bpa wrote: > UNless LMS has been corrupted or badly patched - reinstalling LMS or > plugins will do nothing for this problem. Deleting some LMS cache may > help odd issues but AFAICT It is all about the BBC, the network and the > OS. > > The Radiofeeds are MP3 streams. So the stream is played with a single > HTTP GET which makes the server send bytes non stop on the same tcp > connection. MP3 is played natively on SB players so stream will probably > bypass LMS. > > The BBC HLS is a chunked HTTP format which uses AAC audio format. > Chunked HTTP means the stream is not continuous but made up of separate > "files" of about 3-6 secs of audio. Each file needs a HTTP - which > means a separate DNS lookup and a TCP connection for each "file". > Furthermore the stream is controlled by a playlist (m3u8 file) which is > also fetched by a HTTP GET. In the m3u8 playlist there are a few URLs > for the stream but since the live stream is non stop - the m3u8 has to > be re-fetched regularly with a HTTP get - possibly as often as once > every 10 secs. > > DNS caches will minimise DNS lookup but if the DNS lookup is slow then a > fetch will fail. Some user reported Windows as ignoring the DNs > diretoiev and cachign info for too long resulting in out of date > fetches. > > So compare 30 secs of audio of MP3 which requires a single HTTP GET and > a single TCP connection and no transcoding. 30 secs on HLS stream - > probably has at least 10 HTTP get with 10 DNS lookups, 10 TCP connection > setup and torn down and then transcoding which takes at least 3 more > processes. > > The replacement HLS.pm file has more generous timeouts and tries to do a > bit more buffering but most fo the problem seems to be on the BBC side > in certain regions and more frequent at certain times. The problem has > not been identifed as it is non consistent but anecdotally it seemed to > be occur more often on Windows based systems but perhaps it is just more > Windows users reported. > > The AAC audio stream cannot be played by older SB players such as SB > classic so AAC has to be transcoded. Transcoding on Windows uses with > faad and flac and possibly socketwrapper.
Thanks bpa and everyone else for the advice/support and explanations of how the different formats work, most illuminating. Since I get perfect output from the old, less powerful WHS box I've focused my attentions on the Server 2012 box - I only built it because WHS v1 had gone out of support and so I thought it appropriate to replace it with a more "modern" server. I use it to backup the various household PCs/laptops, to record IP camera video to, to stream ripped DVDs/Blu-rays and of course to host my beloved MP3 collection and to listen to internet radio... I've disabled the W2012 DNS server and changed the DNS address to on the server (and the router) to Google's 8.8.8.8; I tried using a DCHP assigned local address rather than a static one (for no other reason than I was playing around with the DNS settings); I also disabled the uPnP plug-in. The net net is I still get the same behaviour - lots of initial buffering, gets better after 10-20mins but sometimes the entire stream drops too. Am going to investigate bpa's earlier suggestion re socketwrapper in more detail - mainly because I've run out of other things to try! Jerry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry1964's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22126 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=53229 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/plugins
