Playing recorded files on H1 from P1, especially HD channels

[michaelp2005]

Hi

I have recently added an H1 to a second room. I have a P1 in the family room where I record tv shows. I have 4 questions related to watching the recorded shows on the H1,that I have not been able to find existing answers for in the forum.

1. Can't delete a file on the P1 from the H1. H1 screen gives you the option, but....
2. Is there anyway to display the file list in "when recorded" order as opposed to alphabetical?
3. The resume playback function doesn't work. Should it?

4. When trying to playback a Hi Def channel I get no audio and the video looks slightly jittery. This is a big one for me

Other info: My LAN is hardwired. Have no problem playing .mkv files from my PC on the H1. Both using 280 firmware.

Any insights greatly appreciated.

Michael

[prl]

Hi

I have recently added an H1 to a second room. I have a P1 in the family room where I record tv shows. I have 4 questions related to watching the recorded shows on the H1,that I have not been able to find existing answers for in the forum.

1. Can't delete a file on the P1 from the H1. H1 screen gives you the option, but....

... the Delete menu item is greyed out (and several others). That's correct. File deletion isn't supported over a WizPnP connection.

2. Is there anyway to display the file list in "when recorded" order as opposed to alphabetical?

Yes. POPUP>Sorting Options. But your current selection has to be a recording, not a folder (that last bit's a bug).

3. The resume playback function doesn't work. Should it?

It appears to make entries in the resume marker file, but as you say, resume isn't offered when a WizPnP recording (or media file) is restarted. I've posted on the DP-S1/P1/P2 forum to ask whether this problem affects all WizPnP clients, or whether it's specific to the H1.

4. When trying to playback a Hi Def channel I get no audio and the video looks slightly jittery. This is a big one for me

Unfortunately, HD streaming using WizPnP only works reliably when the server is doing nothing but serving the streamed file. This can be achieved by selecting the File Player or Setup screen on the server. This may be an inherent limitation.

[michaelp2005]

Many thanks for the info. I will try your suggestion re playing the HD file. I'm thinking a potential work around is to copy the file to my PC and then view.

I've also just noticed that FF and Rewind don't work. Is that another limitation or known bug? Skipping works just fine.

It's good to know what is and isn't a bug

Thanks
Michael

[michaelp2005]

Can confirm I got the HD recording to play on the H1 by putting the P1 into file play screen.

For the Pop-up> Sort order option, I could not get this to work. Under the pop-up menu it would only give me the "information" option. I could not move the cursor up to "sort order". Any suggestions?

Thx

[DaveR]

For the Pop-up> Sort order option, I could not get this to work. Under the pop-up menu it would only give me the "information" option. I could not move the cursor up to "sort order". Any suggestions?

As peter said, you need to highlight a file (and not a folder) before pressing the popup button.

[michaelp2005]

I was on a file. When I moved to a folder, the pop-up would not even come up. Just to confirm, I'm doing this on the H1.

[prl]

...
For the Pop-up> Sort order option, I could not get this to work. Under the pop-up menu it would only give me the "information" option. I could not move the cursor up to "sort order". Any suggestions?

Thx

Use the LEFT and RIGHT arrow buttons to move between the columns of the menu, in exactly the same way as on other Beyonwiz models.

[michaelp2005]

ok, I'm an idiot was only using up and down!!!!!

Thanks. This eliminates a small, but annoying WAF

Also, just as an fyi. I did copy one of the HD recordings to my PC as a .ts file. This played fine on my pc, but when I played over the network to the H1 the audio was broken up. Video seemed ok.

[Trial_Master]

Unfortunately, HD streaming using WizPnP only works reliably when the server is doing nothing but serving the streamed file. This can be achieved by selecting the File Player or Setup screen on the server. This may be an inherent limitation.

Is this something that can be addressed with future firmware? My P2 does this and I'm surprised since the tuners are HD so one would think the pvr would have enough processing power to handle streaming HD content to the H1 while watching live HD on the P2.

[prl]

Unfortunately, HD streaming using WizPnP only works reliably when the server is doing nothing but serving the streamed file. This can be achieved by selecting the File Player or Setup screen on the server. This may be an inherent limitation.

Is this something that can be addressed with future firmware? My P2 does this and I'm surprised since the tuners are HD so one would think the pvr would have enough processing power to handle streaming HD content to the H1 while watching live HD on the P2.

The problem is apparently due to the internal bus bandwidth on the main chip. To guarantee that the functions of the server itself are not affected by streaming operations, the Beyonwiz engineers have deliberately limited the networking throughput. I have posted a table of how activity on the Beyonwiz affects the speed at which it can deliver data to the network.

When I said "inherent limitation" I meant just that.

[Trial_Master]

When I said "inherent limitation" I meant just that.

Sure, just needed to be 100%. Dam'n. We use the BW P2 - H1 streaming all the time and this has just become an issue since getting a HD TV last week.

I guess I will have to go back to recording SD content as a workaround. Seems a funny limitation as I mentioned with the unit being a HD PVR.

[prl]

...
I guess I will have to go back to recording SD content as a workaround. Seems a funny limitation as I mentioned with the unit being a HD PVR.

I never said it was good

If you look at the table I posted the link for, you should be able to watch HD on the P2 while streaming HD to the H1 if timeshifting is off on the P2. You may be able to still stream reliably if timeshifting is enabled on the P2, but you stay watching live (yes, I know that sounds pointless, but if you can, then at least you don't have to remember to disable timeshifting before streaming). You may also be able to stream HD while watching a HD recording on the P2 (I don't have measurements for that, but it has a similar load on the server as timeshifting enabled, but watching live). If a recording kicks in while you're watching live HD but with timeshifting enabled, the streaming is almost certainly going to suffer.

I'm not trying to say that this is satisfactory performance, just indicating the likely consequences of what I measured.

If you're willing to experiment a bit, I'd really appreciate any feedback about whether the table of network throughput really does serve as a good predictor of whether a Beyonwiz can successfully serve HD recordings. The second table in the post should give an indication of what absolute minimum network throughput is needed to serve recordings from those channels. Please post any results you have in that topic. Anyone else who has a streaming setup and who's willing to try this out, please post any results, too.

The table I've posted makes it easier to compare streaming (and WizFX copy) performance from version to version, but unfortunately, it's not clear whether it reliably answers the question "will this particular load on my Beyonwiz allow me to stream this recording?"

[Trial_Master]

Thanks Peter. I'll have another go and report back on the outcomes.

My situation was a little different to those described. I was playing a HD mkv on P2 from my PC and the H1 was streaming a SD recording from P2. My playback and the H1's playback were both affected with staggered pictures and continued loss of audio.

The second situation was watching a HD broadcast on P2 with TS active and H1 streaming a HD recording. P2 was fine but H1 was affected with staggered pictures and continued loss of audio.

[Trial_Master]

Does WizTv impact on procesor? I wasn't using it at the times but I have active accounts on both P2 and H1.

[prl]

Thanks Peter. I'll have another go and report back on the outcomes.

My situation was a little different to those described. I was playing a HD mkv on P2 from my PC and the H1 was streaming a SD recording from P2. My playback and the H1's playback were both affected with staggered pictures and continued loss of audio.

The second situation was watching a HD broadcast on P2 with TS active and H1 streaming a HD recording. P2 was fine but H1 was affected with staggered pictures and continued loss of audio.

I'm not all that surprised by the first result. Do you happen to know what the bitrate, frame rate and resolution of the MKV file is?

The second one is disappointing. My tests show the Beyonwiz with a throughput (TS enabled but not being used) of about 18Mib/s and the highest bitrate HD broadcasts (in Canberra) being about 14Mib/s, though that's not much headroom for random variations in the server or network load.

[prl]

Does WizTv impact on procesor? I wasn't using it at the times but I have active accounts on both P2 and H1.

As far as I know, not when it's not being used. There is evidence that WizTV has a memory leak that can affect the performance of the Beyonwiz if WizTV has been used a lot since the last restart.

[Trial_Master]

On the second one I think I've confused myself

A HD broadcast was being watched live, TS was enabled (I've never disabled it). Sorry about the confusion.

[prl]

On the second one I think I've confused myself

A HD broadcast was being watched live, TS was enabled (I've never disabled it). Sorry about the confusion.

That's exactly what I took your post to mean.

[Trial_Master]

Okay good, thought I was confusing the situation. I'll try situation 2 again with TS disabled and see how that goes.

Will also check out mkv file this evening and get back to you.

[peteru]

Decoding of AVC/H.264 content (most MKVs) is very bandwidth intensive - a lot more than MPEG-2 (broadcast) decoding. MKV playback is likely to run the processor out of bandwidth pretty quickly.

[Trial_Master]

Does using TS_Remuxer to convert to M2TS format reduce the load by much?

[peteru]

A tiny bit. MKV container contents have to be parsed entirely in software. TS streams can be pushed through the hardware to extract the individual streams. On the other hand, MKV is simpler to extract data from.

Empirical evidence suggests that TS pushed through hardware is (at this point in time) more efficient, however since Beyonwiz have full control over the MKV code, it may be possible to optimise it such that it performs better.

[Trial_Master]

So looks like ts is the way to go for HD content that originates as mkv? Is that a good option or is there a more efficient format/method? I'm going to play around tonight with the H1 streaming but any advise you can offer would be appreciated.

[prl]

Decoding of AVC/H.264 content (most MKVs) is very bandwidth intensive - a lot more than MPEG-2 (broadcast) decoding. MKV playback is likely to run the processor out of bandwidth pretty quickly.

I was thinking that the particular case (streaming MKV HD from PC to P2, streaming SD from P2 to H1) may have simply run into network limitations, rether than chip bus bandwidth limitations. I guess both are possible.

One useful test might be to upload the MKV to the P2 HDD, and see if it can be played on the P2 while the P2 streams SD to the H1.

[Trial_Master]

One useful test might be to upload the MKV to the P2 HDD, and see if it can be played on the P2 while the P2 streams SD to the H1.

We ended up doing that and everything worked fine.

[prl]

One useful test might be to upload the MKV to the P2 HDD, and see if it can be played on the P2 while the P2 streams SD to the H1.

We ended up doing that and everything worked fine.

Thanks. It looks as though the problem is the combined network traffic for the MKV and the SD recording. Can you find out what the bit rate of the MKV is? Or alternatively, how big is it, and what's its play time?

[Trial_Master]

Just got in, here you go.

General #0
Complete name : E:\Torrent Downloads\Battlestar.Galactica.S04E11.720p.HDTV.x264-CTU.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 1.09 GiB
PlayTime : 45mn 36s
Bit rate : 3431 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-01-17 04:50:46
Writing application : mkvmerge v2.3.0 ('Freak U') built on Oct 7 2008 20:39:59
Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video #0
Codec : AVC
Codec/Family : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec profile : High@L4.1
Codec settings, CABAC : Yes
PlayTime : 45mn 33s
Bit rate : 2902 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Language : English

Audio #0
Codec : AC3
Bit rate mode : CBR
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Rear: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48 KHz

[peteru]

That MKV plays fine for me, directly from one of my Linux file servers, which is only a P3 @ 600MHz and serves several other machines at the same time. Playing back on a P1 connected using Cat5e cable to GigE switch.

[prl]

That MKV plays fine for me, directly from one of my Linux file servers, which is only a P3 @ 600MHz and serves several other machines at the same time. Playing back on a P1 connected using Cat5e cable to GigE switch.

Trial_master had the problem when simultaneously streaming the MKV from a PC to his P2 and streaming an SD recording from the P2 to his H1. He later said that if he copied the MKV to the P2, he could play the MKV and stream the SD without a problem.

The problem here doesn't seem simply to be the playback of the MKV.

[crippstor]

My H1 will reliably play streaming HD content from the P1 whilst the P1 is actually playing another file streamed from my NAS

[pauliking]

Hi all,

A little off the topic but in line with the subject heading. Last night I was playing a movie in the bedroom on the H1 (as I now have headphones to please the wife). Anyway, every 5 - 10 minutes the movie just stopped playing and went back to the file menu. The movie I was streaming was coming from the P1 which was recorded from live TV.

After a few restarts of the movie and finding the spot I was up to I rebooted the H1 and placed the P1 into File Player menu in case time shifting or something was causing an issue. No Joy, movie kept dropping out back to the player menu.

[IanSav]

Hi Paul,

What are the firmware versions on each unit? (Is the DP-P1 version as per your signature?)

Regards,
Ian.

[pauliking]

Hi Paul,

What are the firmware versions on each unit? (Is the DP-P1 version as per your signature?)

Regards,
Ian.

Oops I always forget to update the signature. Both are on 105.334 as per the address below

http://www.openwiz.org/wiki/Firmware_Versions

[IanSav]

Hi Paul,

The issues of streaming from one Beyonwiz to another with 01.05.334 are well documented on this forum (there is a known bug is the WizPNP service). Please contact Beyonwiz when they re-open next year and request a firmware update/fix that corrects the issue.

Regards,
Ian.

[Paul55]

I think I've read that reverting to .320 rectifies this problem.
Others may be able to confirm or you could try searching the forum.

[IanSav]

Hi Paul55,

Reverting to the earlier firmware does resolve the WizPNP issue but returns the FTA EPG issue.

Regards,
Ian.

[pauliking]

Thanks for the response guys. Guess I'll wait for the next firmware release. I'll see how I go with different recordings in the mean time.

[prl]

Thanks for the response guys. Guess I'll wait for the next firmware release. I'll see how I go with different recordings in the mean time.

Note that it's a WizPnP server problem, and if you go back to an earlier version, you need to do it on the P1 in your setup, not the H1, to fix this problem.

Streaming HD between BWs is a chancy business anyway, even without the server bug.