2013-12-19, 22:41
I recently re-installed XBMCbuntu 12.2 (frodo) onto my HTPC system (which consists of a Dell Dimension 2400, 2.4 ghz Celeron, 1.5g memory, added Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS graphics card). I've done an apt-get update / upgrade, so hopefully, the system is up-to-date. The problem is that although I can play videos off of my USB drive just fine, streaming of vids off of the internet is extremely choppy, with each "chop" happening approximately once per second. According to XBMC's "System info" option, the system is getting 60 fps and using anywhere from 40-60% CPU. Granted, my HTPC hardware isn't ideal, but I don't think it's the cause of this particular problem because prior to the re-install, videos were streaming off of the internet smoothly. Ok, that's not entirely accurate. Even then, this problem would occasionally arise and the only way I knew of to "fix" it--at least until it happened again a week or so later--was to "exit" XBMC into a classic Gnome session and then log back into XBMC. Yeah, somehow just logging out of XBMC and into a Gnome session and then back into XBMC was sufficient to "fix" the problem--at least well enough so that I could use XBMC. In case anyone's wondering why/how I had Gnome installed, my prior XBMC install began life as an Eden install, and was later auto-upgraded to Frodo. Back when the system was still running Eden I had installed the Ubuntu "App Center" and from there, a number of other apps that I like using in a classic Gnome environment (Nautilus, gEdit, etc.) so I could occasionally log out of XBMC and use the system for general computer work. And BTW, it may be my installing Ubuntu "App Center" that caused the auto-upgrade? I'm not sure... Anyway, in summary, it seems as though something about my XBMC configuration was being "initialized" as a result of my logging out and back into XBMC and that the final XBMC session benefitted from this initialization somehow... Is this even possible? I can't see how else to explain that the problem would (almost always) be resolved as a result of my doing this. Whatever the problem is, it appears to be networking related given that it occurs only when I'm streaming vids off of the internet and therefore, I don't think it has anything to do with my graphics card/driver. For what it's worth, the system is connected over WiFi via a NetGear wireless adapter (WNCE2001) but this hasn't changed since I was running the Eden release and everything was running smoothly... Ok, all of this is really just background information that I hope might trigger an "ah ha!!" in someone. My ultimate goal here is to resolve this without having to resort to logging out of XBMC or perform any other voodoo-like rituals prior to watching a movie with my family. My current install of XBMCbuntu (again, "frodo") is not customized--I haven't installed any additional software other than what apt-get update / upgrade does itself (though I likely will install some of this stuff later). I've pasted my XBMC log at http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=99325. Any help is very much appreciated!