Roku Box?

[vailpass]

I'd like for my boys to be able to get the free Amazon movies and tv shows but their TVs don't support the Amazon feed. The Roku 2XD is listed as a compatible device. Anyone here have any experience with a Roku box? If so, what do you use it for? I'm trying to figure out if there is $80 worth of functionality in these things.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

interesting. does it encrypt the traffic to avoid throttling from the ISP? Does it require a MU account?

Are you familiar with SickBeard? Also might be something up your alley.

Why would your ISP throttle traffic due to its source? There's no need to encrypt the traffic. ISPs are not, and don't want to be, the internet police. They only give users issues when they're presented with an order from the MPAA or such. Other than that, they're not giving many ****s about what you download, let alone stream. And 3rd party sites like the RIAA and MPAA can't monitor what you stream like they can monitor torrent downloads. They have no access to that info, only the ISP does.

The XBMC Icefilms plugin doesn't require a MU account. But there are advantages to having one. The free account doesn't allow you to pause the stream more than 5 minutes or so, and you can't fast forward or rewind the stream. And you're only allowed to stream one MU source per IP, so if you have 2 devices, only one could stream at a time without a paid account. With a paid account, you can pause, FF and rewind, and have multiple download streams, along with getting a faster download.

Sickbeard is the shit. As is CouchPotato, which is a similar app I use for movies. I have both installed. But honestly, with the availability of unlimited online streaming content through ATV, I use it less and less all the time, and just stream everything.

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Why would your ISP throttle traffic due to its source? There's no need to encrypt the traffic. ISPs are not, and don't want to be, the internet police. They only give users issues when they're presented with an order from the MPAA or such. Other than that, they're not giving many ****s about what you download, let alone stream. And 3rd party sites like the RIAA and MPAA can't monitor what you stream like they can monitor torrent downloads. They have no access to that info, only the ISP does.

You've got a much less cynical view of ISPs than I do. Look at the difference in transfer rates between Bittorrent, general web traffic and usenet. You can even see differences between websites. YouTube is typically slower to load a 30 second clip than some other random streaming site is because they throttle the hell out of traffic to YouTube. Usenet is consistently the most efficient with my ISP.

They throttle because they can't deliver the bandwidth that they actually promise.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

You've got a much less cynical view of ISPs than I do. Look at the difference in transfer rates between Bittorrent, general web traffic and usenet. You can even see differences between websites. YouTube is typically slower to load a 30 second clip than some other random streaming site is because they throttle the hell out of traffic to YouTube. Usenet is consistently the most efficient with my ISP.

They throttle because they can't deliver the bandwidth that they actually promise.

No offense, but that's completely absurd.

You see differences in websites because the information is coming from different locations, possibly in different countries, on networks with different speeds. Youtube is slow because it's being used by 3 bazillion users at any given moment. Your throughput to Youtube has absolutely nothing to do with your ISP. They have neither the time, nor the manpower to monitor their users' activity and throttle specific websites they don't like. Haven't you ever accessed Youtube from a really high speed enterprise network and compared that to your personal ISP? It's exactly the same.

You're oversimplifying the way bandwidth works. It doesn't work the same for all http transfer. Usenet is of course faster because you're downloading files from server farms that have insane amounts of bandwidth on the server end, and the system is very efficient. With Usenet, you're only limited by the throughput your ISP can provide. You can't possibly expect for Youtube to have the same kind of throughput as downloading a Usenet file because they are very very different systems that transfer data in completely different ways. When connecting to Youtube, your ISP is providing much more throughput than Youtube is giving. Essentially, you're waiting on Youtube to provide the content. Your ISP isn't throttling it.

And an ISP's "promise" of bandwidth is a tricky thing. Mainly because they have no control over the speed of whatever you may be downloading from. They can guarantee that if you go to the bandwidth test page link on their website, you will get the speeds that they advertised. But that's because they know exactly what you're accessing at the other end during the "test". In reality, your throughput speed is dependent on both your ISP and the server you're accessing at the other end.

[DaveNull]

This article from the Times seems to back my perspective.

In the United States, throttling was detected in 23 percent of tests on telecom and cable-television broadband networks, less than the global average of 32 percent. The U.S. operators with higher levels of detected throttling included Insight Communications, a cable-television operator in New York, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio, where throttling was detected in 38 percent of tests; and Clearwire Communications, where throttling was detected in 35 percent of the tests.

Throttling was detected in 18 percent of tests on Verizon’s landline network and in 30 percent of tests run on AT&T WorldNet Services, the company’s consumer broadband network. Throttling on AT&T’s business network, SBIS-AS AT&T Internet Service, was 18 percent.

[Skyy God]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

It's not really Icefilms, it's Megauplaod. They've been having lots of issues lately. Working great for me now.

You can check the last few pages of this thread for updates on issues with Icefilms. It will always tell you what's up.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=87703

Just updated to 1.0.21, working great.

Is the OS 4.4.4 update worthwhile?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

This article from the Times seems to back my perspective.

That's talking about overall throttling due to excessive traffic. That has nothing at all to do with ISPs detecting traffic source and throttling specific websites. Which doesn't happen. And encryption would be irrelevant in that case.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Pittsie

Just updated to 1.0.21, working great.

Is the OS 4.4.4 update worthwhile?

I upgraded to 4.4.4. Just because. But it depends on what version you're running now. If you're still on the older 4.3 ROM, it will give you some cool extra stuff like Airplay, MLB, NBA, NHL, Vimeo and others by default on the normal Apple frontrow list outside of XBMC. But it doesn't really make XBMC work any better.

I would recommend updating XBMC to the Eden build though. It works really well.

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

That's talking about overall throttling due to excessive traffic. That has nothing at all to do with ISPs detecting traffic source and throttling specific websites. Which doesn't happen. And encryption would be irrelevant in that case.

Glasnost mimics data transfers using the Bit Torrent file-sharing protocol, and then measures whether operators are slowing uploads and downloads.

Probably not getting into that much of a pissing match over, but with what can be done with QoS on a standard router and deep packet analysis I prefer to keep as much of my traffic encrypted as possible. We just hold different perspectives. You're a much more trusting user who's happy to put their faith into the goodwill of telecoms and and anti-malware providers.

I find telecoms to be distasteful organizations who put good people in prison for years and are hostile to their customers and anti-malware vendors to be snake oil salesmen who convince people to pay for an ineffectual level of protection while devaluing the technology they use and giving them a false sense of security.

Clearly we're two geeks who are perfectly comfortable with our respective world views.

[ILChief]

OK I got XBMC on my apple TV. Can I use it to watch justin.tv videos?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

Probably not getting into that much of a pissing match over, but with what can be done with QoS on a standard router and deep packet analysis I prefer to keep as much of my traffic encrypted as possible. We just hold different perspectives. You're a much more trusting user who's happy to put their faith into the goodwill of telecoms and and anti-malware providers.

I find telecoms to be distasteful organizations who put good people in prison for years and are hostile to their customers and anti-malware vendors to be snake oil salesmen who convince people to pay for an ineffectual level of protection while devaluing the technology they use and giving them a false sense of security.

Clearly we're two geeks who are perfectly comfortable with our respective world views.

"Telecoms", as you say, don't put people in prison. Take a look into how many times an actual ISP has filed charges against one of their users. I'm sure you know a lot about deep packet analysis, but I assure you that your ISP isn't doing it. I have no idea what that has to do with anti-malware vendors though. Anti-malware protection is very real and is an important factor in keeping a PC free of unwanted exploits. A real-time anti-malware scanner like Malwarebytes Pro is one of the most effective applications in keeping a Windows PC free of nasties.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by ILChief

OK I got XBMC on my apple TV. Can I use it to watch justin.tv videos?

Sure you can. Justin.tv is kind of tricky though. If you have the Eden version of XBMC, download the 0.2.2 version. If you're pre-EDEN, download the 0.1.6 version. Download the plugin from here:

http://code.google.com/p/divingmules...downloads/list

Copy that to your atv using an FTP program like Cyberduck. Then install it with the Install From Zip function in System\Ad-ons\Install from zip.

Once you do that, you might have to update your librtmp file.

If the plugin doesn't work after install, download the file from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?q8lswzg307ucfud

Then copy that to private/var/stash/applications/xbmc.frappliance/frameworks/ on the atv.

Let me know if you need more specific instructions on how to do that.

[ILChief]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Sure you can. Justin.tv is kind of tricky though. If you have the Eden version of XBMC, download the 0.2.2 version. If you're pre-EDEN, download the 0.1.6 version. Download the plugin from here:

http://code.google.com/p/divingmules...downloads/list

Copy that to your atv using an FTP program like Cyberduck. Then install it with the Install From Zip function in System\Ad-ons\Install from zip.

Once you do that, you might have to update your librtmp file.

If the plugin doesn't work after install, download the file from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?q8lswzg307ucfud

Then copy that to private/var/stash/applications/xbmc.frappliance/frameworks/ on the atv.

Let me know if you need more specific instructions on how to do that.

cool thanks. Is there a flash enabled web browser for XBMC?

[Fish]

He he... Nope. There isn't a flash supported browser. Firecore actually created support for Flash in their Couchsurfer browser, but said that the Flash performance was so bad they removed it. Couchsurfer does HTML5 video though.

Here's a good thread with all the best video plugins:

http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?f=154

My favorites are Icefilms, Hulu, Sportsdevil, Justin.TV, Navi-X, Free Cable, Pandora.

[DaveNull]

Didn't the Wii support Flash in its web browser?

[Huffmeister]

This thread got me looking into devices like the Roku, WD Live, Apple TV, etc. I came across the Logitech Revue, and it sounds awesome. It has all of the streaming that the other devices have, but it also lets you connect your cable box's hdmi output to it so that you can watch your cable TV through the device as well.

Alas, Logitech has discontinued it and Best Buy no longer sells it (even though they have a huge demo display of it).

Are there any other media streaming boxes out there that let you integrate your cable TV into it? Time Warner's cable box guide interface is god awful.