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[madbrain]

I noticed that Media Center automatically sends a WOL packet to the server when connecting to a remote library. This is nice and works great.

A problem arises however if the Media server subsequently goes to sleep, but the Media center client has not. In that case, the Media server is not awaken. Eventually, Media Center displays a non-specific pop-up that "something has wrong with the playback".

Would it be possible to have Media Center send a WOL packet automatically when it tries to play something from a remote library ? Or maybe conditionally send it if the machine does not respond to a quick ping ? Or maybe send it conditionally if TCP connect doesn't happen within a short timeout window (a few seconds?) to give the server a chance to come online ?
This would provide for a much greater experience and lower power consumption, alleviating the need to manually run a separate WOL tool to start the server, or manually exit and restart Media Center to force WOL to happen. While I can certainly do those things, it is not very user-friendly. I'd like to build a system that works seamlessly well enough that my husband can use it too. I realize the playback won't be instant as the server will take some time to restart after the WOL packet is sent - the initial delay would be livable .

I think this would help a lot of others save on their power bills and with global warming as well. And a lot of money saved in building/configuration low power server equipment to run 24/7 vs using regular much cheaper equipment only a fraction of the time.

[JimH]

Wake on Lan was implemented in MC several years ago.  There is a wiki topic about it.

The machines must also be configured to work correctly.

There are WOL programs you could download to test whether your machines are set up correctly.  Some will work on phones.

[madbrain]

Jim,

Wake on Lan was implemented in MC several years ago.  There is a wiki topic about it.

The machines must also be configured to work correctly.

There are WOL programs you could download to test whether your machines are set up correctly.  Some will work on phones.

Thanks for your reply.

I have read the Wiki, and have WOL working as it is designed and implemented.
What I'm requesting is an improvement to this feature.

WOL currently works only when Media Center first connects to the library server.

Afterwards, if the library server machine goes to sleep, for example due to inactivity, another WOL packet is never sent by the client.
That's where I believe things can stand to be improved, and the point of this feature request.

[terrym@tassie]

+1 to this request.
 
I quite often listen to downloaded radio programs which means a single track can be over 2 hours long. During the playback time my server idles to sleep (as the track has been uploaded to my client), when I come to play another track I have to manually wake the server (by sending a WOL packet from the client) or get the dreaded 'Something went wrong with playback' message as stated by the OP.
Having the MC client do this automagically would be a great improvement.

[mattkhan]

agree with this one, it's why I run my MC server 24/7

ISTR asking for this some time back in the day but can't find the post now, pretty sure it's come up before anyway.

[madbrain]

+1 to this request.
 
I quite often listen to downloaded radio programs which means a single track can be over 2 hours long. During the playback time my server idles to sleep (as the track has been uploaded to my client), when I come to play another track I have to manually wake the server (by sending a WOL packet from the client) or get the dreaded 'Something went wrong with playback' message as stated by the OP.
Having the MC client do this automagically would be a great improvement.

Glad to see I'm not the only one wishing for this.

For an ongoing single track playback request, maybe a cleaner fix can come from the server - ie. if there is data being streamed, the Media server applications could signal activity to the OS and prevent it from going to sleep. I'm not sure if this is possible to do in Windows - I believe so. But once the Media server is completely inactive (no outstanding client requests), it should allow the host to go to sleep. Then a fix is needed for client side to wake up the host upon next track playback request as I mentioned in the OP in this thread.