Optimizing performance on my HTPC between SSD and HDD

[tRidiot]

So I have my movie/TV collection stored on my HTPC on a 12TB 7200RPM platter drive.

I have a 500GB SSD SATA drive. MB is relatively old, no M.2. Specs in my sig down there.


So, I use my 4k FireTV Stick to run a Plex client, the HTPC is the server. Sometimes on 4k and even on occ 1080p, I get some issues with buffering and if I rewind/fwd it will get stuck or take forever. I recently got a new router, my 4k FireTV was only getting ~40-50Mbps wirelessly, so I hooked up with a Cat6 cable to my new router with an ethernet adapter to my FireTV and now it is a solid 100Mbps - sadly, the FireTV is only 10/100, not 10/100/1000.

So I don't know, haven't used it much since the change, but I'm wondering if setting up a portion of space on the SDD of the HTPC to "buffer" any movie I'm watching might help? Sort of like a pagefile? Is there a way to make it pull over the entirety of any movie I choose in the first few minutes to the SDD so it is not continually having to read off the HDD? I hear my HDD tracking, tracking, tracking through the movie in quiet parts. I could easily partition off 50 or 100 GB to use in this manner. If it would detect I am reading a large file on the server (2-25GB for a movie), then it could "buffer" the whole thing? I'm not sure if this would help, but I can't imagine it would hurt.

I'm open to options. I have Gigabit LAN from HTPC to router to 4k FireTV, all with Cat6 cable, so I don't see any way to increase connection speed anymore - the FireTV is definitely the bottleneck there. I would have hoped to see better than 100Mb on WiFi, but I was getting just under half that. With next to nothing on the network, I tried this just after setting up the new router, before connecting much of anything else, so network traffic and connections would have been at a minimum.

I got around 1800Mb on my WiFi6 adapter across the house, so the router definitely seems to be working properly.

Is the 4k FireTV stick just this cruddy?

 

[Janus67]

There are ways to do temp file/folder for buffering. I found a guide on the plex subreddit fit it.

Do you have a GPU on your server for transcoding? If not, that may will be your limit. The FireTV sticks are not powerful and can't handle various codecs and subtitles.

Otherwise, if you're willing to try a different device the Nvidia shield are the gold standard for the most part. I have one and it works well, but I generally use Kodi as I find it faster/more consistent.

 

[tRidiot]

I used to use Kodi, but the size of my database became prohibitive with the FireTV. As for transcoding, I have a 3GB 1060, I was told this would be more than enough, but it doesn't seem quite as good sometimes as I'd hoped. Don't get me wrong, overall, it's pretty good. But trying to transcode 4k down to 1080p for one of my TVs doesn't work, I know that.

 

[Janus67]

Just making sure that you have an active plexpass subscription? Last I checked it was required for hardware acceleration.

I ended up getting a 1060 super as it was based on pascal for streams and such and I haven't heard any complaints from coworkers who occasionally use my server. There's a plex kodi connect plugin for Kodi that you could try and see if it works better?

 

[tRidiot]

I do have the PlexPass.

I may look at the Plex Kodi option. I was resistant to switch to Plex because I had used Kodi for years and loved the interface options, but now that I've made the switch, I kinda like it too.


Never happy, eh? lol

 

[dejo]

So I have my movie/TV collection stored on my HTPC on a 12TB 7200RPM platter drive.

I have a 500GB SSD SATA drive. MB is relatively old, no M.2. Specs in my sig down there.


So, I use my 4k FireTV Stick to run a Plex client, the HTPC is the server. Sometimes on 4k and even on occ 1080p, I get some issues with buffering and if I rewind/fwd it will get stuck or take forever. I recently got a new router, my 4k FireTV was only getting ~40-50Mbps wirelessly, so I hooked up with a Cat6 cable to my new router with an ethernet adapter to my FireTV and now it is a solid 100Mbps - sadly, the FireTV is only 10/100, not 10/100/1000.

So I don't know, haven't used it much since the change, but I'm wondering if setting up a portion of space on the SDD of the HTPC to "buffer" any movie I'm watching might help? Sort of like a pagefile? Is there a way to make it pull over the entirety of any movie I choose in the first few minutes to the SDD so it is not continually having to read off the HDD? I hear my HDD tracking, tracking, tracking through the movie in quiet parts. I could easily partition off 50 or 100 GB to use in this manner. If it would detect I am reading a large file on the server (2-25GB for a movie), then it could "buffer" the whole thing? I'm not sure if this would help, but I can't imagine it would hurt.

I'm open to options. I have Gigabit LAN from HTPC to router to 4k FireTV, all with Cat6 cable, so I don't see any way to increase connection speed anymore - the FireTV is definitely the bottleneck there. I would have hoped to see better than 100Mb on WiFi, but I was getting just under half that. With next to nothing on the network, I tried this just after setting up the new router, before connecting much of anything else, so network traffic and connections would have been at a minimum.

I got around 1800Mb on my WiFi6 adapter across the house, so the router definitely seems to be working properly.

Is the 4k FireTV stick just this cruddy?

I have found that the 4xxx boards will accept a pcie carrier card to use an M.2 drive.