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Confused by observation.

  • 01-05-2011 12:38pm
    #1
    Gadgetman496
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,423 ✭✭✭


    I tried something on my home network the other day and the results have left me slightly confused.

    I'm a self confessed hoarder of TV media (Show series and documentary's) and use my sons Xboxes to stream the media to TV's around the house.

    My setup is straight forward, my son has two X boxes, one in his bedroom and the other in our living room. All our media is stored on HDD's installed in and connected to my main computer. The media on my PC is shared via the networked Xboxes and displayed on TV's.

    The fact that I am making the media available to more than one device made me think "What if a media file I wish to use on one device is already in use on another device?" You know. like the way you have ever tried to delete a text file that was open and you get the message "Unable to delete because the file is in use?" or if you had a Word Document open and you try to open it a second time it tells you it's already in use and you can open it in read only mode?

    Anyway, here's what I tried, I went to my sons Xbox in his bedroom and played the file "Criminal Minds S01E01" when it was about 10mins in I went to the second Xbox in the living room and tried to play the same file, it played right from the start. After Approx 5mins I went to my own PC and attempted to play that same file on a third device (my PC) and it started to play from the beginning. I now had the single source media file playing on three different devices at the same time and on each device the show was at a different point in the show. :eek: All three were playing fine without any jitter or noticeable problems.

    I'm not complaining one bit, I think it's a great setup :)

    How can that be? How does it do that? Why was I not greeted with the "The file is in use" error? :confused:

    "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."



Comments

  • #2
    feylya
    Moderators, Music Moderators Posts: 23,363 Mod ✭✭✭✭feylya


    A file can be opened multiple times. When you stream to a device, the device buffers a portion and then requests the next portion. Your pc serves out chunks to each device as requested. When you open a file on the PC, it marks the file as open which is why when you try to delete it, you get the error message. Try opening the same file on the PC multiple times.


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