Thought I'd start a thread to point out the performance improvements made recently with HT4. From v1.0.86 HT4 has seen a dramatic increase in performance, particularly for larger libraries. I've previously created some dummy libraries and tested performance with several different library sizes and got the following results: Posterwall performance for earlier firmware: Since v1.0.86 this situation has improved dramatically as below: Posterwall performance since v1.0.86: Good means after extensive fast scrolling, although the covers can't fully keep up, once you stop, the page is immediately populated. It's certainly on a par with other media players. Very Good means that the covers generally keep up with maybe half the posters showing as you scroll fast and long but on stopping, the page populates immediately. Excellent means there is no lag whatsoever and all posters keep up with any amount of scrolling. To be clear, this is after pre-populating the poster wall by scrolling down line by line so all covers appear - if you don't do this at least once, posters will only populate as you reveal them. I cheated a bit and wrote a bit of code to scroll down and populate without having to sit there with the remote because it can be a bit tedious for large libraries. This is a point which could definitely be improved upon. I also disabled the background image, corner labels and information slip on the Overspread view - not sure how much each of these affect performance - not much I don't think, but I wanted an even playing field. HT is now much more usable for large collections.
Will there be a standalone HT4 update be made available for the X9x (1619dr)series? Or maybe bundled in an actual firmware version update?
Yes Mcbluna puts out regular patched versions for the older hardware to keep them going. all unofficial of course but lots of positive feedback. there is always a chance that some of the optimisations are platform specific though.
This is good to see, performance is one of the big reasons I'm avoiding HT4. My library is about 2200 films and about the same 2200 TV shows so it was chugging and struggling, that totals to about 27000 individual video files. The other issue I have with it is library management, handling local and remote storage with duplicate files automatically (I do this in ZDMC with smart playlists and a library watchdog), custom category management and metadata management/editing (particularly when custom information is sometimes needed, like concerts) I really need some kind of automatic library watchdog with my setup, I have recent releases cached on a local SSD but that is regularly cycled out for new content from the main server, so the library needs to be able to automatically clean missing files and manage duplicates in different locations.
