I have a Qnap TS 439 NAS running raid 5. On this NAS I store my BluRay rips. They are ripped using ClownBD and saved as ISO-files. My WDTV box is connected to the NAS using wired network.
I have seen stuttering while playing back a BluRay ISO from the NAS. If I try playing the same file from a direct attached USB disk, it works fine with no stuttering.
Now, I would really prefer to be able to use my NAS as the media repository. So I was thinking that perhaps installing a mediaserver (like Twonky) on the NAS could help. Does anyone have any experience with that, and will it actually result in better performance compared to a normal network share from the NAS?
However, I have browsed loads of threads on the Qnap forums about the Twonky release being buggy. So, in theory you are right - in practice, it might take quite a while to finish the test… I never had any experience with servers like Twonky, so I was interested to hear if other Qnap+WDTV users had any information they wanted to share.
Actually, I was pretty surprised that the raid 5 on the Qnap could not deliver data fast enough to the WDTV box.
For fun, I tried copying a 25GB BluRay ISO from the Qnap to my work computer, over the wired network.
In Windows 7, it started around 92mb/s but fell steadily while it was copying and by the end I was down to around 70mb/s - but this should still be fast enough for BluRay playback.
This points to the WDTV as the bottleneck, but the fact that the movie plays fine directly from an attached USB disk, kind of points back to the Qnap device…
I might try to install Twonky on the Qnap during the weekend, but if anybody have anything useful to add, please do
Actually, I was pretty surprised that the raid 5 on the Qnap could not deliver data fast enough to the WDTV box.
Yes, SMB protocol on the LIVE is a bottleneck, and it often shows when trying to stream uncompressed Blu-Rays. Many people here will re-encode the Blu-Ray using Handbrake (which will reduce it in size by 60% or so, and not noticeably affect the picture quality.)
Yes, I read about Handbrake. I would however prefer to have the BluRay rips as close to the originals as possible.
I just had 10 minutes and connected remotely to my Qnap at home. I enabled Twonky (upnp media) and played a little with it. But, I soon found out that Twonky apparently does not support ISO-files. So it is no good for me.
I guess I will have to copy my BluRay rips to a USB disk, and then just stream the rest of my media from the Qnap.
I also resorted to playing higher bitrate BD (m2ts, mkv) from a local USB drive. Not the ideal solution, and one of the main reasons I am looking to replace my WDTV Live. (alternatives are slim)
I’m not saying it won’t be possible, but it will be unlikely to find a fix by replacing hardware.
Most of these media players are based on the same chipset, or at least the same line of chips (Sigma). They’re also using a lot of the same GPL libraries (why re-code Samba if it’s already solid?) . As such, you’re likely to find the same results in MANY of these boxes.
Agreed. I may just encode with Handbrake (need to look up how to use the nightly builds). I can not tell the difference; but was trying to keep the original BD without encoding.
I’m using B-rad firmware (primarily for moviesheets but also tiring of the slow menu response/loading of movie art with a large number of movies over the NAS).
I’ve tried xmount, cifs-interceptor for NFS shares with no better success rate. The WDTV Live handles 95% of my movies well (~300), but the number of BD rips is increasing.
Read a post or two that there was some improvement in the latest beta which I plan to try. I’m tired of trading a prettier interface for remote response.
WD recommended I re-encode as well…and I don’t want to spend the money on a Dune.
Have the same problem with BluRay ISO playback from QNAP via wired network. At WDTV Live I have stuttering. When I playback the files at Windows PC, they are working fine, without stuttering. So it is not a general network or samba problem. By the way, B-RAD firmware doesn’t solve the problem at my WDTV Live, also test with nfs was not successful.
I have solved the problem by remuxing the ISO files to m2ts files. It takes about 20 minutes per BluRay. WDTV Live plays the m2ts files without problems via wired network. Using Twonky you will also need to remux the BluRay ISO to ts or m2ts, so the workload is the same.
I purchased Pavtube blu ray ripper software because I used to rip my DVD’s to MPEG4 so that I could play them on my WD HD Video Player. Now that I own a Blu-Ray player, I like to be able to rip my Blu-Ray disks to MPEG4 as well.
Sometimes rip blu ray to ISO, WDTV cant play, because it doesnt support TrueHD audio. MKV is not a bad choice.
