• Registered: 2007-12-23
  • Posts: 21

Topic: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

Howdy Folks,

Ok, technically this isn't a *beta* issue, but since it is a new issue with 2.6.70 that was not present in the 2.6.68 beta, I thought I'd toss it out.

Is anyone having problems with the reliability of the radio station?  On 2.6.68, I could play radio all day and, for the most part, everything was reliable.

Now, the radio doesn't stay playing for more than 2 hours before it dies.  And, it dies to the point where I need to bounce the Chumby (not literally).  This occurs when playing The Classical Station, either from Radio Free Chumby OR "My Streams" (where I had the .ogg URL set up when TCS was missing from RFC for a while).

I wonder if there's a way to set up syslog, so I could tell if my network has suddenly gotten unreliable or if something else is going on.  Oddly enough, the wireless laptop sitting next to the chumby suffers no connectivity issues when the radio goes out.

Cheers,
-J

  • Registered: 2007-11-27
  • Posts: 30

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

Yes, I seem to be having the same issue, particularly with Shoutcast.

  • Registered: 2009-04-20
  • Posts: 2

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

Ever since I installed the beta version, the streaming radio is terrible. I can hardly listen to MediaFly as it cuts in and out every few seconds. My Streams is a little better but still terribly intermittent.

Before I installed the beta version it never seemed to cut out at all. This is a real shame as the new features in the beta version are great.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,209

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

Could you please switch back to the non-beta Control Panel to confirm that the problem goes away?

This is a curious symptom since the changes in the new Control Panel shouldn't affect music streaming, since that's handled by a totally different program that's not modified whatsoever by the beta.

The "beta" this thread was originally talking about was over a year and two major revisions ago and would presumably be unrelated to the issue for the most recent poster.

Duane's Website

  • Registered: 2009-04-20
  • Posts: 2

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

I have switched back to the non beta control panel and things seem slightly better. Although I am still getting cut outs, they do not seem to be as bad.

I really don't understand why I have been experiencing these cut outs. I was always surprised at how reliable the streaming seemed to be on the chumby but since a few weeks ago it is beginning to get unbearable. I don't have any problems with streaming content from any of my other computers in the house.

Is there anything I can do to try and diagnose what the issue is? At this point we don't know if it is the chumby, mediafly (or other stations), an issue with my network etc

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,209

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

Can you try some SHOUTcast stations to see if the issues are isolated to Mediafly?

Mediafly is really just an aggregator of podcasts - they generally don't host them.  Most podcast servers are set up to download the podcasts for later playback, so many servers, to reduce cost, may chose to download them slower than realtime.  The chumby, however, is streaming them using progressive HTTP so this would be a problem.

We haven't done anything to the chumby in the last few weeks that would affect this. If you're experiencing a new issue, then it's probably external  - the wifi connections, throttling by your ISP, the servers hosting the podcasts, etc.

Duane's Website

  • frew
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-03-28
  • Posts: 1

Re: Radio Station Reliability Drops??

I am also experiencing a lot of cutting in and cutting out; and I only use Radio Paradise from blue octy and various Pandora stations.  It happens when the chumby starts to load another widget that needs to load a lot of data it seems; for example twitter and facebook regularly cause the problem.

If I pause the chumby to stay on just one widget, like a clock or the RP widget, the problem goes away.  Also, it *does* seem to go away if I go back to the non-Beta.