Picture corruption when transferring files to server - possible networking issue (1 Viewer)

[Ronski]

My MP1 installation works perfectly, except if I transfer large files to my server.


Network setup.

• HD Homerun Quad tuner - connected to 1G switch
• The 1G switch connects to most of my devices.
• The 1G switch is connected to a 10G switch
• The 10G switch connects to the server, my office PC and my workstation
• The server is also the TV server

Server Spec.

• CPU i5-10600 6 core
• RAM 48GB
• Network Card: Asus XG-C100C
• Time shift folder is on an NVME drive separate to OS
• Recordings are on a SATA drive connected to motherboard
• Multiple other drives are connected by SAS
• Windows 10 Pro

Issue.

When copying large files from my workstation to the SAS drives live TV gets severe pixelation, very much like a bad TV signal. Stop the file transfer and its picture perfect Any recordings at the time are affected, and thus will never playback cleanly. Right now I'm copying three 78GB files to three of the SAS drives, total network speed is in the region of 2 to 3Gbps, on a 10G card, so plenty of bandwidth left.

I've tried adding QOS for TVservice.exe, and the IP address of the tuner, it didn't make any difference.

If I run the HD Homerun app on my office PC, the picture is perfect, if I run the HD Homerun app on the server, there is some pixelation, but no where near as bad as on Mediaportal on a separate PC, the HD Homerun app does use a lot less bandwidth than MP. I can't try running MP on the server as its only set up as a server.

If I watch a recording whilst the transfer is taking place this is perfect, if I carry out a recording whilst the transfer is taking place, then the recording is affected.

I've had this issue for a long time, and have just avoided moving large files in the evening, but I'd like to get it fixed.

Any ideas please?

 

[CyberSimian]

Any ideas please?

You seem to have a very advanced network. The only fly in the ointment that occurs to me is the HD Homerun tuner, which is only fast ethernet (100 Mbits/sec), and not gigabit. Will this adversely affect the throughput of your network? I don't know.

I looked at the current HD Homerun DVB-T2 quad tuner a few months ago, and I was really disappointed to discover that the network connection is only 100 Mbits/sec. It seemed to me that this potentially imposes a limit on the number of concurrent recordings that are possible (this depends on exactly how MP manages the tuner). This limit does not exist for a PCI-E quad tuner card (whose data connection is at least 100 times faster).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Ronski]

I'm not aware of having any issues when recording multiple channels at once (without the file transfers), chances are that the channels we watch are all on the same MUX anyway, so you'd only have the one datastream if my understanding is correct. I used to have a PCIe tuner, but needed the slot and the HD Homerun was a good solution.

The 100Mbps connection won't drag any others down. I do find it rather annoying that these days manufactures are saving tiny amounts of money by using 100Mbps networking, 1Gbps has been around for so long now. HD Homerun do a 4K version, only available in the US, even that only has a 100Mbps network port, so it must be adequate.

 

[CyberSimian]

HD Homerun do a 4K version, only available in the US, even that only has a 100Mbps network port, so it must be adequate.

I think that this may have originated years ago with WMC:

• WMC can record only one channel per tuner, and so a quad-tuner can serve up only four channels.
• MP can record all of the channels in a MUX and use only one tuner. So a quad-tuner card can serve up four entire MUXes.

I am not sure of the total datastream of an entire MUX, but I have a vague recollection that it is around 40 Mbits/sec for a DVB-T2 MUX, and 30 Mbits/sec for a DVB-T MUX. So potentially one DVB-T2 MUX plus three DVB-T MUXes would result in a datastream of 40 + 3x30 = 130 Mbits/sec (and that doesn't include the housekeeping that the network connection requires). This may be an extreme scenario, but on occasion I do record 8-9 programmes concurrently. If MP requests the entire MUX from the HD Homerun, and I am recording from four different MUXes, the 130 Mbits/sec total datastream might actually occur.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

 

[Ronski]

This may be an extreme scenario, but on occasion I do record 8-9 programmes concurrently. If MP requests the entire MUX from the HD Homerun, and I am recording from four different MUXes, the 130 Mbits/sec total datastream might actually occur.

I think you'll be fine, I just added six recordings from random channels, after that MP complained I had a recording conflict. Checking the HD Homerun tuner all four tuners were in use, each tuner reported a data bandwidth of between 15 to 28 Mbps, so just within the 100Mbps. Surprised they still only use 100Mbps for the 4K box, but with superior compression used for transmission I suspect it keeps the bandwidth requirements down.

 

[Ronski]

I'm not sure what the issue was, but I decided to try a different way of solving the problem.

My server has a 2.5Gbps port and the 10Gbps card I added, so I've connected the HD Homerun directly to the 2.5G port, and its solved the problem, I can now copy large multiple files to the server and not suffer with picture issues.

There is another issue, and that is with multiple file copies one thread gets pegged at 80 to 100% usage, clearly something isn't multi-threaded, but as long as I don't use more than 3 simultaneous transfers everything is fine. I have Hyper-V setup, and that uses a virtual switch, and I suspect it may be that, might even be the route cause of the problems, at some point I'll disable it and test.