Apple Time Capsule - streaming to XBMC?

[kroneko]

I'm trying to use the Time Capsule as an NAS to have the xbox pull files off of, but I can't seem to get it working correctly. I looked on Apple's site and it appears the share to windows users is based on "Bonjour" (DAAP?) .

Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what to do? Thanks!

[Gamester17]

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=25097
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=198
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4959

Do not buy stuff that features proprietary technology!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software

...in this area Apple is just as bad as Microsoft, and sometimes even worse!

[dailydisco]

Originally Posted by kroneko

I'm trying to use the Time Capsule as an NAS to have the xbox pull files off of, but I can't seem to get it working correctly. I looked on Apple's site and it appears the share to windows users is based on "Bonjour" (DAAP?) .

Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what to do? Thanks!

Kroneko,

have you had any luck with this? Bonjour is just a discovery protocol used by Apple that makes remote disks/printers autodiscoverable. It is a proprietary-ish protocol that has been ported to Linux according to the wiki. I have found some indication that the sharing protocols supported are AFP and SMB. Since SMB is supported, you should be able to access it... of course I don't have one so I can't answer for you. I do have a mac and a pc and have been thinking of change my router to a time capsule or Airport Extreme (since I have some usb drives already)... the ability (or lack thereof) to connect to XBMC is a deal breaker for me since I have a cheap NAS that works but is limited and I'd like expansion possibilities.

I hope someone out there can help you... if you hear anything or fiddle with it until it works, let us know. If there is a place to setup the network domain in the TC, then make sure both names are the same in the XBMC and TC...then it may show-up when you browse. Or, you could just try to look in the airport utility and see if there is an ip address. Apple's manual is too dumbed down to help, though there is probably a straight forward way. My guess is that if someone got it working with Air Disk, then the TC will work too.

I know people hate proprietary stuff... but a lot of the things in our PCs are proprietary, even if you are running Linux... isn't the Bios and graphics chip proprietary? I understand the distaste for the stuff, but I want to try to help people make things talk to each other... TC just seems to come with some extra features to help people out... the big downfall seems to be that they neglect the poweruser who want to use the core feature and skip bonjour.

[spiff]

by helping those poor souls who buys this crap, you help apple and say it is okay to release hw/sw using proprietary crap. support open standards by saying NO. we as consumers need to tell them that these nasty attempts at controlling the tecnology WE buy is NOT okay and that we want to use our hw as WE see fit.

[Geeba]

I probably hate Apple more than M$ and Sony combined for their proprietary rubbish... sorry Mac owners..... if they use a protocol even named "Bonjour" its gonna be crap! I thought they would of learnt their lesson with AppleTalk after the quiet move to Ethernet...

Have you tried over at Hackingtosh?

http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/indexpage.php

[d4rk]

Nothing wrong with Bonjour, it's just Apple's implementation of Zeroconf (which they did design). Apple released Zeroconf as an open standard. Implementations for which are popular in Windows and Linux (Avahi). Of course proprietary protocols can be implemented on top of Zeroconf and that has nothing to do with the underlying protocol. Zeroconf is simply a service discovery protocol. Many Linux programs use it (as Avahi) including Amarok, KDE, Gnome, VLC and others.

[dailydisco]

Originally Posted by d4rk

Nothing wrong with Bonjour, it's just Apple's implementation of Zeroconf (which they did design). Apple released Zeroconf as an open standard. Implementations for which are popular in Windows and Linux (Avahi). Of course proprietary protocols can be implemented on top of Zeroconf and that has nothing to do with the underlying protocol. Zeroconf is simply a service discovery protocol. Many Linux programs use it (as Avahi) including Amarok, KDE, Gnome, VLC and others.

Thanks for the voice of reason d4rk. I am only sorry that the original poster even mentioned bonjour and got so many people ruffled. I have both a Mac and PC... I appreciate that some things from Apple are crappy, but I also appreciate that they have switched to Intel thereby giving people a choice of running OSX, Windows, or Linux... if you like a piece of hardware for whatever reason, then it is nice to have the freedom to pay too much for it and run other OS's on it, no?

Compared to the Lenovo (used to be IBM) Thinkpad that I have at my job, the Macbook is friggin' awesome... basically the same CPU power... upgraded the RAM on the mac with non-Apple ram (apple's is a joke...so expensive it makes me laugh)... but the battery in the macbook seems to just last forever.

Anyway, I can't really name a piece of hardware that I own that doesn't have something proprietary in it... certainly the Xbox... certainly the router that came from Verizon FioS (even more annoying since it is the ONLY router I can use since they pipe TV information through it)...

So to get back to the topic... does anyone have any constructive advice for how this guy can use the piece of hardware he already purchased with his XBMC?

It is probably good that nobody stopped everyone from buying the proprietary Xbox piece of crap with its fire-hazard power cord, USB ports that aren't like any usb device, CDROM that can't play CDRs (if you are one of the unlucky ones), and very closed source SDK!

Maybe the time capsule will someday prove to be some amazingly hackable piece of hardware... you really never know.

[spiff]

mine was a general rant. and remember, if ppl played along with the proprietariness of the xbox, is is just a useless piece of crap (see the 360 to get what i mean)

[regdunlop]

don't know if you figured it out, but i am reading all my videos and music off of time capsule through samba shares.

i only use the time capsule password for file sharing access, not user accounts or disk password. the counter-intuitive part is that the samba share username is actually the time capsule disk workgroup name.

on the time capsule disk...
turn file sharing on.
set the airport guest access to readonly (or read/write if you'd like).
set a workgroup name.
update the time capsule settings.

on the xbox, create your shares:
smb://[workgroupName]:[time capsule disk password]@[time capsule ip address]/[time capsule disk name]/


examples
-----------
time capsule: annihilatrix
disk: killface
file sharing: on (use time capsule password)
airport guest access: read only
workgroup: friskydingo
wins server: <leave blank>

file paths:
music: annihilatrix/killface/audio/library
vids: annihilatrix/killface/video

xbox:
video share: smb://friskydingo:<password>@10.0.1.1/killface/video
music share: smb://friskydingo:<password>@10.0.1.1/killface/music/library

hope this helps.

[dailydisco]

I also went out and bought a Time Capsule. I didn't bother installing the Bonjour stuff... didn't really care about sharing my printer. I setup the system using user accounts... I made one called XBOX and gave it a password. In XBMC, I then just typed in the IP address of the Time Capsule and set the user name and password. It then allowed me to browse.

I only ran into one problem... after playing 5 or 6 songs, I received an error in XBMC where it said that the playlist was aborted due to too many failures (I am paraphrasing). This kept happening and the first thing I thought was maybe it was overheating (the TC) or something... I rebooted and tried again...same result. When I streamed from my Macbook running XBMC, there were no issues. I am going to hose my XBMX on the Xbox and start fresh to see if that makes a difference.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it is the Actiontech router from Verizon or something... I never lose connectivity when using the wireless on the Actiontech (am using that for "G" and the TC for "N") but I have been having a lot of issues with the ethernet setup when I was using the Xbox and the old Vantec NAS plugged in... sometimes I would turn on the Xbox and it would say "Network connection not available" in the RSS feed and it would not find the NAS. The only cure would be to reboot the Actiontech and then sequentially turn the NAS back on, wait, then turn the Xbox on. I would ditch the Actiontech if it wasn't for the need to use it for the onscreen guide and VOD... one BIG drawback of FiOS if you ask me.

Anyway... based on all of this, I have to say that the Time Capsule seems to be a nice router/drive. If you hate Apple you can always pretend it didn't come from them. Put a sticker on the top or something. I haven't seen any other manufacturers with a combo "n" router/print server/internal NAS/external network drive box. The bonjour stuff is just an added feature should you choose to use it.

I did notice that when I played songs the whole thing seemed very responsive... the Vantec definitely has a speed issue... good enough, but not really expandable in any way other than to just replace the drive.