And in tandem with the rest of my crap I've been rigging up some 7.1 surround sound in my new place. After a couple weeks we *finally* got it all hooked up. Its a sweet rig, ran all the wires through the walls and everything. Minor complications, just lots of them. So let me talk shop for a second -
#Speakers
Luckily I had most of the speakers I needed already, I only needed to buy a couple. What we're featuring here is nht almost all the way around. My front l/r are athena towers (cause i still like to have a "stereo"). Everything else - nht. First the center channel, i don't remember the model (lol, I suck i know) but its cool. The rears are what really shine - the "surround" rears (i call them side rears) are NHT SB-1 speakers. The "Back Rears" are NHT Absolute Zeros.
Now check this - an interesting thing I learned while doing all of this. NHT Absolute zero's... check your serial number BEFORE you buy mounts. As awesome as it is, sometime mid production NHT changed the side of the mounting threads in the speakers. Basically they made them bigger, this requires that you use a heavier duty mount - these mounts are usually rated for speakers above 20lbs. Now the Abs zero is only 8 pounds, why did they do this? I don't have the slightest idea, but it was a huge pain in the butt. I actually bought 4 mounts and put them up only to find later that they wouldn't fit two of my speakers (which they would have fit, had i bought them earlier). Ugh - gets better too - we ran all the cables thinking we could mount stuff in dryall - these heavy duty mounts are also heavier - oops. We used some special anchors and got around the problem, but what a fucking pain.
#Wiring
We only ran cables in the walls for the rears (4 wires in total). In wall wiring has special requirements (like it doesn't heat up and set your house on fire) - so you need to get specially rated wire. I went with some 14 gauge (gauge is important when it comes to distance/power).
How about another lesson - before you do stuff. Check your walls for cross beams ahead of time. My house, as interesting as this might sound, has multiple cross beams all of which are several 2x4's thick. Doing the wiring near the receiver was a bitch. Basically what we did was cut out two large squares in the wall and cut out some of the cross beams to make room for the wire. God. If you don't have cross beams this whole process goes a lot faster.
#Receiver
Well - if we're going full 7.1 then we might as well have a receiver that can keep up. Since I also had a number of hdmi devices it was time for something with bigger nuts. I went with the denon 2809. It has a 4-1 hdmi muxer, upscaling, the works. Very exciting day when i picked that fucker up.
#Testing the experience
I gotta say - its fucking bad ass. Want to know? Try a number of blurays - its an experience, that's for sure. My first test was with the wall-e bluray (collectors ed since i work at pixar and i twas cheaper for me). Wall-e features dts-hd master audio 5.1 - this is a lossless audio format. Now, after some research there are a number of ways to create "lossless" content or I guess I should say formats. Wall-e uses a very high quality one. Its pretty surreal how good the thing sounds.
Now further testing is needed - why? I wanna know what this puppy can do. I found a cool website, bluray-stats.com or something like that. You can search by the features of a particular bluray, includin 7.1 lossless 24bit audio - if you want to get down to that level. Lionsgate films puts out the most blurays with killer audio tracks, the sad part is most of them are movies I really don't want to see. Oh well, I'll get them anyhow.
And for the truly hardcore audiophile there are bluray music discs that feature 96khz sampling in addition to all that goodies. I've heard 96khz tracks before (dvd audio) and its crisp. I'm exciting to see what a 7.1 audio track sounds like at 96khz. Too bad for me (being a rock fan anyhow) that all the music available is classical. I bet its tits tho - I'm sure i'll mail order one before long.
I think the first bluray music purchase will be NIN's ghosts I-IV since i'm a big fan and its an excuse to get some bluray audio. As for movies - looks like its going to be something like hellboy 2 (why? cause its got a killer audio track and comic movies are usually tolerable).
Anyhow, as usual, i'll keep you posted.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
follow up
Alright kiddies - i've had a few weeks with the setup and there've been a few snags, luckily though they are easy enough to work around.
So what's the snag? Basically I found I was having major connectivity issues on my airport express in my living room. Examining the logs and all that it appeared to be related to signal strength - it was sitting around 20%. Sure, it worked but only sometimes, it was really frustrating. So why does this happen? I'll explain.
Although 5ghz N wifi networks have a few advantages (speed, less interference) - they also have a sore disadvantage - range. Now, sure, 5ghz doesn't travel as far but it physical objects affect it WAY more than they affect the 2.4ghz band. In an open room you can expect about 50ft range. You throw in a wall and some objects and that number reduces significantly.
Now my setup my airport extreme base station is in my office, then there's a kitchen and all sorts of crap in it followed by another wall. Clearly this was my problem. The solution? A repeater. And I'm lazy so I just bought another airport express and plopped in the kitchen. The result was about a 15-20% increase in signal to the aiport express in my livingroom (granted this is perceived signal). Since I've made this change nothing but stability. In fact it improved my peformance as well - the system is much punchier now (music/movies start quicker, lots of motion doesn't not induce stuttering).
It gets more interesting, and there are still things to try. Apple wifi products support two different "repeater" type mechanisms. One is apple proprietary - that's the one I'm using. The alternative is called "WDS" or "Wireless Distribution System". I haven't tried it out yet, but I've heard there are performance differences between that and the apple proprietary one. However, lucky for me, I've got enough performance and no connectivity problems - I won't be messing with it, but if someone does it'd be interesting to compare performance of the two mechanisms in a controlled environment. Btw - I've heard that airport expresses don't work well at repeaters - i've had no problems yet (3 weeks of use so far).
As for the network - that's that. I'm going to get into another project soon installing dd-wrt on a 20 dollar airlink router. The goal is to turn it into a fully functional and awesome access point for my b/g devices. Right now its running the original firmware which SUCKS, works tho. Big problems here are if you are using things like bonjour on your network (i.e. hooking the printer into your base station). I tried setting up a portmap for bonjour - no good. I've heard on the grapevine that doing this type of thing requires costly hardware/software - so screw that. Anyhow, that will get its only blog.
What else is coming up - oh, so I'm working on something I'm calling "the pipeline". This will be a linux setup that automatically downloads, repairs, and converts video - all in linux (cause i'm so sick of windows right now I could scream). Maybe not fully automatic, I'd still have to establish the downloads but i'm thinking I'll use inotify (I should say, pynotify ;) ) as the trigger mechanism. Should be cool, stay tuned.
I will also post my mediatomb config in its entirity one of these days. Really tho there's not much I can post here that isn't on 100 other websites, I just like the idea of being a complete source.
So what's the snag? Basically I found I was having major connectivity issues on my airport express in my living room. Examining the logs and all that it appeared to be related to signal strength - it was sitting around 20%. Sure, it worked but only sometimes, it was really frustrating. So why does this happen? I'll explain.
Although 5ghz N wifi networks have a few advantages (speed, less interference) - they also have a sore disadvantage - range. Now, sure, 5ghz doesn't travel as far but it physical objects affect it WAY more than they affect the 2.4ghz band. In an open room you can expect about 50ft range. You throw in a wall and some objects and that number reduces significantly.
Now my setup my airport extreme base station is in my office, then there's a kitchen and all sorts of crap in it followed by another wall. Clearly this was my problem. The solution? A repeater. And I'm lazy so I just bought another airport express and plopped in the kitchen. The result was about a 15-20% increase in signal to the aiport express in my livingroom (granted this is perceived signal). Since I've made this change nothing but stability. In fact it improved my peformance as well - the system is much punchier now (music/movies start quicker, lots of motion doesn't not induce stuttering).
It gets more interesting, and there are still things to try. Apple wifi products support two different "repeater" type mechanisms. One is apple proprietary - that's the one I'm using. The alternative is called "WDS" or "Wireless Distribution System". I haven't tried it out yet, but I've heard there are performance differences between that and the apple proprietary one. However, lucky for me, I've got enough performance and no connectivity problems - I won't be messing with it, but if someone does it'd be interesting to compare performance of the two mechanisms in a controlled environment. Btw - I've heard that airport expresses don't work well at repeaters - i've had no problems yet (3 weeks of use so far).
As for the network - that's that. I'm going to get into another project soon installing dd-wrt on a 20 dollar airlink router. The goal is to turn it into a fully functional and awesome access point for my b/g devices. Right now its running the original firmware which SUCKS, works tho. Big problems here are if you are using things like bonjour on your network (i.e. hooking the printer into your base station). I tried setting up a portmap for bonjour - no good. I've heard on the grapevine that doing this type of thing requires costly hardware/software - so screw that. Anyhow, that will get its only blog.
What else is coming up - oh, so I'm working on something I'm calling "the pipeline". This will be a linux setup that automatically downloads, repairs, and converts video - all in linux (cause i'm so sick of windows right now I could scream). Maybe not fully automatic, I'd still have to establish the downloads but i'm thinking I'll use inotify (I should say, pynotify ;) ) as the trigger mechanism. Should be cool, stay tuned.
I will also post my mediatomb config in its entirity one of these days. Really tho there's not much I can post here that isn't on 100 other websites, I just like the idea of being a complete source.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
wireless streaming hd from a nas - ps3 dns-323 and mediatomb
Alright, I know I had an interesting time getting together all the facts I would need to do this project. Basically I got the idea that I wanted to stream hd movies from the nas (network attached storage) in my office to my home theatre via my ps3 in the living room. I had toyed with some of this stuff before but I had some more resources at my disposal and a bit more motivation (as this is my first project in my *new* house.) This is long and I wanted to offer some discussion of my choices so I'll chop this thing into sections. I guess if I stay up too late I'll just make this a multi-part blog. No worries... I won't leave ya hanging.
## It all boils down to... the *wireless* network.
Anyhow, long story short - I needed some serious bandwidth if I was going to stream hd movies. In the past I've played with mediatomb and the ps3 over a wireless g network. Things worked... kinda. It didn't really stick at the time, but it helped me to understand the reality of wireless networking. Even crappy videos stutterred - I definitely knew what I was in for.
Without a solid network I've got no chance with this project. I did tons of research and decided to go with wireless draft n. I did plenty of research on home routers; lots of crap if you ask me. Some were, ok, I guess, but nothing really stood out as the product of the year. At the end fo the day I went with the apple airport extreme base station. It had plenty of modes and other goodies - I figured i'd have a good shot at accomplishing my mission if I could muck with the settings and it seemed to really stack up to most every other router (plus I get a discount on apple shit working at pixar).
"But wait, back up a second... did you say wireless n? You know the ps3 has wireless g right?"
Well, yes, I do know that. I guess I should mention what we'll put on the other end. Its part of the motivator for the airport extreme base station and it gets us around our 54mbps limitation (although g networks rarely operate anywhere close to 54mbps irl - the best I'd ever gotten was maybe 12-16mbps). Ok so, to get past our issue of wireless g only on the ps3 we'll... go wired... kind of. Apple makes a cool little device called the airport express. It plugs into your wall and into your wireless network. It offers all the modes and goodies of the base station plus... you can use it as a wireless-to-wired bridge.
Pop that bad boy on the network and run a cable to the ps3. If you want to hook up multiple devices to your network just go buy a 4 port 10/100 switch. They are around 40 bucks and we'll do the trick. In my case I've also got my 360 hooked up and its way better than the 360's wireless adaptor.
Now instead of 11mbps or 54mbps we're running anywhere from 120mbps to 300mbps. I found that the only way to really get fast speeds was to configure the aebs (airport extreme base station) to use a 5ghz "n-only" network. There are a couple reasons for this, and they are damn good ones:
1) In the case of the aebs: 5ghz mode also includes channel bonding, a feature that combines channels of a band and ultimately gets you higher throughput.
2) The ps3 uses bluetooth; bluetooth uses the 2.4ghz band - yes, the same band as wireless b, g, and in some cases, n. Bluetooth can be fairly devestating to wifi, it doesn't follow the same rules and tends to hop all over the band. This means that bluetooth data "collides" with your wifi data and retranmission occurs, slowing down your network significantly. I found many interest posts on apple forums of people fighting with their bluetooth mice on their laptops.
Now there are couple bits that come with 5ghz that aren't so hot. First 5ghz also means lower range. If your office/server room is far from your home theatre you might need a repeater somewhere. Second, if you make your core router run 5ghz n-only mode, a good portion of your devices could be offline for good. If you are like me, you might have a wii or a gf with a laptop. Just go get another router or access point. Basically you establish a second, slower network, but that also isolates that traffic such that its not bringing down your n network (you could try to run n in 2.4 mode, just make sure you have no b or g devices online at the time - wifi slows everyone down for the little guy).
With that being said - test your network if you can. If you check stats on all the various devices the numbers should look reasonable. IF they aren't, see if you might have something interfering with the signal, maybe a 5ghz cordless phone. Anyhow, that's that for getting the wireless network going.
## Storing and serving the goodness - the dns-323
I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great if there was a little low power device that could keep my data safe and serve it up to whatever device I wanted to in my house. Well, there are a few. After talking with some friends, I went with the dns-323. Mostly because it runs linux. Its a little arm box, not too powerful, but there's a port of mediatomb (upnp server) to it (via a little download called ffp).
Its also got a gigabit port - with normal frames that will operate maximum around 400-500mbps. Plenty of room for hd video and our 300mbps wireless-n network. The extra bandwidth comes in handy if you have any other devices on the wired network, in my case I do a lot with my work station and videos from my camcorder and the quick transfers make life better. In terms of raw performance numbers, gigabit to my desktop (through the aebs) I was able to transfer about 12.3MB/s with a raid 1 configuration (or ~100mbps, we probably only really need a steady 3 or 4MB/s for 720p, we're probably doin alright). If you felt you really wanted more, convert your dns-323 to raid-0, let me know the numbers.
I should mention too that I'm running two 7200 rpm sata disks in it at 1TB each. I'm using raid 1 as I'm trying to protect photos and all that. This particular box doesn't have a hardware raid controller, looks to me like it uses linux's softraid (mtd). Now that little arm proc isn't to punchy, I'm not sure what the overhead there is, but it *should* be enough.
In terms of serving we'll go with mediatomb. There are a number of other upnp servers out there, all of them are fairly early in their development and many also have a lot of promise. For the dns-323 specifically there are mediatomb and twonky (which is not free). In addition there are things like fuppes, which if you can get to compile yer in good shape. I found mediatomb precompiled in the ffp package (which ultimately is some linux goodies in a tarball that installs itself for the most part, all you have to do is reboot the nas). And since mediatomb was free... it seemed a good choice.
I had also played with mediatomb before. The developer is fairly active in the project, I liked that. When i was playing with my g network I used it to stream mp3's to my ps3. The ps3's software needed to mature quite a bit at that point but mediatomb worked pretty well. It didn't take too much to configure it and came with a nice sql driven web interface. With mediatomb on my nas I just needed to modify a few lines. I'll just save me the trouble of re-typing it and post it tomorrow. Guess you'll just have to wait ;) One thing to note about the config file is that we are specifically choosing to add lines for vob support - those are going to be the containers of choice for wifi hd streaming (why? the forums say they work). If you don't have any vobs, its cool - there are ways to convert things. I'll post that shit in another blog too (mkv2vob!).
Mediatomb will scan your nas and populate its db with all your media. You can also manually add and subtract things via the interface. If you install ffp on the nas then mediatomb will start when the thing boots. You'll need to restart mediatomb and rescan the disks once you update your config file.
Btw, if you don't need tons of instruction to do this shit, really setting all that crap up and powering up mediatomb should get you damn close to where you want to go. Mediatomb broadcasts itself so the ps3 usually just detects it. If it doesn't you can manually scan. At that point its all about providing media and testing various things. All the std def dvix xvid stuff works alright, for hd I've can stream 720p videos no problem (vod, x264). Unfortunately I haven't tested ac-3 yet because my stereo isn't hooked up, I'll post an update when I have some more data.
I think i'll post a less discussion more howto later too if anyone wants it. This was really to talk about the parts that were necessary to pull this type of thing off. I'll summarize, then its off to bed:
WiFi - 5ghz N
* Apple airport extreme base station
* Apple airport express
* 10/100 4-port switch
* cat 5e cables for all that shit
* extra access point for wireless b/g devices
NAS
* d-link dns-323
* 2 7200 rpm 1TB disks
* ffp
Software:
* mediatomb (via ffp or whereever)
* mkv2vob (on your workstation!!!)
Ok that's it - howto coming another day! See yas.
## It all boils down to... the *wireless* network.
Anyhow, long story short - I needed some serious bandwidth if I was going to stream hd movies. In the past I've played with mediatomb and the ps3 over a wireless g network. Things worked... kinda. It didn't really stick at the time, but it helped me to understand the reality of wireless networking. Even crappy videos stutterred - I definitely knew what I was in for.
Without a solid network I've got no chance with this project. I did tons of research and decided to go with wireless draft n. I did plenty of research on home routers; lots of crap if you ask me. Some were, ok, I guess, but nothing really stood out as the product of the year. At the end fo the day I went with the apple airport extreme base station. It had plenty of modes and other goodies - I figured i'd have a good shot at accomplishing my mission if I could muck with the settings and it seemed to really stack up to most every other router (plus I get a discount on apple shit working at pixar).
"But wait, back up a second... did you say wireless n? You know the ps3 has wireless g right?"
Well, yes, I do know that. I guess I should mention what we'll put on the other end. Its part of the motivator for the airport extreme base station and it gets us around our 54mbps limitation (although g networks rarely operate anywhere close to 54mbps irl - the best I'd ever gotten was maybe 12-16mbps). Ok so, to get past our issue of wireless g only on the ps3 we'll... go wired... kind of. Apple makes a cool little device called the airport express. It plugs into your wall and into your wireless network. It offers all the modes and goodies of the base station plus... you can use it as a wireless-to-wired bridge.
Pop that bad boy on the network and run a cable to the ps3. If you want to hook up multiple devices to your network just go buy a 4 port 10/100 switch. They are around 40 bucks and we'll do the trick. In my case I've also got my 360 hooked up and its way better than the 360's wireless adaptor.
Now instead of 11mbps or 54mbps we're running anywhere from 120mbps to 300mbps. I found that the only way to really get fast speeds was to configure the aebs (airport extreme base station) to use a 5ghz "n-only" network. There are a couple reasons for this, and they are damn good ones:
1) In the case of the aebs: 5ghz mode also includes channel bonding, a feature that combines channels of a band and ultimately gets you higher throughput.
2) The ps3 uses bluetooth; bluetooth uses the 2.4ghz band - yes, the same band as wireless b, g, and in some cases, n. Bluetooth can be fairly devestating to wifi, it doesn't follow the same rules and tends to hop all over the band. This means that bluetooth data "collides" with your wifi data and retranmission occurs, slowing down your network significantly. I found many interest posts on apple forums of people fighting with their bluetooth mice on their laptops.
Now there are couple bits that come with 5ghz that aren't so hot. First 5ghz also means lower range. If your office/server room is far from your home theatre you might need a repeater somewhere. Second, if you make your core router run 5ghz n-only mode, a good portion of your devices could be offline for good. If you are like me, you might have a wii or a gf with a laptop. Just go get another router or access point. Basically you establish a second, slower network, but that also isolates that traffic such that its not bringing down your n network (you could try to run n in 2.4 mode, just make sure you have no b or g devices online at the time - wifi slows everyone down for the little guy).
With that being said - test your network if you can. If you check stats on all the various devices the numbers should look reasonable. IF they aren't, see if you might have something interfering with the signal, maybe a 5ghz cordless phone. Anyhow, that's that for getting the wireless network going.
## Storing and serving the goodness - the dns-323
I thought to myself, wouldn't it be great if there was a little low power device that could keep my data safe and serve it up to whatever device I wanted to in my house. Well, there are a few. After talking with some friends, I went with the dns-323. Mostly because it runs linux. Its a little arm box, not too powerful, but there's a port of mediatomb (upnp server) to it (via a little download called ffp).
Its also got a gigabit port - with normal frames that will operate maximum around 400-500mbps. Plenty of room for hd video and our 300mbps wireless-n network. The extra bandwidth comes in handy if you have any other devices on the wired network, in my case I do a lot with my work station and videos from my camcorder and the quick transfers make life better. In terms of raw performance numbers, gigabit to my desktop (through the aebs) I was able to transfer about 12.3MB/s with a raid 1 configuration (or ~100mbps, we probably only really need a steady 3 or 4MB/s for 720p, we're probably doin alright). If you felt you really wanted more, convert your dns-323 to raid-0, let me know the numbers.
I should mention too that I'm running two 7200 rpm sata disks in it at 1TB each. I'm using raid 1 as I'm trying to protect photos and all that. This particular box doesn't have a hardware raid controller, looks to me like it uses linux's softraid (mtd). Now that little arm proc isn't to punchy, I'm not sure what the overhead there is, but it *should* be enough.
In terms of serving we'll go with mediatomb. There are a number of other upnp servers out there, all of them are fairly early in their development and many also have a lot of promise. For the dns-323 specifically there are mediatomb and twonky (which is not free). In addition there are things like fuppes, which if you can get to compile yer in good shape. I found mediatomb precompiled in the ffp package (which ultimately is some linux goodies in a tarball that installs itself for the most part, all you have to do is reboot the nas). And since mediatomb was free... it seemed a good choice.
I had also played with mediatomb before. The developer is fairly active in the project, I liked that. When i was playing with my g network I used it to stream mp3's to my ps3. The ps3's software needed to mature quite a bit at that point but mediatomb worked pretty well. It didn't take too much to configure it and came with a nice sql driven web interface. With mediatomb on my nas I just needed to modify a few lines. I'll just save me the trouble of re-typing it and post it tomorrow. Guess you'll just have to wait ;) One thing to note about the config file is that we are specifically choosing to add lines for vob support - those are going to be the containers of choice for wifi hd streaming (why? the forums say they work). If you don't have any vobs, its cool - there are ways to convert things. I'll post that shit in another blog too (mkv2vob!).
Mediatomb will scan your nas and populate its db with all your media. You can also manually add and subtract things via the interface. If you install ffp on the nas then mediatomb will start when the thing boots. You'll need to restart mediatomb and rescan the disks once you update your config file.
Btw, if you don't need tons of instruction to do this shit, really setting all that crap up and powering up mediatomb should get you damn close to where you want to go. Mediatomb broadcasts itself so the ps3 usually just detects it. If it doesn't you can manually scan. At that point its all about providing media and testing various things. All the std def dvix xvid stuff works alright, for hd I've can stream 720p videos no problem (vod, x264). Unfortunately I haven't tested ac-3 yet because my stereo isn't hooked up, I'll post an update when I have some more data.
I think i'll post a less discussion more howto later too if anyone wants it. This was really to talk about the parts that were necessary to pull this type of thing off. I'll summarize, then its off to bed:
WiFi - 5ghz N
* Apple airport extreme base station
* Apple airport express
* 10/100 4-port switch
* cat 5e cables for all that shit
* extra access point for wireless b/g devices
NAS
* d-link dns-323
* 2 7200 rpm 1TB disks
* ffp
Software:
* mediatomb (via ffp or whereever)
* mkv2vob (on your workstation!!!)
Ok that's it - howto coming another day! See yas.
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