Uncle Toxie Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I was curious, does anyone think that there would be a noticeable difference when streaming from different sources. Specifically; a USB 2.0 external drive hooked into a Linksys NSLU2 versus off of a dedicated server. Right now I stream media through my XBox from either my PC, or a server. I have considered ditching the server and freeing up my PC all together by installing an NSLU2 with a large external drive. My concern is that streaming from the external device causing skipping or stuttering. The network uses 10/100 (can't recall off the top of my head if the XBox is 10/100 or just 10) and I am not opposed to segmenting if needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Easy. What's the bandwidth that the streaming media requires? If you can exceed that by a healthy margin, you're in the clear. Some ballpark figures: MPEG-4: 700 mb/h or 200 kb/s MPEG-2: 2 gb/h or 600 kb/s ATSC HDTV: 7 gb/hour or 2kb/s Note that the above speeds are in BYTES whereas network speeds are typically reported in BITS. On the whole though, it seems fair to say that any worries regarding this particular part of your setup is unjustified. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Toxie Posted January 4, 2007 Author Share Posted January 4, 2007 I'm not worried about the network itself, that works fine, I'm not even sure why in the hell I mentioned it. :) I was concerned with possible lag from pulling the data off of a USB drive to the network device. I really need to learn to organize my thoughts before asking a question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I still don't see WHY this would worry you. Sure going through USB will add a few milliseconds to a lookup. Compensating that is what buffers and caches are for. Throughput of modern USB is sufficient for this particular application. I don't see any potential problem here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howr Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 I have a usb hard drive enclosure connected to an nslug, networked to a modified xbox. I've found XBMC is very good at preventing skipping. Navigating folders using a samba share works fine but it is a bit slow. To fix this I installed the unslug firmware on the nslug and the ccxstream package. With ccxstream the speed is like the files are on a local disk. http://www.nslu2-linux.org has more information on getting unslung running Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Toxie Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 I still don't see WHY this would worry you. Well when my boss calls in sick and I have finished all the projects that I have for the week, things like this start to float through my head. I was more curious than worried, in fact I would say that my worry level was zero. Thanks for the information howr, I'll look into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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