[6corewhore]

Ok, so guess what.

Yesterday, I updated to beta 6 of atv flash black and used their media player for the first time after their beta 2 conflicts with xbmc.

I played my infamous 16 gig mkv file and.....no buffering. Seeking and start time was also quite quick. First time I have achieved this, although I must mention that the progression of xbmc builds has improved this issue as well. Doesn't mean I'm jumping off xbmc, just wanted to make a point of note.

Reminder of my setup.

ATV2 build 4.2.2/8f305 Seasonpassed, running Rapier beta 2 skin.
SMB shares via Imac (part wifi/part ethernet). Router Airport extreme (dual band)

What version XBMC?

[activate]

What version XBMC?

Sorry mate, I am now running the latest official xbmc verison 10.0.9. I think that this version is almost or is the latest nightly build. The improvements in buffering/stuttering I had noticed as soon as jumping off the 10.0.7 to the nightlies. Its by no means fixed and there is still a substantial difference when I tried it on the firecore media player which ran smooth till the end of the movie.

[6corewhore]

Sorry mate, I am now running the latest official xbmc verison 10.0.9. I think that this version is almost or is the latest nightly build. The improvements in buffering/stuttering I had noticed as soon as jumping off the 10.0.7 to the nightlies. Its by no means fixed and there is still a substantial difference when I tried it on the firecore media player which ran smooth till the end of the movie.

I found 10.0.8 seems to run better than 10.0.9. I'll give the latest a try again. Thanks!

[nutsofamily]

Yes, I too went for beta 6 and the media player mounts afp shares in OSX Lion and plays very well. No fan art or thumbnails, but I just want to play movies.

Since XBMc does not support iPhoto or iTunes via smb or afp, for me at least, XBMC is dead.

Ok, so guess what.

Yesterday, I updated to beta 6 of atv flash black and used their media player for the first time after their beta 2 conflicts with xbmc.

I played my infamous 16 gig mkv file and.....no buffering. Seeking and start time was also quite quick. First time I have achieved this, although I must mention that the progression of xbmc builds has improved this issue as well. Doesn't mean I'm jumping off xbmc, just wanted to make a point of note.

Reminder of my setup.

ATV2 build 4.2.2/8f305 Seasonpassed, running Rapier beta 2 skin.
SMB shares via Imac (part wifi/part ethernet). Router Airport extreme (dual band)

[6corewhore]

Yes, I too went for beta 6 and the media player mounts afp shares in OSX Lion and plays very well. No fan art or thumbnails, but I just want to play movies.

Since XBMc does not support iPhoto or iTunes via smb or afp, for me at least, XBMC is dead.

Interesting. As a developer I've been running Lion for months (in fact, I've hardly booted into SL), now using the GM build (not crazy about the iOS implementation in OS X but that's another matter).

I got the beta 6, noticed the features now include what I've been needing. Still need to Seas0npass my aTV 2, I'll install XBMC and the new aTV Flash Black.

[ktjensen]

Yup because SMB sucks on TimeCapsule/Airport Extreme because it uses a netbsd client, not Samba.

If/when afpclient gets refactored then we'll have native AFP in XBMC and hopefully that's better.

Thanks Keith and other who are pointing this out.

I was wondering about this issue with my Airport Extreme, and the backup USB drive attached to it running SMB. You may also find that with SMB on these devices, you seem to need to use all label options. I had to label my hard drive as formatted, and make sure that I activated a password for it. Also could not browse for the SMB and get access, via Airport Extreme. Rather I had to map the drive, which seems to work.

Bottom line is that I now use my win7 workstation to serve files in my home LAN. works mo-betta.

[6corewhore]

Thanks Keith and other who are pointing this out.

I was wondering about this issue with my Airport Extreme, and the backup USB drive attached to it running SMB. You may also find that with SMB on these devices, you seem to need to use all label options. I had to label my hard drive as formatted, and make sure that I activated a password for it. Also could not browse for the SMB and get access, via Airport Extreme. Rather I had to map the drive, which seems to work.

Bottom line is that I now use my win7 workstation to serve files in my home LAN. works mo-betta.

Question. I bought a Synology DS211 NAS to replace my "Time Capsule" attached via SMB/ethernet. Since it is a much different system is SMB via this NAS good to utilize?

[ktjensen]

Question. I bought a Synology DS211 NAS to replace my "Time Capsule" attached via SMB/ethernet. Since it is a much different system is SMB via this NAS good to utilize?

as long as you are inside your LAN, then supposedly you have to test more. My SMB tests with MEDIA PLAYER (by the ATVFlash folks - not XBMC) seem to show good functionality. The few tests with SMB and XBMC did not look good, but may be my own settings issue.

I personally set up a UPNP streaming application (PLAYON or TVERSITY) on my workstation to XBMC. Have not tried enough of SMB, as mine is from both Apple Extreme router, and the WIN7 workstation.

[Scott R]

Question for those of you reporting positive results streaming 1080p MKVs using aTV Flash (black): Is there a server-side component which is transcoding the video (a la Plex), or is it streaming the file as-is?

I haven't played a ton of movies on my XBMC ATV2 yet, but have had good results with DVD .ISO files and 720p MKV files. My straight Blu-ray ripped MKV files (20GB+) play, but not without issues. My latest test (Rango) pauses numerous times over SMB and, with my latest test, using an NFS server on my Acer Revo running XP. With Filezilla server, I can play the movie without pauses, but I get frequent video slowdowns/dropped frames (audio plays fine).

I just recently bought a new desktop (i7-2600) for the main purpose of downconverting my movies to a more ATV2-friendly format. With the rumors of an A5-based ATV (which I'm skeptical will happen this year), I am tempted to hold off a bit, as I'd prefer to keep my Blu-ray rips in 1080p format. But lately I've been thinking that I should just save myself the headache and use Handbrake to bring them down to 720p MP4 files that can play on a stock ATV2. Obviously, though, even with an i7-2600, I'm looking at quite a bit of time to encode all of my movies.

[Scott R]

Sorry for the cross-post on this, but I figured people following both threads might be interested...

I recently posted this in another thread (and below that is an update):

Also, a possible noob question: I've got my XP server and ATV2 connected to the same switch (the XP server connection lighting green for gigabit), but this switch is connected to another switch, which is then connected directly to my Apple AirPort Extreme. Is the ATV2 connecting directly to the XP server, or does it have to travel up the line through to the AirPort Extreme, and then back down to the XP server? Just wondering if it might be better for me to connect my XP server directly to the AirPort Extreme. That should be a fairly painless test, so I'll give that a shot later.

FWIW, I just tried this and it looks to have solved my problem. I connected my Revo (file server) directly to the AirPort Extreme. The ATV2 was still connected via a long run to one switch, then into another switch, then into the ATV2. I re-tried all three methods: FTP access still gave me the same problem (slowdowns/dropped frames), but *both* SMB and NFS seemed to play smoothly with no pauses. The surprise there was that SMB was now working fine, so I'm inclined to shut down the NFS server service and just stick with SMB. But is there a way for me to do some sort of speed test to see what sort of difference I'm getting in throughput with my SMB vs NFS connections?

[Parhakoo]

To the original poster @johndo: I was having identical issues and though I am a bit late, would like to share my feedback as follows:

Setup: atv2 connected to cisco e4200 thru wifi. 500gb usb hdd connected to router. I am using eden v11. iOS 4.3.3.
Result: everything plays well except 1080p h.264 encoded 5.1 blue ray rips (north of 10gb a file). severe buffering (30 sec) after every say 2-3 mins of smooth playback. No stuttering.

Earlier today, kept the same setup and just put a normal Ethernet cable (no super-duper gigabit cable) between atv2 and router. I can confirm that it solved my problem.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their feedback since it led me to try the wired solution.

[Thewolf]

The latest AppleTV2 software update must of done some serious optimisations playing back 1080p is perfect now through iTunes. Before the movies would drop frames all the time now its just silky smooth. I wonder what the point of the AppleTV3 is.

[Memphiz]

1080p output (atv3) vs. 720p output (atv2) ... thats the only point...

[Chrisiooo]

Hey there, with my setup, 1080p streaming runs perfect over my atv2, except that the little box downscale the content.
I use an Airport Extreme with a 3TB Hardrive hooked up. I stream over smb from my Airport Extreme in the Bedroom to my Airport Express in the Living-Room and the atv2 is connected over Lan to the Airport Express.
I use firmware 7.6 on both devices. 7.6.1 made my whole network too slow, don´t know why....:confused2:
Also I uses Firmware 4.3 on my atv.

[Thewolf]

1080p output (atv3) vs. 720p output (atv2) ... thats the only point...

They could of just enabled it on the AppleTV2.