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[john h]

I copied this question from the main board.  I don't know how to quote the earlier posts.  But the thread seems more on topic here. 

Streaming too choppy w/Tivo and Int. Radio?
November 13, 2004,
Any suggestions here?

I use Media Center 10 on Win2K box running as a server.

256MB of memory, 100Mb/s NIC

Cabled connection through 2 Linksys switches (WRT54G) to TiVo (wireless is for notebooks but the server and TiVo are both cabled)

Very low latency network (not much traffic)

When I play MP3's there is never a skip or delay, but when I try to stream any Internet Radio music, it skips a lot.  Mostly listening to SOMA FM and Virgin UK.

iTunes doesn't skip those stations, so it is probably an MC issue.

What are the things that I can do to minimize the skipping?

john h



   
Re: Streaming too choppy w/Tivo and Int. Radio?
 Reply #1 on: Today at 11:25:54 PM »

was there ever a resolution to this question?  I have set things up to stream to tivo just today, and it works great!  except, I also love soma fm, and I tried streaming to the tivo and it skipped furiously.  the soma fm stream does not skip when played on MC10.0.155.  I have a DLink DI 624 2.4 GHz router, so the problem should not lie with my network.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

johnh

[JimH]

It may not be your problem, but I had a skipping problem last night that was solved by killing some of the programs running in the background, using task manager.  I haven't had time to see which one was doing it, but I've seen a couple of people say that the ATI keyboard intercept program caused problems.  I'm sure there are many others.

It's still possible that it's an MC bug.

Please copy the system info from MC Help and paste it here.

[john h]

Thanks as always, Jim. 

I'm going to try a couple things, including closing some of the programs in Task Manager, and also I'm going to try reducing my MP3 stream bitrate in Media Server a little bit because I saw in another posting that this reduced the skipping of streaming radio stations.  I want to be able to give you as much info as possible about what's going on when I send my next posting about this problem.  I'll also post the rest of the info about my system. 

Thanks,

[stevendkimball]

I also have this problem with choppy play.  Everything works fine if I play mp3's, but all internet radio stations start to skip after about a minute and a half when I play them on TiVo.  I have 3 computers on my network, 2 running XP and 1 running Win2000 and I get the same results from all of them.  Any ideas as to what could be the problem?  It looks to me like a buffering issure.  I notice when I observe the MC server that there is a fairly significant fluctuation in bandwitdth usage.  When bandwidth gets down around 80 on a station streaming at 128 kbps I get skipping.  This happens every 10 seconds or so.  Any solutions out there?

I would love the program if I didn't have this problem.  My principal reason for being interested in it was to stream internet radio to my entertainment center through my TiVo machine.

Thanks for any help.

Steve

[John Gateley]

What's your network look like?

j

[stevendkimball]

Hi John,

I'm using a Linksys WRT54G router but all connections are wired.  I'm connecting to my TiVo using a SMC 2202 USB adapter.

Thanks,

Steve

[John Gateley]

What kind of connection to the Internet? Have you tried measuring the speed of the Internet connection over a longer period of time? I wonder if you are not getting full bandwidth, or something else on your network is hitting the Internet, slowing it down.

j

[stevendkimball]

I have Comcast cable connection to the Internet.  The skipping never occurs when playing Internet radio on the PC whether in Media Center, Real One or Windows Media Player.  When I have been testing the Media Center with the the TiVo there is no other traffic on my home network.   I have no reason to think there is Internet congestion as everything works fine except when I attempt to play through TiVo.

Thanks for all your time.

Steve

[John Gateley]

Check your playback buffer size. Check your settings and see if you are converting to MP3 when streaming to the TiVo (are you using Media Server or TiVo Server?)

j

[stevendkimball]

I pushed the playback buffer slider all the way to the left (5 seconds) but still have the problem.  I have tried with MP3 conversion on and off--it makes no difference.  I have tried using both Media Server and TiVo Server.  That is, I have tried with both Media Server and TiVo Server running and with only Media Server running--is that what you meant? Is there some way to connect using TiVo server alone without Media Server?

None of these options affect what happens--on my TV, the stream starts to play, within 30 seconds to a minute the bar pops up on the bottom of the screen with a yellow arrow which then turns green and goes away after about 5 seconds. This may happen a couple of times. By about a minute and a half the stream starts to skip.

As always, thanks for your help.

Steve

[John Gateley]

Hi Steve,

You should not run TiVo Server and Media Server at the same time. Run either TiVo Server OR Media Server, not both, and let me know the results.

Sorry for the delay,

j