HP ProLiant N40L, User Manual

Page 1: ...media T H E U L T I M A T E s y s t e m HP ProLiant MicroServer ...

Page 2: ...d runs very quietly It has a gorgeous user interface and is easy enough for even the wife and kids to use Above all it s very affordable and all the software it runs on is 100 free too Your media will also be transformed into a Cable TV experience where you can make up your very own channels Do you like Sci Fi Why not have 5 different Sci Fi channels The possibilities are endless and the channels ...

Page 3: ...dia and material that you acquire Only use series movies and other media that you legally own I do not condone piracy in any way HOW TO VIEW THIS GUIDE You can press Ctrl Lto view this guide in Full Screen Adobe Reader This document and font sizes have been designed primarily for reading on an average sized computer screen although printing is also an option if you prefer DISCLAIMER ICON LEGEND In...

Page 4: ...udoTV Smart Playlists Adding Channels Planning a Channel Setup Planning Network Channels Planning Playlist Channels Planning Directory Channels Organizing Channels The Final Result Putting it all Together PseudoTV Settings Final Touches Advanced Channel Rules Interleaving Bumpers Adverts Tips FAQ Get Sound Working Useful Links Final Words Notes 1 2 3 5 8 11 15 16 19 20 21 23 26 27 31 32 34 35 36 3...

Page 5: ...sor cache HPProLiant N40L Ultra MicroTower AMDTurion II Neo N40L 1 5GHz 1 2 8 GB 1 x 2 GB included 2 x DIMM slots PC3 DDR3 1 x half height half length PCIe x16 Gen 2 1 x half height half length PCIe x1 Gen 2 7x USB 2 0 ports 4 front 2 rear 1 internal 1GbE NC107i 1 Port Gigabit Ethernet 4 LFF SATA 4 x 3 5 inch Drives 1 x 5 25 inch DVD Bluray Drive Integrated 4 port SATARAID 150 Watts 2 MB L2 HP Pro...

Page 6: ...han 30 languages While XBMC functions very well as a standard media player application for your computer it has been designed to be the perfect companion for your HTPC Supporting an almost endless range of remote controls and combined with its beautiful interface and powerful skinning engine XBMC feels very natural to use from the couch and is the ideal solution for your home theater Open Embedded...

Page 7: ...I recommend the Msi N520GT MD1GD3 LP It has a fan but I assure you it is quite silent The card comes with 3 brackets and handles 1080p video flawlessly You might need to switch the bracket to the low profile one that is included in the box ATI cards might have driver problems with OpenELEC HTPC Graphics Card 5300 rpm hard drives are completely fine for use in a HTPC You may get some faster transfe...

Page 8: ... Drive s Network Cable You will need this to pass digital video and sound signals to yourTV Whether it s a pure HDMI cable or a DVI to HDMI cable will be up to your graphics card The Msi N520GThas a DVI and an HDMI Port on the Low Profile bracket Note Make sure your Plasma LCD has an HDMI port You need a keyboard to install OpenELEC on your HTPC You may even use the keyboard from this computer tem...

Page 9: ...le getting the OpenELEC setup to boot up from your flash drive try formatting with EASEUS Partition Master it has many options for formatting Some USB flash drives have been known to give problems a FAT32 file system might also work with newer OpenELEC releases FAT16 WARNING This will wipe all data on that drive Please make sure you have the correct path of the flashdrive and make sure there aren ...

Page 10: ... the BAT file called create_installstick bat and select Run as administrator The OpenELEC USB Installer should start Specify your USB Drive by typing it s drive letter followed by a colon for example F or G F is MYflash drive location please make sure what the path is on your own computer WARNING This will wipe all data on the specified drive Please make sure you have the correct path of the flash...

Page 11: ...uld be ready and we can move on to the HTPC itself Yay Wow that was quick CREATING A USB KEY Create the OpenELEC USB Key CHECK THE USB Let s just have a quick look on the flash drive to see if all the files have been created for us It should be fine though You should have the following files Autorun ini CHANGELOG INSTALL KERNEL KERNEL md5 openelec README RELEASE syslinus cfg SYSTEM and SYSTEM md5 ...

Page 12: ...is warning After the Beta Warning you should see a Menu with 5 options Press Enter on the first option titled Quick install of OpenELEC to begin At this moment in time none of the other options work yet as this is the Beta XBMC will function perfectly once installed though don t worry KEYBOARD NOT WORKING If the keyboard doesn t work you will have to get your hands on another model Try the most ba...

Page 13: ...ELEC XBMC installation will be on this drive and although that only takes around 80 120MB all your media s high quality covers and fanart will be stored in the XBMC database which can take up a lot of space Installing to USB though gives you the ability to format and re install at will while a 250GB hard drive might need some backing up first If you intend to use that 250GB of freespace for some m...

Page 14: ...C should now be ready to go You can have a bit of a break and play around the menu s if you want but if you are new to XBMC try not to fiddle around too much until you get the hang of things After Installing has completed it s a good idea to reboot your HTPC Note that excellent boot time BUT THERE ISN T MUCH GOING ON HERE We don t have any media on there yet so XBMC is gonna be a tad boring Once y...

Page 15: ...ights flashing on your network card once it makes a connection You might also see a network being established on the network icon on your Windows SystemTray Yep It s all automatic Just give it a minute or so to do it s thing after connecting your HTPC to your computer Type OPENELEC into Windows Explorer Once it s connected you should see the default shares If an error message pop s up wait another...

Page 16: ...efault shares and replaced them with the following Using the following configurations as a template allows you to add writable shares of disks and paths under storage Configfiles path storage config available yes browsable yes public yes writable yes root preexec mkdir p storage config Root File System path available yes browsable yes public yes writable yes Disk 1 path storage available yes brows...

Page 17: ...as samba conf in the same folder OPENELEC Configfiles Restart your HTPC Your network icon on the windows system tray should flash again and soon OPENELEC will be available like before What s going on here Saving your changes WARNING Do not remove the ConfigFiles share If you remove it you will probably not have access to this Configuration file again and might need to re install OpenELEC to have a...

Page 18: ...rever There is no recycle bin for shared network drives Please remember this MOUNTING SHARES You can also have your HTPC s hard drives seem like regular hard drives in Windows by right clicking on the Folder and selecting Map network drive You can choose a drive letter and the drive will appear under My Computer just like your other hard drives This is completely optional though you can always jus...

Page 19: ...you theRenamer is included with this PDF The only important thing that each episode must have in the filename though is the season and episode number for example 01x01 01x02 01x03 and so forth You may decide to use the S1E01 S1E02 S1E03 format that s okay too Once your media is sorted into a decent folder structure either copy the media to your HTPC or simply move your hard drives into the HP ProL...

Page 20: ...oesn t have access to the internet you can scrape the covers on a computer with a Windows based XBMC installation and then simply export all the covers fanart and information to the folders When you add the media to XBMC on the HTPC covers inside the folders will be used instead of it trying to download them from the internet WWE AND UFC SPECIAL EVENTS Some things like sporting events cannot be sc...

Page 21: ...17 SCRAPING YOUR MEDIA STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 To begin adding your media and scraping for covers on XBMC go to Videos press Right and select Files Select Add source Add your Movies ROOT path This is the main folder that contains all your Movies ...

Page 22: ...ideo Library and select Export video Library Choose Separate files and select yes to Exporting thumbnails and fanart After pressing OK your media will be added and scraped to your XBMC Library After XBMC is done scraping all your media it s a good idea to export those covers fanart and information to their appropriate items folder Whenever you need to add these movies series to XBMC ever again it ...

Page 23: ...e file to your HTPC before installing if you prefer https github com Jasonra XBMC PseudoTV zipball stable pre In XBMC go to System Add ons Install from zip file After selectingAdd ons you might need to hit backspace to get to the root of Add ons Browse and select the PseudoTV file you have just downloaded and it should install automatically from there What is PseudoTV Downloading PseudoTV Installi...

Page 24: ...ll open almost instantly in future after playlists have been generated Restart Show Previous Show Next Show Stop and Exit PseudoTV Pause Play Rewind Fast Forward Information Enter EPG Exit EPG Increase Volume Decrease Volume Next Channel Previous Channel Normal Operation Up Down Next Previous Channel Left Right Back Forward 30 seconds EPG Operation Left Right Prev Next Show Up Down Next Previous C...

Page 25: ...eate precise channels in PseudoTV that plays exactly what we want There is a huge selection of fields which you can use to define your rules and it s really easy to set up Why are smart playlists so important WHAT FIELDS CAN I USE TO CREATE THESE RULES Genres year studio rating plot keywords MPAA rating director actor path playcount and video resolution are just a few examples HOW TO CREATE A NEW ...

Page 26: ...and the Operator to IS 6 Type in Comedy or click the Browse button and select Comedy 7 Click OK to save this rule 8 Click on Add to add a second rule 9 Set the Field to Year and the Operator to GREATERTHAN 10 Type in 2005 and press OK to save this rule 11 Click on Add to add a third rule 12 Set the Field to Genre and the Operator to IS NOT 13 Type in Animation or click the Browse button and select...

Page 27: ...t of default channels The channels created depends on what media you have and what media you have most of You can see here that I have a lot of ABC NBC FOX and CBS Shows HOW MANY CHANNELS CAN I CREATE In older versions of PseudoTV could create up to 1000 channels however the newer versions are limited to only 200 it should still e enough for most people though When on the PseudoTV Channel Configur...

Page 28: ... control over the content Ratings HD SD Genres Year etc These channels use Folders on your HTPC to define what content should be played This is typically used for content which isn t easily scraped such as music videos IMAX movies fitness videos and UFC Specials NETWORK CHANNELS These channels use your TV show s studio tags to define what content should be played This is the preferred way to add a...

Page 29: ...press Right 2 Open the File Manager 3 Select Add source 4 Select Browse and add your Drive 5 Enter the name of the Path Drive 6 Press OK 7 Continue to add all your drives in a similar fashion ADDING CHANNELS As you can see adding channels is pretty simple really All you need to know are the 3 main types of channels Network Playlist and Directory channels You can go ahead and create some basic chan...

Page 30: ...ortant it enables you to get away from all the settings and buttons and just think about channels itself The best way is to actually plan your setup in Wordpad or if you can Excel Introduction Steps to be followed Planning Network Channels Planning Playlist Channels Planning Directory Channels IMPORTANT TIP Try to emulate real channels out there because real channels have a PNG Logo s that PseudoT...

Page 31: ...n the Good range with 10 shows instead of a few channels with too much content or too many channels with almost no content Only 5 strong channels or over 500 weak channels isn t really going to be very entertaining The problem is how do we do this How do we move shows from our overcrowded CBS channel to other channels Do we manually edit each shows studio tag No way that will take forever There mu...

Page 32: ... where the actual videos were recorded from If you want to make it easier for yourself when deciding which channel what series should go to it s a good idea to create a few small NFO files that will enable the PseudoTV Network Manager to display this info to you Unfortunately it cannot see which logos are encoded into the videos by itself 1 Open a few avi s of a particular show and check for a log...

Page 33: ... exit the PseudoTV Network Manager and fix the tvshow nfo file of these shows before starting it again To do this open the tvshow nfo file with notepad and add a studio None studio tag after the aired aired tags Save the file After fixing those shows Restart the the PseudoTV Network Manager and re add all your series paths As said before try to move shows from heavily populated networks to other c...

Page 34: ...ime TLC ABC Family BBC One BBCTwo BBCThree BBC Four BBC HD Channel 4 Five ITV1 Comedy Central Discovery Channel Discovery Channel HD National Geographic National Geographic HD History History HD Science Channel Cartoon Network Animax Boomerang Nickelodeon Disney Channel Fox Kids MTV The Poker Channel FOX Life Classic Sitcoms Turner ClassicAction Series This is what my list looks like PLANNING NETW...

Page 35: ...dy 2011 and Newer Movies Genre is Comedy 2000 2010 Movies Genre is Comedy 1999 and Older Movies Genre is Animation 2008 and Newer Movies Genre is Animation 2007 and Older Movies Genre is Crime Movies Genre is Horror Movies Genre is Action Movies Genre is Suspense or Thriller Movies Genre is Action or Adventure Movies Genre is War Movies Studio contains Pixar Movies Studio contains Universal Movies...

Page 36: ... Religious Documentaries Documentaries Music Videos Dance Music Videos DJFM Music Videos Pure Dance Music Videos Hip Hop Music Videos Rock Music Videos Old Music Videos Easy Listening Music Videos Fitness Videos Zumba Workouts Body Building Videos UFC MMAFights PC Gaming Shows Reviews Trailers Interleave with SpykeTV Interleave with E Interleave with Discovery Interleave with Discovery HD Interlea...

Page 37: ...MTV because they are all subfolders of MTV but are also interleaved with other channels as well This enables MTV to play multiple genre s while not playing too extreme Dance or Metal music in it The extreme Dance and Metal music is stored in Energy and Kerrang folders Basically the music contained in the Energy folder are played on the Energy Channel as well as the MTV Dance Channel The music cont...

Page 38: ... another makes for boring viewing If you have 2 comedy movie channels 1 comedy Network and 1 comedy Directory channel put either the Network or Directory channel between one of the movie channels Do this for all genres by splitting up movie channels and adding other types of channels in between of the same genre Also keep in mind the content that will be played on channels Do not put Comedy Centra...

Page 39: ...T I M A T E s y s t e m 35 THE FINAL RESULT Once you have organized all your network playlists and directory channels you should end up with something like this The following Excel file should be included with this PDF ...

Page 40: ...For XBMC on Windows copy them to C Users Your Username AppData Roaming XBMC userdata playlists video For XBMC on OpenELEC copy them to OPENELEC Disk 1 xbmc userdata playlists video ADDING THE CHANNELS Go through each channel in PseudoTV and specify the Network Playlist or Directory for each channel Page 23 24 covers adding channels if you are a little rusty on the subject Make sure to tick Force c...

Page 41: ...f minutes Force channel reset on next start Causes PseudoTV to rebuild your channel setup on the next start of PseudoTV Time between channel resets Causes PseudoTV to rebuild your channels periodically Default channel times at startup Defines whether channels should resume from last position or function in RealTime Background Updating Specifies if all channels are loaded on startup slow or in the ...

Page 42: ...nels Always show channel logo Adds a PNG logo on the bottom right of each channel Channel logo Folder Allows you to specify a folder containing all the PNG logos Clock Display Choose between 12 Hour 24 Hour Show Coming Up Next box Shows a small box with the name of the next show before the current one ends Hide very short videos Enables you to hide adverts bumpers from appearing in the the EPG and...

Page 43: ...fy what channel you are on when watching PseudoTV Make sure the PNG Logo is renamed to the name of the Channel You may also add a channel rule to rename the channel itself which is helpful when adding directory channels CHANNEL LOGOS Over 100 of these PNG Logos should be included with this Guide There is also a Channel Logo pack available with over 5000 PNG Logo s ...

Page 44: ...es second nature 1 Highlight an open rule slot This will be rule 1 if you have no rules yet 2 Press Enter and the Rule 1 Configuration window opens 3 Press Down to go to the rule selection area 4 Use Left and Right to select a rule 5 Configure the rule parameters if required 6 Press Rule 1 Configuration to exit the rule Escape Back button will also work Introduction Channel Rules Menu Navigation C...

Page 45: ...e a channel that only has the bumpers and use this rule on your main channel to interleave those bumpers in between your shows This rule is also useful forAdverts More on Interleaving in the next chapter Only play unwatched Items If the channel contents change a lot there s no reason to watch the same shows over and over Hide things you ve watched from this channel with ease Only play watched Item...

Page 46: ...the bumper after every 1 2 or 3 shows at random Note If you have multiple interleave rules they will be followed systematically from top to bottom If you want it to be Episode Advert Bumper Episode Advert Bumper then you will need two rules Rule 1 Advert Min 1 Max 1 Starting 1 Rule 2 Bumper Min 2 Max 2 Starting 1 Channel Bumpers are the videos that play between shows on some channels that contain ...

Page 47: ...ONS You made it to the end of the guide All steps have been completed and you should now be ready to rock Go ahead and give yourself a well deserved pat on the back I hope you enjoy your new system Don t forget to visit the XBMC OpenELEC and PseudoTV forums ...

Page 48: ...s of a specific genre split that channel it up into 2 or more channels that each play a different era of the genre Spend time on working on your Channel Setup meaning the Wordpad Excel file Don t just limit yourself to my Channel Setup if you have a lot of DIY videos make a DIY Channel The sky is the limit and everybody s system will be different Add a rule to hide the PNG logo on channels that ha...

Page 49: ...k Manager to run what now A Try running it in XP Compatibility mode that worked for me Q Why won t my OpenELEC USB Key not boot A Try formatting it to different file systems or try a different size brand flash drive Q Which XBMC Skin do you normally use A ReFocus Q Can I install Sickbeard or CouchPotato on my OpenELEC machine A Yes Q How do I actually use my iPhone to control XBMC as a remote A Se...

Page 50: ...d now list all your available audio devices List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices card 0 NVidia HDA Nvidia device 3 HDMI 0 HDMI 0 Subdevices 1 1 Subdevice 0 subdevice 0 card 0 NVidia HDA Nvidia device 7 HDMI 0 HDMI 0 Subdevices 0 1 Subdevice 0 subdevice 0 card 0 NVidia HDA Nvidia device 8 HDMI 0 HDMI 0 Subdevices 1 1 Subdevice 0 subdevice 0 card 0 NVidia HDA Nvidia device 9 HDMI 0 HDMI 0 Subdevices 1 ...

Page 51: ...croServer Msi N520GT MD1GD3 LP Graphics Card Logitech Harmony Remotes XBMC XBMC Downloads XBMC Forum XBMC Skins XBMC Add ons PseudoTV Thread OpenELEC PseudoTV Blog OpenELEC Downloads PseudoTV Download OpenELEC Forum EASEUS Partition Master Video DownloadHelper for Firefox ...

Page 52: ...ated to you yet but hopefully this guide brings you many new users who might actually have something they can send your way Send this man a beer or two he deserves it for all his hard work Not forgetting the XBMC Developers here you guys truly are the people that are making this all happen Congrats on the 11 0 Eden release Also special thanks to the guys working on OpenELEC for making it easy for ...

Page 53: ...media T H E U L T I M A T E s y s t e m 49 NOTES ...

Page 54: ...media T H E U L T I M A T E s y s t e m ...