[K-Wood]

I've been having consistent problems with stuttering DVD playback when playing DVDs on my HTPC over my LAN from a RAID server.


Looking into the HTPC's LAN connection, I noticed that my NIC and IEEE1394 adaptor are configured as a network bridge, and that the bridge has been assigned an IP address by my network's DHCP router. Both the NIC (Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet) and my firewire (1394 Net Adapter) are integrated onto my Asus P4PE motherboard.


Is there any reason why these two adapters should be bridged?


(it was the default config that winXp selected when I installed the system)


Could the bridge be the cause of my playback issues?


What advantages are there to having the IEEE1394 adapter bridged? Does that mean it can be accessed by other PCs on the network?


Obviously, I'm not a network administrator, so much of this is over my head.


Thanks . . .

 

[mattmannz]

I believe that this is the default condition if the firewire interface is not disabled, this means that you don't need a router to connect the different segments together and machines connected via the firewire will receive ip addresses from your ethernet connected DHCP router as it is treated as being the same physical segment.


This shouldn't be the cause of your stuttering. You don't give any specs on the machines or how you are actually accessing the dvd's however with my two machines (server and htpc both amd xp2400) I share out the dvd drive in my server and connect to it and play dvd's from my htpc fine.


I would do some simple file transfer tests using Windows Explorer and timing the results to see what sort of throughput you are getting and go from there.


Matt.

 

[Kayle]

"Is there any reason why these two adapters should be bridged?"


XP supports IP over Firewire (in other words, using a Firewire network for computer to computer communication for file sharing, printer sharing, multiplayer games, etc). A bridge means that any IP packets it receives on one interface (your ethernet card or your Firewire card) is automatically forwarded to the other--in other words, your computer is now a bridge between an Ethernet network and a Firewire network. If you had computers on the Ethernet network and computers on a Firewire network, it would all look like one big network instead of two small networks. You've turned your computer into an expensive two port hub


If there are no other computers on the Firewire network, then there is no reason for the bridge to be activated. It may even cause the computer running the bridge to slow down a bit when it receives data over the network because it may have to forward them (I'm not conversant with the details of IP over Firewire).


"Does that mean it can be accessed by other PCs on the network?"


Probably not in the way you mean. It means that other computers can communicate with other computers that are connected by Firewire. It doesn't mean other computers can communicate with a DV cam on Firewire.


Firewire is up to 400 Mbits/sec. Fast Ethernet is up to 100 Mbits/sec. So it may be worthwhile to use Firewire for networking your computers, assuming all of them support IP over Firewire (i.e. all of them are running XP)


"Could the bridge be the cause of my playback issues?"


It is possible although somewhat unlikely. Try disabling the bridge.


Sam

 

[fnkpet]

I had a similar problem with a RAI5 for playing DVD's. I do not think it is your network config but it might be. Check the below thread.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ighlight=raid5

 

[K-Wood]

This is incredibly helpful stuff -- and informative as well. I suspect my problem with DVD stuttering lies elsewhere. I've detailed my issues in this

thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=357702


Unfortunately, no one has replied to it!


fnkpet: I read your informative thread and may give that solution a try, but only as a last resort. I suspect that my problem lies on the HTPC machine (client), not on the server. The easiest way to test this hypothesis is to try DVD playback on my office machine and see what happens.


Will report.


Thanks.


[Edit]

DVDs playback fine using WinDVD on a separate machine. I don't have a second copy of TT to try, so I can't tell if the problem is related to TT. But I doubt that it is a problem with my RAID array.

[/Edit]

 

[gabbe]

What Processor?

What Chipset?


on the server side???

 

[K-Wood]

HTPC Specs:

Case: Kanam Accent HTPC Case

Power Supply: 430W Antec TruePower (2 fans; quiet)

Motherboard: Asus P4PE motherboard

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8MHz CPU

CPU Cooling: Thermaltake Copper

Case Cooling: Thermaltake Smart Case Fan

Hard Disk: Western Digital Caviar 10 GB IDE HDD (OS only)

Video Card: Radeon 9500 with Catalyst 3.6 drivers

Sound Card: M-Audio Delta 410 Card

HDTV Tuner Card: MyHD MDP-100 Card

Capture Card: FlyVideo 2000


Software:

Powerstrip 3.45 (resolution 848x480, 60 Hz vertical, 30 Hz horizontal)

TheaterTek 1.5.46

MyHD 1.62

Dscaler 4.18

MainLobby 2.5

DVDLobby 3

MusicLobby 1.80d

Music Lobby for PPC (Dell Axim)

Girder 3.31

Motherboard Monitor 5.5

LCD Smartie

Media Server

Motherboard: Asus A7M266-D (Dual Athlon MP processors, 64-bit PCI slots, etc.)

Memory: 512 184-pin DDR (PC2100) DIMMs

CPU: Single 1.8GHz Athlon MP

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 40GB IDE Drive (on primary IDE controller) (OS and software)

CD-ROM: Plextor CD-RW

RAID Array: 3Ware Escalade 7500 Parallel ATA Raid controller card (8 port)

RAID Disks: 7x120GB Samsung drives (approx. 680GB formatted)

Video: Elsa Gladiac

Sound: M-Audio Delta 410


Software:

WinXP Professional, SP1, with current updates/patches

MainLobby 2.30b Server Edition

MLServer

MusicLobby

DVDLobby

WebLobby

Media Center 9.1 (music library on RAID array)

DVDProfiler


Hopefully that should give you some info to go on. Thanks.

 

[eggz]

How much RAM on the HTPC? Is the HDD big enough for your swap file?


Are your DVDs compressed on your server, so your CPU has to expand them on the fly? Have you tried playing w/o MainLobby (e.g. just use WMP)? My HTPC is connected to my Media Server using 100 MB/s NICs and I have NEVER noticed any stuttering (in fact, I love how much better it works than playing the disks themselves).

 

[K-Wood]

512MB of RAM on the HTPC; I'll need to check the available HDD space when I get home. Perhaps the old WD 10GB is not enough, but I don't have many apps installed.


I'll also check the driver for the NIC to see if it is up to-date.


Finally, I'll check on the type/brand of RAM and on compatibilities with the Asus P4PE motherboard. Any suggestions on that issue? Or where to find mobo/RAM compatibility info?


thanks.

 

[K-Wood]

Well, I went through and disabled all of the non-essential WinXP services and things improved somewhat.


Now, I've isolated the stuttering to DVD playback in TT, but only AFTER I stop, pause, FF, RW, or skip chapters. If I just launch the movie and play it straight through, it works fine.


Perhaps this is a TT-specific problem?


Anyone encountered this?