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The addition of gigabit ethernet and USB 3.0 means that a Pi no longer feels like a bottleneck in one’s home network. I know that the Pi was invented as an edu

The addition of gigabit ethernet and USB 3.0 means that a Pi no longer feels like a bottleneck in one’s home network. I know that the Pi was invented as an educational product, but thanks to the Linux distribution OSMC it is commonly used as a media center for playing films, music, TV, etc. I have had gigabit internet for a few years now, and every day on average, I torrent a Blu-Ray image onto my main computer. However, subsequently moving the Blu-Ray to my Raspberry Pi 3 media center is always slow on two counts: 1) ethernet from the router to the Pi was limited to 10/100 speeds, and 2) the Pi could push large files to an attached hard drive only over a USB 2.0 port. Consequently, on a Raspberry Pi 1–3 it takes an hour just to move a high-definition file around one’s home network! On a Pi 4, it looks like one can just put the torrent client directly on the media center.

bscphil 7y ago
I imagine the wait must be agonizing! Why not just have a NFS server on your more powerful computer for the Pi to stream the file from? 100 Mbps is easily enough to stream any Bluray.
- jackdh 7y ago
  Can't speak for OP but I don't want my main PC on all the time if I'm streaming away from home.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    Also can't speak for OP: I can't trust my main computer to be stable for that long, and certainly wouldn't want to rely on it for long-range contact.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Not at all. The reason I upgraded my home LAN many years ago was exactly because 100Mbps is not enough to stream 1080p videos. It does suffice on average, but the bitrate changes a lot within the same file.
  - supergauntlet 7y ago
    I haven't actually seen a single 1080p raw bluray file with a higher video bitrate than 35 Mbps. Maybe with TrueHD/Atmos audio the total bitrate could push past 40, but 100 Mbps is way more than you need for 1080p. Even 4k doesn't seem to push past 50 Mbps, but I think that's because h.265/HEVC is more efficient for the same observed quality/CRF.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      You are right. I don't know what your parent comment is talking about. Blu-rays use H.264 High Level 4.1. That has a maximum bitrate (for a single buffer) of 50 Mbps. The average bitrate for an entire disc is usually closer to 25-30. Even the most extreme cases, like the mastered-in-4K Lawrence of Arabia, have peaks at about 48 Mbps, and average bitrates of about 42 Mbps. If you're having issues streaming Blurays on a 100 Mbps network, the speed of the network is not your problem!
      - marcosdumay 7y ago
        NFS can not use the entire raw bandwidth for application data, and it is very likely that mplayer compresses its filesystem calls instead of making a perfectly spaced stream of them. Also, Ethernet does simply stops working way before 100% of the bandwidth is used. I don't know why you expect things to run smoothly at 50% utilization.
        myrandomcomment 7y ago
        NFS is not the most effect protocol however NFS3 over UDP should be able to hit 75% liberate on that 100M link easy. Something else is the bottle neck here. I have done a great deal of testing on this on 100M all the way to 100G links in my career and properly tuned you should be able to hit 80% or so or the link speed at real data through put.
      - jyrkesh 7y ago
        > If you're having issues streaming Blurays on a 100 Mbps network, the speed of the network is not your problem! Well, it COULD be the problem if you're not actually getting the 100 Mbps. I've diagnosed WiFi that should have a lot more headroom than 100 Mbps but still stutters on mid-bitrate 1080p. Signal degradation
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > Why not just have a NFS server on your more powerful computer for the Pi to stream the file from? The “more powerful computer” is a laptop, and it is only being used for torrenting the films because it has gigabit ethernet. I don’t want to have to leave it on all the time, and sometimes it is still packed in its case when I want to sit down and watch a film. Storing the films on a hard drive attached to the Pi is a lot more convenient.
josteink 7y ago
> The addition of gigabit ethernet and USB 3.0 means that a Pi no longer feels like a bottleneck The model 3B+ already had this though.
- bscphil 7y ago
  The ethernet port on the 3B+ is still attached to the USB hub on the board. In my tests it never gets more than 300 Mbps. The Pi 4 should have true GigE support because it doesn't have that limitation.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    How fast does the attached drive write though? Assuming an external spindle drive for storage.
morphle 7y ago
at 2-4 Gbps maximum because of shared bandwidth, slower than a single USB 3.0
mtw 7y ago
> Raspberry Pi 3 media center Just read theverge review on how the Pi struggles to play a video full screen, even if resolution is 480p. How are then people using it as a media center?
- save_ferris 7y ago
  I had no issues using an RPi 3 for my media center, playing 1080p video from an external hd, but my TV is pretty cheap and barebones.
- zeta0134 7y ago
  I've never had these problems with the various media center apps. My Pi 3B+ has been running Kodi for a few months now, and it happily plays 1080p videos at what appears to be smooth 60 FPS. Mind, this is specifically running under Kodi, which is optimized as a media center, and is NOT running also a full desktop environment. Attmepting to do the same in, say, the stripped down Chromium browser was an exercise in frustration. That's always been a major limitation of the 3D acceleration in the Pi, as the libraries took a long while to mature and were always a bit hacky. The announcement for proper OpenGL support and compositing in the desktop environment is huge for me. It seems like it'll finally push the Pi up into "workshop computer" territory that, while underpowered, should be just capable enough to run some of my always on operations and act as a lightweight CAD station for small parts. I ordered one as soon as I woke up and saw the announcement, and we'll see how well that works in practice.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    Likewise. While a lightweight desktop on even the 3B+ can be excruciatingly slow, I ws using the 2 as streaming media center for 1080p video without issues. The main thing to look out for is compatible codecs.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  What review did you read? Playing video is likely the only thing the PI 3 does really well; even most H265 FHD do play without stuttering on the 3+ although we're close to the board limits. Are you sure the writer didn't use the board the wrong way? Some people still believe that videos should be streamed after being transcoded because that is the only way to watch them on their ridiculously limited smart TV which lacks the necessary codecs to watch them the right way. Of course doing this over WiFi would make the problem even worse. To optimize network usage, videos should be kept encoded until they reach the player so that the network won't be clogged. If you use the PI to read the movie as a file over a shared SMB or NFS directory, the network usage is so low that you could watch like 20 different movies on 20 different players on the same home network at the same time. Probably even more. The PI 3 (and to some extent probably the PI4 too) is still behind many other boards in other contexts (openness, performance, price) but playing video is surely not one of them.
KingFelix 7y ago
I just put together a Plex server with the RockPro64 4gb ram, PCI3x4 with 2 sata ports. I booted it up with Dietpi and things are running smooth! The board is a bit more expensive, but you can probably get it faster than the pi4 at the moment. The Dietpi community seems to be pretty great, any issues I ran into were answered pretty quickly
- mafuyu 7y ago
  Are you running it as both NAS storage and a Plex server? How's transcode performance? I put together a NAS/Plex box with a Kaby Lake Celeron and some hard drives, but I was thinking of splitting it out into separate NFS and Plex servers.
- universenz 7y ago
  As to properly balance out this review, what exactly were the issues you had that needed to be answered by a community for the RockPro64? The RPi seems to have a slew of things that just work on it out of the box, and if there are issues, 99.9% of the time you can find the solution with a quick Google. Very curious to understand what type of issues something like the RockPro64 (which has appeared numerously in this thread as a 'great alternative') faces for anyone interested in the alternatives.
  - efreak 7y ago
    I'm looking at buying the raspberry pi 4 right now, as I've been thinking of getting something to replace my odroid-c1 for a while now. My understanding is that the RockPro64 has pcie slots on it, which allows Sata boards so you can connect drives directly without usb. Personally, I'm more interested in the odroid-h2, with the native Sata. Unfortunately, it costs far more ($111 without ram) and has no wireless connectivity built in.
tomxor 7y ago
> I have had gigabit internet for a few years now Keep in mind that you are in a very small world there... most people alive today will never have internet that fast, personally i've never had a connection above 6 Mbits in the middle of a city, and I know that's likely above the median globally (keep in mind average is a poor metric due to connections like yours, SDL is still the primary type of endpoint for homes) My point being, the previous generations USB based ethernet still has massive headroom for the vast majority of peoples internet.

bscphil 7y ago

I imagine the wait must be agonizing! Why not just have a NFS server on your more powerful computer for the Pi to stream the file from? 100 Mbps is easily enough to stream any Bluray.

jackdh 7y ago
Can't speak for OP but I don't want my main PC on all the time if I'm streaming away from home.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Also can't speak for OP: I can't trust my main computer to be stable for that long, and certainly wouldn't want to rely on it for long-range contact.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Not at all. The reason I upgraded my home LAN many years ago was exactly because 100Mbps is not enough to stream 1080p videos. It does suffice on average, but the bitrate changes a lot within the same file.
- supergauntlet 7y ago
  I haven't actually seen a single 1080p raw bluray file with a higher video bitrate than 35 Mbps. Maybe with TrueHD/Atmos audio the total bitrate could push past 40, but 100 Mbps is way more than you need for 1080p. Even 4k doesn't seem to push past 50 Mbps, but I think that's because h.265/HEVC is more efficient for the same observed quality/CRF.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    You are right. I don't know what your parent comment is talking about. Blu-rays use H.264 High Level 4.1. That has a maximum bitrate (for a single buffer) of 50 Mbps. The average bitrate for an entire disc is usually closer to 25-30. Even the most extreme cases, like the mastered-in-4K Lawrence of Arabia, have peaks at about 48 Mbps, and average bitrates of about 42 Mbps. If you're having issues streaming Blurays on a 100 Mbps network, the speed of the network is not your problem!
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      NFS can not use the entire raw bandwidth for application data, and it is very likely that mplayer compresses its filesystem calls instead of making a perfectly spaced stream of them. Also, Ethernet does simply stops working way before 100% of the bandwidth is used. I don't know why you expect things to run smoothly at 50% utilization.
      - myrandomcomment 7y ago
        NFS is not the most effect protocol however NFS3 over UDP should be able to hit 75% liberate on that 100M link easy. Something else is the bottle neck here. I have done a great deal of testing on this on 100M all the way to 100G links in my career and properly tuned you should be able to hit 80% or so or the link speed at real data through put.
    - jyrkesh 7y ago
      > If you're having issues streaming Blurays on a 100 Mbps network, the speed of the network is not your problem! Well, it COULD be the problem if you're not actually getting the 100 Mbps. I've diagnosed WiFi that should have a lot more headroom than 100 Mbps but still stutters on mid-bitrate 1080p. Signal degradation
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> Why not just have a NFS server on your more powerful computer for the Pi to stream the file from? The “more powerful computer” is a laptop, and it is only being used for torrenting the films because it has gigabit ethernet. I don’t want to have to leave it on all the time, and sometimes it is still packed in its case when I want to sit down and watch a film. Storing the films on a hard drive attached to the Pi is a lot more convenient.

josteink 7y ago

> The addition of gigabit ethernet and USB 3.0 means that a Pi no longer feels like a bottleneck The model 3B+ already had this though.

bscphil 7y ago
The ethernet port on the 3B+ is still attached to the USB hub on the board. In my tests it never gets more than 300 Mbps. The Pi 4 should have true GigE support because it doesn't have that limitation.
- tracker1 7y ago
  How fast does the attached drive write though? Assuming an external spindle drive for storage.

morphle 7y ago

at 2-4 Gbps maximum because of shared bandwidth, slower than a single USB 3.0

mtw 7y ago

> Raspberry Pi 3 media center Just read theverge review on how the Pi struggles to play a video full screen, even if resolution is 480p. How are then people using it as a media center?

save_ferris 7y ago
I had no issues using an RPi 3 for my media center, playing 1080p video from an external hd, but my TV is pretty cheap and barebones.
zeta0134 7y ago
I've never had these problems with the various media center apps. My Pi 3B+ has been running Kodi for a few months now, and it happily plays 1080p videos at what appears to be smooth 60 FPS. Mind, this is specifically running under Kodi, which is optimized as a media center, and is NOT running also a full desktop environment. Attmepting to do the same in, say, the stripped down Chromium browser was an exercise in frustration. That's always been a major limitation of the 3D acceleration in the Pi, as the libraries took a long while to mature and were always a bit hacky. The announcement for proper OpenGL support and compositing in the desktop environment is huge for me. It seems like it'll finally push the Pi up into "workshop computer" territory that, while underpowered, should be just capable enough to run some of my always on operations and act as a lightweight CAD station for small parts. I ordered one as soon as I woke up and saw the announcement, and we'll see how well that works in practice.
- Legogris 7y ago
  Likewise. While a lightweight desktop on even the 3B+ can be excruciatingly slow, I ws using the 2 as streaming media center for 1080p video without issues. The main thing to look out for is compatible codecs.
squarefoot 7y ago
What review did you read? Playing video is likely the only thing the PI 3 does really well; even most H265 FHD do play without stuttering on the 3+ although we're close to the board limits. Are you sure the writer didn't use the board the wrong way? Some people still believe that videos should be streamed after being transcoded because that is the only way to watch them on their ridiculously limited smart TV which lacks the necessary codecs to watch them the right way. Of course doing this over WiFi would make the problem even worse. To optimize network usage, videos should be kept encoded until they reach the player so that the network won't be clogged. If you use the PI to read the movie as a file over a shared SMB or NFS directory, the network usage is so low that you could watch like 20 different movies on 20 different players on the same home network at the same time. Probably even more. The PI 3 (and to some extent probably the PI4 too) is still behind many other boards in other contexts (openness, performance, price) but playing video is surely not one of them.

KingFelix 7y ago

I just put together a Plex server with the RockPro64 4gb ram, PCI3x4 with 2 sata ports. I booted it up with Dietpi and things are running smooth! The board is a bit more expensive, but you can probably get it faster than the pi4 at the moment. The Dietpi community seems to be pretty great, any issues I ran into were answered pretty quickly

mafuyu 7y ago
Are you running it as both NAS storage and a Plex server? How's transcode performance? I put together a NAS/Plex box with a Kaby Lake Celeron and some hard drives, but I was thinking of splitting it out into separate NFS and Plex servers.
universenz 7y ago
As to properly balance out this review, what exactly were the issues you had that needed to be answered by a community for the RockPro64? The RPi seems to have a slew of things that just work on it out of the box, and if there are issues, 99.9% of the time you can find the solution with a quick Google. Very curious to understand what type of issues something like the RockPro64 (which has appeared numerously in this thread as a 'great alternative') faces for anyone interested in the alternatives.
- efreak 7y ago
  I'm looking at buying the raspberry pi 4 right now, as I've been thinking of getting something to replace my odroid-c1 for a while now. My understanding is that the RockPro64 has pcie slots on it, which allows Sata boards so you can connect drives directly without usb. Personally, I'm more interested in the odroid-h2, with the native Sata. Unfortunately, it costs far more ($111 without ram) and has no wireless connectivity built in.

tomxor 7y ago

> I have had gigabit internet for a few years now Keep in mind that you are in a very small world there... most people alive today will never have internet that fast, personally i've never had a connection above 6 Mbits in the middle of a city, and I know that's likely above the median globally (keep in mind average is a poor metric due to connections like yours, SDL is still the primary type of endpoint for homes) My point being, the previous generations USB based ethernet still has massive headroom for the vast majority of peoples internet.