Xbox 360 - Stream from Win 7 virtual machine?

RobotXander

RobotXander

RobotXander

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3 Mar 2010
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Highlands, Scotland
Hi guys,

I have set up hypervisor on a home server I have built (ESXI 4.1)
I have installed Vail to handle all my media (Photos, software, movies, backups to IDrive etc) and have also installed a second virtual machine (Windows 7) so that my Xbox 360 can stream my media.

The VM's have been installed across 3 drives (VM install, System files and Swapfiles all on seperate drives) and I have created a virtual drive that all my media is on. This is on the Vail VM, mapped to the Windows 7 VM

Both machines have been assigned 4 gig of RAM and share an E8200 CPU, so resources a plenty...

Now, the connection to the Windows 7 VM from the xbox is excellent (Wired Ethernet) and the test shows maximum bandwidth. Music and photos stream without issue as does the SD Video content.
I am having a bit of an issue with my HD mpeg videos (Converted from MKV with MKV to VOB) Basically, they just buffer for a few mins, then the screen goes blank....
I never had this issue when I streamed from my physical PC, and these are just mpegs (size is 6 - 12 gb)

Does anyone have any similar experiences? Plenty of disk space, throughput is good as well. One of them actually worked for about 30 mins but I've had no luck since

EDIT: I have also tried installing the Win7 codec pack but this made no difference
 
I don't think I have QoS packet scheduler enabled, no. Would I have to enable that on each NIC?

Good idea with regard to hosting on the Win 7 machine....I havent tried that.

My old setup involved streaming the media over some homeplugs from my external hard drive on my PC upstairs....I thought if that worked then this would work without a problem :)
 
Yes you would need to turn that on in the NIC config. It's not always necessary but when streaming media using QoS where possible rarely hurts. Even if the switch doesn't support it it'll make sure the packets leave your NICs in the correct order. I.E normal boring data isn't interrupting the flow of video traffic.

I'm not convinced it's a network thing though, hence the suggestion of hosting it on the same machine you're streaming from.
 
Right, I created a new virtual disk on the Windows 7 PC and moved a couple of films onto it. Re mapped media centre, saw the films, tried to play but no joy. Just the constant "Buffering" message in the bottom right.

I have the virtual machines set on Auto Negotiate (Host has a gigabit NIC)
Browsing the media using media centre is instant, no lag at all....this is strange. PLus, maximum bandwidth according to the Network Tuner within Media Centre
 
It does seem from what you've done that there's no network issue or problem with data rates. I'd agree this looks like an issue with the application setup, the infrastructure side of things appears to be working pretty well tbh.
 
Maybe it uses the Win7 machine to partially decode HD stuff before it leaves the pc, so requires a decent video driver and not the standard VMware one. To test, maybe try with a phyical PC that only has Standard VGA drivers installed.
 
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