[DoyleS]

I have been running Theatertek on my HTPC for years with no problems. I use MyHTPC as the front end. I rip all of my movies to the HD and play from there. Running out of storage, I have added a 300 GB external drive. When I try to play a movie using an external drive with either Firewire or USB2 I get stuttering. If I copy the movie across to one of the internal drives, it plays fine.


Any suggestions on what could be the problem.



...Doyle

 

[N3W813]

Are you using ffdshow? If so, is ffdshow using most of your cpu when you play off your internal hard drive?


USB and firewire both use more cpu cycles than an internal hd, so you may be maxing your cpu out.

 

[DoyleS]

That at least gives me a clue. I am not using ffdshow but am using MyHTPC. I will try doing a cpu monitor while playing an internal drive movie and then repeat using the external drive to see if that looks like the problem. My machine is older being a 1 Ghz Pentium with a Radeon LE card. It has worked so well for all these years that I have not wanted to mess with it.


..Doyle

 

[pcCinema]

A 1ghz pentium probably has USB1 not USB2 and yes you're probably CPU limited such that even firewire can't keep up. Btw USB1 is way to slow for realtime playback of pretty much anything no matter how fast the cpu is.


You could just drop in a USB2 card and try to run the drive off that, but it might be time to replace the whole thing as your processor may still hold that back too much.


Troy