Summary: Fixed issues playing my media files from network shares by using NFS (Linux) instead of Windows (Samba)
Howdy all,
Thought I’d share my findings and solutions to issues I’ve constantly being having with my TV Live Hub (all the firmwares all with mixed results) with network shares from my Network Attached Storage (NAS) and after a lot of fiddling around thought I would share my findings.
My Hardware:
- D-Link DIR-825 Dual Band Wireless Router
- QNAP TS-412 NAS
- WD TV Live Hub (3.01.19)
I was running the NAS using Windows networking and created a user for the WD TV to access the multimedia share. I set up the NAS running dual 1Gb ports to my router with port trunking (aggregation) enabled. Using the current firmware 3.01.19, I was easily able to add my network share into my media library and it would scan without problems. However I would often find after scanning that My Media Library would indicate there were no media files. A restart of the WD would fix this, however it often had problems playing certain media files. At present it just hates playing MKV files (ISO files on other firmwares) and would just sit there with either a blank screen or the revolving arrow indicating it was trying. After stopping it then stop playing all other files as well. Therefore another restart would be required.
However, if I put the same MKV file that wouldn’t play from the network share onto an external USB hard drive, it would work. So this got me thinking about what might be the issue with running the file over the network instead of USB cable.
I tried all of the following things;
- Update Firmware on router
- Reset WD setting to default numerous times.
- Change Windows Workgroup from my original value NAS back to default WORKGROUP
- Remove extra 1Gb network connection and port trunking (aggregation)
Unfortunately nothing fixed the problem of running media files from the network shares until I finally realised that maybe I should be looking at how the files are being accessed by the WD hub. So here was my thinking;
- WD TV device uses Linux
- NAS (QNAP TS-412) uses Linux
So the way I had everything set up the WD TV Live Hub was trying to access file shares using Windows protocols when both devices weren’t even on a Windows operating system. For those that don’t know, for the WD to communicate with Windows it needs a piece of software that allows for interoperability between windows and linux systems. This is done using an implementation of the Samba software. My understanding is Linux native protocol is the Network File System (NFS). So it seemed logical to try one more thing to see if I could get things working;
- Enable NFS (Linux) shares on the NAS
- Remove the windows network shares from the WD TV Live Hub
- Add the Linux share to My Media Library on the WD TV Live Hub.
- Rebuild library and restart…
Awesome, it finally works flawlessly (at present).
I haven’t had any problems playing any media file and I’ve even noticed it seems to run faster when browsing the media library (probably due to less overhead communicating via samba to network shares?).
Anyway I hope this may help others.
