TV server on VMware ESXi 4.1 (2 Viewers)

[Dirk23]

Afaik is esxi 5.1 Not able to pass the onboard USB Ports to the VM. Maybe 5.5 can do it.

 

[Benoire]

Afaik is esxi 5.1 Not able to pass the onboard USB Ports to the VM. Maybe 5.5 can do it.

ah yes 5.5 can do this. That is what I had installed.

 

[seppi2204]

Even with the tvserver VM on an SSD and a 2nd HDD with no VM on my Tvserver reports discontinued Packages and the LiveTV is unwatchable. I cant figure Out why!
Has anyone a DVB-S2 TVServer configuration Running on an VM Host like esxi? What Hardware are you using?

Regards

Dirk

Hi Dirk,
I'm running a passthroughed USB2 stick on an Esxi 5.5 Environment. I've passthroughed the whole USB-Controller to the VM. With this configuration my TV Server works quite well - sometimes there are discontinued packages but you barely recognize them when watching live-tv. Maybe you can give it a try and also passthrough your USB Controller to the VM.

My hardware setup looks as follow:
OS: Esxi 5.5
CPU: Intel Core i7-4570
RAM: 24GB DDRTV Card: Elgato Hybrid Stick (passthroughed to HTPC-VM)
GPU: HD5570 (passthroughed to Desktop-VM)
GPU2: HD7750 (passthroughed to HTPC-VM)

 

[Dirk23]

seppi2204 Thanks for your Suggestion.
I'm now passing a usb3 Card to the VM and it seems to work fine. When i do something Else on the tvserver VM i instandly get discontinued Packages (e.g. Copy a file from One Folder to a other)

I Wonder if it will work when i have 2 USB Receivers Running and both are streaming!!!

 

[seppi2204]

Hmm, seems that something in your machine produces a bottleneck when you get a heavy load on your tv server vm.

My VM is, as you probably recognized, a single seat setup. So besides the TV Server also Mediaportal has to be running and rendered. Also I can't notice a correlation between cpu load and discontinued pacakages. These discontinued packages occure very randomly.

Maybe you can check in DPC Latency Manager what's producing these latencies and nail down this issue.

 

[Dirk23]

With no extra I/O my DPC Latency Manager is green all to the Time. After copying some files i had yellow and Red ones too.

 

[seppi2204]

With no extra I/O my DPC Latency Manager is green all to the Time. After copying some files i had yellow and Red ones too.

Give this tool a try it will report to you which device/driver is producing the latencies.
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

[Dirk23]

Here's the result:

 

[seppi2204]

Did you set msienabled = False for your passthroughed controller?

 

[Dirk23]

Nope. I can't find the option. @Benoire tried to explain it to me, but i couldn't follow his instructions:

So to add this item (and it is one per device passthrough and it must match the passthrough device number, i.e. 4 devices will yeild a final line of pcipassthru3.msienabled = false) you must edit settings, go to the second tab on the top level and select general. In that area there will be a section called advanced with a table of settings. Add the line there.

I can't find anything on an "2nd Tab" where i could insert a Line in a Table!

Can you please tell me how to set that? I tried to google it but can't find any information!