Help - HTPC having persistent problems with blu ray playback over network

Both server/client are using onboard network cards? These are known to throw their toys under load.. I've been having problems with the gigabit onboard on my server.. Am going to swap it out for a proper pci gigabit card.

Also, the switch/router you're using is that 10/100? You could try upgrading to gigabit.. even if it doesnt fix your problem they are REALLY handy to have on a local lan.

The Gigabyte H55M-UD2H and Gigabyte EP43T-USB3 motherboards both have Realtek onboard LAN NICs. The integrated Realtek LAN chips have been known to be problematic with gigabit networks and HTPCs. Get Intel PCI-E gigabit LAN cards for each PC and they should fix your streaming issues.

I ran into almost the same issue. I am runnng a Windows Home Server and my HTPC accesses the Blu Ray files from this server using My Movies and Total Media Theater Platinum. The Blu Rays are ISO 's mounted with Virtual Clone Drive. I too also experienced the stuttering and pausing as well. My network is all Gigabit throughout the house using Cat6 all going back to a single core switch. I found out that at a minimum you need 192k of buffer memory on each switch port to adequately support HD video. What happens is that the network is serving up data packets faster than the NIC or switchport can receive or deliver them. What needs to happen is for the NIC to signal the switch to buffer some of the packets so the NIC can catch up. This function is only available on certain switches. The one that cured it for me is the Netgear GS116 ($155). If you check its specs the que buffer memory is 512k per switch port which is more than enough to handle the load. I can replicate the problem by connecting the old switch and it will happen everytime. When I put the Netgear back in I no longer have issues.
Hope this fixes the problem for you.

First things first, make sure that your NIC and Switch port settings match.

I would hardcode the NIC's and Switch ports to

1000
full duplex

Usually they are set to

Auto
Half Duplex

or

Auto
Full Duplex


Any type of mismatches between switch and NIC can be detrimental to your network traffic.

So, again, set both NICs and the switch (if it's managed, if it's not then think about getting one that is) to 1000/Full. Then perform an "agile" system reboot. Basically where everything is powered up systematically from a fully powered down network, starting with the Router, then switch, then each PC verifying that each device comes up with the appropriate settings in place and operating.

Best of luck!

The only way to manually set a switch ports' settings is to have a managed switch which is going to cost you a bit.
My advice is to try a new Intel NIC first on the HTPC. See if that remedies the problem. If not you are only out a few $$'s.
Next I would put in a switch like the Netgear GS116 I suggested then connect both your server and HTPC to that same switch. Now you have a Gigabit connection between the two and enough buffering on the ports to handle the traffic. You are also then taking out of the equation any other traffic from the rest of your network that could be inducing slowness. Putting the two machines on their own switch will eliminate any broadcast storms from other network clients.
If this doesn't resolve the issue try replicating it with the file local on the HTPC. Take the network and server out of the equation and see if it is a software issue.
Good luck on your hunt. Mine drove me to almost pitch the whole setup...

You might be experiencing Network Throttling. See this Microsoft support note on how to address it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948066

bovinda -

Did you ever resolve this issue? I'm working on a new HTPC build and I'm having the same (or at least similar) problems. I know my WHS setup isn't the problem as I can stream blu-ray ISOs just fine to my Popcorn Hour C200 box with absolutely no stuttering ever. I'm setting up the HTPC so support 3D playback (I know, I know, WHY???), and the HTPC is now plugged into the same switch port the C200 was using (the C200 moved upstairs to our family room). I have found that when the stuttering occurs I can enable and then disable jumbo frames on my Realtek mobo NIC (ASUS P7H55-M Pro mobo) and the problem will disappear for a while, but it always comes back. I've tried disabling interrupt moderation (per another site's suggestion) but no luck. So I'm just wondering if you've worked out the problem.

I have an Intel NIC arriving Friday, and I need to install my Netgear GS116 that's been sitting in it's unopened box for months (thanks mikemack for motivating me) to see if that improves my situation (beyond the Cisco SD2008 I'm currently using).

Well after trying pretty much everything except address Network Throttling, I finally gave that a shot last night and shut it off by modifying the registry setting from 0x0000000a to 0xffffffff. It appears that has done the trick - fingers crossed! I played numerous Blu-ray ISOs via XBMC & TMT5 and the stuttering is gone and thus far hasn't come back. I returned everything else to original settings (latest Realtek driver with default settings, etc) and no stuttering. I changed NetworkThrottlingIndex back to its original and the stuttering returns after reboot. I changed it back again to 0xffffffff and the stuttering is gone after reboot. I'm hoping that's it and it's fixed once and for all. Of course now I have a $30 Intel PCIe NIC card arriving tomorrow that I don't really need. I hope.

Now on to trying to resolve some minor lipsync issues with DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD passthrough from TMT5.

Thanks switchman70 for the info!!!!!!!!

From the kb;

To configure the throttling rate, change the value of the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry under the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Multimedia\\SystemProfile\\
Name : NetworkThrottlingIndex
Value type : DWORD
Value data : From integer 1 through integer 70 (Decimal) (Decimal)

Did/Can you try changing the value from 10 (default) to something between 10 and 70? (e.g. 50) to see if that also resolves your stutter issue?

I'm just wondering if that would be a better solution than completely disabling network throttling.

tehowell -

No I didn't try any other settings at this point - just went straight for disabled. When I get a chance I may give it a try. I noticed on the "Steam" users forum that this fix was used to address some gaming issues, and one user stated that setting it to 50 decimal fixed his issues. Maybe I'll give it a shot tonight and post back.

I am setting up my wired network this weekend, I hope i do not run into a similar issue. the only difference is i am using the blu-ray folders, not ISO's.

If i have a similar problem I will try this first. Thanks for going through this first so i wont have to.

bovinda,

It applies equally to Windows 7 (i.e. both OSs use the same registry key).

What network throttling does is to say to your processor; "Don't send packets as fast as possible. Artificially slow down the rate you send them, just in case some other process wants to use additional CPU time".

It might be worth trying. If you do, please post the results. The first thing I would try is to set the value to 50 decimal.

bovinda -

I'm on Win 7 64-bit as well - should've mentioned that before. I just tried setting the throttling value to 50 decimal and that seems to work just fine.

As I understand it (more like interpret) the value represents the number of data packets per millisecond that can be processed for non-multimedia network traffic. So 50 allows 5X as much data per millisecond as 10.

Perhaps since I'm streaming my Blu-rays from an ISO the network traffic is seen as non-multimedia and is therefore throttled during the playback by TMT5 which is certainly multimedia. In other words the transfer of data from my WHS to Virtual CloneDrive isn't multimedia.

Not sure but at least things seem to be working now.

One more bit of information... Since I had already order the Intel NIC I decided to see how it would behave in my HTPC with the different NetworkThrottlingIndex settings. I set it back to the original value of 10 and so far it appears the Intel NIC works just fine at that setting, whereas the mobo Realtek NIC did not. I'll keep running it that way just to be sure nothing crops up, but if things continue working it would appear that both Microsoft and Realtek contribute to the problem.

And on a bit more subjective look - the lipsync issues seem to be reduced, if not altogether corrected, with the Intel NIC. But that was an intermittent issue I was having anyway, so I'm not sure I should attribute the improvement to the Intel NIC>

After my last post on the 30th the issues returned.

I have spent the last week and some days working on this and here is what resolved it for me. Hopefully this can help someone else.

BTW - changing the network throttling settings were not the answer for me.

At first it was the demigrator.exe service on my WHS that was the major cause of the hiccups/stutters. After turning that off during watching hours it improved but not completely.

I also tried numerous network and NIC setting changes (including network throttling), replaced cabling, isolated the WHS and HTPC to their own switch, etc... The issue would disappear for a couple of movies and then reappear.

Finally two things resolved it for me. The first was I replaced my main switch with a Netgear GS116 which has 512k of que buffer memory per port. After reading many sites and articles I stumbled on a recommendation from the Windows Media Center Group or Alliance which recommended at minimum
192k of memory per switch port for streaming media especially HD content. The Netgear was the only desktop (non-managed) switch I could find that had this feature and above what was recommended. When I replaced my Linksys Gigabit switch with the Netgear Gigabit switch the stutters/hiccups went from several repetitious stutters/delays to just slight blips every now and then. Some were just audio dropouts or looked like layer changes in the disc like on a two layer DVD. Much, much better than before but not perfect. Oh and my network throughput went from 150-170Mbps to 220-250Mbps when I measured Windows Home server to HTPC with JPERF.
The second change that resolved it completely was to replace the Realtek NICs in the server and the HTPC with Intel Pro PCIe Gigabit NICs. The onboard Realteks on the server and HTPC were both Gigabit and running the latest drivers. I tried all the tweaks of the driver settings and nothing worked. Finally for $30 each I installed new Intel NICs and ran 6 Blu Ray movies (ISO's / VCD mounted / TMT3 Platinum / MyMovies on WMC Win7 Home) from my WHS and not one stutter/hiccup/dropout all weekend. I tested network throughput with this change and the HTPC went from 220-250Mbps after the switch change to 320-350Mbps with the NIC change.
I even ran some stress tests on the network by streaming other Blu Ray movies to two other desktops and another HTPC in the house. So in all I had 4 HD streams going at once and I had no issues.
For $30 investment I advise replacing the Realtek NICs and save yourself some headaches. If that doesn't solve it try the Netgear switch for $155 online.
My consensus is that the Realtek NICs are not optimal for HD playback over the network. There are too many posts on other forums and this forum as well that point to the Realteks as being the source of the issue. My network throughput went from 220-250Mbps with the Realteks tweaked with flow control on and port speed set to 1000 full duplex and connected to the Netgear Gigabit switch to 320-350Mbps with the PCIe 1x Intel Gigabit NICs at their default settings.

Running W7 x64 - streaming .iso Bluray over LAN from Intel NIC to Realtek Nik with TMT5. Had stuttering - changed the throttle registry as suggested above - worked like a charm! Thanks.

I gave up on my Realtek Nic after several version rollbacks and setting changes. Solved the problem with a sub $20 USB TRENDnet 10/100Mbps network adapter.

hjackson

This is one reason I've been using Asus boards in my builds, they use Intel nics onboard, at least on the better boards (not sure across the board).

With Intel nics, a good switch and a server with good drive performance (and nothing running like denegrator on WHS1) and you should have no problems streaming blu-ray. Just as a test I ran two separate blu-rays on my two HTPCs from my WHS 2011 server. Both streamed continuously with no problems.

One thing that does also help a lot is to make sure your server drive performance is decent. If you running slower green drives you could run into issues if you don't have them in a raid array to increase performance (this is one reason why WHS 1 is really not a very good server for streaming HD media, especially full blu-ray rips.)

Do you think?

Max bitrate for Blu-ray is 50Mb/s, which is 6.25MB/s.

Taking a Western Digital WD20EARS Eco Green drive as an example, that benchmarks at over 100MB/s for sustained reads, dropping to around 60MB/s for random 4k reads. That should allow a few simultaneous HD streams with few issues, even without RAID striping?

My unRAID server is running WD20EARS EcoGreen drives (and unRAID isn't RAID - no striping, files are stored in a standard Linux file system) and has no issues with BD streaming over GigE (and works OK over a Netgear '500Mbs' Powerline network as well - though only a single stream over the Netgears!)

all i am having a lot of issues with this. I have tried setting the throttle settings, buying a new Trend Net Gig Network card and none of it seems to work. The weird thing is that my trend net nic card seems to be using the Realtek driver. Is this expected. Also is there no other option other than buying an expensive 155 dollar netgear router? I have a WHS (8tb) and am pretty bummed that i cant get this to work. Could jumbo packets help?

also i should note that my whs is a EX480 so i dont really think i can switch out the NIC card on that one.

I see the Netgear GS116 is highly recommended as it has a big packet buffer.

Would this be a good managed version? If I read it correct this one has way way more buffer and is managed? For only $35 is more?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127351

Or is the 3.5Mbyte for all of them so divide by 16 (3.5*1024=3584Kbytes /16=224Kbyte per port?

I have an HP WHS as well. Thinking of switching my Blu-rays to a straight NAS and not the WHS. I believe my EX475 is a bottleneck. I'm wondering if the cost of the Drobo units would be worth it....

The other half of the problem is the damn Realtek NICs on my Gigabit Mobos. I've ordered a replacement for my Hackintosh desktop, because the Realtek NICs aren't natively supported by Apple, and the drivers that Realtek provides are problematic. Even under Windows they suck, and cause issues with the bridging of my Ceton InfiniTV on my HTPC. I just haven't decided which one I card I should order for the HTPC. I may consult Ceton and see which NIC they recommend, as well as ArcSoft for TMT5.