[Henchmanc]

So I've spent the past month or so of my free time building a standalone XBMC on an Acer Revo 3610, as well as completely polishing up my movie library using EMM. I had been using XBMC on my old XBOX for roughly 5 or so years now, and I felt it was getting long in the tooth and I wanted a change. Not to mention I wasn't sure how I could safely wipe it out and start from scratch, I'm kinda rusty. But the new one is set up now and everything looks wonderful. Now I would like to show it off to family and friends so they can envy me if not for one fatal flaw...

...starting any of my media is embarrassingly slow, almost 2 minutes after executed (plus, I never get an indication that it is loading, like I did when it took considerably less time on the XBOX, maybe only 15-20 seconds then). Whether it be a movie, TV show, or even a simple trailer (ones I have stored, not ones via plugin/add-on) there would be quite the long, awkward moment once play is pressed after voicing it's praise and beholding it's exquisite glory.
"Looks pretty. So, uhh... does it do anything??"

Revo specs and setup is as follows:
Aspire Revo 3610
Atom 330 @ 1.60Ghz and 2Gb RAM
Bios Version is P01-A4 (11/03/09)
Intel XD Bit [Enabled]
Hyper Threading [Enabled]
UMA Frame Buffer Size [512] (maxed)

My media is stored on 2 NTFS formatted Western Digital My Book 1TB drives that are connected to an old Pentium 4 2.66GHz machine with 1GB of RAM. It's running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 SP3 with a 100Mbps ethernet card and I'm using the XBMS protocol with ccXstream to share the media (I have tried using SMB to connect to the folders shared on the Windows XP MCE install I have, but whenever I try to access a share I get an 'Invalid Argument" error message on the XBMC). I have a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with DD-WRT v23 SP2 (09/15/06) std - build 3932 for my router setup as well as D-link DGS-2208 Gigabit switch. Everything is connected via ethernet cable, not wirelessly.

As I mentioned in the upper paragraph, it did not take this long to play anything using the same exact configuration on the XBOX all the time that I had been using it.

I'm using XBMC 9.11 r26018 from an XBMCfreak release, though I can't recall which of them. I made several previous attempts to install XBMC to the Revo with the various other options available (Ubuntu desktop with standalone, which was a nightmare for me, as well as the official XBMC release to name a few), but the XBMCFreak live CD route I ended up going with was the only one that worked well instantly, where it actually installed simply and cleanly and after the installation it both made it past the boot screen (and didn't stop at some foreign to me linux command prompt) and sound and everything else worked correctly without any tweaking.

The library itself loads very quickly, but browsing TO the folder which holds my media also takes a questionably long, but I suppose that should be expected when it contains over 600 folders, although I expect it shouldn't take just as long when returning to the main folder after browsing a folder contained therein. (again, this didn't take as long on the XBOX, maybe the browsing to part a bit long, but not going back)

I must note that browsing within a folder looks beautiful and is speedy enough (though some skins could be slightly more fluid) and media playback looks fantastic once it finally begins without any A/V sync issues, and I have sound in most skins (I haven't tried any MKV HD files yet, but it's really not a huge factor at this point in time. I guess you could say I prefer quantity over quality)

So what I'm ultimately getting at here is, is all of this normal? Is there supposed to be this kind of wait for something to start playing. Or is there something I need to tweak to get them to begin faster? I know my server setup is not the greatest, but I was comfortable with it in the past. Although I'm not beyond building a better server if it's not very costly or can be done with specs I already have. I know next to nothing about linux so most of those suggestions are not going to help me much. As I mentioned, I TRIED using Ubuntu Desktop on the Revo and it drove me nuts between not being able to fit my screen because it was too big, as well as trying to install drivers and packages and SVN's, oh my. Is there an ideal Windows based server I can put together that will fix this? Can someone more accurately point out where my issue lies?

Sorry this was my first post and it was so long winded, but I'm pretty baffled by this and I wanted to be as concise and give as much information as I could. I hope I posted this in the correct forum, and someone has the patience to read through the whole thing.

[timmers]

You've done a helluva better job than me at posting your problem. All I can say to that, is to add my name to the list of people with a similar problem. Mine seems to be only with the remote, ie: when I click on some movie to start it, it'll take while before the movie actually starts playing. And to make it sort of weird for me (and make it so I can't figure out the problem), is that this only occurs after I've left the revo for a day or two (with xbmc running, but I'm not watching anything on it, only watching live tv, etc). Then when I go back to the revo, to watch a movie, I see that long hesitation moving the cursor around (with the remote). Weird thing is, if I use the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, I don't have that hesitation at all - things respond in a really crisp fashion.

I haven't really done much about the problem, I just exit xbmc to the console, and restart it. Then the remote works just as good as can be again.

Hope there's some people who can shed a bit of light on this problem.

[Henchmanc]

Updated to Xbmcfreak LiveCD 10.08 svn31632. Still the same issue. Oh, and I'm using Aeon65 currently (not that it matters, because it's the same despite which skin I choose, but this one sure is pretty) I got to say it sure is painful when I have to wait 2 minutes to watch a 1 minute trailer.

[BORIStheBLADE]

What I would try is and it doesn't sound like you have is plug the external HD right into the Revo. Bypass your network and see what happens. I would also try moving some random files into the revo's internal HD and try those files too.

I would also try and setup a SMB share later too. I know you have had problems with it, but let start with the basic ones I suggested.

I have a Revo 1600 connected through SMB to a Windows 7 pc and don't have loading issues like you.

[poofyhairguy]

Its normal for me to wait- my Unraid server powers down its drives so I have to wait for them to spin up for things to play.

On my old Hackintosh server I disabled disk sleeping to prevent that wait, but honestly that (plus too high heat) killed a few disks. Consumer drives aren't meant to run all the time. I don't mind waiting once I discovered that fact personally....

[Henchmanc]

I thought I would give an update on this issue.

Well I didn't solve the problem, per se, but I did add a WD Sharespace to my network and it's working extremely well. No waiting (well, maybe the obligatory 3 seconds, but not agonizined waiting), gorgeous playback, and very fast library updating. It was kind of easy to setup, and is expandable up to 8TB currently (I expect newer firmware can increase that size in the future), and it doesn't take up a lot of desk real estate. Thank you all for your suggestions. This community rocks.

[jbass350z]

I thought I would give an update on this issue.

Well I didn't solve the problem, per se, but I did add a WD Sharespace to my network and it's working extremely well. No waiting (well, maybe the obligatory 3 seconds, but not agonizined waiting), gorgeous playback, and very fast library updating. It was kind of easy to setup, and is expandable up to 8TB currently (I expect newer firmware can increase that size in the future), and it doesn't take up a lot of desk real estate. Thank you all for your suggestions. This community rocks.

So do you think it was a server/sharing issue?

[sealbeater]

I have the same issue. I'm running linux on a macmini, with the files being shared via sshfs. I have a broadcom crystalhd card as well. I've noticed that when it happens, the host computer shows a lot of network traffic, basically pegging the 100 meg for the length of time it takes to start the movie, once the movie starts, the network traffic drops down to normal. Playing the same file via command line results in the file being playing immediately with no abnormal network activity.

This doesn't crash the xbmc box per se, but is annoying. I've noticed that disabling the crystalhd card helps but not completely.

I've posted mediainfo for Iron Man 2, which is always behaving so, here:

http://pastebin.com/EwaHNK2p

This doesn't really cause XBMC to crash, but I can provide a crashlog if need be.

This isn't constant for all files, I've almost never had this happen with TV shows but low res/high res doesn't seem to make a difference.

Using XBMC beta2, r33681

I don't think it's a server/sharing issue.

[davilla]

I have the same issue. I'm running linux on a macmini, with the files being shared via sshfs. I have a broadcom crystalhd card as well. I've noticed that when it happens, the host computer shows a lot of network traffic, basically pegging the 100 meg for the length of time it takes to start the movie, once the movie starts, the network traffic drops down to normal. Playing the same file via command line results in the file being playing immediately with no abnormal network activity.

This doesn't crash the xbmc box per se, but is annoying. I've noticed that disabling the crystalhd card helps but not completely.

I've posted mediainfo for Iron Man 2, which is always behaving so, here:

http://pastebin.com/EwaHNK2p

This doesn't really cause XBMC to crash, but I can provide a crashlog if need be.

This isn't constant for all files, I've almost never had this happen with TV shows but low res/high res doesn't seem to make a difference.

Using XBMC beta2, r33681

I don't think it's a server/sharing issue.

XBMC is filling aq/vq buffers when the video starts playing.

[MacGyver]

Henchmanc, I have a Revo, and have had 9.11, and the most current 10.08, and have no issues with SMB shares. Are you sure that Windows MC isn't transcoding the requested file first, that could explain the delay. I would make sure your router's firewall and NAT is working and turn off all firewall/anitvirus on the MC, and share out your media as simple shares on SMB, and check that "everyone" has permissions. Add the security back in one step at a time, until you find a good mix between security and usability.

SMB + Revo runnning linux = no problem, as long as all the permissions/security crap is resolved with windows.



timmers, do you by any chance have a big mirror and a plasma TV near your setup?

I had the same problem and I figured out that my plasma TV sends out some sort of IR (or near enough to IR) signal that was jamming/flooding my IR receiver (some Rosewell no-name brand), as soon as I switched back to my XBOX DVD dongle on a hacked USB cord, irw showed that lirc stopped getting flooded by my plasmas phantom IR signal, and there was no more lag in my remote.

The mirror behind my couch was bouncing back the bogus IR coming from the plasma screen and flooding the lirc service in linux.