I have just read through this thread because I am reliably getting a couple of seconds of picture and audio dropout when watching a BD from my unRAID 6.0.1 NAS to a 2014 Mac Mini running Plex through to my TV. The dropout occurs once per movie within the first couple of minutes and then not at all after that so I wondered if I was affected by this issue.

 

The NAS is on a Gigabyte H97N-WIFI board with an Intel i3-4160 processor, 16Gb RAM and the Intel onboard LAN port (not the Atheros one).

 

I do see some drops reported on the Dashboard - System Status - Errors tab. In fact the drops increased by one when I got the latest dropout in Kung Fu Panda BD.

 

I have included the diagnostics ZIP for folks to have a look at but I wondered if I would be advised to get one of the recommended discrete PCIe Intel LAN cards.

tower-diagnostics-20150706-1435.zip

I am not sure what is going on but I do know this whole problem started AFTER v6b14f when it was decided make the kernel preemptible.  Note in the change log for that (internal) release.

 

 

 set CONFIG_PREEMPT: Preemptible Kernel (to address RCU timeout errors)

 

At the time, the problem was determined to be related the faulty RealTek onboard NIC software in the Linux kernel.  So it was suggested that the Intel Network card be used.  However, the last couple of users with issues are not using RelaTek hardware.  So something else must be going on. 

 

So perhaps LimeTech needs to revisit this issue again...

I do see some drops reported on the Dashboard - System Status - Errors tab. In fact the drops increased by one when I got the latest dropout in Kung Fu Panda BD.

 

The Drops counter is not related to bad transmission or reception. It indicates that the system dropped the incoming frame because (a) it didn't recognize the protocol or (b) it is not the intended destination.

 

It it perfectly alright to see packets dropped. The Errors counter on the other hand shows any bad frames received, when that happens the first suspect is the ethernet cable.

 

The good news is that I see no Errors reported... I just get the second or so of blank screen. Am I affected by the issue in this thread or should I look for a different cause to my issue?

The good news is that I see no Errors reported... I just get the second or so of blank screen. Am I affected by the issue in this thread or should I look for a different cause to my issue?

 

To me, it doesn't sound like a network related issue.

 

The good news is that I see no Errors reported... I just get the second or so of blank screen. Am I affected by the issue in this thread or should I look for a different cause to my issue?

 

You have just posed the $64,000 question. 

 

To answer it, you need to eliminate a lot of other variables. 

 

Did  you have the problem before the upgrade?  Have you rebooted all of the switches and routers in your network?  If you revert back to the earlier version (hopefully, you made a backup of your flash drive before you started the upgrade), does the problem disappear?  Do you have it with all of the devices that you use to play BluRay content?  Does it always occur at the same point in playback?  How often is the problem occurring--- once a movie or five times in a ten minute period? 

 

If you are a good Amazon.com customer, you could order a Intel Card and test it out.  (I am a Prime member and I have always received pre-paid return shipping costs when I purchase an item that didn't work on receipt.)

I do have a lot of things to check but I can answer a couple of them...

 

1. I have had the issue since about 6beta5 and at every release since. I have not used older versions of unRAID.

2. It only occurs once per movie, generally within the first couple of minutes but I have not checked if it is exactly in the same place each time. The Mac Mini has just been woken from sleep and Plex opened.

3. It also occurs within the first few minutes of opening iTunes on my Mac Mini desktop. The iTunes library is on the NAS too.

4. It does not happen when I just use Safari and browse the web. It does not happen when I use my PC to access the same BD file that shows it on the TV.

 

It is almost as though it is either tied to the NAS spinning something up or a buffer.

 

If I wanted to try one of the recommended PCIe Intel cards it would be £25 plus shipping so not a cheap thing.

 

EDIT : An oddity... if I allow the black screen dropout to happen when I open iTunes, I then don't get it on the next BD I play during the same session.

 

2. It only occurs once per movie, generally within the first couple of minutes but I have not checked if it is exactly in the same place each time. The Mac Mini has just been woken from sleep and Plex opened.

 

 

This one is interesting!  Could it be that the movie is being buffered in RAM and what you are experiencing is the delay in spinning up of the hard drive when the buffer has been emptied?

 

When I was testing, I would actually reboot the server to empty all buffers so that I was sure that nothing was in any RAM buffer when I was trying to figure out what I was going on.  I usually used the BluRay "Lucy" for all my testings as that movie was probably the worst one for demonstrating the problem.  Using a single movie also eliminated one more variable when looking at the results. 

 

In my case, the dropouts would occur randomly as often as thirty seconds to ten minutes apart during the entire movie!  There never was any type of pattern that I could discern.