Thread: Streaming to HTPC (XBMC) from a Seedbox

Streaming to HTPC (XBMC) from a Seedbox

This is a collection of links to information and guides that explain how to stream from a seedbox (ubuntu/debian) to a Windows 7 x64 HTPC (or any OS that XBMC supports)

I would like to make clear that I take no credit for this guide whatsoever and can not provide any support for it either! Although I will be trying this when I am able to so may then be able to help a bit.. I must also point out that linked guides below do assume that you have a desktop installed on your seedbox so some of you I know don't ever intend installing one so you mind find this more difficult..

I use usenet as a source in this but any source will work. It just won't be as pretty unless you find a way to call Sick Beard's scripts. Couchpotato is a similar option but for Movies. I think both PVR programs will interface with an rtorrent watch directory. Setting a private tracker to be the a source of content is a trickier bit but can surely be achieved! (Just takes time and patience)

I have set up right now a SABnzdb w/ Sickbeard box feeding my XBMC HTPC over https. I don't think there is anything out there that can beat it for simplicity or functionality.


Tips:

• You need to have a fast connection. For smooth 720p playback it would require approx. 15-20Mbit.
• You probably need to be relatively close geographically to the box to achieve the best results.
• If you are working over VPN don't forget to disable it when you go to stream.

Tools:

SABnzbd
Sick Beard
Lighttpd
XBMC
OpenVPN


Security:

I had issues with digest auth and XBMC but if someone can get that working more power to them. I thought about using SSL key pairs but I doubt XBMC supports it lol.

Instead of using mod_auth I ended up using mod_access and wrote a rule to deny all access to the host unless it matched the first three octets of my public IP. (Dynamic IP) I think that that and SSL is a reasonably secure setup. Before I came to this solution I was binding the web server IP to tun and using OpenVPN to achieve similar results but I found it wasn't fast enough to stream 720p without lag.

Note: You can still use mod_auth plaintext over SSL on top of mod_access as an added layer of security or deny access on all but your complete IP. IP spoofing is super tricky if you actually want to get data back from the server so it's pretty darn secure. Even if you don't lock down that last octet it only has 2^8-2=254 possible IP matches for the rule.


Process:

I will link to tuts that individually set up the tools you need to get this working so I am just going to paint the picture for you.

I set up all but the Lighttpd instance to bind to tun for security purposes. I prefer dealing internally with those types of services rather than opening them up to the world. Working over a VPN also allows you to give a box the hostname of your choice via the hosts file. Next, I have a sym link in the web root that points to the completed downloads directory. In XBMC all that is required once the mod_access rule is in place and the downloads directory has been set to enable indexing in Lighttpd is to add an https source via the add source menu. XBMC will then generate info and recurse into all of the child directories silently reading Sick Beard's scraped data and everything will be good.


Setup Links:



Sick Beard
SABnzbd
Lighttpd
OpenVPN Setup Script