No playback on Ceton Echo when host is a VMWare VM

[clio_williams]

I'm using a networked HDHomerun tuner and Ceton Echo Extender - trying to create an entirely virtual Media Center. I am using VMWare ESXi as the host. The Media Center VM is running Windows 7 and records perfectly. After following the installation procedure for the Echo and installing the Ceton software on the VM the Echo connects to the VM fine and network performance is not an issue. When attempting to play content (say a recorded TV program) using the Echo the screen turns black and (judging by the slight increase in CPU and network utilisation on the VM) I would say it is trying to play the content. There is no video output but oddly there are occasional audio outputs which seem to skip. By means of an example, if the audio output should be "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" what I might actually hear would be "The quick bro lazy dog", though most of the time the audio is silent. After a while, it is as if it has given up trying and returns to the Recorded TV menu. With each attempt an error is logged on the host in the 'Media Center' Event Viewer log for the Mcx user. The error number is 602 but it says a description for the event cannot be found. It periodically also logs an error bearing number 700.

I realise I am trying something somewhat unconventional but would appreciate any suggestions as to what you think the issue might be. If I were to guess I would say it may be down to a video driver issue (or lack of physical video card) on the host...?

Kind regards,

James

[3rob3]

If you haven't already, I would read the following articles from wegotserved:
http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/06/28/t ... ia-center/

Hope that helps. I considered doing this recently but it seemed like it could be a real PITA.

[RyC]

You shouldn't need to passthrough any video or audio devices to the VM to get playback to work on an extender. Is this a clean installation? If not, try installing Windows 7 clean on another VM and see if it works on a clean installation. On the first VM I tried (that wasn't a clean install), the UI wouldn't come up and video wouldn't play. I just brought up another Windows 7 VM and everything has worked since, more or less.

[cram501]

I had a similar problem when I set up Media Center under ESXI 5 about a year and a half ago.

Which network card did you specify when doing the install? I found my issues were caused by the E1000 driver. Once I swapped to the VXNET3 driver all my problems went away.

I could turn off the "Link-Layer Topology" with the E1000 driver and it worked with some performance issues. Swapping to the VMXNET, solved my issues.

(Ref: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... itpromedia)

[RyC]

I completely forgot about the NIC drivers. The E1000 is kind of a fail safe that will work with nearly any VM/OS, since it emulates an old Intel NIC. Definitely try the VMXNET NIC. My motherboard and NIC is capable of passthrough, so I passed through an actual NIC to the VM.

[clio_williams]

Awesome. Thank you all for your answers. Todays winner is Cram501! Having checked I was surprised to find that this VM was using an E1000. I normally build my VM's with a VMXNet3 card but this was a P2V into Virtual Server then into ESXi. I can only assume that's why it ended up with the E1000.

Finally the Ceton seems to be working properly. The image in playback seems a little juddery and not as clear as I'd expect but it's certainly very watchable. Maybe it's the best a Ceton can do.

For now, this can be considered solved. Thanks again all!

James

[cram501]

My Echo was always a bit jittery. I don't see any of the same issues with the xbox 360.