# What makes mediashare so slow and clunky?



## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

I'm using WMP as my server, and it takes forever to scroll through my PC's music content. I go to "folders" in "my music". I probably have 90 or 100 folders broken down by artist. Page up's and page down's must take 10-15 seconds to move to the next page. Same lag once you finally get into a music folder and start scrolling through the songs.

I'm wondering if there is a better choice over WMP to make browsing my pc music faster and more efficient. I like the potential convience of mediashare, but right now it is so slow that I don't use it as much as I could.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

The HR's don't cache any of that information, so everytime you need to browse through your music, your PC needs to read all of the ID3 tags and then stream the data over to the HR. That takes time; a lot more time than you're used to when browsing locally on the PC. It's just a fact of life.

The HRs are simply far from an ideal platform for such use. A dedicated HTPC is best, and second best is a dedicated streaming box that has plenty of cache for buffering. The HR can get the job done, but you have to be patient with it, and it's never going to be as robust as one of the other two.


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## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

BattleZone said:


> The HR's don't cache any of that information, so everytime you need to browse through your music, your PC needs to read all of the ID3 tags and then stream the data over to the HR. That takes time; a lot more time than you're used to when browsing locally on the PC. It's just a fact of life.
> 
> The HRs are simply far from an ideal platform for such use. A dedicated HTPC is best, and second best is a dedicated streaming box that has plenty of cache for buffering. The HR can get the job done, but you have to be patient with it, and it's never going to be as robust as one of the other two.


That makes sense. I wonder if the developers are looking at the option of caching the data to the hard drive to make it a lot snappier. It could poll the PC's occasionally to do any refreshing of changes to the music library on each PC. It surely wouldn't take a lot of hard drive space to make this a MUCH more usable feature!


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

The Magic 8 Ball says:


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## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

BattleZone said:


> The Magic 8 Ball says:


Sad but probably true...


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## Getteau (Dec 20, 2007)

Be happy you can even get it to work. Media share for me has been at best inconsistent and lately, completely non functional. I check it every once in a while to see if it has gotten any better and it always disconnects itself from my Win 7 box as it tries to pull the list of pictures. Like you, I go to browse by folders and if it doesn't disconnect as it tries to pull the folder list, it usually disconnects as it tries to open a folder.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

stlmike said:


> I'm using WMP as my server, and it takes forever to scroll through my PC's music content. I go to "folders" in "my music". I probably have 90 or 100 folders broken down by artist. Page up's and page down's must take 10-15 seconds to move to the next page. Same lag once you finally get into a music folder and start scrolling through the songs.
> 
> I'm wondering if there is a better choice over WMP to make browsing my pc music faster and more efficient. I like the potential convenience of mediashare, but right now it is so slow that I don't use it as much as I could.


The real answer to the thread questions is - many factors.

1) Your PC and its performance to deliver video and audio content into a network

2) Your network bandwidth and speed

3) Your connectivity to your HRx devices - SWiM coupled with DECA is the most recent network framework DirecTV is rolling out, and the performance is optimized for video/audio content delivery

4) The HRx device itself

I run Mediashare even on my HR21-200 with a WIN PC and 1 Gigabit network infrastructure. In addition, I'm running SWiM and DECA as my DirecTV network connectivity. Finally, I'm using TVersity, as opposed to Window Media Player as the software on my PC for content distribution.

My Mediashare experience is excellent - in fact, even on H21 and H24 HD receivers...the searches and playback are quite fast.

I wanted to share my setup details to respond, simply to show that this can make a difference...not just the HR2x DVR handling all the responsibility by itself. When a ran a slower PC, a slower network card and router in the past...Mediashare also ran slower.

Your mileage will vary.


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

All very true.

Lots of folks say that 100 MB is plenty, or that WiFi is fine, but given the size of my media collection, I promise you it really isn't. Before I switched to Gb Ethernet, it would take forever to remotely load my music over the network (20,000+ songs). It still takes some time, but it's much better now (on another PC; MediaShare would still be terrible with that many files).

It's easy to forget that just because you are networked and things "work" doesn't mean that your network is problem-free, much less "optimal." And as we rely on the network more and more, and as the file-sizes and bandwidth needs increase exponentially, as they have been, any limitations of your network are going to become painfully evident.

That still doesn't make HRs a great platform for media sharing, but networking speed and consistantcy will certainly play a big part in the user experience.


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## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> The real answer to the thread questions is - many factors.
> 
> 1) Your PC and its performance to deliver video and audio content into a network
> 
> ...


I'm running Win 7 64-bit with a 3.0 GHz quad core, gigabit ethernet (until the HR's of course  ) so I don't think my network or PC is any sort of bottle-neck. 

I'm glad to hear that TVersity may be faster than WMP and that was really the point of my post. The software server I'm using I can control. Many other things I can not.

Thanks!


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

There are very few very good network streaming boxes out there. These days companies love shoving ok to downright horrible streamers into everything from TVs to Bluray players to DVRs. But there are some decent solutions and they are not terribly expensive. The WDTV Live for example is miles ahead of mediashare and can play content in its native format right off PC shares. There are others like the ASUS O!Play, Patriot Box Office, Popcorn Hour, etc.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

stlmike said:


> I'm running Win 7 64-bit with a 3.0 GHz quad core, Gigabit Ethernet (until the HR's of course  ) so I don't think my network or PC is any sort of bottle-neck.
> 
> I'm glad to hear that *TVersity may be faster than WMP *and that was really the point of my post. The software server I'm using I can control. Many other things I can not.
> 
> Thanks!


That could be one contributing factor. I know when I originally started out, I used WMP, and quickly moved away from it based on speed and instability.

I've now been through several updated versions of TVersity, and have been pleased with how it has worked for Mediashare here.

That's not the only thing, but it certainly can contribute.


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## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

hdtvfan0001 said:


> That could be one contributing factor. I know when I originally started out, I used WMP, and quickly moved away from it based on speed and instability.
> 
> I've now been through several updated versions of TVersity, and have been pleased with how it has worked for Mediashare here.
> 
> That's not the only thing, but it certainly can contribute.


I installed TVersity, added My Music library, and scrolling through it via the HR21 seems a bit quicker. However, the songs, while displayed in track order, are playing in alphebetical order. For instance, on The Wall, it displays as "In the Flesh?", "The Thin Ice", etc, but my HR21 play Another Brick in the wall, Part1, then 2, then 3, then continues in alphabetical order. I will research to figure out why (unless someone here knows why  ) But I did want to share that it is a bit faster with TVersity.


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## MemphisBrian (Mar 6, 2010)

I have been using Media Share for music videos and really enjoy it, and would like to second the original poster's appeal to speed it up with caching or tweaking. 

Gigabit networking should not be necessary for navigating a folder list quickly. Consider that the original poster said he has problems with 100 folders. If you take all those artist names and put them in a text file (dir > file.txt) then look at the size of that file, then multiply times 10 for protocol overhead, you're probably still only looking at a few kilobytes of data.


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## Getteau (Dec 20, 2007)

stlmike said:


> I installed TVersity, added My Music library, and scrolling through it via the HR21 seems a bit quicker. However, the songs, while displayed in track order, are playing in alphebetical order. For instance, on The Wall, it displays as "In the Flesh?", "The Thin Ice", etc, but my HR21 play Another Brick in the wall, Part1, then 2, then 3, then continues in alphabetical order. I will research to figure out why (unless someone here knows why  ) But I did want to share that it is a bit faster with TVersity.


I just installed TVersity as well and I can finally display pictures without the software crashing on me. You're right about it being faster. My unit is actually semi responsive as it goes through the media share menus.

One thing that would help speed up the photo side would be an option to skip the thumbnails. I'd be willing to bet that is one factor in why it's so slow. I don't remember, but I think that may be on the wish list.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Its not just the server on your computer. Heck WMP works fine with my other devices as a server.

Mediashare is just slow on the HRs.


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