[ringsting]

First post, been using XBMC for a while and it rocks

We recently bought a 3D TV and so I got hold of some films and gave them a go. It all looks good but playback stops about every 30 seconds to buffer when playing the files over a lan.

I wonder if anyone can give me some ideas on where the bottleneck is or how I find it.

Here is my setup:

Server:
Beefy Ubuntu Machine with samba share setup for sharing to the rest of my network
Connected to router by 20+meters cat5 cable

Router:
Netgear WNDR3700 flashed with DD-WRT

Client:
Foxconn nt300i (atom 330)
XBMCbuntu eden beta installed on usb stick
2GB Ram
Connected to router by 10m of cat5 cable

When playing the movie I watch the dubug info at the top and CPU usage never goes above 25%

Any sugegstions would be greatly appreciated.

If this kind of question has been answered previously I apologise. I searched using the forum search but most of the answers were not relevant and google has indexed a load of broken link forum archive pages, which make searching difficult.

[Chris!]

You could do additional tests to find out where the bottleneck is but this would require a bit of effort on your part:

Try connecting the Ubuntu server directly to the Foxconn box = If still buffering then it's the beefy ubuntu machine or the foxconn box.

If not then it's probably the router.

[thethirdnut]

samba share

If you're running *nix to *nix for the love of ____ use NFS. It blows SMB out of the water...this could potentially be part of your problem here.

There's no issue keeping both Samba + NFS sharing some or all same mount-points, but if you're running Ubuntu to Ubuntu NFS is by far superior. I'd give that a try. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NFSv4Howto

[aptalca]

To rule out problems due to the atom machine (cpu or drivers, etc.) I would suggest playing the file locally first. If you have an external drive or a large enough usb stick, play it off of that first. If it plays fine, then the problem lies with either the router or the ubuntu machine.