Common 200 Series problems and solutions.

[accident]

I posted this in the a2x0 firmware thread but I'm tired of reposting this so here it is in a place that can be easier found and I can just link people too

It's based on some issues that occur in the summer 2012 firmware updates. More exact, so much was fixed it's a list of things to help you get a player that might be out of wack back into shape so it's running the same clean firmware install that syabas is testing with.

Topics in this post:

Tips:

1. Follow the install instructions
2. The release note have what was fixed and what they know is still a problem
3. Look over your setup as a whole and see if you can make your life better
4. CSI and oPKG apps are not made or supported by syabas and cause stability and bugs.
5. Factory resetting is good
6. Make a great post if you need more help
7. Tell Support
   

Problems:

1. nmj won't scan, time is never correct or app market does not connect to server/work or no internet error.
2. You seem to have a lot of strange problems, your unit is getting unstable, crashes, reboots a lot. It may be sluggish and getting worse and worse playback performance
3. All volume starts out low, but if I lower the volume to -1 it gets much louder
4. SMB (samba) login with username and password doesn't work anymore
5. Volume doesn't go above 0
6. Video stutters from network shares or online streaming apps like youtube
7. My wireless doesn't work
8. My 3tb or larger drive is not detected by the pch
9. My 3TB or larger drive does not work when I use the tether/slave usb mode of my a series model
10. My pch has a weird ip address that starts with 169.254
11. Various problems when using 10/100 network setting
12. AUTO/GIG Network doesn't work for me
13. GIG Networking doesn't do full speed transfers
14. I have a WD Green Drive installed in my player
    

Tips:

A) Follow the install instructions for an update

All firmwares have install instructions and they do change. Even if your updating online after the player told you there was an update, you'll find the instructions on the tv screen before you start. It's easy to avoid headaches just taking the 2 extra minutes to do it right the first time.

B) The release note have what was fixed and what they know is still a problem

Updating is not always smart. If the player is perfect to you, it doesn't mean the next version will still be perfect to you. Take a moment and read over what changed, what is still broken. A feature you use non-stop could be in the broken list.

C) Look over your setup as a whole and see if you can make your life better

You'll find there are certain people who are always happy with the updates, myself included. Over the years, we've adjusted how we rip, dl, record, and save videos to the drive. We tend to go with file formats, codecs and quality that we are happy to use and tend to work all the time. For those of us who are automated with more powerful nas or similar devices doing the work, we also have it clean up the video files for us so they will work the first time, every time.

I'd love to have a longer discussion on this, but it does not belong in this thread but it does impact how well upgrades go for you.

D) CSI and oPKG apps are not made or supported by syabas and cause stability and bugs.

Fellow Users are making the additional apps, updates and things you may be enjoying on your setup. They are hacked in using a method that is fairly safe and does not void your warranty. They are only tested by the users that make and use them. They consume memory, take away cpu power and things that your player may need just to play a video.

Some apps also fix previous firmware bugs. When firmwares update they might actually break an official fix for the problem. Asking in the threads for those apps before you update is the best way to know if it should be removed.

I'm not saying throw them out, they shouldn't be used but you need to keep in mind that your extra software might be your bugs and problems. Disabling them will help you figure out if it's a bug in your applications or a bug with the player itself.

These apps are the #1 reason why firmwares fail to update. This is why syabas has instructiosn to remove the drive forcing the apps to no longer be running so it can safely update the player

E) Factory resetting is good

Settings change, some bug cause settings to change automatically, some settings are internal and you cannot change them yourself.

• Factory resetting before and after a firmware update will make sure your player is almost as close to how syabas made it for that firmware as possible.
• Factory resetting when your player starts to feel sluggish or unstable can get all the settings back in line to be stable again.
• When you find yourself factory resetting for sluggish/unstable rather often, then you should consider a full system reset. You'll find reset information and steps in problems #2.
  

Just like D, you'll get the hang of how to make sure you setup streamlined so resetting isn't a big deal.

F) Make a great post if you need more help

The people who get the fastest and best help make really good first posts about the problem.

Suggestions:

• Choose the best forum, posting a 300 series video problem in the General nmt forum probably won't get many to see it who can help.
• Pick a subject that quickly informs others what the core problem is. If your having a network problem, PLEASE HELP is not a good subject. Need help with network is better, but Wireless network problem is even better.
• If you have multiple problems, post multiple threads. People read threads if the subject interests them. If you piggy back too many problems in 1 thread, you don't get all the help available here. Also some problems are better posted in different sections. Put the video problems in the video thread, the nmj problems in the nmj thread.
• Make 1000% sure an old thread is really the same problem, if your not sure, don't reply to it. The people who read the whole forum will go out of their way to help a thread with almost no posts, but will avoid threads with hundreds of posts.
• Your message should be information overload. Model numbers, version numbers, brands, things you've tried already, similar information asked in other threads. Anything you think can help out so the first reply is exactly how to fix it instead of a week of asking for more information.
• This is an international forum. The person who can help you might be on the other side of the world. give it a day or two to get a reply. Weekends are quiet, give it longer on the weekend.
• If you see 100 reads and no replies, it might be 100 people with the same problem hoping you posted an answer. It might also be 100 different search engines indexing your new thread. Don't get discouraged because it's being read but no replies.
• Answer the questions asked. It's very common that people ask a few things and only part of them get answered. If you don't know how to answer them, SAY THAT. Some questions might seem unrelated but it's exactly what is needed to tell you how to fix it in your setup.
  

G) Tell Support

This is a user forum sponsored by Syabas. Just assume they do not read a single thing here. Support on the other hand they pay to reply to you and they would prefer to fix a problem then hiring more people for the extra calls. Also it gives them a trend for what is important to the most people. It will help prioritize fixes in your favor if you get counted by the company.

Support is found at http://support.popcornhour.com/

Problems:

1: nmj won't scan, time is never correct or app market does not connect to server/work or no internet error.

Check your network settings.
- If your an a200 owner, this should have been fixed in the Aug 10, 2012 firmware update. Try the upgrade first before anything else.
- if you factory reset and switched to static, check the subnet it's probably wrong and needs to be adjusted to 255.255.255.0
- If you see 1 dns server. Try editing the dns only (it's an option) and put in the same server for dns1 and dns2. save and reboot the pch.
- if you see dns servers that start with 208, some routers do not like multicast-dns with open dns. Edit the dns servers and put in your home dns server twice (usually the router/gateway ip), or try googles dns servers which are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. You may need to reboot for it to fully kick in.
- You can also try your providers dns servers, they can easily be found in your routers status screen under the wan network status. Some providers like to block things.
- of your pch ip starts with 169, see #10 below
- if you use 10/100 networking, see #11 below.

CISCO ROUTER OWNERS:

A user recently found that a cisco home router firewall defaulted to only 10 devices on the network talking to the internet. You may want to check your router logs and see if you need to increase the number of hosts limit in your home. It's possible a rebooted devices and computers could appear double to the router for some time and push you over the limit even if you don't have 10 devices on your network

Technical reason:

There are 4 main problems happening here.

a) dns lookup on low end hardware adds seconds to any communication to a device. This is the time it takes to look up the hostname or url and turn it into an ip address before it can even start to communicate with the world. in the last firmwares, syabas switched to an mdns setup which caches and speeds up this avoidable slowdown. It also works using multicast. Multicast is not worldwide on the internet yet and some ultra low end routers or older routers may not process it right. while a good move for speed, it can negatively work for many people.

b) large hosts with datacenters all over the world use something known as global load balancing to send you to the center that would offer you the best performance. About a year ago, a project was started to expand dns itself to do this verses very expensive datacenter hardware. opendns and googledns both added it to their public dns servers the same day when it was announced. Syabas also changed defaults to opendns partially to fix some users with major dns problems in the past but also to get you better online video streaming in the apps making sure you get to the best possible playback with least amount of effort. Just like A, some routers and providers don't talk correctly with opendns.

c) There is a bug with some parts of the player. Some parts of the player use the first dns server then the second if that is not available. Other parts use the second and sometimes never try the first. This is why you can have part of the player working with the internet and part of it not. Making sure you 2 dns servers that work with your router and isp is how you get the whole player to work. Again a bug that is mostly fixed in the current RC of the C200 firmware, but not in all the players yet. It's a bug you can fix yourself while you wait for the full robust solution.

d) Some home firewalls, generally found in small office or gaming routers have some added security features you may not have known were in them. They might actually limit the number of devices that can talk to the internet. this is a good way to help contain a possible virus or worm that might get into your computers from really impact the internet as a whole. Unfortunately even with just a couple devices on your home network, their is timeouts to say "this device is no longer here" so some rebooting of a device or several can easily go over the low limits.

2: Sluggish, slower performance over time, strange problems, probably only you seem to have, reboots, very unstable/unusable, settings lost on reboot and apps won't install.

If your player is acting like it's unusable or you don't want to use it then it's probably time to just wipe out the firmware and full reset the player like it just came out of the factory again.

When doing these steps, it's best to not have NMT or other apps running.

1. If you have a drive with NMT installed on it, shutdown and remove it.
2. Factory reset and reboot
3. Follow the firmware recovery instructions. You want to follow the numbered instructions (1 and 2) to make a recovery thumbdrive and then follow the lettered instructions to force the player into recovery mode and do the recovery
   • A2x0:
     
     1. A210
     2. A200
     3. A Model Note: When you go to update the newest firmware, you may get a kernel error message. Use the online update instead. You may need to install, reboot and do the online update multiple times to get to the newest version.
        
4. C200:
   
   1. Recovery instructions for C200
   2. Scroll down the page, the instructions to follow are after the ----- line
      
5. Factory reset and reboot
6. Install the latest firmware. if you need to alter any settings to get online to do the update, use the usb instructions and do not alter any settings.
7. Factory reset and shutdown
8. Reinstall any removed drives and power on
9. Add your settings and enjoy.
   

Technical reason:

The internal flash drive storage in the pch units are NAND. NAND is very standard in all devices, mobile phones, tvs, tablets, car computers, gps, you get the idea. Like all other flash drive storage (SSD, THUMBDRIVES, etc), NAND eventually has bad "sectors" which are completely dead or can not longer be written too. The standard procedure is to map out the bad sectors and avoid them.

The firmware recovery procedure is designed to "rescue" a player when something went horribly wrong with an update. Because the most likely cause of this is a problem with the NAND storage, it completely wipes it, retests and puts a nice clean copy of the firmware onto it. It basically ensures your problems are not because something is corrupted in the firmware.

The additional factory resets are just to make sure the player ends up with firmware defaults before you start to add your settings back in. Some bug fixes are changes to the defaults, you can wait for a problem, post about it, maybe someone else who did reset knows what changed or you can just get the new defaults now and not worry about it.

Advanced user alternative option:

You can turn any firmware into a recovery firmware. While I have not personally tried this with the current firmware releases, if you have the time, you might want to find the old recovery instructions in the wiki and do both the recovery and update in 1 step.

3: All volume starts out low, but if I lower the volume to -1 it gets much louder

This is caused from a previous bug that was fixed, your volume setting is internally wrong.

- start playing any video
- press vol down to -1
- press vol up to 0
- press power button and release, press eject buttong and release. the pch will reboot within a couple seconds. If you have a drive with nmt, it might take longer because it needs to shutdown properly and then reboot.
- 0 will be the correct loudness now

Other things to know:
- It does take proper timing on the reboot to be successful. If it doesn't work the first time, do it again maybe pushing the buttons with less pause in between or try it with a different video playing.
- This can reappear. If there is a crash, reboot or loss of power when a video is playing and the volume is not on 0, 0 will become the same volume you were last on. Just do the procedure again.
- Remember if your sitting with the family, just vol down/vol up back to 0 does fix the volume without rebooting. Just reboot when you have more time

UNCONFIRMED: This issue might appear separate ly for video, music and flash app (youtube) playback. If you experience it in the other media types and this works, please post and let us know.

Technical reason:

When you adjust the volume, the setting your on is saved to firmware for the next time you start playing something. The interface you see on the screen to control the player is different from the program actually doing the playback and they work together. the 200 is a hybrid device, it's part new framework and part old framework. The playback parts of the system are the old framework and it saves data differently then the interface part of the player. Because of this, you see 0 on the screen but hear your lower last used volume setting.

This is a fancy trick to make sure after the playback interface updates the volume setting in firmware, you don't give the playback module a chance to update when it thinks the volume is.

4: SMB login with username and password doesn't work anymore

I believe it's mostly synology owners that see this. There is a thread about it, you should read it.

Short answer is enable guest on the nas/computer OR switch to nfs/nfs-tcp which can be secured so only the pch can access just like using a username/password.

Technical Reason:

SAMBA is microsofts networking protocol reverse engineered. Because microsoft doesn't license it, they change the protocol and samba reacts. Storage device makes update their samba and adjust the settings to be easiest for windows users to connect to their devices.

The core problem is the version of samba and it's settings on the PCH just isn't fully compatible with the updated protocol and settings found in windows machines and nas devices. The low end nature of the players makes it rough to update them quickly.

Accident's comment:

I'm not too thrilled it's not updated. It could have been a very very long time ago and it's impacting a lot of people.

5: Volume doesn't go above 0

This is how it works now. It's listed in the release notes of the firmware.

Perhaps a remote like a harmony might be a good investment to control the pch and your tv from 1 remote to adjust volume.

Technical reason:

0 should really be the only volume you use. For the best quality sound, you always want to adjust the "volume" at the amplifier. But the pch does have some analog outputs. some digital formats when converted to analog may need slight adjustments to avoid distortion. That's why volume exists in the first place.

Syabas reason:

People were returning players and sending them in for repair for distorted sound. The only problem was the volume was at +15. The Popbox v8 and 300 series always had volume working this way for this reason and this expensive customer support/store problem completely went away. Because of that success, we all get this change.

6: Video stutters from network shares or online streaming apps like youtube

A) First you should do #2 to make sure it's not something quirky like the microcode that runs the decoder.

B) If it's a still a problem:

Youtube is important to me:

There is a confirmed bug in the current youtube app. A bunch of us went over the app and we did find some ways you might be able to make it work. Instructions for where to put these settings are below.

- syabas is now aware of the problem.
- The problem happens with the highest bitrate videos on youtube. These tend to be the ones where youtube and another site are partnered like VEVO music videos or paid ad movie trailers, etc.
- Using an auto (gig) networking with tcp window of 0 has the best success.
- Youtube set to 1080p produced the most troubles. You need auto/gig networking and lots of bandwidth at home to avoid the bug. if you need to use 10/100 networking, setup youtube for 720p or lower.

If you use 10/100 networking and AUTO doesn't work:

- Jump to section #11.
- See section 12 if that doesn't help.


If settings->network has a tcp recieve window not 0:
- Adjust the TCP Recieve window to 0
- reboot

If settings->network has a tcp recieve window of 0:
- Adjust the TCP Receive window to 4830 and save
- reboot.

NOTE: It appears 4830 automatically changes to a higher setting. I'm not really sure why this particular setting does that. I've been testing some alternative values, please leave it whatever it changes too for now.

Technical reason:

The part of TCP/IP that this impacts is how much data to burst out at a time. The way it works is it sends some data, waits to be told it's safe to send more and then repeats. As the server gets further and further away and/or the data your transferring needs more data per second to arrive safely it needs more data sent in each burst. This setting is how much data to send in each burst.

It's actually fairly confusing to figure out the best setting to use and tcp/ip is divided into packets with extra information added for where the packet came from and who it should be sent too. Ideally you not only want a good setting, but a setting that makes sure only full packets are sent for the best efficiency.

On top of it, there is a flaw in the chipset that sigma admitted to and it's really easy to cause hardware problems with too much data. It's was a lot of trial and error to find a setting that not only lets internet streams happen successfully from far away servers, but also not cause the pch to crash at the same time. The 300 series does not experiencing this hardware flaw so you can safely use much higher settings which is the best for this option.

The only reason your computer can max out a gig network single file copy is because of these settings. Modern tcp/ip stacks have automatic ways that dynamically adjust the settings in real time for your connection. There's no real single standard to this, and of course microsoft invented there own they will not share with non-windows computers. The embedded linux is very behind on this, although some new projects by some linux makers have been started to make new base systems so I suspect this will be 1 key area it might get better in the next couple years.

Side note: There's more options to tune a device which are not accessible to us. In the business world for large websites, especially those with streaming video it's a very closely guarded trade secret.

7: My wireless doesn't work

There appears to be some home wireless setups that aren't playing well with the new update. It doesn't impact everyone but it's unclear if anyone found a solution or what they is if it does.

I have noticed that german users and linksys owners seem to have the most problems.

1 user has reported that using WPA2 instead of wpa+wpa2 worked for them. I am unsure if this setting is in the pch or the access point/router. Try to change to find and change the setting in the pch first.

8: My 3tb or larger drive is not detected by the pch

Manufacturers are starting to pre-format >2tb drives for old windows xp compatibility.

It's pretty simple to fix, but I only have windows so I do not know how for other os's:
- install the drive into a computer
- select start->right click computer->manage
- scroll down to disk management and find the drive
- delete all partitions
- convert the drive to GPT
- if you want to use the drive as NTFS, format it with 4K sectors, I strongly recommend also using a volume label that is simple, all lowercase, no spaces or special characters. It will help identify the drive later if you have many, show the name on the screen, and make jukebox paths dirt simple.
- put the drive back into the pch.

Technical explanation:

MBR is how all drives are formated for many many years. But it's limitations do not allow drives larger than 2TB. When 3TB drives came out, 4K sectors (aka advanced format) and GPT was invented to overcome the limitation. Because of how it works, some aged computers and OSs can't support GPT.

Drive makers have come up with a way to trick these old computers and operating systems to work. There is a couple methods to do this but one of them is the reason your having the problem. It's only friendly on old windows computers and the pch is unable to detect and convert it for you at this time. You just need to remove the "trick" drive makers are using to stop returns of good drives and redo the partition table to modern >2TB standards.

WD doesn't support their drives when used on linux.

9: My 3TB or larger drive does not work when I use the tether/slave usb mode of my a series model

Not supported in 200 series at this time. It's very complicated and even the hard drive makers have fancy hardware solutions to make it work for them. There is a 300 series test of adding this support which you can PM Werner for.

I suspect after it's working and released on the 300 series, we'll see it added to the 200 series. I'm kind of surprised it's even possible to make this happen since I know the drive makers solutions are special hardware.

10: My pch has a weird ip address that starts with 169.254

This would only happen with dhcp enabled and it means the pch isn't getting an address to use or the address it was given is already in use on the network.

There's no simple, "do this" to fix it. but you'll want to verify your cables are ok, you have link, link is staying stable, your dhcp server (probably your router) didn't run out of ips.

There is always a chance of some bug in your router dhcp server which other os's might be able to handle. Don't forget to look for a router firmware update and/or use a static IP on the pch. WIKI HELP FOR DHCP AND STATIC IP.

If your a wireless user, you may not be connected even if the PCH tells you, see #7 for help.

Technical:

The network range starting with 169.254 is know as a link-local address. It's an address range that is used when devices don't know what ip address to use for a network connection to avoid conflicting with other devices.

11: Various problems when using 10/100 network setting

Special thanks to Manani for this.

If you have a setup that does not work with AUTO network speed, you might experience some quirks that are fixable.

Things to look for:
- Have to unplug the network cable to get an ip address
- Sluggish interface
- Slow PCH Booting

His recommended steps to fix:

1. In settings->network:
   
   1. Select auto mode
   2. Press Save
   3. Select 10/100 mode
   4. Press save
      
2. Make sure things with networking are working.
   • If you have network shares try going into them
   • open App Market
   • open Web Apps
     
3. Reboot and repeat to make sure the setting took
   

If this doesn't help you:
- Cables go bad, especially when touched. Keep in mind it could be a simple cable problem that needs replacing.
- Switches do start to act up shortly before they die, it could be first signs that your network gear might need an update for age.
- Accident recommends doing #2 to full reset the player.
- Also look at #12

Technical reason:

Manani discovered that just because the setting was changed, it may not have actually used the setting at first. A lot of trial and error on his part for this very simple couple step process to get it to work as set.

12: AUTO/GIG Network doesn't work for me

Some common problems that indicate this section will be helpful to you:

• You can't get a link or ip address is always 169.254.x.x
• The link light on the pch goes on and off often
• You get a link but everything else you tried is poor performance
• You just can't use the auto setting
• Another section of this post told you to read this.
  

There are a few solutions to these problems but it's not as easy as giving you a list of things to try.

Brands to avoid:

Nobody likes spending more money to fix problems but we've just learned there are certain brands that work horrible and cause hundreds of problems with the pch. I also held out replacing some switches but I have to say, night and day difference when I finally did. The switches are still good so sell them, give them to a neighbor or family member, donate them to a local youth group, you don't have to consider it a waste to change it.

• DLINK
• Newer budget/home cisco/linksys models. I need to disclaimer this one. It appears the newest models of home cisco made gear are coming up more and more often in peoples problems posts. It's too early to really say if this brand is an avoid, but I'm letting you know that this brand is starting to appear more and more.
  

brands that seem to work great:

• Netgear (some models, see wiki)
• trendnet (accidents choice)
• tplink
• HP
  

BRAND WARNING: As noted in the cisco warning, just because a brand is good today, doesn't mean it will be good tommorrow. Do not use this list as the guide for what to buy. Also ask others what they recently purchased that appears to work great for them before buying.

GREEN Related problems:

Green, lower powered and friendly always on devices is a big trend right now. There are 2 things going on in networking gear, especially newest networking gear to lower the power.

1. Turning off ports they think aren't in use/connected to something
2. Lowering the power used on a port when shorter wires are being used
   

The PCH is also green friendly but sometimes not friendly with the switch. Generally you'll see the no link or link going on and off to indicate your having an issue with the green features. Unfortunately, some of these methods are not technical standards yet so it's causing us headaches.

NOTE: Even htpc forums are starting to be filled with instructions to disable green features on network ports inside computers, it's not just a PCH problem.

Fixes for green related problems (is your switch a GREEN switch?):

• Managed Switches: Switches you can connect to and adjust settings
  • Adjust any power output settings. These are not POE (power over ethernet setting)
  • Disable Green features of a specific port or the entire switch
  • try the unmanaged options
    
• Unmanaged Switches:
  • A user found out if they used a longer cable it forced their switch into a higher power mode that worked. The used a 5 meter cable even though they only needed a .5 meter one
  • Consider replacement for a different brand
  • Add a tiny low cost different brand. Connect it to your existing router/switch and then connect to the pch to this switch.
    

Technical Reason:

The PHY in the 200 series is the part that controls interfacing the wire to the chipset. It has some flaws which sigma admitted to. When a switch with the correct corners cut or it's own conflicting bugs is connected, the pch can't communicate well. There's no choice in this situation except to go with a brand that's more forgiving of the sigma flaw.

Green switches and the pch will raise and lower it's power output to converse energy. Unfortunately, it turns into this strange cycle where either the switch or the pch thinks nothing is connected to the wire anymore so they turn the port fully off. This is most common when the switch has the power mode that will fluxuate based on cable length.

13: GIG Networking doesn't do full speed transfers

There is a lot of arguments about if syabas should be marketing that it supports gig. To networking experts, this is gig but i'm not here to start another argument and you can think whatever you like.

The facts about the PCH and why it's not 70MB or higher:

• The sigma chipset has an internal bus speed of 250Mbps, It can never go higher than this number. Just like you have certain sized pipes for your street feed, and smaller pipes for showers and even smaller pipes for kitchen and garden hoses. Only so much data can flow.
• 100mbps/Fast Ethernet networking is 11MB max. Network ports link in speeds, after 100 is 1000 aka gigabit. There is no lower choice to put in the units. If it was advertised gigabit and never wen faster than 11MB I would be all over this with you, but it does transfer faster than 100
• Windows Server 2003 and XP cannot go 70MB. Most older devices cannot go 70MB. The hardware and software changes to make this happen are just starting to get into embedded chipsets. Sigma has not released a unit with higher performance yet.
  

Why is it ok that it doesn't do 70MB+ speeds?

• The highest standards for video you can buy in a retail store is a bluray. The max speed of a bluray is 54mbps including video and audio combined. In copy speed terms this is 6.75MB. Even with 10/100 you can still play blurays over a network connection with room to spare.
• This is really an issue that's most annoying to users who have their media stored in drives and network copy to them. You want to get your media on the device asap so you can enjoy it and turn off your computer that's doing the copy. There is a hardware limitation in the chipset, as well as all other embedded player chipsets at this time. It's just not possible to go faster. This is starting to improve in new chipsets so future players might be better, hopefully they will still be lower cost.
  

14: I have a WD Green Drive installed in my player

Some issues you may be experiencing:

• Drive is unusable after the PCH was in standby, sometimes requiring power off and on the machine several times to make it work.
• Playback issues with lower bitrate videos and music stored on your drive
• Incredibly slow browsing of files on the drive
• Very Sluggish jukebox or NMJ
• Starting to play a video seems to take a longer time than it should.
  

The Spindown setting in the WD drive is not friendly with media usage needs. Besides making a slower PCH experience, it actually wears the drive out faster.

The Tivo community put together a little boot disk an instructions for how to adjust the idle timeout higher. You'll need to move your drive to a computer. If your unable too, perhaps your companies IT team or friend with a desktop could.

Instructions on the TV Site

Special thanks to fsmit for originally posting this

Technical Reason:

1 of WD Green methods to reduce power of a drive is to keep turning it off when not in use. Depending on when you purchased the drive, this time is anywhere from 1 to 8 seconds. So the few seconds your reading the screen and the drive has already spun itself down. In order to access the drive again, this means you first need to wait for it to spinup fast enough to start reading it, and then the delay to do what your requesting.

This change raises the drive timeout from seconds to an hour. Some models it'll completely disable it. This allows the PCH to control when it's ok to spin down.

Another reason is WD doesn't support their drives when used on linux, so you need to adjust things.

More information on this problem can be found at this web report. A link to WD saying "this drive isn't good for every type of usage" is in that article

NAS NOTE:

This can have a huge impact on raid array based nas units. You should check with your NAS maker or their forums if doing something similar to this recommendation would increase your nas success and speed.

[Manani]

Quote:- adjust the rx window to 4830

The value is automatically changed to 5313 when I click save.

[bogdan.tyka]

I've problem after the firmware upgrade. I can connect to my network but not to Internet. Getting error there ... anyone a idea?

[TManiac]

For the weird IP thing, both times I got it to work I had to physically disconnect and reconnect the ethernet cable with PCH on. I believe I had manual IP selected but it got an IP via DHCP.

[accident]

(08-02-2012 08:29 AM)Manani Wrote:  

Quote:- adjust the rx window to 4830

The value is automatically changed to 5313 when I click save.

my a200 is in my daughters room so I havent' had a chance yet to look over the update. 5313 isn't bad and in a usable range. Try changing to 0 and then changing to 4830 and see if that takes. There is also a command line way to telnet in and adjust the setting. I won't get into that until I have a moment to look over my a200 and see if there is a simple from tv method to get it to take.

---

(08-02-2012 11:56 PM)bogdan.tyka Wrote:  I've problem after the firmware upgrade. I can connect to my network but not to Internet. Getting error there ... anyone a idea?

can you be more specific. What doesn't connect to internet? It will lend a clue where the issue is however, I would look over problem #1 in post 1 above and try adjust the dns servers to something like google.

---

(08-03-2012 01:29 AM)TManiac Wrote:  For the weird IP thing, both times I got it to work I had to physically disconnect and reconnect the ethernet cable with PCH on. I believe I had manual IP selected but it got an IP via DHCP.

Have you factory reset yet? sounds almost like the settings saved might be corrupted. you might want to go further and just do a full reset because who knows what's going on here and a few minutes to ensure it's not something like a bad update that your trying to fix with settings instead of replacing a corrupted file.

[corvus]

I had to manually assign an IP (within the range specified for DHCP in router setup).

[accident]

(08-03-2012 06:15 AM)corvus Wrote:  I had to manually assign an IP (within the range specified for DHCP in router setup).

thanks for adding a solution, but what was your problem??

[chris57]

And why set a manual ip within the DHCP pool!! It's asking for trouble:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/wiki/i...ol_Setting

[Manani]

(08-03-2012 02:15 AM)accident Wrote:  

(08-02-2012 08:29 AM)Manani Wrote:  

Quote:- adjust the rx window to 4830

The value is automatically changed to 5313 when I click save.

my a200 is in my daughters room so I havent' had a chance yet to look over the update. 5313 isn't bad and in a usable range. Try changing to 0 and then changing to 4830 and see if that takes. There is also a command line way to telnet in and adjust the setting. I won't get into that until I have a moment to look over my a200 and see if there is a simple from tv method to get it to take.

Thank you for your response.
0 is preserved when I test it, but it does not solve the gigabit incompatibility.
But the 4830 is always modified in 5313.

[accident]

The fix is for "Video stutters from network shares or online streaming apps like youtube". There is no magic setting or software that will fix the chipset isn't compatible with some gig switches. You can only solve that with hardware.

I'll have time to play with a200 later today to see what I come up with about that setting changing.

[PrimusDK]

I'd just want to Thank you @accident for making the guide it was a huge help to me just to get it working again after the latest firmware update.

Now i can at least play all my media stuff via HaneWin NFS server without problems from the Samba login issue.

BTW i had to do a full firmware recovery but now every thing is fine.

Also i did an online Firmware update after the recovery and it's still working fine.

Also i did not change the NMT i just unpluged the harddrive under the recovery process.

Thank You

[Manani]

It appears that I have overcome my connection problems. Process:

1- When starting the NMT I notice that the connection is not optimal: slow and/or failure of network connection lan/wan.

2- I configure and save the auto mode.

3- I return to the mode 10/100 and I save.

4- I verify that everything works.

5- Then I turn off the NMT by holding down the power button.

6- I unplug the NMT.

7- I reconnected the NMT.

From now my switch detects my NMT as a network 10/100. Stable result after 5 cycles of reboot by holding down the power button.
Hope it helps someone.
@+

[accident]

I've started to add in more technical descriptions to everything so you understand what's happening and why they fix things.

[accident]

Updated the network video section to reflect youtube app bug better.
Added the gig networking/switch info from the 300 guide

[thevoiceover]

Thanks for the time spent on this guide.. I found many things helpful. I do want to say though when I set the TCP Receive Window to your suggestion, it does switch to 5313 but then my FTP transfers are VERY slow to what they used to be. i.e, I set it to 6313, I max out at 4MB a second - I set it to 0 (auto), I get 15-23MB per second. Is there something else I am skipping??

Thanks,
TVO