Optimizing the client

[mvallevand]

Now that the hockey season is back on in Canada I am quickly finding that live TV navigation with XBMC is so poor that I am seeking other options. My goal is to find a LiveTV client as stable as NextPVR was when I used to use it on the host

With the R2 patches things seem a little better and I've lived with the occasional stop because of the frustrating rolling file rollovers for years but it just takes too long to restart playback on the client. Here is a side-by-side comparison on a digital 720p channel with NextPVR vs XBMC. Note that people think XBMC is slow on LiveTV

http://youtu.be/D03o_oJnmaI

Any suggestions to improve this?

Martin

[sub]

Is that from an ATSC tuner on the server?

I've got a client/server environment setup at the moment, from test I was running the other day, and I check time my channel startup time to compare with yours. When I try it here, from the time I click 'watch', I've got audio and video within 4 seconds.

[mvallevand]

Yes ATSC tuner, same channel multi-rec. This is the best case, it can be slower on analog SD and HDPVR (h264)

Martin

[sub]

Can you reproduce, and post:
- server's nrecord.log, ndigital.log
- client's npvr.log and c:\temp\stream.log (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NPVR\LogClientStream=1)

[mvallevand]

Here you go,

Martin

[sub]

Oddly, it's taking 10 seconds to connect to your server (actually 2x5 seconds for two connections). This seems to be the main reason it's taking so long.

I'm not really sure what to suggest, but it sounds like maybe it's related to name resolution or something like that?

[mvallevand]

I use an IP not name, the same one that I tell XBMC to use, static on the network. The recording starts on time too, the point on that video from the NextPVR playback is actually a little earlier than the one in XBMC.


Martin

[sub]

It's definitely network related.

This is the two connections on your client machine: (nearly 10s)

17:14:24.473 Connect()
17:14:29.381 Connected...
17:14:29.450 Closing Socket
17:14:29.450 Connect()
17:14:33.953 Connected...

This is the two connections on my client machine: (about 15ms)

11:52:47.271 Connect()
11:52:47.274 Connected...
11:52:47.283 Closing Socket
11:52:47.284 Connect()
11:52:47.285 Connected...

[sub]

For the record, I'm using a machine name not an IP address. It might be worth trying that.

[mvallevand]

Yes terrific that does seem to be it. To be safe I added the name to my hosts file and it quickly resolves it, and now it is under 4-5 seconds to play. I kept the share as IP

http://youtu.be/RAw_GuoZJ9Q

Code:

18:22:45.853    Connect()
18:22:45.855    Connected...
18:22:45.902    Closing Socket
18:22:45.903    Connect()
18:22:45.904    Connected...
18:22:46.104    Read(0 bytes)
18:22:46.104    Requesting 0 byte chunk from 0
18:22:46.902    Received packet of 0 bytes from offset 0 (filesize=251580, duration=858)
18:22:46.903    Read(75200 bytes)

So a big step forward thanks..

However now analog is freezing causing me to restart the recording service. What a new thread or continue here?

Martin