Serviio

My serviio has been running fine for a long time. Lately, I have been getting some great deals on 4k blu ray disc at the flea markets so i have been expanding my collection of movies to 4k blu rays. I have had a difficult time streaming my 4k rips. so i have been playing around with several properties in the user.vmoptions file to see if it helps. The two main properties are
-Xmx1512m
-Dserviio.socketBuffer=128112

These were originally in the user.vmoptions file and working. This morning I noticed the serviio service failed and attempting to start it fails over and over. I activated the debug login but it never writes to the log, it stays empty when the service fails. Here are my steps for troubling shooting
1. reinstall over what was there but the user.vmoptions doesn't get overwritten so i had the same problem
2. backed up the library directory, uninstalled serviio, cleaned up my registry and reinstalled serviio.
this worked but upon coping my library folder back it failed again.

what I determined is that the user.vmoptions file needs to be empty. any properties in it cause the service not to start. I moved the properties to the ServiioService.exe.vmoptions file before the include line and the service starts. My question: why is the user.vmoptions file crashing the serviio service? I am running on windows 10 32gb ram and the latest version of serviio for windows.

Thanks
Lou

I stream 4K rips without an issue. Does your Serviio computer have a Gigabit Ethernet connection, and how are your players wired? Ripped UHD movies will have issues on a 100 Mbps network, so Gigabit wired or 802.11ac WiFi is needed for sufficient bandwidth.

The only setting I have in my uservm file is to increase the size of the thumbnail images. It shouldn't be crashing your Serviio process. Try removing the file and see if it will start, as a test.

My network is 1GB, my Roku 4K ultra is wired to the switch and hdmi connected to a vizio 65 inch 4k uhd tv. The serviio server is a ryzen 7 3700x with 32gb ram. The issue with the file just started recently. I always had the -xmx property option in there with no issues but yesterday i added the networksocket property because i couldn't stream 4k longer than a few minutes. This morning i discovered the serviio service was not running and wouldn't start unless the user.vmoptions file was empty. No reason why this would happen and a reinstall didn't fix it.

What property did you add to increase the thumb size in the user.vmoptions file?

Thanks for the reply
Lou

My contents of the user.vmoptions file is only two lines:
-Xmx512m
-Dserviio.hdThumbnailResolution=1000

Note that the resolution line also requires the profile in use to be changed from ThumbnailsResolution>DLNA</ThumbnailsResolution> to ThumbnailsResolution>HD</ThumbnailsResolution>

Roku devices with hardwired connections only support 100 Mbps, which isn't fast enough for UHD movie rips. Some users have reported success using WiFi on a 802.11ac connection, which of course needs to be hardwired at Gigabit to the Serviio server. As for myself, I've never been able to watch my UHD movie rips on a Roku player, wired or wireless. UHD movies have bitrate peaks that can approach 150 Mbps or greater, and I can only play them successfully on my Shield players, which have Gigabit connections. Online providers such as Netflix, Disney, etc. compress their 4K titles down to around 25 Mbps, which is why they play fine on devices without Gigabit.

Thanks for the info, very much appreciated. So the roku 4k ultra can connect at 1GB but has limits of 100Mb? Why the hell is Roku doing this. is there a way to test this? with all the firmware upgrades they are pushing maybe it's changed.

Lou

Roku does not have Gigabit Ethernet adapters in any version, new or past. Yes, they can connect to a Gigabit network (as mine does), but the speed it limited to 100 Mbps. You have to remember what Roku players are designed for, which is streaming from the Internet. Support for playing from DLNA servers was only added about 5 years ago, and it's absolutely an afterthought. Nothing available on the Internet needs a network speed above about 20 Mbps or so, so there was no reasonable need to a faster network connection. Why do they do it? I'm certain it all comes down to cost. Save 50 cents on each player, and after selling a few million of them it adds up to a considerable cost savings. This isn't something that can be upgraded with a software patch. It requires supporting hardware.

With the exception of UHD rips, the Fast Ethernet connection on a wired Roku is fine for anything you want to stream via Serviio. While I've seen bitrates of a few 1080 Blu Ray movies exceed 50 Mbps, they never come close to saturating the network connection. And as mentioned, it's possible to get a bit higher speeds using WiFi, but don't expect to see any speeds beyond 150 Mbps or so. It's enough for UHD rips, just barely.