WD-mediaplayer will never play HD-MKVs without stuttering!

Dear guys form WD,

when I went to my local tech-dealer to buy a WDTV-player I never expected any problems playing 1080p-MKVs located on my network-server. Hey… it’s printed on the box: “Playes HD 1080p videos”

But that’s not true. This player will never be able to play 1080p-HD-videos from network-shares. Why? 'Cause this box can not read data fast enough from SMB/CIFS-network-shares. And I do not believe that it will ever be able to do so.

I give a sh**t abou all these new features like facebook and stuff.

FIX THE PROMISSED FEATURES PRINTED ON THE PACKAGING (HD-video-playback, VOB-video-playback, HD-MTS-video-playback… all without stuttering when playing form networkshares) BEFORE IMPLEMENTING NEW FEATURES. OHTERWISE I’LL SEND THIS CRAPPY BOX BACK TO YOU.

And if you are NOT ABLE to fix it: Be honest and tell it to your customers.

_TV_1 wrote:

Dear guys form WD,

 

when I went to my local tech-dealer to buy a WDTV-player I never expected any problems playing 1080p-MKVs located on my network-server. Hey… it’s printed on the box: “Playes HD 1080p videos”

 

But that’s not true. This player will never be able to play 1080p-HD-videos from network-shares. Why? 'Cause this box can not read data fast enough from SMB/CIFS-network-shares. And I do not believe that it will ever be able to do so.

 

 

plays 1080p mkv’s from my shares fine and it’s running over wireless.

There are so many postings from other users here at the forum with problems playing MKVs. Why are the experiences with this box so different… ?

btw… what kind of wifi do you use?? IEEE 802.11n ??? That is faster than the 100mbit-LAN-port…

I am one of the lucky ones :smiley: only ever had minor problems.

yes I do run IEEE 802.11n wifi, the shares are running from an old Athlon 2000 computer running XP :dizzy_face:

media files do load and start playing quicker for me if I use media server instead of network share,   serviio dlna media server  is the one I use. I tend to stick with the network shares because my iso dvd rips do not work through the media server.

All three of my WDTVs that I use regularly play 1080p content with no issues at all, and I’m using Wired LAN.    This includes HD videocamera, and BluRays converted to MKVs, as well as quite a few calibration and bandwidth testing videos up to about 36 to 40 megabits per second.

Now granted, I seldom stream pure, unmodified BluRay ISOs because that’s asking a little too much.

In fact, that can exceed even the BLURAY specification.   

The Bluray specification allows for approximately 54 megabits per second read-rate from the optical disk, 48 megabits per second MAXIMUM stream bitrate, and 40 megabit for video only.

If you take a straight rip of AVATAR,  without modification and try to stream it from a NAS, you’re demanding more than that maximum allowed because you’re streaming ALL STREAMS simultaneously:   The MOVIE, and ALL AUDIO TRACKS, and all Subtitle Tracks…   It adds up!

Depending on what you’re trying to do, you might do well to take your videos and strip out the unwanted subtitle streams and audio streams (foreign languages, etc.)  and that will go a long way to reducing the bandwidth demand.

From my experience things are exactly as you stated. This thing will never handle SMB/CIFS properly. But there are at least two other ways to make it play HD videos without shuttering. You can use custom firmware with NFS support or DLNA if you prefer original firmware. Both worked worked flawlessly for me as opposed to SMB/CIFS shares.

@ all:

I’m talking about LAN-connected devices (wired) ! An USB-plugged Draft-N-Wireless-LAN-stick is faster - that’s right. But I don’t want use WLAN.

@ Lost_gamer:

I tried a custom firmware last night, but couldn’t access my NFS-shares… I’ll try again…  (any hints?)

How do you see a solution in using DLAN? This still used the 100mbit LAN-port which is the needle eye… I tried it. Didn’t worked for me. With SMB/CIFS you can use 60-70% of max. bandwith… (NFS 95%)

@ _TV_1:

What I was talking about is to use dlna media server to share your media (similar to  serviio dlna media server  mentioned by markinuk) because of somewhat better bandwidth utilization.

As for NFS and custom fw, there are lots of detailed guides out there. You may want to check that wdlxtv wiki.

Also don’t forget to plug some compatible usb drive into WDTV to be able to see NFS shares.

@Lost_gamer:

okay… DLNA… i read DLAN… my fault…

Lost_gamer wrote:

@ _TV_1:

 

Also don’t forget to plug some compatible usb drive into WDTV to be able to see NFS shares.

I guess that’s the solution…

_TV_1 wrote:

@ all:

 

I’m talking about LAN-connected devices (wired) ! An USB-plugged Draft-N-Wireless-LAN-stick is faster - that’s right.

Only on marketing glossies.   In practice:   Next to NEVER.    About the only way you’d ever see an N network get close to 150 megabits per second is in an anechoic RF isolation chamber where the client and AP are the only devices present, and only a few meters away from each other, with “ideal” antennae patterns, etc…  

There’s truly very little that can cause a switched 100megabit wired network to perform lower than that, except for contention at the endpoints.

There’s TONS of things that can keep a Draft-N stick from even approaching 50mbps, let alone 150.   It’s a shared medium, and your next door neighbor’s baby monitor or cordless phone will knock its bandwidth down quite a bit… and the presence of ANY B/G devices on the same channel (even if not associated to your network) will destroy performance.

TonyPh12345 wrote:> Only on marketing glossies.   In practice:   Next to NEVER.    About the only way you’d ever see an N network get close to 150 megabits per second is in an anechoic RF isolation chamber where the client and AP are the only devices present, and only a few meters away from each other, with “ideal” antennae patterns, etc…  

 

There’s truly very little that can cause a switched 100megabit wired network to perform lower than that, except for contention at the endpoints.

 

There’s TONS of things that can keep a Draft-N stick from even approaching 50mbps, let alone 150.   It’s a shared medium, and your next door neighbor’s baby monitor or cordless phone will knock its bandwidth down quite a bit… and the presence of ANY B/G devices on the same channel (even if not associated to your network) will destroy performance.

I agee with you but actually this is not the subject of that topic.

Did you try connecting via media server (DLNA) instead of via SMB?

I found that I was able to play 720p / 1080p files with BitRates up to about 16Mbps over a fairly slow Powerline network using Twonky media server that would not play smoothly via network share.

PixelPower wrote:

Did you try connecting via media server (DLNA) instead of via SMB?

 

I found that I was able to play 720p / 1080p files with BitRates up to about 16Mbps over a fairly slow Powerline network using Twonky media server that would not play smoothly via network share.

Jep… same suttering/no sound like SMB…

But there is another interesting thing: I copied files from an external USB-drive connected to the WDTV to my NAS. WDTV and NAS are LAN-connected. I achieved transferrates that should allow 1080p-playback without stuttering.

Why does it not work the other way around???

_TV_1 wrote:

 


PixelPower wrote:

Did you try connecting via media server (DLNA) instead of via SMB?

 

I found that I was able to play 720p / 1080p files with BitRates up to about 16Mbps over a fairly slow Powerline network using Twonky media server that would not play smoothly via network share.


Jep… same suttering/no sound like SMB…

 

That’s really weird… which media server did you try?  

Can you describe your file server setup a little? Right now we know nothing about it.  What kind of router are you using?

Actually, we don’t even know whether you have a Live or a Plus, nor what firmware you’re running, so any more details you can supply might increase the chances of identifying the culprit.  ;)

I plugged in my Live Plus and have been streaming a 1080p file (~16Mbps) from my NAS (Twonky) to double check my claims.  It’s playing back just as smoothly as when I originally played it on my Live Hub directly from its internal HDD.

That’s over a WD Livewire Powerline connection plugged into the LAN port, which is probably slower than the physical RJ45 cable you’re using.

Did you try playing any files from a locally attached HDD / flash disk?  If they no longer stutter, we can assume it’s network specific and not a hardware problem with the player.

PixelPower wrote:

 

That’s really weird… which media server did you try?  

 

Can you describe your file server setup a little? Right now we know nothing about it.  What kind of router are you using?

 

Actually, we don’t even know whether you have a Live or a Plus, nor what firmware you’re running, so any more details you can supply might increase the chances of identifying the culprit.  ;)

 

Did you try playing any files from a locally attached HDD / flash disk?  If they no longer stutter, we can assume it’s network specific and not a hardware problem with the player.

Okay…

h/w:

WDTV LIVE fw: 1.03.49 (checked all 1.04.XX, same problem, + VOB-stuttering)

Synology 210J NAS (SMB shares, DLNA)

TP-Link-switch

symtoms:

most (actually not all) 1080p-MKVs start stuttering and no sound after a while (and allways at the same possition) when playing from network (no matter if DLNA or SMB), fast forward fixes stuttering/sound for few minutes.

same problems with MT2S-videos from my Panasonic Lumix digicam.

no probs with 720p-videos.

Same files play fine from connected USB-drives, no stuttering, no sound problems.

I’ll try streaming from my desktop tonight to see if it’s a server-problem.

Okay…

tried playing some 1080p-Videos from a Windows-PC-share. Same problems like playing from my Synology-server… 

TV_1,

This almost sounds like you might have an issue with your LAN.  Have you tried to isolate that by connecting your WDTV Live directly to the NAS box - or something similar?

Also, you don’t say how you made your MKVs.

I am able to play full 1080P, BD rips w/out issue.  My setup is as follows.

Syn DS211j, wired GbE LAN and a WD TV Live Plus.

As for my MKVs, I use DVDFab8 and do not compress or encode anything.  Just rip the full video file and one audio track (usually DTS), and that’s it.  Haven’t had any issues with playback, and have played Avatar (w/internal forced subs) , Transformers 2, etc…

Hope this helps.

tjkaz wrote:

This almost sounds like you might have an issue with your LAN.  Have you tried to isolate that by connecting your WDTV Live directly to the NAS box - or something similar?

I’ll do so this weekend.

tjkaz wrote:

Also, you don’t say how you made your MKVs.

I am able to play full 1080P, BD rips w/out issue.  My setup is as follows.

Syn DS211j, wired GbE LAN and a WD TV Live Plus.

As for my MKVs, I use DVDFab8 and do not compress or encode anything.  Just rip the full video file and one audio track (usually DTS), and that’s it.  Haven’t had any issues with playback, and have played Avatar (w/internal forced subs) , Transformers 2, etc…

Hope this helps.

ALL my MKVs play without issue from USB-drives connected localy to the WDTV…

_TV_1 wrote:

  

ALL my MKVs play without issue from USB-drives connected localy to the WDTV…

 

 

Ahhhhh, you may be on to something…

Good luck, and hope you get it worked out.  Focus on your lan.