160 of it, instead of £50 for an XBox. There's no audio/video issues I need to we aware of? ie: All frame rates (24p) are all dandy etc? NFS connections all happy over networks?


Does XBMC create thumbnails of photos in your library? ie: I have tens of thousands of photos, so is it going to create tens of thousands of thumbnails on this USB stick?

 

[ubern00b]

No the speed isn't an issue, not for me anyway. I have a very hefty media library and it doesn't bat an eyelid.

I cannot tell you without a doubt that you won't have any issues. You are not me, I don't know your technical capabilities and you will use it differently to how I use it but all I can say is that it is the easiest and slickest solution I have used to date. I came from ATV2, RPi and a couple other solutions. Got real tired of chasing jailbreaks or waiting for people to update their software to work with the newest versions. With this solution it just works, no hacking anything and OpenELEC is always the latest version of XBMC. Get tired of OpenELEC? Stick a hard drive in it and install windows. The world is your oyster.