[FernetMenta]

It's probably this bug: http://trac.kodi.tv/ticket/16915

Maybe it is, however I am playing recordings over LAN, not WAN.

What is the difference between accessing a folder on LAN using pvr://recordings vs adding the same folder as a SMB share then playing recordings from Videos? Because that seems to be the problem.

If you mount the same folder as a SMB share and play via video menu, it does not use tvh addon.

[pajtaz]

Ok, I did more testing. I tried setting up NFS and SMB shares on the PVR machine and then playing back recordings from those shares. I got the same terrible playback.

So I went into the PVR machine, into Ubuntu, and tried copying files from the machine to Cubox. The file transfer was slow, just as slow as the playback. Then I turned off Samba on Cubox and tried accessing Cubox again from PVR machine. Ubuntu connected using SFTP and then the file transfer was lightning quick! Then I tried copying files from the PVR machine to my Windows 7 (also connected using SMB). The file transfer was also slow, less than 1 MB/s. I also tried copying the files from PVR machine to my NAS (also using SMB) and I got the same slow speed.

HOWEVER, I tried copying file from PVR to my NAS but first I set up the share in /etc/fstab using cifs. Accessing NAS share this way and copying the file got me blazing fast speed, copying 82 MB file in 3 seconds. Then I set up a SMB share on my PVR machine and accessed the share with my Windows 7 laptop (of course, with SMB). Then I copied the same file but it took a it longer, I got transfer speed of about 5.2 MBs.

So that seems to be the problem. Ubuntu seems to be transferring files really slow when connecting using SMB. But it's strange the same SMB share I set up above does not give me the same speed when playing back the file using Cubox.

Now, how do I get the file transfers to the best speed? Do I have to change something on Kodi or Ubuntu or both? Anybody know?

[pajtaz]

I did even more testing and now I have gotten to the root of the problem.

I mounted the SMB share that I set up on my PVR machine using the "manual" method in LibreELEC. Meaning, I ssh-ed into my Cubox machine, mounted the share using "mount -t cifs ..." method and then tested the playback. Voila! Now the playback is perfect!

So accessing SMB shares using Kodi's interface is horribly slow but using the kernel mounting gives me the expected speed.

Now if someone can just tell me how I can replace the "pvr://recordings" default mount in Kodi with the SMB mount using the kernel so that when I click on TV->Recordings, I will use the kernel mounting. Can anyone help?

[negge]

You can't do that. I'm not sure why the network between your devices is slow on some protocols but that's most likely the issue for recordings as well. It should work just fine on both LAN and WLAN. The bug report I posted was limited to WAN (over the Internet) only.

[pajtaz]

Seems like the bug you posted is not relevant now.

It's strange to me that using Kodi's way of mounting SMB (or NFS for that matter) is causing the slowdown and that my Ubuntu PVR machine is seemingly doing the same when using its own file browser to access SMB shares.

I will do some more research/testing to see if I can speed up the SMB protocol on my PVR machine when Kodi access the recordings using pvr://recordings.

Thanks for all the help. I will post an update here if I figure out how to fix this.

[sakos]

Seems like the bug you posted is not relevant now.

It's strange to me that using Kodi's way of mounting SMB (or NFS for that matter) is causing the slowdown and that my Ubuntu PVR machine is seemingly doing the same when using its own file browser to access SMB shares.

I will do some more research/testing to see if I can speed up the SMB protocol on my PVR machine when Kodi access the recordings using pvr://recordings.

Thanks for all the help. I will post an update here if I figure out how to fix this.

Hi Pajtaz,

Have you concluded anything? I am also struggling with inexplicable slowness and buffering issues.