Plex on FireTV doesn’t play? (can’t find required server) – Here’s a fix

I tried to use the Plex App on the FireTV (because its a lot nicer than the one on my Samsung Smart-TV), but unfortunately I wasn’t able to playback any video. I encountered the following message:

IMG_4480To fix that, go to settings and change the media profile to “enforce direct playback” (or something) and it will work. Seems my Plex server doesn’t want to serve to Android devices (my Plex server runs on a Synology box).

IMG_4481Have fun, it should work now.

MacBook Pro Retina external disk USB 3.0/SuperSpeed is too slow?

This is shit. If you had plugged in an USB 2.0 device before plugging in the USB 3 disk, the port may stay in USB 2 mode.

How do I get the best performance from the USB 3 ports?
The first device you plug in will configure the port, so always connect USB 3 capable hubs or devices first.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5172?viewlocale=en_US#8

The only solution is to reboot the system. Happy, my disk is not broken, unhappy because this is shit.

Mavericks/Yosemite Dual-Boot on a DIY fusion drive

As OS X 10.10 Yosemite DP1 runs awful in a virtual machine I wanted to install it onto my MacBook as a dual-boot configuration with OS X 10.9 Mavericks. My MacBook runs on a self-made FusionDrive configuration using a SSD and a regular hard disk. Here is a link to a HowTo for that FusionDrive stuff. As Mavericks is already installed, the hard part was to create partition for the Yosemite installation. What absolutely is not working is:

  • Simple create two volumes on the FusionDrive using the “diskutil coreStorage createVolume” command
  • Add a second partition using the disc-utility

The disc utility does create a partition, but it completely ignores the size you specified. For me it worked by booting from USB and using the “resizeStack” command (I got that hint from here).

diskutil cs resizeStack X Y 991G jhfs+ Media 120G

This command will resize the FusionDrive volume to 991G while creating a second partition with the size of 120GB. To exactly know how big your partitions should be, type:

diskutil cs list

It will show you the size of the current volume. If its, for example, 1000GB and you want to create a 20GB second partition, type:

diskutil cs resizeStack X Y 980G jhfs+ partitionname 20G

X should be the UID from the volume you want to shrink (also called Logical Volume (not Family)). Y is the UID from the physical volume you want to create the 2nd partition on. I used my regular disk for that to avoid reducing the performance of my FusionDrive. To make it clear: The second partition will not be part of the FusionDrive, so the performance may be slower that used to. To display the UIDs use the list command:

diskutil cs list

After that, install Yosemite on the newly created partition. After a successfull installation, you can choose which system to boot by holding the alt-key on boot. Worked for me and I hope it will work on your setup, too 😉

OS X Yosemite 10.10 in Virtual Box

I finally managed it to install Yosemite in VirtualBox as a, well, virtual machine.

Create a new virtual machine, choose OS X 10.9 x64 as operating system and give it some RAM. Then you need to prepare the install disk image (i have used the developer preview version!) with the following steps (taken from here):

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iesd -i /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ 10.10\ Developer\ Preview.app -o yosemite.dmg -t BaseSystem
hdiutil convert yosemite.dmg -format UDSP -o yosemite.sparseimage
hdiutil mount /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ 10.10\ Developer\ Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
hdiutil mount yosemite.sparseimage
cp /Volumes/OS\ X\ Install\ ESD/BaseSystem.* /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
hdiutil unmount /Volumes/OS\ X\ Install\ ESD/
hdiutil unmount /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
hdiutil convert yosemite.sparseimage -format UDZO -o yosemitefixed.dmg

You can save these commands as a bash script, run it and relax. When finished, mount the yosemitefixed.dmg as a live-CD in your virtual machine. Internet said it is a good idea to change the chipset of the virtual machine to PIIX3, so do that. After installation it is important to remove the live-CD image and reboot. Voila, should work. Good luck!

But performance is really bad at the moment.

Spotify dark update: broken

For me, Spotify is broken since the last update. What the hell were they thinking?

For clarification, this was “my way” to use Spotify:

  1. Start a radio station with an artist I like
  2. Listen to the station
  3. “Star” every song i like
  4. Sync all stared songs with my mobile phone for offline usage
  5. Later, start a radio station based on your starred playlist and find more awesome stuff you like

And guess what? Spotify almost removed the star-feature. They replaced it with the so called “collections”. Whats the difference? Well, I don’t know. But what I do know is:

  • You can’t sync your collection for offline usage
  • You can’t start a radio station for your collection

Screenshot 2014-04-22 15.00.19

But, there is a work around. Even if the “star this” button is removed, there is still a playlist called “starred stuff”. Drag & Drop your songs there and you are fine. So can someone explain me whats the use case for that collection stuff?

But seriously: Spotify-people, do you even use your stuff your self?

Episodes 2 Open Beta!

Icon-beta

Episodes, my awesome Mac-App for awesome TV-Show management, is reaching its next level really soon: Episodes 2!

And the Open Beta phase is starting today. And I need you to help me test!

Go here and grab your copy. If you find any bugs or have some ideas, send me your feedback!