HD 300--Problem Streaming DVD's

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by AzTech

Edit: Oh yea, forgot to mention, I'm running Sage 7.0.13

Might be worth updating to 7.0.16

[kmp14]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Might be worth updating to 7.0.16

I am on 7.0.16, and I still have the problem.

I submitted a bug report to Sage, and, as expected, they are asking for logs. I have since realized that I am dealing with a dying WHS, so I want to rule that out as a culprit before I submit the logs.

[sacrament055]

I had a similar issue on an HD100 with Sage 6.6 but only with beta firmware. When I go back to the last official firmware it goes away so my guess is this is going to take a firmware update to resolve.

[civerson4]

I've submitted logs. Sage has been very responsive. I am sure they will get this worked out soon.

[wikel]

It's definetly a HD300 / current firmware on the HD300 issue. Just got finished putting my 300 in place of my 200, which I just got working and had on-going jerking issues. Put the HD200 back and it was ROCK SOLID on the exact same recorded video H.264.

Both boxes have the latest firmware...

[drewg]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

FWIW - Running DVDs with menu rips work fine for me. Ripping software is DVD Shrink. HD300 and Linux Server 7.0.16

B

My DVDs work as well. HD300 & Linux server 6.6.2. DVDs were ripped with k9copy

Drew

[AzTech]

Just wanted to update on this:

I submitted a bug with Sage beta and they were very quick and helpful in responding. They isolated the problem as a network issue. Frankly, I didn't buy it since it worked when communicating with my Sage server box (which also houses my DVD collection) in standalone mode and the HD100 also worked in the same location. But I went ahead and swapped out my switch just to see. I won't quit my day job cuz it turns out they were right, the switch must have been defective. I have stutter-free DVD playback once again, thanks to Sage support!

[Email68]

How did they isolate your problem to the network? What did they test to point to that?

-Tim

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by AzTech

Just wanted to update on this:

I submitted a bug with Sage beta and they were very quick and helpful in responding. They isolated the problem as a network issue. Frankly, I didn't buy it since it worked when communicating with my Sage server box (which also houses my DVD collection) in standalone mode and the HD100 also worked in the same location. But I went ahead and swapped out my switch just to see. I won't quit my day job cuz it turns out they were right, the switch must have been defective. I have stutter-free DVD playback once again, thanks to Sage support!

What switch did you have? Did you get the same switch or a new one? If you got a new one, which one did you get. I've got the same issues, along with others that I think might be my switch.

Thanks for posting the update,
Chuck

[CollinR]

HD200s and MVPs, SageTV v7 and couple hundred AnyDVD/xcopy (VIDEO_TS only) rips, no studdering here.

[AzTech]

What switch did you have? Did you get the same switch or a new one? If you got a new one, which one did you get. I've got the same issues, along with others that I think might be my switch.

I have a couple of switches in my network but I suspected, if any, it would be the Frys gigabit (FR5PTGSW)--cuz it was really cheap. And that did turn out to be the problem. I swapped it out with an old Netgear 10/100 (FS605) to fix it. I'm off to Frys after work to get a new gigabit switch that costs more than $20. I guess there is truth to the saying, you get what you pay for.

How did they isolate your problem to the network? What did they test to point to that?

I'm not really sure how they determined it was a network issue. It must have been something they saw in the debug log. They had me set various other debugging log settings in the properties file.

[madpoet]

I'd like to know myself. I can stream HD media till the cows come home, but stutter on DVD ISO rips. That's a bad thing and it can't be network.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by AzTech

I have a couple of switches in my network but I suspected, if any, it would be the Frys gigabit (FR5PTGSW)--cuz it was really cheap. And that did turn out to be the problem. I swapped it out with an old Netgear 10/100 (FS605) to fix it. I'm off to Frys after work to get a new gigabit switch that costs more than $20. I guess there is truth to the saying, you get what you pay for.

I only have one switch, which all of my SageTV devices are connected to, which is a D-LINK DGS-2208 (Green 8 port). I may need to get a better switch.

Thanks,
Chuck

[paulbeers]

I am not having any issues with playing ripped DVD's on the HD300. I am running V7 and they are in folder format as opposed to ISO and are ripped without Menus.

[AzTech]

Another update:

I sent Sage a Wireshark log and they said that they don't think the Fry's switch is defective. I guess the HD300 just doesn't play nice with it...yet.

I went ahead and replaced it with a D-Link Green gigabit 5 port switch anyways. It works and I was always a little bit suspect of the cheapo Frys switch anyways.

[babgvant]

Could be the buffer sizes on the switch. If you use gigabit on the PC it might not be able to keep up.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

I only have one switch, which all of my SageTV devices are connected to, which is a D-LINK DGS-2208 (Green 8 port). I may need to get a better switch.

Thanks,
Chuck

That's the same switch I have. This switch enables ethernet flow control, and since it is unmanaged, I don't think it can be disabled. When you're sending from a 1GbE port to a 100MbE port and you have a large TCP window size, you get close to overrunning the switch's output buffer. When this happens, it sends a flow control "pause" packet to the server's NIC, telling it to stop for a while. After the 100MbE port drains, the switch sends a flow control "pause" packet back to the server, cancelling the previous pause and allowing it to resume.

In my case, my server's NIC had flow control enabled (meaning that it listened when the switch told it to stop) by default. With flow control enabled, I saw erratic performance, and about 25 - 35Mb/s from iperf and netperf (just on the edge of being able to playback a BD). Once I disabled flow control on the server's NIC, I saw a steady 94.5 Mb/s from iperf and netperf, and all my playback problems went away.

I'm not sure if the switch is to blame, or if the server's NIC is to blame. It could be the switch's fault if it didn't send a second "pause" packet to let the server's NIC know it could keep sending. It could be the server NIC's fault if it did not act quickly enough on the resume packet. All I know for sure is that disabling flow control on the server's NIC fixed the problem.

I don't think there is much that sage could do to fix the problem. I did see good performance (80+Mb/s) when restricting the linux socket buffer size to 8K on the HD300, but I don't think that is a good general solution as there are valid reasons to have a larger socket buffer size.

Drew

[thomaszoo]

I too have that switch (D_Link green) and was having very choppy playback of DVDs and BDs on the HD300. I disabled flow control on the server's NIC and the problem went from bad to worse. When I re-enabled it the problem completely disappeared. It doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm hoping the problem doesn't reappear.

Wayne

[cat6man]

try the new beta

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by drewg

That's the same switch I have. This switch enables ethernet flow control, and since it is unmanaged, I don't think it can be disabled. When you're sending from a 1GbE port to a 100MbE port and you have a large TCP window size, you get close to overrunning the switch's output buffer. When this happens, it sends a flow control "pause" packet to the server's NIC, telling it to stop for a while. After the 100MbE port drains, the switch sends a flow control "pause" packet back to the server, cancelling the previous pause and allowing it to resume.

In my case, my server's NIC had flow control enabled (meaning that it listened when the switch told it to stop) by default. With flow control enabled, I saw erratic performance, and about 25 - 35Mb/s from iperf and netperf (just on the edge of being able to playback a BD). Once I disabled flow control on the server's NIC, I saw a steady 94.5 Mb/s from iperf and netperf, and all my playback problems went away.

I'm not sure if the switch is to blame, or if the server's NIC is to blame. It could be the switch's fault if it didn't send a second "pause" packet to let the server's NIC know it could keep sending. It could be the server NIC's fault if it did not act quickly enough on the resume packet. All I know for sure is that disabling flow control on the server's NIC fixed the problem.

I don't think there is much that sage could do to fix the problem. I did see good performance (80+Mb/s) when restricting the linux socket buffer size to 8K on the HD300, but I don't think that is a good general solution as there are valid reasons to have a larger socket buffer size.

Drew

Drew,
Thanks for the info. I checked my SageTV server and Flow Control was already disabled. So I thought I was just out of luck but then I realized, most of my issues is when I access my DVD collection, like the title of this thread implies, but my DVD collection is actually not on the same computer as my SageTV computer. I have a WHS that has my entire DVD collection ripped on it. I then checked the flow control on my WHS and sure enough, flow control is enabled on it.

Before I disable it though, what is the impact to my WHS if I disable it. Is their any downside to disabling flow control? Just wanted to check before I mess anything else up.

Thanks,
Chuck