Samsung C650 error: "Request cannot be completed"

[Gus]

109Please see attached the error i get at random when browsing folders on my Samsung C650. It happens when i click on a folder or select Videos from the main Media screen. If i retry the folder it will work and it occurs about 1 in 10. I have not started the logging process, i will do that over the weekend but wanted to let you see the error first.
I am on v 2.3.1 and it did not happen on 2.1.9 if that helps, as that was my last version.

attached is the error. will post logs soon.
cheers

Gus

[Paul]

Can you upgrade to the latest version v2.3.2 and see if that is better? Also, make sure you are using the "Samsung C" device profile for your TV. Go to the Media Devices dialog to see this. If none of that helps, please send us the logs when it happens to support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[Gus]

Thanks Paul,

i have updated to latest version and checked to make sure i'm on the Samsung C profile. The error on TV appeared after browsing just 2 folders. Will try to grab a log for you this weekend.

Gus

[Gus]

Finally got round to spending some time to look into this in more detail. It looks like it's not a Mezzmo issue, it's my setup.

I have a Buffalo 2Tb external disk for all my MKVs. It has a power save feature which puts the disk to sleep after about 15mins of no activity.
Once the drive letter is accessed again, the disk will spin back up and become available.

The spin up takes about 6 seconds, so after getting the error, i can reselect Videos on the TV and this is why it always works on the second attempt.

Is there a timeout in Mezzmo that can be extended for disk responses? i'm not sure it's the TV since i used to have large folder contents in the past and there were pauses larger than 6 seconds for listings to show.

I hope this makes sense, as always there is no rush, now that i know what's going on i can live with it, and let Mrs Gus know too!

cheers

Gus

[Paul]

Gus,

The problem with the disks going to sleep is that Mezzmo cannot even start streaming any headers or initial information to the device until there's some disk activity for us to get data from files. This timeout may be too much for some devices (albeit the DLNA standard specifies a 30-second timeout, as experience shows, not all manufacturers decide to adhere to the specs). When you have a large folder, which can be accessed immediately it works because we can send it out in small chunks, thus keeping the device happy that we're sending something out. When we can't send anything, then the device may drop the connection. Unfortunately there isn't much we can do from our side here.

[Gus]

Cheers Dennis, thanks for the quick reply.

that makes sense, i kind of thought that might be the case. :-(

I take it there is nothing that can be sent to the TV by way of a dummy signal/packet just for a few seconds until the disk comes back to life?

[Paul]

No, dummy signals will confuse the TV even worse than nothing at all and besides, Mezzmo doesn't know if your disk is sleeping or not - it's up to the hardware disk controller to receive a signal from the OS and try to access the file (and then wake up the disks if necessary). The easiest solution is not to put them to sleep - how much power are they taking in when on?

[Gus]

no bother Dennis, thanks for the feedback.

I've found a util that will run on my server that will stop the disk going into power save mode, it's called XSleep ( http://xsleep.codeplex.com ). I can then setup a sheduled event to start the tool between 6pm and midnight. Since i'm at work during that day and we only really watch videos at night.

cheers
Gus

[Paul]

Yes, that makes sense :) I would've also thought that there would be a setting on the NAS itself to do this, but then of course it depends on the firmware that the manufacturer has put in.

[kappa7]

I get the same error on my Samsung C6000 TV when the hard disk have to power on. The hard disk take about 10 seconds to start and the timeout error appears after about 3-4 seconds.

Until yesterday I was using twonky server and with the same TV the timeout error as never came out! The TV was waiting the 10 seconds and then proceed.
Are you sure that there isn't a sort of timeout on the mezzmo server itself?

[Paul]

We have improved this area for the upcoming Mezzmo v3.0. It will be released this month and is a free upgrade for all registered users.