Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS

I have a Synology DS220+ that has two 4TB internal WD reds and 2 external USB powered 4 TB drives connected. The only (fairly recent) issue I have is that devices from the internal disks - never the USB connected ones - suddenly disconnect from HT4. When I go to device management in HT4 one or more of the devices will report as 'Expired'. NOTE that the devices will still be accessible in the ‘Media Center’. A reboot of the Z9X fixes this issue until it happens again. As recommended elsewhere I have set a permanent IP address for the Z9X in Quick Settings which does not seem to have fixed the problem.


Apart from this I have NO other issues playing any type of video via SMB connection. This includes 4K MKV, ISO and BDMV.

 

What’s the best channel for getting in touch directly with Zidoo support? I’ve tried the Facebook Messenger route but no reply yet.

 

I still need to do some additional testing but looks like I may have resolved my audio / video stuttering issue with my Z9X connected via SMB to my Synology NAS.

Last night I dove deeper into the Realtek developer settings and found an option for Performance Mode which I enabled and another option for Playback Performance Mode (EXPERIMENTAL) which was enabled by default and I disabled.

Something about these changes, along with the days worth of other tweaks, seem to have solved my playback issues. I'm not sure of the history of these settings but hoping smooth performance continues.

 

What are these parameters ........ Thank you in advance!

 

I would love to know how this is working for you, still having no issues after the Playback Performance Mode changes?

 

I'm beating my head over this for days now. I've only had my Zidoo Z9x for about a month and it's great but this pausing during video playback randomly has me worried. My movies are all 4k or 1080P .mkv/.mp4 and Gig ethernet no wifi served off a Synology DS918+ and gigabit on Cat7 cable, NAS with Samba2 or 3 selected doesn't change the effect any. I've used HT4 and ziddo-jellyfin apk and both are showing the same pausing randomly issue and my drives in the DS918+ are all Seagate. I also have a Synology DS416j that is showing the same problems via Zidoo. I used to use Plex installed on the DS918+ and client was app for my Sony TV, never had video pausing issues. I can play the files just fine off the Jellyfin full windows desktop client ( Nvidea 1060 card ). I'm more than willing to provide any info to help figure this out. I'm also on the latest firmware per Zidoo website ( non-google firmware ). The only thing I've not tried was to put about a half dozen or so movies on a external drive and plug in via USB3 to the Zidoo and see if those play okay.

 

Maybe you should do this

 

The other thing I would try is to connect the NAS directly to the Z9X - no switches. You could also try serving a few movies via SMB from your PC.

 

Last night I tried playing two 4k .mkv files from an external SSD plugged into the USB3.0 ports. Both played just fine like they should with no issues and before they would stutter and pause randomly. I've not tried to hook up the nas directly as that would take well to be honest much effort on my part and well I'm a bit lazy at this point. I'm not sure I even can has it has no USB out in the since that the Zidoo can access files directly via USB3. I might be able to set a static IP on the NAS but not sure how the Zidoo would connect. Food for thought later today when I have more time. At this point I'm looking into a multibay HD enclosure that I can put the drives in that is android compatible.

 

I made a video with the settings I use with my 2 synology NAS.

Before buying a dock station (Icy Dock, Orico,...), watch the video, you never know it might give you a clue about the problem you have.



I am not a NAS expert but with the above settings I have no problems of viewing, I use ISO and mkv Remux.

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Speaking of freeze problems while watching a movie.

I have exchanged on YouTube with a new Zidoo user, he uses ironwolf pro 12tb.

He had freeze during movie and TV series, I told him to try on another hdd, in this case an ironwolf pro 10tb and no more freeze problems...

Really strange but at least he found the origin of the problem.

 

Thanks for the reply OlivierQC. I actually came across your video a while back and followed it and I have all the same options for samba, hibernation, etc but still have video pauses. I'm going to buy two HD's of Pro series IronWolfe 10TB drives and get an external DAS for the Zidoo and just play them that way and use the Synology as a backup for my movies I guess.

 

Maybe you should still look for the source of the problem before buying new hard drives?

And why buy Ironwolf PRO, you can surely find external hard drives in special price and thus cheaper than Ironwolf PRO and they will do perfectly well.

If you buy a docking station, try to put the case as far away from your listening position as possible, because the noise of the hard drives when you are watching a movie is really annoying, I experienced this with my 5 bay Orico's that I quickly changed to NAS.

After that it depends on the auditory sensibility of each person of course

 

Don't worry I'm trying to still find the source of the issue. As far as why would I buy IronWolf Pro drives? Well because I have the money and I can if I wanted to, but will I end up doing that maybe not. I may buy 5 x 2TB SSD and put them in an enclosure with built in Raid 0 and run that I've not made my mind up yet.
Not worried about sound from the hard drives at all. I watch TV next to 90Gallon aquarium with two filters running in a living room that is 22 feet long x 20 feet wide and 18 feet tall ceiling, trust me when I say I will NEVER hear a couple of spinny hard disks.

 

Boxer,

How frequent are the freezes / stutters now? In my case they seem to have mostly settled down, though I do still see an occasional freeze from time to time. It almost looks like an old DVD layer change, freezes for 1.5 seconds then picks back up. I may see this happen once per movie now.

I made so many changes during my troubleshooting it's hard to say what actually made a difference. Nearly all people I've seen that have this issue are using Synology NAS via the Zidoo ethernet connection. I had freeze issues with both SMB and NFS. My hard drives are WD drives shucked from external enclosures. I would also note that playing the exact same files via Infuse on AppleTV have no freezes at all so I ultimately think the network / NAS setup is fine.

 

We watched John Wick and Baby Driver yesterday and I would say it played the movies okay for about 30 min or so then it would start to freeze like you said maybe 1 to 1.5 seconds each time in both HT4 ( latest ) and zidoo-jellyfin betta 11 ( latest ), I've not tried XMBC yet. Then it varies between how often and duration between each pause, it was never consistant. USB external SSD saw no issue just over Synology SMB and NFS both now that I've tested. Tried with Samba 3 being highest level with SMB2 lowest and even did SMB with Large Frame Support as the highest and SMB2 lowest. Still am seeing about the same. I think I really want to just get a nice 5 bay external usb 3.1 enclosure with built in raid 0 to put my movies on, and keep backups on the NAS if a drive fails ( maybe a Raid 5 ).

 

I tried that when I had problems between 2 Z9X players and local drives. I made a long crossover RJ45 patch cable for direct connection between 2 Zidoos. Static IP and no switches. It didn’t work. Zidoos didn’t detect any network at all just like no cable. It needs at least one simple switch between 2 devices on gigabit network.

 

Currently my all my devices, ( zidoo, Synology Nas, PC, etc ) all plug directly into a 24 port Ubiquity managed switch. Sad to say but I'm about burnt out on testing, time for a usb3 raid enclosure and just backup my movies to the Synology like I've been doing. Now if SSD would get a bit cheaper for 4TB+
ohhhh nelly.

 

The Ubiquity switch might be the problem - lots of traffic management and QoS options that might be causing problems with the Zidoo NIC or IP stack. You might pick up a cheap, dumb switch to try?

 

I've got QOS turned off and I never had an issue running Plex Server on the Synology DS918+ with that Ubiquity Switch and same cables to my tv. Only new device is the Zidoo but I'm not going to say that it may not be the problem. I have a 24 port TP-Link un-managed switch I could try this weekend so maybe that will help who knows. I will update you all soon as I have time to test it out. Thanks EVERYBODY for all the suggestions and idea burning. I love this Zidoo so much that I won't even entertain the thought of using anything else.

 

My suspicion is that the ethernet NIC and /or TCP/IP stack in the Zidoo is marginal by design and may be sensitive to things that other devices aren't (speed tests using the Chrome browser are pretty lame), so "my NAS/LAN works with ..." may not be an adequate troubleshooting methodology. I have zero stuttering issues so far, but I'm using an old (10+ years) QNAP NAS and cheap unmanaged switches. It is interesting that, anecdotally at least, most of the discussions I recall reading here and on AVS about similar issues all involved Synology. Not saying they aren't quality products but there may be some arcane IP/ethernet configuration that creates issues with the Zidoo.

Another interesting thing to try is using a 5GHz WiFi WLAN instead of ethernet (counter intuitive, I know) in case it is a NIC problem, either by design or due to a defective part. And there is always a factory reset.