Sporkers Helping Sporkers

Sporkers Helping Sporkers Well, why not? this is a community, after all. http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,9#msg-9 Sun, 19 May 2013 19:18:08 -0400 Phorum 5.2.16 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42266#msg-42266 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42266#msg-42266
New business: Anyone have advice on how to sign in to a Google Group w/o using a gmail/google account? Google documentation says, sure, you can do that -- and then doesn't say how.

ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Wed, 15 May 2013 16:41:44 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42186#msg-42186 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42186#msg-42186 porruka Spork Central Thu, 09 May 2013 18:44:39 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42179#msg-42179 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42179#msg-42179
Long-shot ask: Anyone in the SF bay area have a spare laptop they can loan/lease out for a month? It has to have wifi, clean browser, and can support running Silverback (http://silverbackapp.com). I don't think my janky laptop will be workable for usability testing.

ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Thu, 09 May 2013 16:01:40 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42166#msg-42166 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42166#msg-42166
iTunes, Amazon.com, and Netflix movies generally work fine now that the AppleTV and Roku are connected via Cat6 to an Airport Extreme that is in turn connected to a TrendNet Powerline Ethernet-Over-AC connector. Its mate is connected to a Time Capsule which is connected to my Fios Router.

I get 56Mbps down on DSL Reports tests over the air, maybe 57 straight through Ethernet.

But Youtube videos stall on our iPads, iPhones, and Macs. So do videos from um AEBN (which I highly recommend … completely 100% NSFW). Funny thing is that the latter work fine in Parallels. Maybe it's just wonky implementations? The latter videos seem much better over Ethernet too.

Or maybe there is something in the Airports that doesn't play nice with streaming video? Anybody notice this?

Maybe there's a QoS setting?]]> bahamut Spork Central Wed, 08 May 2013 18:39:47 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42009#msg-42009 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,42009#msg-42009
Update: craziness! Placed down my glasses on the laptop palmrests, and the cursor went all over the place! Same with a single hair from my head.

ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:53:25 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41976#msg-41976 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41976#msg-41976 dharlow Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:20:26 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41974#msg-41974 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41974#msg-41974 http://www.amazon.com/elago-PALMREST-13-inch-Trackpad-Protector/dp/B007PJEANW/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:53:55 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41973#msg-41973 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41973#msg-41973

Quote
ddt
So what was the cure?

ddt

They were (and still are) an alternative rock band from England.]]> Cloudscout Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 01:06:58 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41972#msg-41972 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41972#msg-41972 John Willoughby Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:57:10 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41971#msg-41971 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41971#msg-41971
ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:52:52 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41969#msg-41969 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41969#msg-41969 John Willoughby Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:45:16 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41968#msg-41968 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41968#msg-41968

Quote
ddt
Anyone ever see this on their MBP? I think somehow I've worn down the palm rest areas or something -- if I drag the heels of my hands around outside of the trackpad area, the cursor moves!

ddt

That's certainly interesting and since the trackpads are conductive, implies a short somewhere. That or you have the prototype "no trackpad" trackpad MBP.]]> porruka Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:38:39 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41967#msg-41967 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41967#msg-41967
ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:35:28 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41859#msg-41859 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41859#msg-41859 I keep getting errors on setup.
It's surprising how many sites GACK at super-strong passwords (and usernames created from super strong passwords). Though I have no reason to believe that's the reason it's gacking. Might be the various levels of proxy/ip obfuscation I am attempting to use being flagged. :)]]> El Jeffe Spork Central Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:13:42 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41857#msg-41857 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41857#msg-41857 El Jeffe Spork Central Sat, 20 Apr 2013 14:11:35 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41839#msg-41839 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41839#msg-41839

Quote
Tony Leggett
You do realise that the WDTV has a little hardware doohickey that transcodes all those different codecs on-the-fly as well? In practical terms, what on earth is the difference between third party media server software using quicktime to convert the file in real time or it happening in real time in a little box?

There's a difference between transcoding and decoding. Transcoding takes the original file, decompresses it, then recompresses it into a format that the AppleTV can play. This is like making a copy of a copy and reduces quality.

The WD doesn't have to go through that because it already supports all of the containers and codecs natively.]]> Cloudscout Spork Central Sat, 20 Apr 2013 10:35:47 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41834#msg-41834 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41834#msg-41834 (google glass)
he he]]> El Jeffe Spork Central Sat, 20 Apr 2013 08:51:50 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41833#msg-41833 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41833#msg-41833

Quote

That's the point. I don't want to transcode.

You do realise that the WDTV has a little hardware doohickey that transcodes all those different codecs on-the-fly as well? In practical terms, what on earth is the difference between third party media server software using quicktime to convert the file in real time or it happening in real time in a little box?

Either way, you press a button and watch a film.

Quote

I also want to be able to watch DVDs with their menus and special features.

That is a fair enough point. I could never get the WDTV to do this reliably however. Apple does need to lift its game about in-movie menu navigation, subtitle support and so on.]]> Tony Leggett Spork Central Sat, 20 Apr 2013 03:25:26 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41776#msg-41776 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41776#msg-41776 El Jeffe Spork Central Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:17:20 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41751#msg-41751 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41751#msg-41751
I also want to be able to watch DVDs with their menus and special features. In fact, that's the majority of what I watch (aside from Netflix).]]> Cloudscout Spork Central Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:23:01 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41745#msg-41745 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41745#msg-41745
Not sure what slingbox is, and I can't comment much about ISO (airmedia supports it but not the DVD chapters), but as for containers & codecs:

http://www.airmediacenter.com/

http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html

There's also a free vlc streaming app for iphone/ipad (and I assume android) and half a dozen other apps that do on-the-fly conversion.]]> Tony Leggett Spork Central Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:58:30 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41743#msg-41743 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41743#msg-41743 Cloudscout Spork Central Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:40:57 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41741#msg-41741 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41741#msg-41741

Quote

The Problem:

When a Seagate BlackArmor NAS is present on your network, the WD TV Live SMP and WD TV Live Hub will not play video files reliably.

...

Quote

The Workaround:

Buy an AppleTV and be done with it?]]> Tony Leggett Spork Central Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:38:48 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41736#msg-41736 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41736#msg-41736
I would say that you should take it to the apple store. you may have a a bit something that got wedged in there. also try and take off as many gestures as possible. With the defualt gestures on my MBP, my hands are alwayays accidentally moving something or other.]]> Mokers Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:03:07 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41735#msg-41735 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41735#msg-41735

Quote
ddt
So, has anyone seen this kind of behavior on their MBPs?

It's not limited to any app, but most annoying in my text editor: the cursor flies around the screen, words get highlighted and looked up, in TextEdit suddenly the zoom changes (as if key combo of shift-cmd-, were pressed). It's not the mouse, as I see it with the mouse unplugged. It's as though my palms being on the palm rest area were affecting the trackpad. Oh, sometimes the desktop changes to the dashboard, or the notification center pops in.

ddt

I have had somewhat similar experiences with my trackpad, where my hands did not touch the pad but still evoked responses from the MBP. Try disabling all gestures in the Trackpad system preferences and see if the symptoms go away. Just a thought.]]> John Willoughby Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:00:52 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41732#msg-41732 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41732#msg-41732
ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:30:41 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41730#msg-41730 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41730#msg-41730

DDT, Combine this with your other recent oddness and I'd be doing some malware scanning.

Secondarily, these (mostly)l could be errant gestures; do you have an external track pad, bt keyboard, etc that might be sending off spurious events?]]> porruka Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:26:52 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41728#msg-41728 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41728#msg-41728
The Problem:

When a Seagate BlackArmor NAS is present on your network, the WD TV Live SMP and WD TV Live Hub will not play video files reliably.

Detailed Symptoms:

When you attempt to play an .MKV, .MP4, .AVI, .MPG or .FLV file, you will see the spinning orange arrow/circle but the video will never start. Sometimes you can get the device to play a video file once after a reboot but it will refuse to play any additional video files after that.

Important Notes:

- This issue does NOT seem to affect playback of .ISO files. Even when the device refuses to play other video files, it will play .ISO files just fine.
- The issue is independent of where the video files are stored. Even if you are trying to play the video files from the local hard drive in a WD TV Live Hub or from a USB attached drive on a WD TV Live SMP, the symptoms persist.
- If you shut down the Seagate BlackArmor NAS or simply disconnect its ethernet cable while you boot up your WD TV Live device, the symptoms will appear to be resolved for up to 30 minutes. Even if you plug the NAS back in after the WD has booted up, things will seem to be fine for a while before the symptoms suddenly reappear.

That last point makes troubleshooting extremely frustrating because a reliable test of any attempted fix/workaround takes close to an hour to properly validate.

The Workaround:

In searching the web, I found several reports of similar symptoms (including this thread) without anyone reporting a confirmed fix or workaround. I believe I have finally worked out a solution that should work for most people. The only people that it will not work for are those who are using Dynamic DNS services with their NAS.

1) This workaround requires you to enable SSH access to your Seagate BlackArmor NAS. Hajo Noerenberg has written a tutorial to accomplish this here:

http://www.noerenberg.de/hajo/pub/seagate-blackarmor-nas.txt

2) Once you are able to SSH into your NAS, you need to edit the "/etc/init.d/rcS" script and comment out the line that calls the "/usr/bin/nic_ip_mon.sh" script.

3) After you've made the change, reboot the NAS and then reboot your WD TV Live devices.

That's it. That should fix the problem. It may also break your dynamic DNS setup... assuming it even worked properly to begin with. I have validated this with two devices (a WD TV Live SMP and a WD TV Live Hub) streaming file after file for two straight hours without any symptoms reappearing. I then rebooted the WD TV Live Hub again and continued streaming for another 30+ minutes without any issues.

Analysis:

So what was happening in the first place? I can only speculate because I've wasted a ridiculous amount of time just getting this far. A complete answer would require me enabling ssh on the WD TV Live and my motivation is running low now.

What I do know is that the /usr/bin/nic_ip_mon.sh script is supposed to check your BlackArmor's internal IP and your network's external IP address periodically in order to update the dynamic DNS information for your NAS. To do so, it uses a test utility from the MiniUPnP Project called "upnpc". This tool is supposed to identify a UPnP Internet Gateway Device on your network and query it for redirection information including the external IP. It queries this information frequently and is supposed to update dynamic DNS when it changes but the script is horribly written and doesn't accomplish what it is meant to do unless you have a network configured in a very specific way. Now, I don't know if the symptoms on the WD would disappear if your network configuration happened to match what Seagate's amateur shell scripters had in mind when they wrote this garbage, but that's irrelevant.

Seagate can't take all of the blame here either. I have no idea what is happening on the WD side of the fence but they screwed something up so badly that an unauthenticated network peer can cause a denial of service. If anybody else wants to take this information to Seagate and/or Western Digital to try and get them to fix their junk, please do. At any rate, things are working for me right now and hopefully this will help the rest of you in a similar situation.]]> Cloudscout Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:14:42 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41727#msg-41727 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41727#msg-41727
It's not limited to any app, but most annoying in my text editor: the cursor flies around the screen, words get highlighted and looked up, in TextEdit suddenly the zoom changes (as if key combo of shift-cmd-, were pressed). It's not the mouse, as I see it with the mouse unplugged. It's as though my palms being on the palm rest area were affecting the trackpad. Oh, sometimes the desktop changes to the dashboard, or the notification center pops in.

ddt]]> ddt Spork Central Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:11:17 -0400 http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41683#msg-41683 Re: Sporkers Helping Sporkers http://www.macedition.com/forums/read.php?4,9,41683#msg-41683
Based on all the feedback here, I'm thinking more and more that MLs will be the way to go. I'd be willing to bet I can find uses for many of the other pieces of MLs as well.

Setting something like this up has been on my "wish list" for a few years now and that length of time effectively confirms that if I have to "learn it for real", I'll never do it. Not whining about it, just a fact, it's not *that* important to me to take away from everything else I have going on.

And... given that ML/MLs can legally run in a VM, I can still encapsulate that part of the puzzle on the target machine.]]> porruka Spork Central Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:39:19 -0400