anything linux will have native NFS support
in windows Hanewin or FreeNFS are the well known options
I have been having issues streaming 1080p blu-ray over wifi (n) to one SMP. Sometimes it works, but often if rebuffers every couple of minutes. By contrast, a second wired SMP works flawlessly. Files are being served by a Linux machine shared out via Samba.
I have been intending to set up NFS sharing to try, but KAD79’s results not withstanding, have to admit to being skeptical that SMB is the issue unless that protocol interacts badly with wifi protocols or SMP’s SMB implementation is broken. Just used smbclient from a second Linux machine over gigabit Ethernet (via two intervening switches), and got ~90MB/s file transfer rate using SMB from an internal drive and ~30MB/s from an attached USB2 drive. So the Samba server is not an inherent bottleneck.
edit my post above, important note, my test file was on an external drive
but moving on, everybody I’ve ever seen do some sort of objective speed test between samba and NFS
NFS has always been faster by a long shot
now that does not mean that samba will not be enough in some situations, particularly hard wired, etc …
but when you put samba together with possibly a wireless bottleneck and most people will have issues
I think tonight I may connect over wireless and run my test again
The only reason I’m using the powerline adaptor was I could not get enough through put using the wireless included in the SMP to stream large blu-ray’s and that was over NFS
I think this largely has to do with my individual home, # of walls signal must pass though ect
combined with the lack of 5 ghz band
by contrast my old WD Live I used a Linksys WUSB600N
and was able to wirelessly stream blu-ray over NFS without any issues at all
for good measure repeated the test over wireless tonight
once again the test bed is
test bed
Ubuntu Server 12:10
Switch ASUS GX-D1081
Router Linksys E3000 (running DD-WRT)
file used for test is on an external drive connected to PC
First some basics, from iwconfig and ifconfig
you can see the network is up and running connected with wireless N 
~ # uname -a
Linux WDTVLive 2.6.22.19-49-4 #11 PREEMPT Wed Oct 24 11:51:56 CST 2012 mips unknown
~ # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
tunl0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:“DYGERTNET” Nickname:“WIFI@REALTEK”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 68:7F:74:A9:68:A0
Bit Rate: 300 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0
Retry: off RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Encryption key:****-****-****-****-****-****-****-**** Security mode: open
Power Management: off
Link Quality=58/100 Signal level=-66 dBm Noise level=0 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
~ # ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:A9:C3:41:21
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:128
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:65
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:42143 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:42143 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:6264151 (5.9 MiB) TX bytes:6264151 (5.9 MiB)
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:A9:C3:41:21
inet addr:192.168.1.108 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:132633 errors:0 dropped:9502 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8674 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:197099896 (187.9 MiB) TX bytes:1550873 (1.4 MiB)
So first using NFS
~ # /usrdata/.wd_tv/theme/Beta/bandwidth_test “/tmp/media/nfs/192.168.1.123/Action2/Fire With Fire.avi”
Pass #1:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:34 min, 5 MB/sec (40 Mb/sec)
Pass #2:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:19 min, 5 MB/sec (45 Mb/sec)
Pass #3:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:22 min, 5 MB/sec (44 Mb/sec)
Pass #4:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:23 min, 5 MB/sec (44 Mb/sec)
Pass #5:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:30 min, 5 MB/sec (42 Mb/sec)
Pass #6:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:26 min, 5 MB/sec (43 Mb/sec)
Pass #7:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:22 min, 5 MB/sec (44 Mb/sec)
Pass #8:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:33 min, 5 MB/sec (41 Mb/sec)
Pass #9:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:31 min, 5 MB/sec (41 Mb/sec)
Pass #10:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 2:31 min, 5 MB/sec (41 Mb/sec)
Average Transfer speed after 10 passes is: 42 Mb/sec
next up is Samba
~ # /usrdata/.wd_tv/theme/Beta/bandwidth_test “/tmp/media/samba/DYGERTSERVER/Extra/Action2/Fire With Fire.avi”
Pass #1:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 10:43 min, 1 MB/sec (9 Mb/sec)
Pass #2:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 10:20 min, 1 MB/sec (10 Mb/sec)
Pass #3:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 13:23 min, 0 MB/sec (7 Mb/sec)
Pass #4:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 10:49 min, 1 MB/sec (9 Mb/sec)
Pass #5:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 10:19 min, 1 MB/sec (10 Mb/sec)
Pass #6:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 10:28 min, 1 MB/sec (10 Mb/sec)
Pass #7:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 12:49 min, 1 MB/sec (8 Mb/sec)
Pass #8:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 12:36 min, 1 MB/sec (8 Mb/sec)
Pass #9:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 11:58 min, 1 MB/sec (8 Mb/sec)
Pass #10:Timing ‘Fire With Fire.avi’(769844 KB)… Time: 11:6 min, 1 MB/sec (9 Mb/sec)
Average Transfer speed after 10 passes is: 8 Mb/sec
I’m surprised that samba did not see the sharp decrease like NFS did, but even though it faired just slightly better, it’s still no where near blu-ray capable, when you consider the average blu-ray is 25 Mb/Sec
I think my largest rip is 45 Mb/Sec for a single movie
Not a good start to resolving this issue.
NFS - I downloaded FreeNFS and have tried to follow THESEinstructions. They are not written with real noobs in mind though, and it took me an age to figure out that I need to install B-Rad’s Webend configurator, before I can Xmount the NFS Drives (is this correct?) Given that the last update for this was August 2011, is the tool still current? I don’t want to overwrite the current firmware with something outdated.
Handbrake - seems simple enough to use, and the queue system might let me set up and run without too much interaction. However, it really is pummelling my 4 cores, and they are registering in the 60s as I type (fans full on), and I have had 2 BSODs and not completed encoded file yet. Still trying…
OK so finally encoded Moulin Rouge as an MKV and it runs well - no buffering - hooray. But I don’t like this 2 step process, and also Fast Forward/Back is painfully slow. Also, while it is not bad at all, I can see the degradation of quality from the orginal BD. So I am still investigating NFS. Do I really need WEC?
WEC is specific to WDLXTV firmware which currently does not exist on this device
step 1 & 2 required
steps 3 - 5 only for multiple drives
steps 6 -7 WDLXTV specific
maybe you want to tell us what you’ve done and what parts are not working
edit: the SMP has native NFS support, but WD disabled it by default
once your NFS server is running
on SMP go to Settings - Network - enable Linux file sharing
then go to view your media
select, source, network shares, linux shares, IP address
Thanks for the response KAD79. I’ve completed steps 1 thru 4, with no difference to performance - implying the NFS share isn’t set up properly.
I’ve tried to find “Settings - Network - enable Linux file sharing”, and I don’t see anything there.
The menu options in “Settings” are:
Network Setup
Check Connection
Device Name
Network Share Mgt
Workgroup.
My firmware version is 1.12.14
My version of the firmware is:
settings - network
then you need to scroll down
there’s actually about 8 different items there
enable linux file sharing is the last one on the list
thanks for your patience KAD79…
OK so I didn’t know you could scroll off the bottom of the screen :flushed:
I enabled the Linux Shares and followed your directions. When I clicked on the IP Address, I got the message:
“Unable to connect to the selected source…”
One thing I have noticed is that the Linux IP Address that comes up is 192.168.1.65 which is not my WDTV Live address - is that an issue? I could not see how I could change it though.
For more info, my setup is pretty simple:
I have a 1TB disk dedicated to Movies - F:\Movies, so my free NFS path is "F:". As there is only one drive at the moment, is this all I have to do?
Help me Obiwan - you are my only hope 
Help me Obiwan - you are my only hope
LOL,
well the IP address should be the IP address of the machine running FreeNFS
a couple of thoughts, if it can’t connect
-
possible FreeNFS is not set up correctly,
-
check that FreeNFS (program) is running and that portmapper (service) is running - portmapper is required
-
some have reported various network set up problems preventing NFS from working
– a. make sure jumbo frames are disabled on your NIC
– b. check flow control settings on your NIC, some people need it off, some need it on
– c. if possible you could try a different NIC, I had to use a different NIC in my Dad’s set up for NFS to work (hardware problem)
checked 1 and 3 are OK. Would not know how to check for the Portmapper Service. Life is short and Xmas is coming, so, I think I will live with SMB and MKV files and the slow fast forwards / rewinds till after Xmas.
Thanks for your support anyway.
