[ncudmore]

About a year ago I started using XBMC on my ATV, to save having to 'convert' media to iTunes before playing back on the main TV.

After experimenting with a couple of media servers I settled down to using mediatomb as the DNLA server software on an old G4 mac mini running OS X 10.5.x

This worked well for video and allowed me to play things back from my old Windoze machines and all sorts. But, as always these thing grow.....

I started to want the media library functions in XBMC to work. And after posting in other parts of other forums I was told it was down to my use of a DNLA server, as this would not supply the metadata that the library functions required... in short switch to SMB shares.

So, about a month ago I turned off the DNLA server, and started sharing the folders with SMB share, and connected that way... Great, Library mode in XBMC now works....

BUT, now I'm getting dropped frames in video playback, even on a wired 100mb network.

So, looks like the choice of SMB was not such a good idea after all, as SMB is slow for file transfer.

So, anyone here want to help point me in the right direction. I'd prefer DNLA as this allows use of a PS3 as well, and looking at new TV for upstairs and a few are not getting DNLA built in....

[sho]

A correctly configured SMB network is not "slow for file transfer".
Why not run both?

[TeknoJnky]

1) you can have both the dlna and smb shares, they are independent and unrelated protocols.
2) no build number, no log, not really any useful information to even begin helping

[ncudmore]

1) you can have both the dlna and smb shares, they are independent and unrelated protocols.
2) no build number, no log, not really any useful information to even begin helping

Not that this will make any difference to the question, but....
XBMC 9.04.1 r20677
OS Darwin 8.8.2 kernel 8.8.2

SMB is a slow protocol; compare the speed of transfer of a large file when using SMB, TFTP, FTP and DNLA. SMB is by far the slowest. Even so it should be in excess of the speed required for streaming video ( I get approx. 9mb).

Yes, I've had both DNLA and SMB shares running on the same hardware, and whilst DNLA gives better performance SMB works with Library Mode

When playing back large >2Gb files on SMB, XBMC on the ATV often pauses and then I see buffering displayed. This is not the case on playing the same files with DNLA.

At the moment I'm in the process of rebuilding the Mac mini with OS X server to see if the SMB has be optimized for the server version.

The REAL question I was trying to get at, is what is the most tried and tested way of doing this with XBMC on the ATV and with Macs, hence I didn't think of requiring logs etc, just to ask this as a question....

[68732]

my downstairs neighbor is always trying to play my blu-ray rips on his crummy macbook even though i told him to stick w/ the xvid files - But you said it works with DLNA hmm. is uPnP allowed on router? Does that make any diff?

*edit*
oops forgot i searched for dlna smb threads.
just answered a 2 yr old post. oh well maybe it help somebody else