Medium bitrate mkv stops during play

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Hi,

I’ve got a WD TV Live streaming box with firmware 1.14.09 running on it. I use my Synology 212j NAS as a data storage for my movie files. I connect to the NAS via NFS share with a wired LAN connection, through my Asus gigabit router.

Yesterday i’ve faced with the following: i wanted to watch an MKV movie, but after few minutes the movie stopped, than 10 seconds later continued: it’s like it would be not buffering it enough. I’ve checked the read sequences: according to my NAS’ info the reading speed was around 900kb-1,3MB/sec. The size of the video file is 7,2Gb, encoded with x264 codec @ 6,1Mbps bitrate (simple 720p).

I’ve read on forums, that even higher bitrate movies should not be a problem for the WDTV. It’s like the box would not request enough from the file in advance, that’s why it stuck. Do you have any idea what can cause my problem and how i could solve this?

Thanks for the replies in advance!
Cheers!

2

In another thread they mentioned updating the Synology firmware would fix this. Don’t know if it was the same model though.

3

  Load Synologys Media Server and use Windows shares. I could never get NFS share to work with a couple of DS212j’s and still try every now and then without any luck.

4

I’m running on the latest DSM on the NAS.

5

I don’t have problem with any other smaller files - actually i did not have the chance yet to search for something simiar size and bitrate.
Windows share is not an option, i’ve got a Mac.

6

Most NAS’s will let you share the same directory out multiple ways–e.g., NFS and CIFS/SMB/Windows.  Use the NFS share for your Mac and the Windows share for the SMP.

7

the problem is, that the WD TV sees only my NAS at Linux shares and nothing at Windows shares. Have no idea why, i just spent the afternoon to try to figure it out. Without success

8

I think I’ve solved this, and need to think of the best way to present the info to WD, I guess maybe a new issues thread

So not too long back I upgraded all my network equipment

Also I’ve been watching a lot of netflix which seems unaffected by the issue

so, that’s why it took so long for me to notice this

problem,

NFS share studders or freezes during playback

happens on small files, large files, medium files, etc …

it’s not file specific

also if you have no followed my previous post, I’ve done exensive network testing and average throughput is 95 Mb/s

So over the weekend I began to look into WD’s implementation of NFS

and I found a couple of surprises

There’s no portmapper :dizzy_face:

and as such the WD will not mount NFS over TCP

the WD will ONLY mount NFS over UDP

for those that don’t know the difference

UDP does not require any confirmation that a packet was received

As such if a network packet is dropped/failed/etc

the packet is simply missing

this results in either missing frames (studdering) durring playback

or in some cases, I’ve even see the WD completely freeze

i.e. only option is to pull the plug

to contrast TCP does require packet receipt confirmation

if a packet is dropped/failed

the server resends the missing packet

my temporary work around is to use the WDLXTV beta, because it has a full portmapper

the one test I haven’t gone through is adding the portmapper to the official firmware to see if it will mount via TCP

but I suspect it will

edit: if anybody wants to chime in

here’s an official issue’s post

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Issue/idb-p/streaming_issues/tab/most-recent