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[DonJefe68]

Hey Jim,

I've been using MC with my TiVo HMO for about a month now and in the past three days, I've been getting a weird occurrence.  About two days ago, the system started flaking out - within two minutes of starting, the song or stream would hang and eventually TiVo would give up with its "A problem occurred while accessing the server." error message.  I've tried several different songs and streams, rebooted and pretty much everything I can think of.  I occasionally get (maybe 50% of the time) a tcp_write error=10054.  Other times I get no error at all in the server window.  When I watch the server window, it plays normally then abruptly shows the song as finished (if I do not get the tcp_write error) or stopped (if I do get the error).

I'm wondering what the best way to pursue this is.  I have version 9.0.180.  I've tried running the server on another machine - that seems to work okay, so I think it is something to do with my computer, but there's nothing in the event logs I can find to clue me in.  I was toying with putting a packet sniffer on to see if I could track it down.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

[JimH]

No ideas, really.  Maybe something else is using up bandwidth and then that triggers an error?

Is it wireless?  We see more problems there and I think it's a bug in the OS or the drivers.

[DonJefe68]

Honestly, I don't know of anything chewing up bandwidth.

Also, I realize I misspoke earlier.  My other machine is also exhibiting the same behavior, but both machines work fine with the TiVo Desktop server.  So, I'm even more confused.

A bit of background that may or may not be related - the night it started acting weird we had a lively thunderstorm which fried the network card of one of the two computers I'm using.  I replaced that card (natch), but after that was when this started.  The other machine, a laptop, wasn't even turned on or hooked up at the time.  My only other postulate is that somehow there was minor damage to the ethernet adapter on the TiVo, enough to cause a problem with MC, but not with either TiVo desktop or the normal downloading functionality.  That seems improbable, but it's the best thought I have at the moment.

Thanks . . .

[JimH]

When you stream from the TiVo server are you streaming the same files at the same bitrate?

Lightning works wonders, but I doubt if it would leave TiVo working and MC not working.

[DonJefe68]

Yep, same files and streams.  The bitrates on the files are the same.  The settings for the TiVo desktop is Medium-High, the MC bitrate on conversions is 320mb, though I don't think that matters for regular mp3 files.

I appreciate your time on this!

[DonJefe68]

Bit more information . . .

I'm able to use Media Server to send music between two PCs without any trouble.  I'm beginning to think the USB/Ethernet adapter on the TiVo is wonky and for whatever reason, the TiVo publisher and program guide update function are a great deal more fault tolerant - not that I'm saying MC is twitchy or anything.  I'm just thinking that the TiVo stuff seems to be designed with less quality and more brute resilience.  I may test this theory by using that ethernet adapter on one of my PCs  and see if I can stream PC to PC via that adapter.  I'll keep you posted.

Thanks!

[JimH]

If MC is converting the files, the 320K bit rate could be too high.  Try testing something lower.

It's possible that MC is converting MP3 files too, but it shouldn't.

[DonJefe68]

Wow . . . it's working again and the solution was rather obvious. though the cause is completely unexpected.

I disconnected the usb/ethernet adapter from TiVo and hooked it up to my laptop.  Then I started playing songs from my Media Server.  In a minute or so, I started getting IP Address Conflict errors.  I released and renewed my DHCP lease, but that didn't fix it.  So, I rebooted my machine.  Presto - it works.  Which gets me to thinking . . .

I shut down TiVo, reconnected the USB adapter and restarted.  And voila it's working.  So I go and check the server console and sure enough, wherever I died with the IP address conflict I had the tcp_write error=10054.  So, I think the error was rooted in a TCP/IP address conflict.

Which means, if I'd done the obvious "reboot the machine" on TiVo, this would have been fixed five days ago.  Hmph.

It's interesting, though, that this interrupted MC but neither the TiVo desktop nor the regular program updates.  I could believe that there was some other protocol connecting the TiVo desktop to the TiVo itself which made it immune to these errors.  That falls apart when it comes to program data.  Maybe it was too short a connection to suffer this failure?

Anyway, that's it.  Gotta tell ya, I really do love MC.  It's a sweet piece of software that does just about everything I could want with my media collection.  I'm really quite taken with it.

I'm also really stoked about your responsiveness in this matter Jim.  I mean, it's a Friday evening/Saturday morning and you have been working with me on this.  That's pretty cool.  Thanks a lot - I'm sure you have better things to do with a weekend.

Well, I'll be telling any TiVo owner I know that MC is really the thing.  Matter of fact, I think I'll tell anyone who has a media collection the same thing.

DonJefe68

[JimH]

I'm glad it's working.  It's usually something simple when you finally find it.