A few problems - hulu, smb, tv shows...

[jon123]

I shouldn't specify hulu, it seems to be any streaming video - unwatchable. It jerks and is very unresponsive to remote presses - audio works fine the entire time usually.

Watching mp4's on a smb share works well for a while, but usually ends up falling behind at some point and having to rebuffer. Today it happened such that it would play for 5-10 seconds, then rebuffer, play 5-10 seconds, rebuffer.. repeat a few times.. Then it played fine for a minute, then rebuffering... again. (also, these mp4's have chapters, but they don't seem to be used?)

Another strange thing. I went to Video->Movies and it showed me all 200+ movies on my smb share. But, while it was sitting there it seemed to lose most of them, then start to re-index?

It would be great if the Video->Movies screen remembered it's "View" setting. Loading that screen on the ATV for the first time takes 30-40 seconds with thumbnails, and I find a list far more useful. Maybe some different defaults for ATV for performance?

Regarding TV shows, it would be nice if it would search for the episode name on it's own if you tell it its a tv show (as it does for movies). Entering everything in with the remote is just not gonna happen ;) .

The project is looking great though guys, no disrespect at all with any of my comments. I also understand you're working with very little in terms of hardware on the atv, so I just hope everything will work out.

[cbeiting]

Have you updated to the latest build? The new build on Monday was pretty unusable for Hulu and CBS.com -- the one out yesterday is damn near flawless... I watched a full length movie from Hulu on my ATV and only had two times where it hitched, but I was downloading the Resistance 2 beta for my PS3, and they're both wireless -- so I blamed that.

I'd suggest you make sure you're updated for the hell of it. If so, do it again just to make sure, and make sure you've updated Launcher too.

[Apek]

I shouldn't specify hulu, it seems to be any streaming video - unwatchable. It jerks and is very unresponsive to remote presses - audio works fine the entire time usually.

Watching mp4's on a smb share works well for a while, but usually ends up falling behind at some point and having to rebuffer. Today it happened such that it would play for 5-10 seconds, then rebuffer, play 5-10 seconds, rebuffer.. repeat a few times.. Then it played fine for a minute, then rebuffering... again. (also, these mp4's have chapters, but they don't seem to be used?)


You can increase the cache size in your guisettings.xml. This is what I have:



<cachevideo>
<dvdrom>2048</dvdrom>
<internet>4096</internet>
<lan>8192</lan>
</cachevideo>


The flash based videos can't be cached though.



It would be great if the Video->Movies screen remembered it's "View" setting. Loading that screen on the ATV for the first time takes 30-40 seconds with thumbnails, and I find a list far more useful. Maybe some different defaults for ATV for performance?


It is a bug and it is reported and there are several threads mentioning the problem.



Regarding TV shows, it would be nice if it would search for the episode name on it's own if you tell it its a tv show (as it does for movies). Entering everything in with the remote is just not gonna happen ;) .


Actually Boxee gets the episode names correctly. Maybe you have an unusual file naming convention that Boxee can not understand.

[jon123]

Thanks for the replies. I've updated my cache settings and hopefully that will take care of it. Watched an entire movie today with boxee when the ATV software didn't want to cooperate (sigh) - it skipped 4-5 times towards the end of the movie for just a few seconds each time - not as bad as that last report, which is great.

Sorry for not specifying. I am on the newest version of Boxee. (Have updated launched and boxee and verified version number). I noticed a HUGE improvement over the first version with Hulu to the current version, but it is still not watchable on the ATV. Works great on my MBP though.

If others are not having as big of a problem with Hulu and other streams, the only thing I can think is if Boxee is indexing in the background still? I have a lot of media on the smb share (about 250 m4vs movies, another 300 or so m4v TV episodes, only about 10 dvd rips right now, and about 10k mp3s) - if it's trying to (re)index any of that in the background that would make sense.

Is there any way to know if Boxee is updating? Does it continue when video is playing? And is there a way to turn it off/pause it/make it manual or a cron job or just timed somehow?

My naming scheme for TV shows is more of a hierarchy:
/Media/TV/Entourage/Season 1/Episode_Name.m4v

I noticed just now that some are Episode Number instead.. I'll look in to that and rename them to help boxee locate them.

Thanks! Great work so far, boxee will be repleacing FrontRow very soon. (BTW, there is a Boxee Remote Buddy Behavior available now - check your updates)