[oldwoodnut]

First off, Hi, I'm Jim. Today, call me ANGRY HULK Jim.

I recently switched to XBMC from using Windows Media no codec support center and an xbox360 as a no codec must re-encode media extender.

Yes, I searched, and read, and searched, and read, so If I am posting for some help, I either didn't find it, or it doesn't exist, till now.

Ill start with my setup, specs, favorite color, etc.

2 computers, 1 in bedroom (main HTPC/Server) and 1 in living room.
All PC's are wired network, zero wireless.

Main HTPC/Server
Windows 7 64 ult
Q9300 Quad Core
8GB Mem
Nvidia GT420
Creative SoundCard
Dual TV Tuner
500Gb OS drive
2TB "Movies" drive
2TB "Kids" drive
2TB "Tv Shows" drive
2TB "Music, Pictures" Drive
Connected to Plasma in bedroom

Apple Airport Extreme N Base station

Living room
Windows 7 32 Ult
P4 3Ghz
4gb mem
250gb OS drive
GT420 video

Shares are setup on main htpc for the media drives.

Using RC2 XBMC on both machines.
Minimal install of Windows on both machines, just needed updates, if i "need" a codec ill install only what i need, along with any specific drivers. Ive learned to minimize my HTPC when i was using the xbox360 as a media extender.
HTPC has been running this way for 2 years.

What works...
Bedroom HTPC, flawless
Living room, runs, does fine. I do have to update library manually for now.

What doesnt work...

1. If I say, play a huge M2TS movie in the living room (again, its streaming), or one of my BD encodes, a large MKV, etc, it plays fine, no issues.

However, if I play any HD content from the "Kids" drive, all I get is lag, stuttering, crap playback. Audio is fine, video is a trainwreck. TV Shows drive seems to be fine, can stream say....my Band of Brothers BD Rips in MKV and play fine.

A good example, Toy Story 1, 2, 3 that I ripped from BD, and encoded to be able to be played back using the xbox as a media extender, they played fine on the 360, play like crap now. Ive tride 10.1, and this new RC2 as well.

Settings for the drives are all the same in windows, regarding write buffering, blah blah blah.


Now, ill eventually switch over to all machines running either XBMCbuntu, or do a custom build of buntu and XBMC, as I use Linux on my computer, however I did not have luck today with booting from the live cd and getting the media to stream very well on anything, so ill play around with an install on a drive this weekend.

2, 3, and 4 will come later, right now, I want to scream due to this lame ass issue.

Now, before someone jumps in with "do a google search" I DID. for days. I was on page 30 in some parts of these forums searching for a fix, information, a how to, etc, and i got a lot of info, but, this.....is weird.

[jmarshall]

Weird. Have you tried copying a file from the Kids drive to one of the other ones, just to rule out the drive itself?

[Prof Yaffle]

That'd be my guess as well - eliminate the drive and/or the connection method, so try moving files around, then try moving the discs around (e.g. swapping around master/slave if they're internal, chained drives).

[DDDamian]

Check that drives aren't almost full (kills Windows badly) or heavily fragmented either.

[oldwoodnut]

Ha ha, I didn't think of transferring a few files to movie drive, I'll try that in a few minutes.

Fragmentation, I could defrag the kids drive tonight, full?, nah, I have 600gb space left on that drive.

Drives are sata, and I swapped them around, and put new cables on this weekend.

---

nope, still studders.

[oldwoodnut]

Well, I loaded xbmc on my computer running Ubuntu 11.04, wireless connection, all media played fine. Opened windows media center on living room, everything played fine, including my test video...a straight copy off a bluray m2ts file, played fine.

I guess a wipe, and reinstall is in order, guess I'll go Linux for the living room now.

Thank you for the help.