words

The XBox 360 can play back xvid/divx + AC-3 (or AAC), and H.264/x264 + AAC. I’ve noticed a distinct difference in audio quality between AC-3 and AAC, at both the default 128kbps and forced 192kbps AAC (--aencoder aac --arate 48 --ab 192).

This is easily demonstrated by listening to the first few seconds of the Fox Searchlight intro, which features kettle drums. The AAC is lacking substantial low-frequency character which is present in the AC-3 version.

This will likely never matter if you watch your movies exclusively on your computer or use only your television’s speakers, but on my NHT 2.5’s, the AC-3 track sounds significantly better.

uShare, a GeeXBox project, is a media server which is compatible with the new XBox 360 “Spring Update” media player capability. Running uShare on a desktop seems straightforward, but getting it working on such a lightweight machine as the TeraStation Live is a bit more difficult, particularly if you’re not experienced at cross-platform compiling.

Bear in mind that the TeraStation Live is ARM-based, unlike the older TeraStations. Luckily, many other embedded network appliances are ARM-based, so many of their compiled binaries can be run without modification.

Before working with uShare, the TeraStation must be hacked for full console access. This is an involved process which is explained here.

Once console access is available, install ipkg and use it to install uShare. The ipkg for the Maxtor Shared Storage II (also ARM-based) should work, so these directions apply. Then uShare can be downloaded and installed by following these instructions.

For me, the startup configuration didn’t work on my TS Live, so I simply created a script called ‘relaunch-ushare’. It kills any running uShare process, then restarts it.

#!/bin/bash
kill -9 `pidof ushare` > /dev/null
/opt/bin/ushare --xbox --cfg=/opt/etc/ushare.conf --verbose -D

The relevant portions of my /opt/etc/ushare.conf file are as follows:

# Port to listen to (default is random from IANA Dynamic Ports range)
USHARE_PORT=49201

# Directories to be shared (space or CSV list).
# Ex: USHARE_DIR=/dir1,/dir2
USHARE_DIR=/mnt/array1/media/video/movies

# Use XboX 360 compatibility mode (yes/no)
ENABLE_XBOX=YES

To administer uShare via its web interface, browse to http://server:portnumber/web/ushare.html. Note that the port number should be whatever appears in /opt/etc/ushare.conf file on USHARE_PORT line.

Trying to get autofs working on Ubuntu, I found that everything worked except that I could never actually get at the folder contents. Instead, I would get an infinitely recursive set of empty folders:

jeff@ubuntu:~$ ls /smb/myserver/
backup/ info/ media/ pictures/ share/
jeff@ubuntu:~$ ls /smb/myserver/media
backup/ info/ media/ pictures/ share/
jeff@ubuntu:~$ ls /smb/myserver/media/media/media/media/media
backup/ info/ media/ pictures/ share/
jeff@ubuntu:~$

In the end, I inadvertently solved the problem by installing samba.

sudo apt-get install smbfs

Otherwise, installation worked just like the Internets said. The most important bit is to configure your /etc/auto* files correctly. Here’s a rundown of mine:

My /etc/auto.master:

#misc /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60
/smb /etc/auto.smb
#/misc /etc/auto.misc
/net /etc/auto.net

Additionally, /etc/auto.smb.yoursevername must contain your username and password, and only be read-write accessible by root:

username=yourusername
password=yourpassword

Resources:
This page was helpful. As an aside, this page shows how to substitute cifs for smbfs.