Network Setup and Usage - Accessing a WindowsXP Share from your ReelBox

From ReelBox Maniacs

You may have some mp3 files on your WindowsXP Computer, you like to play on your ReelBox. Or you don’t have a hard disc in your ReelBox but nevertheless want to record some movies? Read on, there is a solution! For preparations on your ReelBox see Windows Client Settings above. For the following example, we assume these network settings:

You should be able to adapt them to your needs.

Logon to your windows computer as administrator and create a new user named rbuser. Set the password to rbpasswd. Open up your windows explorer, go to the directory you want to share and right click on it. Select share and security and create a network share named rbshare. On XP professional make sure about the correct access rights not only for the network share but for the directory also.

If these preparations are done, you have to restart your ReelBox. There is more than one way to do this. Please use the method described here to be on the save side: put your box into standby, after this into deep standby mode. Switch it of and after 5-10 seconds switch it on again.

If the setup is ok and your network is up and healthy, you may now access the files on your PC from yur ReelBox.

To be able to do a simple check, make shure a mp3 file (i'm going to use test.mp3 as an example below) is available directly in your shared directory on your PC.

In my network, i'm sharing the directory c:\somefiles on a computer named mypc. The share name is somefiles, so the fully qualified name \\mypc\somefiles. In the somefiles directory there is a mp3 file named test.mp3. I'm going to access this files and play it on the ReelBox using the MP3 plugin for VDR, which is available on every ReelBox as a standard.

Use your remote control unit to follow the next steps. At first make sure, that the mp3 plugin is installed correctly:

Setup > 6 Plugins > 9 mp3 (0.9.13) - A versative audio player

Replay Display: should be set to via skin.

Now exit Setup. go to

Menu > 3 Mediacenter > 5 MP3

and press Exit once, then Source (=Green Button). This will give you a selection list of drives and shares. Do down to Network Drive (samba) /mnt/net1 and press Ok. Press Browse (=Yellow Button).

Now you should see the list of mp3 files and directories available in your shared directory of your Windows PC. In this example this is test.mp3, which you may play now (Ok or Play (=Red Button)).

If you can't access test.mp3, there are several sources of error. Review you network settings first. Then do the basic network check. If everything is ok up to here, make shure, you know how to telnet to your ReelBox.

mount -t cifs -o username=$CLUSER,password=$SMB_PASSWORD //$SAMBA_PC/$SAMBA_SHARECL $MOUNTPOINT

umount $MOUNTPOINT