Streaming from Windows 8 Pro as a server

[FrankAZ]

Hi. I hope that there is a simple obvious answer to this otherwise I'm $$$ in the hole.

Last week we (work) got our Windows 8 RTM ISO images to play with so I pulled the trigger and ordered the parts for a new machine at home which I intend to use as a larger-capacity replacement of my Windows Home Server. My WHS is already at 5x 2TB and has no more room to grow, whereas my Windows 8 Storage Spaces solution can grow beyond all reason. I'm starting at 8TB (3+3+2 TB)and will migrate drives from WHS to make it even larger as I retire successive 2TB drives from WHS.

For now though I am experimenting with six old HDDs with a variety of sizes ranging from 36GB to 120GB and doing horrible things such as unplugging drives mid file transfer and hard-unplugging the Windows 8 machine while it is in the middle of volume-to-volume copies both directions to reassure myself that the parity and mirror implementations work. So far so good! Rebuilding an injured volume is slow, but faster than say a Intel Rapid Storage rebuild.

But, and here's the problem I have right now. When I load up a parity-protected volume (akin to RAID5, but not) with some VIDEO_TS folders and point Media Browser on my HTPC to that folder I discover that I can read/write those folders and read files. HOWEVER when I try to watch the movie in exactly the same way that I can do with my WHS hosted copy the HTPC stalls and has to download the whole movie (or possibly just the whole VOB) into an internal cache before it can begin to play, and there doesn't seem to be the same FF/RW behavior available. This is not good as the WAF will approach zero.

So, does anybody know if there is a special switch somewhere in Windows (7, 8, anything) which enables some sort of file streaming behaviors which is not on by default?

I have not installed the WMC pack to my Windows 8 yet, nor have I registered my copy. (I am waiting for my MSDN key on Aug 15th since the pre-launch key I have only allows a trial install with 3-hourly nagging to activate).

In closing, apart from the streaming issue which I am sure is fixable somehow, Storage Spaces seem like the bees knees. Nice and fast, robust, and have the ability to grow to exabytes and across multiple machines theoretically. I'll be working out other WHS equivalent behaviors such as automated RecordedTV transfers for nominated shows, email alarming and an automated network machine back-up in due course, but my short-list of must-haves all seem possible.

Frank.

EDIT: Resolved - see post #16.

[milli260876]

Are U mad? Don't U know Windows 8 is the devils brew????

[STC]

I reckon this is a function of the player rather then the host data server.
I presume the player is factoring in that it needs to cache the content before playing it. Hopefully this could be adjusted.

Maybe see if a different player can view and play the files 'normally'.

[STC]

Frank, what are you using to play the vobs?
Any third party codecs or muxing/filters going on?

[adam1991]

What is this "Windows 8" of which you speak?

It's not available at any of the usual places...

[STC]

Last week we (work) got our Windows 8 RTM ISO images

Most probably a business where RTM releases go

[FrankAZ]

My HTPC is a regular ol' Windows 7 Home Premium build with WMC augmented by Media Browser, and some other popular add-ins oft spoken of in these forums. I try to keep it crap-free so it only uses the best add-ins. It has been very reliable (~80%+ WAF, as good as it gets) for well over a year.

I can use integrated Windows 7 DVD playback with media browser to play ripped DVDs hosted by the WHS just fine. From a file transfer perspective I have all the permissions to read, download and even write to a folder hosting similarly ripped (actually previously watched) DVDs on the Windows 8 Pro 'server'. But, it seems that there is something missing which prevents the Windows 7 WMC client from requesting and receiving a stream, and the controls to FF/RW are not working properly, at least not with as much agility as with the puny WHS. It seems that a much larger chunk of data has to be delivered to the HTPC from the server each time. No Just-in-time playback for me, it is a download, cache, play, retire operation. I think.

My Windows 7 HTPC can still play the WHS hosted files just fine. To test the Windows 8 'server' I edited my Media Browser config to add a new category 'test' and pointed it to the seemingly working fileshare on the Windows 8 box.

Yes - I have access to Windows 8 a little ahead of time because of my well-known employer. Even so I only have a key which doesn't allow me to activate it (no personalization features) and I have to suffer either a desktop watermark or a 3 hourly nagging. As soon as Aug 15th rolls around I get to get my own activation key via MSDN which will stop the nagging or watermark. Until then I am experimenting with how to set this puppy up since once it goes 'live' I won't want to be experimenting while it has the family data on it.

Frank.

[adam1991]

RTM already? It's only the first of August. Isn't this an October release or something?

Anyway, more to the point: Wednesday it's on MSDN? Will it also be on Technet?

[STC]

~80%+ WAF, as good as it gets

Graph please!

[newfiend]

~80%+ WAF, as good as it gets

Graph please!

Ok this made me snicker... back to the topic at hand... lol

[STC]

Can you install Windows 8 on another box as a test client to playback?

Perhaps 8 Media player fully recognizes the file system share type and will not buffer it as you describe.

[FrankAZ]

RTM already? It's only the first of August. Isn't this an October release or something?

Anyway, more to the point: Wednesday it's on MSDN? Will it also be on Technet?

Yes. On August 15th it will be on TechNet too. See http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/ for a schedule.

Maybe I'll prepare a graph of 'Software Maturity' vs. WAF, or 'Incidence of major/minor errors' vs. WAF. I'll have to determine some SI units though so we can properly discuss the topic. I propose the 'WAF' (Wf), defined as 0 Wf = you are on the kitchen floor with your bodily fluids outside your skin, and 1 Wf = that theoretical point when nothing could be better. So, we'll say 'My S.O. peaked to 860 mWf yesterday when she got her new car'; and 'I crashed my wife's car while dating her sister. I saw a record low of 10 uWf'.

Frank.

[STC]

^Top form

Do you get my little joke there?

[barnabas1969]

Geek bliss.

[adam1991]

Stunningly good, stunningly accurate.

[FrankAZ]

UPDATE

I had the opportunity to do some more investigation last night and along the way it seems to have fixed itself inasmuch as I tried doing a bunch of things which didn't fix it at the time but later on I found it unexpectedly working. Phew.

In contrast to WHS (2003) a Windows 8 box running as a server requires a password for each user account with which it shares files. Accounts with no passwords are denied. I already had a passworded account ('Media') on my HTPC which made using RecordedTV HD easier to use and I had established the same 'Media' account on the Win8 box. That allowed me to share content between the HTPC and Win8 boxes and transfer files but there was that problem with streaming (post #1). I couldn't 'push' new content to the Win8 box from my passwordless user account on the family PC, though I could 'pull' it to the Win8 box from the WHS. There were some silly A-B transfer restrictions which broke the usefulness of my home network. Last night I decided to add passwords to my own houshold account, my daughter's account, and create a separate account for my wife so that all the networking barriers could be removed. I ran all around creating the accounts on my six networked Win 7 machines, my WHS, and doing all the hair-pulling and rebooting that MSFT networking entails.

After I'd established proper passworded accounts for myself, my wife, and my daughter, plus the 'Media' account I already used and had futzed with the permissions everywhere to prevent family members accidentally damaging stuff I checked and found that the streaming to the HTPC still didn't work. As a break I decided to reposition the fans in my Windows 8 box to try direct more air to the HDD pool but without increasing fan noise. That entailed more power cycling and when I was done with that I decided to sit down and use the damn kit while I had a beer. I was surprised to discover that somewhere along the way of the last hour it had fixed itself and I could watch DVDs and even TV shows copied to a new Win8/RecordedTV folder with as much agility as those hosted on the WHS. (I verified to myself that I could copy copy-protected TV shows from the WHS to the Win 8 box and still play them on the HTPC which originally recorded them).

I don't know what the streaming 'fix' was, but adding passwords to accounts and permissions not involved with the Win8 - HTPC transfers and a lot of power cycling of all the network client machines, plus some time and beer did the trick.

I've never got into the HomeGroup easy networking thing with Microsoft and prefer the hard way of manually working user accounts, Everybody accounts, Guest accounts, and permissions. Perhaps Homegroup would work better. I still need to experiment with linking my family user accounts to Microsoft accounts to allow sync of settings between machines, and I am fearful that will disrupt the now nice-and-clean account/permissions I have set up in my home network.

Anyway, that wraps the streaming issue. I may post some findings about disk utilization and unpublicised limitations on how Win 8 Storage Spaces uses disks added one-by-one to a pool in another thread later today.

Frank.

[jbrooks792]

I know its early on with 8 but I'm surprised I'm not seeing this reported more places since I'm seeing the same issue here with RTM. I haven't tried any other file types from my 3 drive parity Storage Space. Sometimes I can get a movie to start but then it freezes and wmc stops responding. Move the same ripped directory over to a none Storage Space drive and it works without issue. Since it is the RTM I have been unable to load media center on the 8 machine itself to see if it behaves the same accessing the Storage Space on the local machine versus across the network. As part of standard practice I have the local security policy set to not require passwords for access via the network. I suppose my final step is to try your method of adding passwords to the media center account that is on all the machines on the network. Although I don't have much confidence in that since your original testing didn't have an affect. At least, not at first.

[FrankAZ]

Update to my experiences. There is still a problem with playing DVDs stored as VIDEO_TS folders in a Windows 8 Storage Space. See this thread http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =49&t=2516 which links to a Technet thread in which I have posted greater details.

Playing single files (MOV, MPG, WTV) from the storage space works fine. Playing VIDEO_TS stored on the Windows 8 machine but not in a storage space works fine. But, playing a DVD stored as a VIDEO_TS in a storage space fails 90% of the time to a spinning blue donut. The same VIDEO_TS play fine from WHS (2003), the local disk, or from shares hosted by not Windows 8 machines.

Frank.

[jbrooks792]

Not sure if this is a solution for anyone but I was finally able to get this to work. When I built the array under windows server 2012 versus the client I had no issues with streaming my ripped dvd content.

If you have access to TechNet or I think there is a server trial available from Microsoft here is what I did. Since I didn't have a spare machine at the time and didn't want to wipe my existing one I used hyper-v to install 2012 then I made three of my initial 2tb drives on the host available to the vm and created the parity storage space and created the volume and formatted it. I close that down and then made those three disks available to the host again and showed up as an existing storage space volume. Its nice that you can transport disks natively between systems. I then added my additional 6 2tb drives to that storage space and copied over all of my content. I tested this a couple of times and the dvd folder structure streamed without issue every time as long as I setup the initial set under server.

There are not any limitations to make changes to the storage space after having built it under a different system. The only thing I can warn some people that aren't familiar is that you need to plan out your expansion prospects for your array before you dump your data to it. When you initially create it you will be locked into the number of drives needed to expand it. Since I wanted to expand slowly while copying my data from the old array I had to set my to 3 a three disk column otherwise I would be forced to upgrade 4, 5, or 6 disks at a time. I could be recalling incorrectly but I think you can go up to 8 columns. Based on my array size and choice of 3 column setup I certainly am seeing a performance impact but with main purpose of the array being mass archival it is only a minor inconvenience when ripping multiple disks at a time.

Not motivated enough to post and research to figure out what this bug is or whether it will be fixed but there is a workaround.

[FrankAZ]

Thank you for your post. How long have you been using the array successfully? I ask because periodically I get myself all excited when a troublesome DVD rip plays a couple of times in a row, but so far I have always run into the problem again.

My experiments have so far involved various types of Storage Spaces created on both Win8 Pro and W2012E, including those created on W2012E and then moved to either another W2012E installation or to Win8 Pro. No joy with any of that, however I have not had a new run with it since the most recent Patch Tuesday. I live in hope that one Wednesday I'll find that all has been magically and silently fixed and keep a couple of proven but difficult DVD rips on my main array ready to attempt.

For the most part though I have now converted all my rips to MKVs using the default setting of MakeMKV, except removing non-English audio and subtitling. I have found that works well and is compatible with my Ceton Echo. If DVDs ever play with 100% reliability I'll revert back to my original rips since my wife does like to use extras and scene selection. She is already undermining the whole HTPC premise by pulling her actual DVDs from the shelf instead of using the library I have invested so much time in.

Frank.