Network

First Steps
Fresh out of the package, the screenplay will not automatically recognize your network, regardless of whether or not you are using DHCP and ethernet or a wireless.

Wired Connections
The ScreenPlay Pro HD will not automatically configure itself for a wired network connection with a router. Set it for DHCP (Auto) and see if it finds the network connection. If it doesn't, try entering a static IP and see if it finds it then. If it does find it once you've entered a static IP, and you want to use dynamic IPs, then try switching it back and it may work at that time.

Static IPs do have a problem if your IP address is too long. It may work initially, and then stop working once you reboot the screenplay.

If you are tech savvy and can modify the ScreenPlay's /etc/init.d/rcS1 file, you can add the static IP configuration and gateway by including something like this at the end of the file:

sleep 25 ifconfig eth0 192.168.120.111 netmask 255.255.255.0 up& route add default gw 192.168.120.1&

To modify it in windows, you will need a tool such as Notepad++ to prevent Linefeeds from becoming Carriage Returns + Linefeeds. Use the Ext2IFS driver for windows to mount the ScreenPlay's primary partition visible to window to make this change.

If you want to directly connect the ScreenPlay Pro HD to the computer via an ethernet cord, you can. Iomega claims the device has an autosense and therefore does not need a crossover cable. Crossover cable is confirmed to work, however.

Wireless Adapters
Only a limited selection of wireless adapters work with the ScreenPlay Pro HD. An emerging common thread is that WPA should be used instead of WEP, as nobody has yet reported the player capable of connecting via WEP encryption. SSID must be broadcast even after the wireless connection has been setup or it will not find the connection You cannot enter a static IP into the wired address and then access the network through the wireless, even if you have disconnected the ethernet connection. You must set the configuration back to DHCP for the wired connection. When you first boot the player, about 3 seconds after the menu appears you will see a "Wifi Plug-in" appear briefly in the upper left corner of the screen. If you do not see that, your wi-fi adapter was not detected and may be defective or not compatible with the ScreenPlay Pro. It will still take up to a minute longer sometimes before the wifi is fully functional. One thing I will do is go to the setup / network screen and wait until the wifi IP address appears. Make sure that your wireless adapter is compatible with your router. If you can't get it to connect to your router using a PC, then you probably won't be able to get it to connect using a ScreenPlay Pro. Sometimes you have to go into the wireless setup multiple times before it will pick up a broadcast SSID from your router.

Discovery Tool
There is a screenplay discovery tool that ships with the program. If you use this tool, it will automatically map all ScreenPlay Pro HD devices to a drive letter on your computer. You can only run this on one computer, as the ScreenPlay can only have one network connection to it (unless you have R1.8 or make this change). If it doesn't find the drive on the network, it cannot map it. If the drive is already mapped under a different IP, you may have to right click and select disconnect on the mapped drive before you can remap it. After a power cycle, you may have to right click on the ScreenPlay Pro mapped drive, select disconnect, and then rerun the discovery tool to find it again.

You can also manually map the drive, but trying to browse to the location may cause it to prompt for a user name and password. There isn't one, so just click OK.

Windows Network
Your screenplay will automatically show up on a Windows Network. A few minutes after the screenplay gets an IP address, it will automatically show up in your Workgroup.

Windows XP - Look under My Network Places -&gt; Entire Network -&gt; Microsoft Windows Network -&gt; Workgroup -&gt; //Iomega-a1b2c3d4/ScreenPlay

From there you will be able to use your screenplay like network attached storage: transfer files back and forth, organize folders, watch movies from your computer, etc.

Linux Network
Connect as "guest" with no password. Samba utility wouldn't let you use a blank password.

Here is the procedure in Ubuntu;


 * Go to Places in menu
 * Connect to Server
 * use Windows share
 * Enter IP address in Server dialogue
 * Enter guest in username
 * Enter workgroup in Domain
 * Enter
 * Leave password blank

Web Pages on the ScreenPlay Pro HD
There is a web server running on the R1.0 version of the firmware. This is disabled starting with the R1.8 firmware. There are three pages on the drive. /index.html is a page that shows how to use CGI. /cgi-bin/sum.cgi is called by index.html to sum two numbers together. /cgi-bin/webtorrent.cgi is a still undocumented page on the drive and its purpose is not yet known, although it appears to be a torrent client.

Telnet
There is a telnet service running on the drive for firmware version R1.0. This is disabled on the R1.8, but can be enabled

Making computers visible
Under Windows XP, you must share a folder on the network before the ScreenPlay Pro will see your computer and allow you to have access to the files. Sometimes, it may take a few attempts selecting the network option on the ScreenPlay Pro HD before you will see the group appear on the network.

User names and passwords
If you have user names and passwords set up on your computer, you may experience problems with the ScreenPlay Pro logging in. The drive does not have a very good keyboard entry system, and entering the user name and password each time can be a nuisance.

The ScreenPlay Pro HD will try to connect to other computer shares on the network using its own user name and password. The user name it will use is Realtek_guest and the password is Realtek_pw so creating a user with this name and password on your computer, and allowing that user to have shared read access will enable the ScreenPlay Pro HD to connect without having to prompt for a user name and password. It is case sensitive.

Multiple ScreenPlay Pro drives
If you have multiple ScreenPlay Pro HD drives, you can put them all on the network. Each drive is identified with its own unique drive name, and all are placed in the Workgroup network group. But until Iomega solves the 2 GB network limit problem, you will only be able to play files from one drive to the other that are less than 2 GB. As far as performance, with both drives directly connected to the router, the video streaming from a DVD and MPG2 worked fine and did not experience any buffering. You may have different results.

When you use the discovery tool, all drives connected to your network will appear as mapped drives on your computer.

Network Speeds
These are some network speed test results: So the fastest connection obtained is approximately 20Mbits/sec. Doing an internal copy from the hard drive to an attached USB drive also yielded the same speed, so this may be the maximum speed obtainable by the drive with its current kernel. Copying a file to the drive in USB mode gave about 120 MBits/sec, so that is the recommended form of transfer.

Known Problems

 * Firmware version R1.0 has a 2 GB problem with the drive when you access it over the network. It also does not support multiple connections. It is possible to change the settings.  Firmware version R1.8 has these problems corrected.