Media Browser Add-in

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Scallica

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#81

Post by Scallica » Fri Oct 11, 2013 1:59 pm

bobbob wrote:videos play back in the web browser for me. using chrome
^^I updated to the latest build and was prompted to install a Google WebM plugin for IE. The videos play now!
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newfiend

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#82

Post by newfiend » Fri Oct 11, 2013 5:58 pm

I haven't even tried MB3 through the browser yet.

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#83

Post by bobbob » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:25 am

@milli

for a client the pi can handle sd fine, but yes HD really needs transcoding to 720p by a more powerful server. i do this at present through raspbmc
actually the pi can also work as a server for dvblink apparently, they released the software for it last month. i haven't tried it and it won't work for me as its USB tuners only but if you are dvb-t it looks like it might do the job

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#84

Post by milli260876 » Mon Oct 21, 2013 5:59 pm

@bob pi worth a buy then??
Lee

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#85

Post by bobbob » Tue Oct 22, 2013 1:34 pm

as far as playing the media definitely. its just a bit slow navigating the menus and getting the media to start playing. too slow for me for serious consideration. i'm trying to install onto a usb drive rather than the sd card as that permits overclocking which will hopefully give a performance boost but for some reason its not working. only been trying a couple of days

for me the pi is a nice little tinkering tool. i've got xbmc running on them as clients, as you may have seen from another thread i've used an xbmc addin to get a phillips ambilight type effect with 100 leds behind my tv. i can get spotify, iplayer all running natively etc. what i really like is you can just swap out the sd card and try something completely different. for roughly £50 you can get pi, case, wifi dongle, sd card, 16gb usb drive, remote.

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#86

Post by christoph86 » Fri Nov 01, 2013 4:03 am

MB3 is great! Just installed it the other day and I'm loving it. Got it to work on my Android based smartphone and can stream my library (non DRM) to my phone. Love the ability to access the server anywhere through a browser as well. Added a bunch of images for a few items that don't have metadata from a different computer than my HTPC. Still playing around with it, but great work guys. I will become a supporter soon. Can't wait for MB Theater!

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#87

Post by werds » Sun Nov 10, 2013 12:41 am

christoph86 wrote:MB3 is great! Just installed it the other day and I'm loving it. Got it to work on my Android based smartphone and can stream my library (non DRM) to my phone. Love the ability to access the server anywhere through a browser as well. Added a bunch of images for a few items that don't have metadata from a different computer than my HTPC. Still playing around with it, but great work guys. I will become a supporter soon. Can't wait for MB Theater!
Been reading all this and seeing all the love so decided to try mb3 by installing server on the PC that has all the movies on it and the MB classic on a PC upstairs (aka not the main HTPC) this way I could get all the kinks out of the way before moving on to the family use...

So far I cannot get a single movie to play just gives me errors and tells me to use UNC... and those errors are usually MINUTES after play was hit if they even choose to pop up. Cant speak about speed or anything else though for the moment =/

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newfiend

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#88

Post by newfiend » Mon Nov 11, 2013 9:42 pm

werds wrote:
christoph86 wrote:MB3 is great! Just installed it the other day and I'm loving it. Got it to work on my Android based smartphone and can stream my library (non DRM) to my phone. Love the ability to access the server anywhere through a browser as well. Added a bunch of images for a few items that don't have metadata from a different computer than my HTPC. Still playing around with it, but great work guys. I will become a supporter soon. Can't wait for MB Theater!
Been reading all this and seeing all the love so decided to try mb3 by installing server on the PC that has all the movies on it and the MB classic on a PC upstairs (aka not the main HTPC) this way I could get all the kinks out of the way before moving on to the family use...

So far I cannot get a single movie to play just gives me errors and tells me to use UNC... and those errors are usually MINUTES after play was hit if they even choose to pop up. Cant speak about speed or anything else though for the moment =/
I had this same issue, Trying to access the media on my HTPC from my Desktop PC with WMC. The new MB3 uses UNC paths instead. You can read more on it here: http://mediabrowser3.com/community/inde ... er-shares/ It doesn't take long to figure out and once it's setup it works VERY well. I made this a little simpler by creating a HomeGroup and sharing the folders to my media on the network then opened MB3 Server and set the paths to each folder as UNC paths and boom.. everything played. If you get a chance check out the Crystal and ROC themes for MB3 as well.. they look incredible.
HTH,
newfiend~

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#89

Post by christoph86 » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:08 pm

Yep, you need to do it UNC. Follow that guide, it walks you through it pretty well. I have never done UNC and got it to work. Lots of good help and info on their forum as well. I also have the Homegroup and the share the folders I want. So right now I have a lot of pictures stored on one computer and movies on another and I can access them anywhere, whether on a browser at home or somewhere else outside of my network, on my android phone anywhere via their app, or another computer running classic, or my echo. There is a lot you can do with it and a lot of customizing options.

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#90

Post by newfiend » Thu Nov 14, 2013 4:52 am

Looks like MB3 Server and Client software is finally out of Public BETA and has an official release. The site got a bit of a redesign as well and looks much better. It keeps getting better and better with constant updates and improvements. So far I have been very pleased with the performance of it even in BETA. Check out the new site here : http://www.mediabrowser3.com/
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#91

Post by werds » Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:36 pm

christoph86 wrote:Yep, you need to do it UNC. Follow that guide, it walks you through it pretty well. I have never done UNC and got it to work. Lots of good help and info on their forum as well. I also have the Homegroup and the share the folders I want. So right now I have a lot of pictures stored on one computer and movies on another and I can access them anywhere, whether on a browser at home or somewhere else outside of my network, on my android phone anywhere via their app, or another computer running classic, or my echo. There is a lot you can do with it and a lot of customizing options.
Blah! I'll have to wait until there is time available and this is up on my priority list as I currently do now use UNC with the MB2 setup, and the last time I attempted using UNC in the MB2 setup it failed to work properly consistently. (And I already have all my folders on the HTPC shared in the Homegroup :( )

Oh well at least it sounds like it might be a simple fix as long as I have time. Thankfully MB2 still is functioning for the time.

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#92

Post by newfiend » Fri Nov 15, 2013 11:01 pm

werds wrote:
christoph86 wrote:Yep, you need to do it UNC. Follow that guide, it walks you through it pretty well. I have never done UNC and got it to work. Lots of good help and info on their forum as well. I also have the Homegroup and the share the folders I want. So right now I have a lot of pictures stored on one computer and movies on another and I can access them anywhere, whether on a browser at home or somewhere else outside of my network, on my android phone anywhere via their app, or another computer running classic, or my echo. There is a lot you can do with it and a lot of customizing options.
Blah! I'll have to wait until there is time available and this is up on my priority list as I currently do now use UNC with the MB2 setup, and the last time I attempted using UNC in the MB2 setup it failed to work properly consistently. (And I already have all my folders on the HTPC shared in the Homegroup :( )

Oh well at least it sounds like it might be a simple fix as long as I have time. Thankfully MB2 still is functioning for the time.
If you have a homegroup setup already this is pretty easy to fix.
Open Media Browser 3 (Server) from the Desktop
On the left select Default Media Library
In the right Payne Add a Media Collection (for this example I will add a Folder named DVD Movies located on my E: Drive of my HTPC)
When you point the Server to the location of the file "DVD Movies" on Drive E: of the HTPC, instead of selecting the Drive E: and pointing the location to DVD Movies Folder, Click on Network, Select the PC on the Network that has the DVD Folder on it (mine is HTPC) then select the DVD Movies folder. Then click OK.
This will set a UNC Network Path to the folder (\\HTPC-PC\DVD Movies) and your media should play over the network just fine.

You will want to do this for each location (folder) you add to MediaBrowser 3.

NOTE: If you previously set the location by selecting the Actual drive and folder (such as E:\DVD Movies) for the location of the media you will need to remove that first and then re-add the folder by clicking Network, then the PC the media is located on, then the folder it's located in, thus creating the UNC path. Your media will then work on both the HTPC and any network device that has MediaBrowser 3 installed on it. (Phones, Tablets, Other PC's on your network etc.)

It's really not as hard as the tutorial above makes it look. Creating the HomeGroup sets up sharing between PC's on your network pretty good and just setting the UNC path as described above (actually really easy) makes it all work. Don't give up on it that easy there are many benefits to MB 3 over MB 2, it's a worthwhile update!
Hope this Helps,
newfiend~

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#93

Post by werds » Sat Nov 16, 2013 3:33 am

Hot damn, I completely had forgotten that I could point directly to the shares by scrolling down to Network... cool thanks that definitely is easier (havent done it yet but know what you speak of just from memory!)

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#94

Post by newfiend » Sun Nov 17, 2013 1:00 am

werds wrote:Hot damn, I completely had forgotten that I could point directly to the shares by scrolling down to Network... cool thanks that definitely is easier (havent done it yet but know what you speak of just from memory!)
no problem.. MB3 is set up much differently than the previous version. It's a bit more complicated to set up at this time, but they have really expanded the Add-in to encompass a broader range of devices then the old HTPC we are all pretty fond of still. It's nice because now I can stream .MKV to my phone with the Windows Phone App since it encodes on the fly. I am very excited to try MB Theater once it's released.. I noticed that it works MUCH better on my XBOX extender as well. :)
newfiend~

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#95

Post by werds » Sun Nov 17, 2013 4:00 am

newfiend wrote:
werds wrote:Hot damn, I completely had forgotten that I could point directly to the shares by scrolling down to Network... cool thanks that definitely is easier (havent done it yet but know what you speak of just from memory!)
no problem.. MB3 is set up much differently than the previous version. It's a bit more complicated to set up at this time, but they have really expanded the Add-in to encompass a broader range of devices then the old HTPC we are all pretty fond of still. It's nice because now I can stream .MKV to my phone with the Windows Phone App since it encodes on the fly. I am very excited to try MB Theater once it's released.. I noticed that it works MUCH better on my XBOX extender as well. :)
newfiend~
Now I see on the page it claims that it allows access to your library via a web browser. Would this work for accessing the libraries from on the road using a web browser? How so? Curious as to how that works... as for testing it out before putting it on my main htpc... that is still a rough road, even after changing the server install to point to UNC's the computer I was using classic on is having fits, apparently it doesnt want to consistently allow me onto the shares, sometimes it does other times it doesnt (even though it does recognize the share is there it just loves saying that I have no permissions... what has me up at this moment of the night is that the server is on, it's working fine or so it seems... from the PC with classic on it I can browse the shared folders with aplomb... but the classic configurator insists that the media browser server is not running

=/

I am sure at some point soon this will work I am just wondering what goofishness is causing issue now... because once I get it fixed we will be gravy... since I plan to move my htpc from an i3 530 over to a 6 core Xeon L5639 (the easier to transcode my dearie!)

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#96

Post by christoph86 » Sun Nov 17, 2013 2:50 pm

[quote="werds"][ Now I see on the page it claims that it allows access to your library via a web browser. Would this work for accessing the libraries from on the road using a web browser? How so? Curious as to how that works...quote]

You have to set up port forwarding in your router to allow for access outside of your network. So to access it on a browser somewhere else you have to set up the following in your router:

Q: How can I enable remote access to Media Browser 3 outside of my LAN ?

A: You need to port forward the two MB3 server ports (default 8096 & 8945) on your router to the PC running MB3 server. You may also need to open the ports in your firewall. Once that is done, you should be able to access the MB3 Server via the URL: http://WAN_IP_ADDRESS:PORT/mediabrowser

...replacing WAN_IP_ADDRESS with your router's external IP address (as assigned by your ISP). Optionally, you may wish to sign-up to a free DDNS service if you do not have a static ip through your ISP, or if you wish to have a easier-to-remember address.

So I set up my router using the IP address of my computer that runs the server. Make sure your configurator is set up to connect to the computer running the server.

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#97

Post by werds » Sun Nov 17, 2013 4:06 pm

christoph86 wrote:
werds wrote:[ Now I see on the page it claims that it allows access to your library via a web browser. Would this work for accessing the libraries from on the road using a web browser? How so? Curious as to how that works...quote]

You have to set up port forwarding in your router to allow for access outside of your network. So to access it on a browser somewhere else you have to set up the following in your router:

Q: How can I enable remote access to Media Browser 3 outside of my LAN ?

A: You need to port forward the two MB3 server ports (default 8096 & 8945) on your router to the PC running MB3 server. You may also need to open the ports in your firewall. Once that is done, you should be able to access the MB3 Server via the URL: http://WAN_IP_ADDRESS:PORT/mediabrowser

...replacing WAN_IP_ADDRESS with your router's external IP address (as assigned by your ISP). Optionally, you may wish to sign-up to a free DDNS service if you do not have a static ip through your ISP, or if you wish to have a easier-to-remember address.

So I set up my router using the IP address of my computer that runs the server. Make sure your configurator is set up to connect to the computer running the server.
Awesome thanks!

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#98

Post by newfiend » Sun Nov 17, 2013 5:59 pm

werds wrote:
newfiend wrote:
werds wrote:Hot damn, I completely had forgotten that I could point directly to the shares by scrolling down to Network... cool thanks that definitely is easier (havent done it yet but know what you speak of just from memory!)
no problem.. MB3 is set up much differently than the previous version. It's a bit more complicated to set up at this time, but they have really expanded the Add-in to encompass a broader range of devices then the old HTPC we are all pretty fond of still. It's nice because now I can stream .MKV to my phone with the Windows Phone App since it encodes on the fly. I am very excited to try MB Theater once it's released.. I noticed that it works MUCH better on my XBOX extender as well. :)
newfiend~
apparently it doesnt want to consistently allow me onto the shares, sometimes it does other times it doesnt (even though it does recognize the share is there it just loves saying that I have no permissions...
Check your homegroup on Both PC's (Server and Client) are Documents set up to be shared between PC's in the Homegroup settings? If not enabling that may set the permission levels to allow you to play the content. If not you may have to allow them manually for each shared folder/user you want MB3 to access. I didn't have to do that though, I set up my HomeGroup and shared all my folders including documents (which I believe is unchecked by default) to all my network and didn't have to configure sharing permissions at all.
If you have to manually set permissions then read this thread.. I know it's a PITA to do it this way but once it's set.. it' done. http://mediabrowser3.com/community/inde ... er-shares/
newfiend~

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#99

Post by christoph86 » Thu Nov 21, 2013 3:10 pm

Having any luck werds? I didn't quite explain the outside network connection correctly. For access outside of network away from home you need to use your wan external ip address. For access in network you use the computer ip that is running running the server. The android app is now available on google play for a small fee if you use android. For that app I have two connections. If I'm on WiFi I use my computer server ip, if I'm away on 4g network I use the external ip. Same thing for a browser.

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#100

Post by IownFIVEechos » Thu Nov 21, 2013 3:16 pm

Can someone confirm that this MB3 works on echos and Xbox's? Thanks. I did not want to read 5 pages do excuse me if someone answered. I know someone said it worked on the older extenders etc...

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