# Experienced Popcorn Hour users' advice needed, please...



## dh2005

Hello folks,

I was going to tackle this matter within my PS3 thread, but I couldn't be sure that PCH people would read it.

I bought an A-110 a couple of weeks ago and, although I continue to be excited by its potential, I'm becoming frustrated.

For a start, it looks like the external (independently powered) USB hard drives I own aren't compatible with the A-110. When I connect them, the PCH 'thinks about it', but the drives don't appear on the GUI and, after something like two minutes, I get an error message to the effect of "request cannot be processed". Does this sound to you, the people who *know *about the A-110, like a typical drive compatibility error? If not, could someone help me to get these drives working? I'd rather not throw away 2TB of storage for no reason...!

Secondly, does anyone have any idea why I'd be getting audio dropout when playing back DVD rips (in video_ts folder form) from an _internal _hard drive? I mean, the transfer rate required to playback DVD video and audio is hardly intimidating. I would expect this playback to be perfect.

Thirdly, is it just me, or does an internal hard drive get _ridiculously _hot? Like, touch-it-and-it'll-burn-your-finger hot. Surely, this must cause some performance problems?

Thanks for reading. I hope you can help.


DH.


EDIT: ... and Merry Christmas!


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## Hakka

There shouldn't be any compatibility issues with a USB drive, the PCH will just see a USB drive, not like connecting an internal drive. I've tried 5 different externals and never had any issues, including seagate, wds, samsungs, SATA and IDE.

Does the drive work ok when connected to a pc?

No idea about the dropouts, mine has no problems playing 1080p h264video with 5.1 sound so a dvd rip shouldn't tax the unit as much as that. Only thing I can suggest is make sure you have the latest firmware installed.

My internal drive does get quite hot, but not hot enough to burn your fingers, I've ran an 8 our FTP session when I got it and the lid was hot enough for me to be concerned about but no way would it burn you. My internal drive is a 500gb samsung SATA. There is a simple fan mod that can be done, look on the NMT forum in the hardware section.

Hakka.


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## eugovector

I love numbered questions. Also, to start with, ditto on the updated firmware.

1) Never had a problem with external drives. What file system is it formatted in? By independantly powered, I'm assuming you mean the plug in the wall variety, so a powered USB hub likely wouldn't help.

2) Once again, never had the audio dropout problem. Does it happen at the same spot in the movie everytime?

3) Yep, it'll get hot, but that shouldn't offer an performance decrease. It may, that's may, shorten the life of your drive, but with the price of storage these days, you shouldn't be keeping anything on there that you're not willing to loose. You can certainly fan or otherwise mod simply enough.

Let us know if you get anywhere with the detective work. I'm sorry you're having so much trouble with yours. Mine, aside from occasionally freezing a requiring a reset with previous firmware, has been working swimmingly.


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## dh2005

Hey guys,

Thanks for getting back to me. And on Christmas Day, too...!

I had assumed that the A-110 would automatically download the most recent firmware on setup. Clearly, this is not the case. I'll download a firmware update and get back to you.

... oh, and, I checked as to whether the dropout happens in the same places each time, and it doesn't. So, the rips are definitely fine.


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## dh2005

Right, well, this seems to get only more complicated...

... the USB drives I'm using are definitely fine - they get on perfectly well with my PS3, 360 and laptop. But my A-110 isn't interested. Even after the firmware update, the same thing happens - two minutes of ruminating, followed by "request cannot be processed". Hardly an unreasonable "request", surely...?

I borrowed a 160GB external WD drive from my father, and it worked. At least, it appeared on the GUI, I navigated to a movie (Star Wars), and it started to play... then, as if by *un*magic, the A-110 stopped taking instructions from the remote, and shortly thereafter, hung. So, I pressed the reset button on the front and restarted the machine, downscaled my ambitions, and decided to run Scrubs from the internal hard drive again to see whether the audio dropout problem had resolved after the firmware update... and the machine hung again.

Seriously, guys. How many kittens did I drown in a former life to deserve this...?


EDIT: The offending hard external drives are Fujitsu-Siemens, by the way. And it really sucks that they don't work with the A-110, because they're great drives otherwise.


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## Harpmaker

Since this is a recent purchase, maybe it's time to request another unit from the seller?

And maybe leave a bowl of milk out for the faeries, it couldn't hurt.


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## dh2005

Sure. If I spend the whole of Christmas and New Year trying to get this working and I'm still in World o'Hatred, I'll send it back.

Great spelling of "faeries", by the way... like it!


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## dh2005

Hakka - could you tell me which external drives you've used that you know work? Like, the model numbers. Because I don't want to buy *even more* drives that don't work...!

Certain USB drives are definitely known to be incompatible, by the way - http://networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=8153


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## dh2005

Stop the press - potential good news!

Since the firmware update, I've had no audio dropout. I watched seven episodes of Scrubs in a row (149 minutes... I like Scrubs, but that's just *too *much), and the playback was perfect.

So, I conclude from this that either the firmware update resolved the problem (which would be good), or alternatively, that this is an intermittent fault that will rear its head again as soon as I let my gaurd down (which would be a right son-of-a-youknowwhat).

More news as we get it, campers...!


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## Hakka

Not sure of the model numbers of the drives, I bought a few A-110s for family members for christmas and the drives went with them. I had them connected to mine to make sure they worked.

The one I still have here is a Samsung HD501LJ 500gb SATA drive. The others were IDE drives, hence the need to run them as external.

Do you know anyone nearby with an A-110 that you could test your drives on?

Hakka.


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## dh2005

No, mate. I'm not sure what the situation's like in Australia, but over here in the UK, nobody's even heard of them.

Sweet Christmas for your family members, I must say...!


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## Hakka

My 85 year old nanna loves hers, shes's watched 28 episodes of Lost in 2 days!

Hakka.


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## dh2005

Hahahahahahahaha...!!!

That, sir, is *awesome*.


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## eugovector

If there someone knowledgeable to get it setup, it think the popcorn hour and other NMT make the perfect video jukeboxes for the less than technically inclined.

Glad to hear that yours is somewhat back on track. Let us know if you run into bumps again.


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## dh2005

I've made a potential discovery. I've just been posting my findings on the Popcorn Hour official site...

... remember I said that the two Fujitsu-Siemens Storagebird Solo 1TB USB drives that I have don't work with the A-110? Well, another user set me straight and said that his _used _to work before he reformatted these drives to NTFS through Vista; and now they don't.

I bought two WD Elements 1TB USB drives this afternoon, having been told that they worked with the A-110. I brought them home, connected them to the A-110, and they lit up beautifully. "Awesome", I thought - "problem solved"...

... then I reformatted them to NTFS with Vista. *AND THEY NO LONGER WORK*.

I'm currently testing the extent of this realisation. The two drives I bought today were pre-formatted to FAT32, and I used Vista's _"convert" _function to change their filing systems to NTFS, which takes a matter of minutes rather than hours. What I'm doing now is reformatting the drives to NTFS again - one in Vista, but with the 'real deal' _"format"_ function, and the other in Windows XP. I'll then compare the results and see whether it's NTFS, Vista, or the _"convert"_ fuction's fault that so many drives are apparently _"incompatible"_ with the A-110.

These reformats are going to take about six-thousand years, so I won't have any findings to publish for until tomorrow, at the earliest. But as soon as I do, you'll hear about it.


DH.


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## eugovector

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. You might also try formatting in NTFS using a program like swissknife: http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm


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## dh2005

Update - XP formatted one of my drives to NTFS in three and a half hours. Vista, on the other hand, is around a third of the way through the format after over four hours. Would someone please remind me why Vista exists...?!

The good news is that, after an XP format, an external NTFS drive is visible by my A-110. I'm now going to copy a movie over to this drive to ensure that the playback's okay. I'll let you know ASAP.

And I'll get back to you about the other drive in 2012...


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## dh2005

Playback from the XP-reformatted drive is fine. It seems that issue's now resolved...

... but, for the love of God, what's the issue with Vista?! It's been reformatting the other drive for more than six hours, and it's less than halfway through. And the Vista PC is a 2x2.00GHz Duo, whereas the XP PC is a 2.66GHz P4 - it must be five years old!!!

Honestly... why is Vista so terribly slow?


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## dh2005

eugovector said:


> You might also try formatting in NTFS using a program like swissknife: http://www.compuapps.com/Download/swissknife/swissknife.htm



Hey man,

Thanks for the recommendation. Sadly, all that this install of Swissknife does is make my laptop hang.

I'm convinved there's somebody somewhere having a joke at my expense. Seems that everything I try falls squarely onto its backside, catches fire, burns for several minutes, then gives rise to an angry ghost that tries to rape my grandparents.

Sincerely, has there ever been anybody anywhere who's had *so *much grief from an A-110...?


If there's anyone out there who's had a worse time, I'd love to hear from you. I could do with a laugh.


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## Hakka

I went through some issues with mine, no playback issues but I could hear the hard drive spinning up and seeking through my ht speakers and was getting mains noise, I went through 2 days of troubleshooting before I traced it back to a faulty power supply. I also ended up buying a heap of new parts that I didn't really need while trying to get it sorted.

Hakka.


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## dh2005

Maybe it's just not meant to be, ya know...?

Further update - the external drive formatted properly through Vista also works.


*My conclusion - using Vista's "convert" function on an external FAT32 drive to make it an NTFS drive will destroy it's compatibility.*


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## dh2005

Another thought...

... when I connected these drives to my A-110 under FAT32, they lit up within five or six seconds. Now that they've been formatted under NTFS, they take between 30 seconds and a minute.

My question - is there any reason at all for me to be using NTFS? I don't use .ISOs, so the largest files I have are 1GB. I'd like to be able to format these external drives to Ext3 (I figure the A-110 would be happiest with this...), but I can't find a program that'll run in Vista and format drives to Linux filing systems.

Do I need to buy Partition Magic, maybe?


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## Hakka

Can you put them in the A-110 as an internal drive to format in EXT3?


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## dh2005

Not without breaking them out of their enclosures, dude. And I'm not willing to do that - I've no idea whether I'd be able to get them back together again.

Otherwise, a good idea.


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## Harpmaker

Here are a few links for free Vista compatible partition managers that might help.

http://www.cutepm.com/ Don't know if this supports formatting Linux partitions.

http://www.download.com/Paragon-Partition-Manager-Express/3000-2248_4-10904411.html?tag=mncol This one supports Linux formats, but I'm not sure of the "free" status. Their web site lists it as costing $39.

Finally, I think you could download almost any "live" Linux distribution CD and use it to format your drives. Vista would have nothing to do with it! :T


Forgot to mention, if you will never have any files over 4GB in size, FAT32 would work just fine, some say even better than NTFS. I don't know what the advantages of Ext3 might be, unless it would simply be more native to the A-110 firmware.

If it is any consolation, others will benefit from your current trials and tribulations.


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## dh2005

How d'you like this for _yet another_ ironic kick to the groin...?

... these drives were formatted to FAT32 when they were new, and it was formatting them to NTFS that slowed them down. So I decided to reformat one of them back to FAT32, to see whether this drive or the NTFS drive performed better during movie playback so that I could decide which of these two formats to commit to (given that getting Ext3 onto my external drives appears to be the hardest thing in the World).

Guess what? It's impossible to reformat an NTFS drive to FAT32 in Windows Vista *and *XP.

[sound of DH hanging himself]

... would you *believe *it?!

So, basically, I had two drives that worked fine, I reformatted them so that they worked less fine, and this step cannot be undone.

[sound of DH's immortal soul weeping for Eternity]

When all this is said and done, I think this thread should become a sticky entitled - "this is what happens when it ALL goes wrong".


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## dh2005

Harpmaker said:


> Finally, I think you could download almost any "live" Linux distribution CD and use it to format your drives. Vista would have nothing to do with it! :T



DUDE! Seriously!!! If you know how to do this, please walk me through it...

... on someone else's advice I downloaded an .ISO of an Ubuntu Live CD (whatever *that *is...!) - some 689MB file that, apparently, will answer my prayers. *But moo baby moo do I do with it?!?!* _(translation: "what do I do with this .ISO?")_

Please, become my favourite person on Earth and give me a moron's guide.

[... still weeping...]


EDIT: Personally, I don't consider what I wrote to be swearing... but I'm leaving "moo baby moo" there because it looks funny!

EDIT EDIT: By the way - even if I were to've sworn, I think even the most Christian of web-nanny software would forgive me... I don't think I've ever been so frustrated in all my life.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Anyone who helps me to resolve this formatting issue will have a favour to call in, anywhere, anytime...!


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## dh2005

Alternative title for this thread when it's a sticky - _"Have you ever seen a grown man cry...?"
_
I welcome other suggestions.


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## Harpmaker

Hang in there DH! Step away from the edge of the roof and relax, I'm downloading and testing a live sysadmin CD. Will report back soon. There is still hope!


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## Harpmaker

OK, unless your hardware simply hates Linux, I think I have a solution for you.

1. Download the file 'gparted-live-0.3.9-13.iso' located here. It's 94.9MB. Don't get the zip file.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=271779

2. Burn the .ISO file to a CD. Most programs like Nero or CD Creator can do this, but I use a free program called ImgBurn. To clarify, don't simply copy, or write the .ISO file to a CD, this file MUST be USED to create a CD since the .ISO is an image file, not a program file. It's easy as pie with ImgBurn.
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

3. Make sure your PC will boot from a CD (this may have to be set in the BIOS). Put the Gparted CD in the CD/DVD drive the PC will boot from (in case you have multiple DVD drives ). Restart the PC.

4. After the CD starts, you will need to make a few selections to continue. I chose to go with the default settings at the first screen (just wait for it to time-out). Ignore the stuff that flashes across your screen too fast to read, it means something to Linux, but not to you. :bigsmile:

5. The next selection is keymapping. I chose 'Don't touch keymap'.

6. It then prompts you what keymap to use. I chose #33 US English, you should probably go with #02 British English.

7. I chose Mode 0 at the next prompt (just press the Enter key).

The system will now boot into Linux and start Gparted automatically. It took about 1 1/2 minutes for my system to find all the drives I have on it. The longest was my 1TB USB drive.

8. After Gparted starts (the bottom bar will stop moving back and forth), select the drive you want to work with by clicking on the down-pointing arrow, in the top-right of the Gparted window, and selecting it from the list.

9. Put the mouse cursor anywhere inside the green rectangle and left-click the mouse (this selects the drive). Right-click the mouse and move the cursor to 'Format To', this brings up a list of available formats the drive can be formatted to.

At this point, you're on your own, I didn't format any of my drives to test this. :bigsmile:

More documentation can be found at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Hope this does the trick for you. :T

If you need more help I can try to take and post some screen captures.

There are many formats you can choose from (including FAT32). If you feel daring, you might want to try using ReiserFS on a drive and see how it works, this is a "journaling" file system (whatever that is) and is the file system used by many of the Linux versions designed to be media center software. I say daring because I don't know if the A-110 supports this file system.


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## dh2005

Thanks, man. I've not got around to trying this yet, but I will.

Your efforts amaze me. Now I've *two *reasons to cry...!


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## Harpmaker

In my hurry to get this info to you I forgot to mention what Gparted is. :doh:

"GParted is the Gnome Partition Editor application. Before attempting to use it, here is some basic background information.

A hard disk is usually subdivided into one or more partitions. These partitions are normally not re-sizable (making one smaller and the adjacent one larger). The purpose of GParted is to allow the individual to take a hard disk and change the partition organization therein, while preserving the partition contents.

GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging)."

The "live" Gparted CD is a bootable version of Linux (it doesn't install anything to your system hard drive, everything runs from the CD), it's only purpose is to run the Gparted program. After booting your PC with this CD you are running a Linux PC, but you don't have all the overhead, or power, of the full Linux OS.

DH, the Ubuntu .ISO you downloaded can be used in a similar fashion to the Gparted CD, but it is a full Linux implementation. It probably has Gparted on it as well, but a lot of other stuff you don't need is also launched or prepared for use (such as web browsers, CD players, games, etc.). That is why I suggested downloading the Gparted .ISO.


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## dh2005

Hey, man.

Listen, your commitment to my problem has been legendary. I'm touched, genuinely.

For now, I'm gonna bumble on with NTFS. It seems to be working fine for playback so far... but if it starts to freak out, I'll get into Linux filing systems ASAP.

Thanks again. And Happy New Year!


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## Harpmaker

dh2005 said:


> Hey, man.
> 
> Listen, your commitment to my problem has been legendary. I'm touched, genuinely.
> 
> For now, I'm gonna bumble on with NTFS. It seems to be working fine for playback so far... but if it starts to freak out, I'll get into Linux filing systems ASAP.
> 
> Thanks again. And Happy New Year!


No worries, DH. Glad to be of help. :T

With the craziness that is Windows these days, I think I will partition and format my drives in the future using Gparted anyway! It will do Windows and Mac formats as well as Linux.


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## dh2005

You're a gentleman and a Saint, sir.

My A-110, after two weeks of relentless faffing, appears finally to be working. And when these babies work, they're truly beautiful.


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