Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS

I think so too...

 

and I do not think so, since on my box HT is not inizialized and no SMBor NFS mounts added there.....only reason can be that native player (i have favourites added as SMB and NFS) is also scanning in the background, hm

 

Aha, @mirror. You guys are on to something here in the .98 firmware.

It's still not perfect but the buffering issues are very much improved with some high bitrate content, but there's still room for improvement.
My findings are: (do note that all files I mention below play perfectly on three other mediaplayers)

Seven Worlds One planet episode two UHD HDR 10. (I just use this episode for testing since I've got it memorized by now)
Here the buffering issues still exist, but the player does seem to recover faster. In 6 minutes I had a freeze on the 3, 5 and a small one on the 6 minute mark. The player recovered within 10 seconds with the first two freezes. It's still a problem though.

Just tried episode one to see if it was episode related and there was buffering around the two minute mark that recuperated itself within 3 seconds. Edit: I left this episode to play and I notice irregular behaviour. There's still severe buffering that recovers reasonably fast. Sometimes it goes perfect for about 5 minutes and then it buffers every minute only to recover reasonably fast.

Seven Worlds One Planet inexplicably triggers the most bad behaviour from the player in my case. I don't know why, the Dune plays it perfectly with the same cables on the same location. I thought it had to do something with the Dolby Atmos sound file but Doctor Sleep is also decoded in Atmos and there are much less issues now.

Tenet UHD HDR 10: again, didn't watch the movie fully but the previous firmware editions made the player glitch in less than two minutes. there's a lot of movement in these scenes and that used to trigger the player quite fast. Now I didn't notice a single problem.

Doctor Sleep UHD HDR10+: This file was a disaster for the Zidoo, it never got past the two minute mark without glitching and then glitched every minute or so, now it started to gently buffer around the 6 minute mark, and recovered within 5 seconds.

It seems you guys are on the right track, I'm actually starting to believe that the issue can be resolved now. If you can finetune whatever you changed with this firmware update it might be possible we'll reach the end of the tunnel here.
(I'm going to check how long I still have to send the Dune back, since I'd much rather keep the Zidoo)

 

Well, maybe I spoke too soon. I saw there was a reset in the HDMI mode (should of checked what it was, but I forgot) so I reverted it to 23 Hz since all files mentioned support this framerate. Doctor Sleep started to buffer after two minutes again, then I switched it to auto, same result. It was exactly as before.

Edit: and now Doctor Sleep plays fine again, the player is definitely sensitive. I always restart the file for testing.

I expected Tenet to be a victim as well but it hasn't so far. Still improvement then. As I said Seven world's one planet and Doctor Sleep are in Atmos in RAW mode on my Ambeo soundbar.

 

I had one 3 sec lag within a 2 hour movie today (SMBv2 connection).

 

Managed to find some time to recapture Wireshark after disabling HT4 scanning. Much much better.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gjmOAfPVZ9RxRJ72sZZjRBH20yjWyyKc?usp=sharing
-> Excel file dated 2021-01-30.


This wireshark trace was taken soon after boot up, and started the JellyFish clips via Media Center.
I don't see anymore SMB scanning packets, checking out other folders/files.
The streaming SMB read requests are pretty consistent until the end of the clip.
One observation was that at the start of the stream the SMB read request length is unstable, and can vary from 1Mb to as low as 4kb, and then jumps back up to 1Mb read requests until the end of the clip. Not sure why the SMB read request length is varying by so much...

 

This will not help when not using SMB and NFS without HT problem is still there for people not using HT and just the native player......but I am happy your problems seem to reduce, that are good news.

 

i for one dont use HT ever
and my stutter issues are only smb DV DA type files ,every thing else is stutter free

And the stutter is gone from the DV DA type files direct ubs3

still waiting on Mirror to acivate my Mac addy so i can test smb DV DA out

 

Just to clarify, I am also not a iser of HT4, I use ZDMC. Problem is, even when I am not using HT4, the HT4 background scanning still happens... which I think is interfering with playback...

Try disabling HT4 auto-scanning, even if you’re not using HT4. You’ve nothing to lose. It might just help...

BTW, I am still on firmware 90G.

 

SMB uses standard TCP bulk transfer which uses the typical TCP slow start ramp up. There is also a serious potential performance impact with SMB versions used as SMBv1 was designed with LAN in mind but SMBv2 was re-designed with also WAN connections facilitated (better buffering).

 

@Armin Moesslacher do you have the Samba server option on the Z9X enabled?
If so disable it and see if if it helps with the client stutters.

 

No, was always disabled since I have a NAS

 

Okay nevermind, I managed to watch a couple of movies without stutters since disabling it but probably just a coincidence not all movies stutter for me even the really long ones only have maybe 1 or 2 stutters with 0.98. When compared to 0.90 it's much better for me. I just wish Dolby Vision standard wasn't broken with the new firmware I was halfway through a Dolby Vision series

 

I have also a funny small bug (existed also in 0.90) : when in the native player, one can select to disable (scroll to next page enabled or disabled) but the player DOESN NEVER remember the setting (funny since this bug happend also in some! X9S FWs) not big, but PLEASE can Zidoo not get a consistent FW ........where old bugs (even that small) are NOT popping up again......

 

Ive watched the first 2 epis of Seven worlds so far via smb and had zero issues with stutter/buffer/freezes with either episode
Thou , like all my other testing ,theyre not dolby vision/ dolby atmos , which is the only time this issues happens AND doesnt happen direct to usb3 via HDD

 

I had no stutters the last 2 days, no idea why, but like this it can/should stay

 

Also had no stutters last few days. Only change I made recently was to disable the Samba server option on Z9X. Whether that has freed up system resources or there was some periodic query to the samba server on Z9X that was interfering with my client playback.

There were changes made in 0.90 to the samba server and they added more complexity with password username etc. this is when I started having the problem with SMB client so possibly related.

 

I noticed that in my NFS server's list of mounts, the Zidoo's client name is stated as "ZD-SAMBA".
I'm rather suspicious to a device's SMB server name being stated as its NFS client. Is this something to worry about?

 

I updated to 6.1.05G firmware, and re-did the high bitrate JellyFish test. I must say the SMB performance is a much much better, and can be considered good enough for daily use (on my system). Here are the results...

300Mbps JellyFish: PERFECT! No stutter at all.




400Mbps JellyFish: 50% PERFECT, 50% slight stutter. I tested 4 times. Honestly, this is a crazy high bandwidth test, I think this is good enough...

 

Even for High Res it is more than enough great news