[SOLVED] Problem when playing videos through wireless router's USB port ?

[Djinn252]

My household has an ASUS RT-AC86AU as a primary router, and an RT-AC68U being used as an AiMesh node. By and large, everything is working fine; streaming, connectivity, etc.

Both of the routers have USB ports in the back, so I had the brilliant idea to plug in a USB drive loaded with MP4 videos. This was partially successful. I can stream video content to any of the televisions in my home. However, roughly once every 15 minutes, I get a "Video Interrupted" message on the television, and I have to re-navigate through the folders, and resume.

I tried moving the USB drive from the AC86 to the AC68 AiMesh node, which is about 18 inches from the television, and was still able to reproduce the problem. The televisions are all connected on the 5GHz band for the higher bandwidth.

Grateful for any suggestions.

 

[kanewolf]

My household has an ASUS RT-AC86AU as a primary router, and an RT-AC68U being used as an AiMesh node. By and large, everything is working fine; streaming, connectivity, etc.

Both of the routers have USB ports in the back, so I had the brilliant idea to plug in a USB drive loaded with MP4 videos. This was partially successful. I can stream video content to any of the televisions in my home. However, roughly once every 15 minutes, I get a "Video Interrupted" message on the television, and I have to re-navigate through the folders, and resume.

I tried moving the USB drive from the AC86 to the AC68 AiMesh node, which is about 18 inches from the television, and was still able to reproduce the problem. The televisions are all connected on the 5GHz band for the higher bandwidth.

Grateful for any suggestions.

If the routers are meshed, that may be the problem. Run a temporary ethernet cable between them and test.
Also move your TV to a wired connection if possible.

 

[Ralston18]

Reference:

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/RT-AC86U/E15867_RT-AC86U_UM_v4_WEB.pdf

Verify that I did identify the applicable router User Manual. Just the RT-AC86AU for the time-being.

(You can also check the User Manual for the RT-AC68U later on - if and as necessary.)

Go to to the USB pages starting on physically numbered Page 24.

Try the monitoring screens and see if those screens reveal anything fitting the "15 minute" pattern.

Double check supported devices and configurations.

Before you stream MP4 videos, feel the USB drive. Get a sense of its temperature. When the video gets interrupted carefully check the USB drive again. Is the drive warm, hot, or possibly very hot?

Then during the interruption time, the USB drive cools down some while you re-navigate through the folders.

Just my immediate thoughts on the matter.

 

[Djinn252]

Many thanks, both for the info!

Based on my testing, the USB drive heats up considerably during write operations, but not during prolonged reads, so I doubt that's the issue. I'll see if I can reproduce the problem, then check the monitoring screens.

 

[gggplaya]

Cheap USB drives are probably too slow for this. Many cheap drives top out at a few MB/s with USB 2.0. If you using USB 3.0 drive with the blue USB 3.0 port, you should get decent speeds with the 86U.

Mesh speeds aren't the best for bandwidth applications. Playing and decoding a movie on the client side takes alot of bandwidth. Using a PLEX server to transcode uses much less bandwidth.

Did you try a download test onto a windows PC to see how fast the average transfer speed is when you copy a movie?

Also, how are you playing videos on your TV, through DLNA or through SMB or FTP?

Are these 1080p video or 4k videos?

 

[Djinn252]

Thanks for the reply ... It's a Sandisk 512GB drive. And while it's no speedster, it's not so slow that reading the media should present an issue. I just ran a test, and one of the 700MB videos copied from the chip to my computer in about 20 seconds. Given that the video runtime is about 22 minutes, I don't think the media speed is the issue.

Likewise, I don't think it's about transcoding either. The videos are standard h.264 MPEG, which is natively supported by the television. When I plug the same drive directly into the TV set's USB port, there are no problems.

Per your DLNA/SMB question ... I'm not sure. I hate to oversimplify, but I just plugged the USB drive into the back of the router, and hoped for the best. I changed no router settings.

 

[gggplaya]

What kind of TV do you have, if it's not Android with Kodi or have a network browser, then it's using DLNA.

It's possible the miniDLNA server on the router isn't very good, or the processor on the tv isn't very good at handling it. You may want to invest in an Amazon Firestick and install KODI on it.

 

[Djinn252]

It's a relatively new Sony TV; I do not recall the model, but it's from the sub-$1000(US) family.

 

[gggplaya]

Some of Sony TV's have Android/Google TV on them. You can install KODI and try watching network movies with that. Android has a poor implementation of SMB so speeds are generally slow, it's best to use FTP with android.