Streaming issues with ASUS AC66u and WD TV Live

[ryancharles]

KAD...SO close.

I enabled NFS on my NAS and WDTVLive and like magic, Avatar streamed beautifully...no buffering of any kind. Set my NAS back at 1000mbps and still awesome.

My other two issues went away as well. I can stop playing movies and if I reboot my wdtvlive I don't lose my connection with my NAS. I was litterally jumping up and down

.....UNTIL.....

now some movies wont play at all....ARGHH. I can browse my share, select the movie and all I get is the wdtvlive spinning arrow...forever. I tried playing the same movie with my windows laptop over wireless with VLC and worked immediately.

 

[KAD]

well you're sort of comparing apples and oranges

vlc uses software codecs
WD uses hardware codecs

in general file compatibility issues should be addressed over at the WD forum
but if you run media info and post the out put over there, I'm sure they'll let you know what's wrong/not supported in that file

 

[icece]

You might drill down the problem with wireshark. And ensure layer 1 is working/connected correctly.

 

[ryancharles]

I have returned the wdtvlive. Too many issues and too buggy. I am back to this setup

NAS (100mbps) -> ASUS ac66u -> Samsung TV (100mbps).

My 1080P mkv files seem to stream smoother when I force my NAS to 100mbps. It's not perfect, but way less buffering then when it was connecting at 1gbps.

I think it's the router. It appears to be struggling to stream content from a 1gbps source to a 100mpbs destination.

Any suggestion on how I can troubleshoot this?

On the off chance it's a cabling issue. I intend to purchase two ethernet cables tomorrow.

 

[admiral2145]

Buy a pivos box.... Wd live sucks.... Or some other one... Realtek 1186 processor or higher

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

[pilotbob3]

I have returned the wdtvlive. Too many issues and too buggy. I am back to this setup

NAS (100mbps) -> ASUS ac66u -> Samsung TV (100mbps).

My 1080P mkv files seem to stream smoother when I force my NAS to 100mbps. It's not perfect, but way less buffering then when it was connecting at 1gbps.

I think it's the router. It appears to be struggling to stream content from a 1gbps source to a 100mpbs destination.

Any suggestion on how I can troubleshoot this?

On the off chance it's a cabling issue. I intend to purchase two ethernet cables tomorrow.

Hey Ryan, sorry you had to return your WDTV Live. For me, it's still the most economical, and useful streaming device I have. I stream Bluray rips from my Windows Home Server 2011 box to multiple WDTV live devices I have around the house and I have never had any feed interruption issues.

Not discounting your problems, but even my rev1 WDTV boxes (with BRAD firmware) work fine. Did not even have to load NFS on my WHS server.

I'm hooked up on wired connections, with multiple GigE switches. Not sure where the Asus router would be involved, as I would have thought all the local devices are just passing data over the switch, and not being routed via the ASUS. Figured that all they get from the Asus is a IP address via DHCP.

Anyhow, just wanted to document that for some of us the device works fine.

 

[elorimer]

I had this issue adding an xbox 360 as a media extender. Playing from a WMC PC would buffer every 5-6 seconds. I seem to have resolved it by adding an old Netgear gigabit card to the WMC PC to replace the motherboard gigabit adapter. I didn't have this problem streaming to either a XBMC RPi or a PS3.

The xbox crowd and microsoft say this occurs when a gigabit router can't handle traffic from a gigabit WMC into the FastE Xbox, and suggests setting the WMC to use flow control, setting the WMC to FastE, or swapping out the router for one with more than 1mb buffer, and making sure the WMC and the Xbox are plugged into the same router. None of that worked for me, and neither did wireless N to my RT-N66U. In all case network tuner gave me full green.

As soon as I added the Netgear card, using defaults (no flow control, full auto), the problem went away.

 

[ryancharles]

Thanks for all the advice. For me I don't have that option. I can't add an off the shelf nic to the QNAP NAS or the TV, so I don't have the option. I would have kept the WDTVLive, but I had so many other issue with it, that it just wasn't worth it.

I purchased an inexpensive 5 port dlink gig switch and put it on the other side of the router

NAS -> ASUS router -> dlink switch -> Samsung TV. This did not resolve the issue. maybe it's the nic in the TV? I am not sure.

I am thinking about building or buying a small pc, that has HDMI and connect that directly to the TV. I will probably put plex on it to serve my media.

I am looking at an Intel NUC, Acer Revo or Zotac Zbox. Not sure which one yet.

I even tried enabling DLNA on the Router, turn on NFS sharing on my NAS and then I logged into the router and attempted to MAP to the NAS shared folders.

I got the following error:

192.168.1.3 is my NAS

I log in to my router

showmount -e 192.168.1.3
Export list for 192.168.1.3:
/homes
/Web
/Usb
/Recordings
/Public

mount -t nfs 192.168.1.3:/Multimedia /tmp/mnt

I get this error after about 30 seconds

mount: mounting 192.168.1.3:/Multimedia on /tmp/mnt failed: Input/output error

Any ideas. I noticed portmap is not running. If that's the issue, how do I turn it on?

Here's the error in my log

Feb 11 18:33:35 kernel: rpcbind: server localhost not responding, timed out
Feb 11 18:33:35 kernel: RPC: failed to contact local rpcbind server (errno 5).

 

[RMerlin]

I am thinking about building or buying a small pc, that has HDMI and connect that directly to the TV. I will probably put plex on it to serve my media.

I've been using a Zotac miniPC myself for a few years, running Linux + XBMC. Works beautifully.

 

[blurblur]

I have a similar setup and it works fine. I'm connected like this:

NAS ...(wire).. AC66U... (wire)... moca bridge ...(coaxial wire)... moca bridge ... (wire) ... gigabit switch ... (wire) ... WD TV Live Hub (2010 model).

I can stream recoded Blu-ray with bitrates of up to 20Mbps just fine. File copy maxes out at about 8-9MB/s, which is about the theoretical max for the moca connection, given that at the phy level, it is really just 175Mbps each way.

I cited 20MBps for Blu-ray because it's what I have. I have not had any problem playing any other files or formats in any size.

If there is a configuration you would like me to try, I'ld be glad to help.

 

[ryancharles]

Hey Merlin,

What cpu are you using on your zbox?

I was looking at an ivy bridge i3-3320T or an ivy bridge i5-3470T

It should just be serving my TV via hdmi, so no transcoding. Is the i5 overkill. My big files are about 35gig MKV blu-ray rips.

My files sit on my QNAP NAS.

 

[RMerlin]

Hey Merlin,

What cpu are you using on your zbox?

I was looking at an ivy bridge i3-3320T or an ivy bridge i5-3470T

It should just be serving my TV via hdmi, so no transcoding. Is the i5 overkill. My big files are about 35gig MKV blu-ray rips.

My files sit on my QNAP NAS.

It's an older one, with an Atom D525 and a pretty average nVidia ION2 chipset. I swapped the HDD with a 240 GB Agility 3 SSD, which greatly reduced boot time, and noise as well (less heat generated, so the fan doesn't have to run as fast).

For media playback, an i3 would be more than adequate, and would be quieter too.

 

[Globespy]

Solution to streaming issues

I've had the same issues with the WDTV Live SMP (3rd Gen) on my N66u - large mkv BD rips on my Drobo5N constantly stutter. I did have a day of normality after updating the WDTV to the latest 2.0.1 firmware, which has an option for Linux NFS...but issue is back today. Strange thing I don't understand about the WDTV Live SMP is, if the Drobo5N is linux based and has drives with EXT3 format, why won't the WDTV see the Drobo in Linux network shares? It only sees it in Windows shares, which I assume won't utilize the linux NFS option?
Had the same issue on a Netgear R7000, which I returned.
Never had this issue on my old Netgear WNDR3700, which has gigabit ports just like the Asus.

Tomato firmware (version 108 although I can't see why the latest 117 would be any different) resolves the streaming issues completely. But then the wifi range/speed is horrible compared to stock/Merlin firmware so it's not a solution.

I find it very difficult to believe that this issue hasn't been resolved by Merlin, especially given his great input on previous generation of the WDTV products in the WDLXTV forums?
Surely he could take the QOS stuff from Tomato and incorporate into his firmware, since Asus don't seem to have any interest in fixing? Then we would have the best of both worlds, from a developer who knows these WDTV devices intimately.

So what's the solution? I'm thinking for me it's going to have to be keeping my WNDR3700 as the main device and then using my N66u as a bridge to serve solid range/speed to the rest of my devices in the home. Or hobble my Drobo5N's gigabit ports to 100Mb?? Pretty sad that these newer, much more capable routers from Asus and Netgear have so many issues streaming to other devices with 100Mbps NICs?