520E WIFI Speed

[GRFN09 0]

I am running 4.2.2 and I developed a problem over the last 2 months with Gotham 13.2: the video stream would randomly (and often) stop and kick me back to the xbmc home screen - up to 3-4 times in a 60 min show. I initially thought overheating - but the box was not shutting down and did not feel hot.

So I loaded Kodi 14.0 to see if it would help. Now with Kodi I am have a new problem: wireless/connectivity. Shows will not stream/buffer at all. I checked my dowload/upload speeds for my box on OOKLA speedtest. I put up normal speeds initially but then the download rate rapidly drops to near zero and by half way through I lose connectivity completely and the test stops before it is completed. Other computers, devices on my wifi network do not seem to be affected. The only change has been installing Kodi. Even Netflix on the 520E has stopped streaming - all other home computers stream fine.

Not sure if this is related to the Kodi upgrade. Any ideas ... ? After the past 2 months my wife is ready to smash the 520E.

[Justin 206]

I am running 4.2.2 and I developed a problem over the last 2 months with Gotham 13.2: the video stream would randomly (and often) stop and kick me back to the xbmc home screen - up to 3-4 times in a 60 min show. I initially thought overheating - but the box was not shutting down and did not feel hot.

So I loaded Kodi 14.0 to see if it would help. Now with Kodi I am have a new problem: wireless/connectivity. Shows will not stream/buffer at all. I checked my dowload/upload speeds for my box on OOKLA speedtest. I put up normal speeds initially but then the download rate rapidly drops to near zero and by half way through I lose connectivity completely and the test stops before it is completed. Other computers, devices on my wifi network do not seem to be affected. The only change has been installing Kodi. Even Netflix on the 520E has stopped streaming - all other home computers stream fine.

Not sure if this is related to the Kodi upgrade. Any ideas ... ? After the past 2 months my wife is ready to smash the 520E.

Are you able to try Ethernet to see if that makes a difference?

You can also try this

I know it is for a Pivos, but they are the exact same design.

[domito 0]

Adding some info from wifi issues I have with the ATV520E. Using the latest 4.2 firmware.

With both XBMC 12 and 13 I see frequent pauses for buffering.

- Using Samba shares stops to buffer every few minutes and often bumps me out to the file list.

- Using Samba I am not able to resume playback if paused for more than a few seconds. I get bumped to the file list.

- Switching to NFS helped, it does not buffer as much. This is expected because NFS uses UDP, which means less traffic.

- Using NFS I have the same issue with resuming after pause.

- I have a Windows based XMBC (helix) box with 802.11g and it does not have any of these issues even though it's slower wifi and placed much farther from the wifi access point.

Generally the network is slow. Using speedtest with my ATV520E and Nexus4 android phone side by side, using the same server for testing, I get the following results;

- ATV520E 4.48Mbps down, 3.70Mbps up

- Nexus4 39.19Mbps down, 3.63Mbps up

- The Nexus 4 gets almost 10x the download speed.

- The upload speed is limited by my provider.

- Small download speeds are ok, large downloads and streaming do not work so well. (empirical, no numbers to support this)

The youtube link provided is for the ATV520, the ATV520E has an external antenna. Is there a similar fix for the 520E?

I'll try using wired ethernet later today, but i bought this unit specifically because I wanted wifi.

HTH. Let me know if there's any more info I can provide, or anything you want me to try.

Thanks!

[GRFN09 0]

I average about 5.35 down and 1.0 up across all my devices with my wifi.

When I test the 520E now I get 5-6 Mbps download initially but after 2-3 seconds it falls off to nothing and the test stops prior to completion.

Similarly when I try to stream, I see the buffer initially build to 5-6% then it drops to zero and show stops after 10-20 seconds.

I reviewed the video but as domito notes the 520E has an external antenna

I have tried to re-position the box - no difference.

It will be a major undertaking to move the box/tv to the ethernet or vice versa. Any other ideas?

[domito 0]

Bumping the thread. I have had to take my ATV520E out of service until this issue is resolved because with the wifi issues it's basically unusable for streaming HD media from my local file store. Note that on the same wifi my 3 years old Patriot PBO Core can stream BR ISO files from the same source without so much as a stutter, while the ATV520E has buffering issues with 420P x264 sources. Even YouTube is problematic.

I did try hard wiring it to a wireless repeater and it does not get any better throughput.

I love the device and would really like to make is useful for video. Is there any method to speed up the wifi? Is it a hardware issue, or something in the 4.2.2 android?

Any help would be appreciated.

[domito 0]

I'm still seeing overall throughput issues with the kodi update, it's topping out around 15MBit/s. Kodi seems to have less buffering issues but sometimes freezes and dies in the middle of a video.

While playing around with it I noticed that location of the box (within wire reach) did not really affect the throughput but the direction of the antenna affected it a lot. By adjusting the antenna by millimeters while downloading I could actually see the changes in throughput. This leads me to believe that the issue could be the antenna itself not having a solid connection. Is there any way I can check this without voiding my warrenty, or should I get an RMA?

[Justin 206]

I'm still seeing overall throughput issues with the kodi update, it's topping out around 15MBit/s. Kodi seems to have less buffering issues but sometimes freezes and dies in the middle of a video.

While playing around with it I noticed that location of the box (within wire reach) did not really affect the throughput but the direction of the antenna affected it a lot. By adjusting the antenna by millimeters while downloading I could actually see the changes in throughput. This leads me to believe that the issue could be the antenna itself not having a solid connection. Is there any way I can check this without voiding my warrenty, or should I get an RMA?

You can attempt to open the unit if you want to see if the wifi antenna wire has something wrong with it.

Or you can just go straight to getting an RMA.